What happens at the end of science? Philosophy?
It is the kind of question that can pause a conversation. Not because science fails, and not because philosophy is waiting at the edge of the laboratory to correct it, but because every discipline, if you follow it far enough, begins to run into its own foundations. What counts as truth? What can be known? What is real? What do numbers describe, and what do they leave out? At a certain depth, questions begin to blend between fields of study.
In the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a group of students has chosen to move between science and the humanities. Their schedules are crowded; their degree plans are complicated. But they are trying to make room for the fact that curiosity does not always arrive in a single form.
Of the roughly 12,517 undergrads in LAS, more than 1,000 are pursuing degrees in more than one major, according to the LAS Student Academic Affairs Office. I spoke with a few of them to learn more about their thoughts and college experience. One of those three was Jess Johnson, who majors in history and geography & geographical information science.