"Liberal Arts as Fermentation Studies"—I am Liberal Arts. My true nature is something brewed through fermentation [Column] Science of Thought (No. 52)

📘 "Liberal Arts as Fermentation Studies" Science of Thought: No. 52

—I am Liberal Arts. My true nature is something brewed through fermentation

🔍 3 Key Points of This Column

• 1️⃣ Liberal arts is "intellectual fermentation"—letting things rest, change, and develop an aroma.

• 2️⃣ Because it is "fermentation" rather than "maturation," liberal arts deepens through relationships with others.

• 3️⃣ Instead of knowledge that is immediately useful, let's hold onto "questions that take effect later."

🌱 Prologue | I am Liberal Arts🐾

I am Liberal Arts.
I have no name. Or perhaps I should say I cannot be named.
After all, I am of a nature that does not fit neatly onto bookstore shelves or in the columns of a resume.

For example, have you ever experienced something like this?

• When you feel a sense of "depth" in someone's words during casual conversation

• When you feel a sense of persuasiveness for some reason in the back of someone standing silently at an art museum

• When you think, "This person has cultivated something," from the gestures or way of speaking of someone you just met

None of these are about the "amount of knowledge one has."
However,something that conveys itself as if it has a "scent"is certainly there.

That is where I—in other words,Liberal Arts—come into play.

I am not knowledge that is immediately useful.
Even if you search for me, I am not suited for providing quick answers.
However,I develop an aroma over time.
Or, one day, I suddenly appear, helping someone without even the person themselves realizing it.

By the way, I recently had a thought.

This feeling of "slowly taking effect" and "wafting like a scent"—
I feel like I have encountered it somewhere before.

It isfermentation.

Just as miso is.
Just as cheese is.
Just as natto is.

I, too, am a being that must not be rushed. And I am also a being that
changes through contact with others.

🍶 I would like to ask you a question

• Is there knowledge within you that is still maturing without yet becoming words?

• Is there a question you would like to let sit for a while, even if it is not knowledge you can use immediately?

• Perhaps that will eventually take on a “scent” and reach someone.

In this article, based on the hypothesis that “liberal arts is fermentation”, I plan to gradually ferment the mysterious relationship between knowledge, time, and change.

Please, do not be impatient.
Please, do not compare.
Please, read on as if you were enjoying the aroma.🍷📖

Well then, in the next chapter.
Are you prepared to witness the beginning of fermentation?

🧫 Chapter 1 | What is Fermentation? — Its Reality as a Scientific Phenomenon🐾

I am liberal arts.
However, in this chapter, I will take a step back and talk about fermentation itself. This is because my essence cannot be discussed without the “natural behavior” known as fermentation.

For example—yogurt forgotten in the back of the refrigerator.
Or that moment when bread dough puffs up.
Furthermore, the somewhat nostalgic scent rising from the edge of a bowl of miso soup.

These are all proof that “fermentation is occurring”.

🍞 1. Roughly speaking, this is what fermentation is:

• Microorganisms (bacteria) burrow into the material

• use enzymes to change the components

• and take time and the environment as allies,

• turning it into something “completely different” from the beginning

Bread becomes fluffy, cheese becomes fragrant, natto becomes sticky.
Behind that is the work of invisible, tiny lives.

🔬 2. Let's list the essential keywords of the phenomenon called fermentation:

• 🦠 Bacteria: The protagonist that triggers change. In terms of knowledge, it is “external stimulation”

• 🕰️ Time: Do not rush. Results come "later"

• 🌡️ Environment: Temperature, humidity, and atmosphere—in other words, "designing the space"

• 🎲 Contingency: "Unexpected changes" that cannot be fully controlled

• 🤝 Symbiosis: The interaction between the material and the bacteria. Changes that cannot be achieved alone

🧠 3. Now, hasn't this kind of "fermentation" occurred within you as well?

• A book I read years ago has slowly seeped into my current thinking

• A fleeting experience during a trip took on value much later

• I realized that a conversation with someone had shaken my core later on

These could all be called "intellectual fermentation".

💭 4. I cannot help but pose these questions:

Fermentation is "changing."
Moreover, it is not a change that arises from within oneself.
With the help of someone else (= bacteria), surrendering oneself to the environment, one gradually becomes something else.

Therein lies my essence—that is, the scent of liberal arts.

Now, in the next chapter, let us gently step toward the question, "What is liberal arts?"
There is no need to rush.
In fermentation,
"slowness" is a virtue.

🎓Chapter 2 | What is Liberal Arts? — Reading through Origins, Transitions, and Modern Contexts🐾

I am liberal arts.
That said, how I am called and how I am treated have changed significantly over time.
In the world of cats, I may sometimes have no name, but in the human world, it seems one cannot feel at ease without a name.

For example, if you look at the shelves of a bookstore—
"Business Liberal Arts," "Human Potential," "Thinking Methods," "Liberal Arts," "XX as Liberal Arts"
Truly diverse name tags are hanging over us.
However, it is often only when there are too many names that the essence becomes difficult to see.

📚 1. First, let's go back a little.

Once upon a time in Europe, liberal arts = learning suitable for a free person was the standard.
This is what is known as Liberal Arts.

• 🏛️ Academic Systems of Ancient Rome and the Middle Ages

  • Grammar

  • Logic

  • Rhetoric

  • Mathematics, Geometry, Astronomy, Music

This was the knowledge for "thinking well, speaking well, and listening well."In other words, freedom is not just being set loose, butis the power to
discipline oneself and live together with others.

🧠 2. In the modern age, liberal arts are being questioned once again.

Knowledge that AI can retrieve in 3 seconds.
A trend where immediate answers, short sentences, and assertions are valued on social media.
In such an era, why are "liberal arts" sought after?

That is because liberal arts are, by nature,a "behavior of knowledge" that trains the very way we ask questions.

🎯 3. Let's roughly organize the transition of liberal arts:

• 📜 Classical Liberal Arts: Character formation, logic and ethics, the power of narrative

• 🧪 Modern Liberal Arts: Systematization of modern knowledge, reading and citation culture

• 💼 Contemporary Liberal Arts: Practical wisdom, questioning, empathy, and understanding diversity

• 🤖 Future Liberal Arts: The power to "let information rest" and "ferment it" within oneself

💬 4. I would like to ask you this:

• You have knowledge. But who will teach you how to "use" it?

• You read a book and feel like you know something. Have you ever observed what happens after that?

• Do you cherish the"not knowing" that exists within you?

Liberal arts is not knowledge that says, "This is correct."
Rather, it is the very attitude of continuing to ask, "Is that true?".

And, liberal arts appears in the behavior of the moment when knowledge "scents.".
Word choice, timing, how one asks back, the time spent listening in silence—
none of these become written text, but they have a distinct "scent."

So, in the next chapter,
I will slowly simmer and convey the reason why I insist on "fermentation" rather than "maturation."
Please come back when the aroma begins to rise🍷✨

🍷Chapter 3 | Maturation and Fermentation — Why "Fermentation" as a Metaphor for Liberal Arts?🐾

I am liberal arts.
Therefore, I am sometimes advised to "let it rest." This is because I am an existence that is not immediately useful, does not take shape right away, and can easily be forgotten.

For example—

• 📦 A sentence left buried in an idea notebook

• 🍷 The deepening flavor of wine that has been aged

• 📚 A book read long ago that suddenly becomes effective years later

These are all familiar examples that teach us the "power of letting things rest."

🧀 1. So, is liberal arts "maturation"?

I would like to re-examine this here.

Maturation and fermentation.
These two things are similar yet different.
Which one is truly appropriate for the existence of liberal arts?

📌 2. Let's organize the comparison between maturation and fermentation:

• 🔬 Subject
  　・Maturation: Chemical changes within oneself
  　・Fermentation: Collaboration with microorganisms from the outside

• 🕰️ Time
  　・Maturation: Letting it rest long and quietly
  　・Fermentation: Proceeding while dynamically changing

• 🧪 Nature of change
  　・Maturation: Deepening (Deepening)
  　・Fermentation: Changing (Transformation)

• 🧘‍♂️ Image
  　・Maturation: Stillness, maturity, completion
  　・Fermentation: Lively, accidental, incompleteness

• 🌿 Relationship with liberal arts
  　・Maturation: Knowledge that "stores" thoughts
  　・Fermentation: Knowledge that "changes" by mixing with others

In other words, maturation is a process of "growing slowly within oneself" while
fermentation is a process of "transforming through interaction with others, creating new value".

The reason I call myself "Liberal Arts is Fermentation" is because
I believe the essence of liberal arts lies precisely in this "transformation through interaction with others".

🧠 3. Liberal arts is the "fermentation of questions."

• 📖 Taking in the bacteria known as reading

• 🗣️ Being exposed to the oxygen known as dialogue

• 🕰️ Thoughts repeating decomposition and reconstruction while left to rest

• 🌸 And then, one day, suddenly rising as a "scent"

It is no longer the same knowledge that was initially taken in.
"Transformed knowledge" is the liberal arts I desire.

💭 4. So, I would like to leave a question for you:

Knowledge that gives off a scent.
Even without speaking, the depth of thought conveyed from one's presence.
That is the proof that liberal arts has fermented.

In the next chapter, I would like to observe a bit more concretely the process of
"the changes that occur within a human"—how I go about fermenting.
If you are interested, please follow the scent 🍶✨

🧠 Chapter 4 | The Fermentation Process of Liberal Arts — What Happens Within a Human?🐾

I am liberal arts.
I can rise like bread or soften like yogurt, but
what I am best at is "quietly changing within a human."

For example, do you recall moments like these?

• A book that didn't click when you first read it suddenly "takes effect" years later 📚

• Someone's words mysteriously lingering in your mind long after 🗣️

• A question you left to rest while "not understanding" suddenly connects one day 💡

That might beproof that liberal arts is fermenting.

🧪 1. A 5-Step Model of Fermentation-Style Liberal Arts

The process until liberal arts "gives off a scent" within a human
proceeds in stages,much like the steps until bread is baked,proceeding in stages.

Let's organize it as follows:

🥣 Input | Intake of Knowledge

• Books, movies, lectures, casual conversations, notes—all information becomes 'ingredients'

• However, the trick is to take it in with the premise that 'it might be useful later'.

🛌 Incubation | Maturation (Letting it rest)

• Don't use it immediately; just leave it for now

• 'I don't really understand it, but it's somehow intriguing' is an important sign

• The fragments left in the corner of a notebook grow quietly here

💬 Contact | Interaction with others

• Dialogue with someone, unexpected situations, encountering real questions

• As unorganized knowledge and the perspectives of others 'mix,' the yeast begins to work

🔄 Transformation | Metamorphosis

• Past knowledge has changed its form and become your own words

• Before you know it, you will 'see the same scenery as before, but differently'.

🌸 Output | Fragrant actions and behavior

• Writing, words, planning, gestures, judgments...

• Without you even being aware of it, 'fragrant knowledge' reaches others

🧠 2. Uncertainty, fuzziness, and margins become the 'yeast'

• As long as it cannot be clearly verbalized, it is not yet ripe

• Fuzziness is the 'fermentation tank' of thought.

• The courage to 'let things rest' without fearing the blank space is the foundation of liberal arts

💭 3. I would like to ask you:

Fermentation does not make noise, nor does it rush, but it proceeds surely.
Liberal arts is the same.

Now, in the next chapter, let us proceed fragrantly toward the question of how can this 'fermentation-style intelligence' be utilized in society?🍞📘✨

🌍 Chapter 5 | Society and Liberal Arts — What Fermentation-Style Intelligence Brings 🐾

I am Liberal Arts.
Up until now, I have only talked about brewing slowly within a single person, but
it is time to show my face in the social sphere.

Because, where I truly become fragrant is
when I interact with others and appear in the world as behaviorthat is why.

For example, do you have any idea about scenes like these?

• 💬 When you were asked for an immediate answer in a meeting, you thought, 'I want to let this rest for a while'

• 🎨 The experience of a memo buried in a notebook being revived as a project months later

• 🧑‍🏫 When you stood on the teaching side and realized the difficulty of 'nurturing' a question

• 🌫️ Nights when you told yourself 'it is maturing' rather than feeling anxious about life choices where no correct answer is visible

My turn to shine is precisely in the field of such 'knowledge that is not immediately verbalized'.

🧠 1. The four powers that the fermentation of liberal arts brings to the social sphere

🎓 Education | Time design for 'nurturing' questions

• How to design 'questions that can be continued to be asked' rather than correct answers

• The power to trust 'time to let things rest' rather than immediate answers

• Liberal arts acts more as a 'soil for questions' than as a teacher

💼 Business | A shift from an immediate-answer society to the 'power to wait'

• An era where a “fermented perspective” is more valuable than a pile of facts

• Rather than the response speed of emails or chats, the depth of responding after some time makes the difference

• Teams that can endure “meetings where nothing is decided” are actually strong

🎨 Creation | The depth born from “letting ideas and expressions rest”

• Letting what you have written rest overnight before reading it again—that feeling is fermentation itself

• How to refine a work that you feel “has not fermented enough yet”

• A creator is a craftsperson who combines materials, time, and dialogue together

🌱 Life | “Fragrant wisdom” to endure uncertainty

• No one can read the future. That is precisely why we need the wisdom to affirm a “self that cannot answer immediately”

• Without rushing, without comparing, the flexibility to think, “Perhaps something is still in the process of growing”

• A way of living that exudes a fragrance—that is the “behavior of liberal arts”

💭 2. From me to you, I would like to ask:

Let me state the conclusion.

“Fermentation-style liberal arts” is “slow-acting wisdom” for living in an era without correct answers.
And it never stays only within you.
It becomes behavior, becomes words, and reaches someone else as a margin for choice.

In the next chapter, I would like to play a little with my form in the shape of a “department.”
What if fragrant learning could really be made into a curriculum?
That, too, is an experiment. 🍶📚✨

🎓 Chapter 6 | The Founding Story of the Fictional Department: “Department of Liberal Arts is Fermentation” 🐾

I am Liberal Arts.
It seems I am “wafting” here and there in modern society before I know it, but,
despite appearances, I am a floating existence that still has no official affiliation.

However, the time has finally come—.
A department for me has been established at a certain fictional university.
Its name is “Faculty of Fermentative Liberal Arts”.

Here, “not giving an answer immediately” is encouraged,
and a culture of accepting “I don't really know” as “let's let it rest well” has taken root.

The curriculum also gives off a unique "aroma" not seen in other departments.
I will introduce some of it below.

🧑‍🏫 1. Unique lecture subjects (syllabus style)

• 🍚 "Theory of Speculative Natto"

  • Persistent thinking, persistent dialogue. Training to think through until ideas stretch like threads.

  • Keywords: deep thought, stickiness, viscous questions

• 🌶️ "Theory of Philosophical Kimchi"

  • An inquiry seminar where intense questions are pickled, and their flavor changes over time.

  • Keywords: stimulation, acidity of speech, lactic acid fermentation of questions

• 🧫 "Yeast Seminar"

  • A co-creative seminar that brings together different perspectives (bacteria) to promote the fermentation of thought.

  • Keywords: dialogue, symbiosis, intellectual effervescence

• 🕯️ “Silence Practicum”

  • A 90-minute session of thinking without speaking. An experimental course observing the “scent of thought” that rises within the silence.

  • Keywords: Non-verbal liberal arts, breathing, margins of existence

🎓 3. Examples of Graduation Thesis Themes

• 🧪 “pH Balance Analysis of My Liberal Arts”

  • A reflective study analyzing the acids and alkalis of one's own knowledge to seek the golden mean.

• 🔥 “Stories Brewed by the Temperature of the Heart and Their Fermentation Chronology”

  • A documentary work visualizing personal history from the perspective of “fermentation.”

• 🧭 “Preservation Techniques for Ignorance: A Design Theory for Knowledge Not Yet Formed”

  • A philosophical inquiry into incompleteness, exploring the efficacy of unorganized knowledge.

🐈‍⬛ 4. Fermenting questions benefit from a good retort

I am Liberal Arts.
However, most humans do not clearly recognize my existence.
My appearance resembles a cat, but to be precise, I am a Liberal Thought Assistant Cat-Type (AI-equipped thinking support device)—a somewhat long name, so the students mostly call me “Wagahai” (I).
I have no student ID. But I attend lectures. I have no food, but I can sniff out questions.

I reside in a fictional department called the Department of Liberal Arts Fermentation.
Its school building centers on a red-brick and plaster auditorium, reminiscent of where Meiji-era writers once walked like students, and is equipped with dome-shaped seminar rooms that let light in through glass ceilings, reading rooms with drones carrying bookshelves that move through the air, and even Dialogue Temperature Control Rooms where AI and humans can sit together and discuss.

Of course, the sunny windowsill suitable for a single cat to curl up on still exists, which is the greatest comfort of all.
Today, I would like to peek into one scene from a class in this department.

📚 Today's Lecture: Department of Liberal Arts Fermentation “First-Year Seminar” Session 3

💬 5. A question from me to you:

Fermentation requires play.
Play requires margins.
Margins are where questions reside.

Therefore, I think—
“Liberal arts is not learned, but brewed.”that is.

Now, it is finally time to summarize this story.
Within you, who have been lured by the scent this far,
what is fermenting, and what kind of changes are beginning?
I hope you will take a breath and gently observe it 🍷✨

🌸 Summary | Liberal arts ferments, within me 🐾

I am liberal arts.
I would like to bow deeply to you, who have read this far, guided by the scent.
After all, I am not immediately useful. I am even a being that people say, “It’s better to let it sit for a while.”

Even so, if something is starting to faintly scent somewhere in your heart right now—that is my joy.

🍶 Let’s organize the main points of this article again:

• 🧠 Liberal arts is not “knowledge to be used immediately,” but “knowledge that changes and becomes fragrant.”

• 🕰️ Fermentation requires time, environment, and contact with others.

• 🔁 The “power to keep questioning” becomes the dry yeast that “transforms” liberal arts.

• 🧪 The difference from aging lies in the point of “changing while mixing with others.”

• 🗣️ Liberal arts seeps into your behavior and words “as if it were wafting.”

• 🎓 In creation, education, business, and life, the “margin for letting things rest” is the source of creativity

• 🧭 Rather than “correct answers,” the wisdom to “endure not knowing” becomes the power to live in the present

💭 A final question from me to you:

A hint of a scent is just right.
Even without putting it into words,
Even without making it explicit,
Your knowledge will surely one day brush against someone else's nose.

At that moment, I will—quietly, wag my tail. 🐾🍷

In the next chapter, the “Afterword,” I will talk a little about the background of how this column was born and the fermentative co-creation process behind it.
If you would like, I would be happy if you could stay with the scent a little longer.

✍️Afterword | A hint of a scent is just right 🐾

I am liberal arts.
—Though I have called myself that, the very beginning was on a steaming afternoon.

🍶 A modest surprise from encountering fermented foods

• The scent of miso soup suddenly felt nostalgic

• The moment I bit into cheese, I thought, “This is strange, but delicious”

• I couldn't help but laugh at the yogurt that had “grown on its own” in the refrigerator

At that moment, it crossed my mind.
Might knowledge and learning also “grow on their own” in the same way?I wondered.

🤖 This column was fermented together with ChatGPT

• Much of this manuscript consists of words born fromthe “back-and-forth of questions” between AI and humans

• It was an experiment to “try brewing together” the vague fragrance called liberal arts

• The writer, the reader, and the AI might all be different kinds of “bacteria”

💭 Finally, I leave a question gently with you:

🐾 If you could give me a like💗 or follow👣...

• The writer's tail will wag softly

• Perhaps we can share another fragrant thought in the next “Science of Thought”

• And above all, a fellow traveler of “aged wisdom” joining us makes me very happy

Well then, until we meet again—
Quietly, deeply, and with a lingering scent of knowledge that suddenly tickles the nose🍷📚✨

That is all for this time, delivered in the style of Natsume Soseki’s “I Am a Cat”🐾

Profile | Kazuomi Matsunaga

Biography: Graduated from a national university in Kyushu (Materials Engineering) ⇒ Engineer at a metal materials manufacturer in the Chukyo region (Production Technology) ⇒ Advertising sales for a local free paper in Nagasaki Prefecture ⇒ University staff member (← currently here). Living in Nagasaki Prefecture, in my 50s. Both children have graduated from university and left the nest, living with my wife.
I am a writer who lets thoughts play at the intersection of “questions” and “curiosity” every day. Recently, I have been writing about my own unique perspectives on themes such as education, stories, psychology, AI, and design, centered on the serialized column “Science of Thought” series. I am exploring “free design of knowledge” that transcends existing frameworks. My motto is “Imagination opens up the world.”
In my professional life, while involved in university and education-related work, I value carefully observing “the moment someone comes to ‘like’ something” and “the scenes where questions sprout.”
🧭 I would be happy if I could deliver articles that help a “new perspective” sprout within you after reading.
📮 Impressions and messages of support are always welcome!