The short answer to the question posed in the title of this essay is that special-ized and general education need each other because their relationship is comple-mentary. Specialized education is a process of analysis. It breaks complex knowledge down into bite-size chunks we know as disciplines. It is vertical. General education is a process of synthesis. It puts disciplinary pieces into interdisciplinary wholes. It is horizontal. Analysis is necessary to identify problems, but synthesis is necessary to solve problems. Just as the terms “inventory” and “invention” share the same root word, mastery of inherited knowledge (inventory) is the first step in learning, but by itself is insufficient because the interconnected world is constantly changing. Adapting to those changes with wisdom and compassion requires creativity and imagination (invention). Mirroring the two hemispheres of the human brain, analysis is the realm of rational intelligence; synthesis is the realm of creative, emotional, social, and moral intelligence. Like the brain, which requires the integration of both these two hemispheres to form the integrity of the whole, a successful education requires both analysis and synthesis. The challenge of complementarity, of course, is to find an appropriate balance between the two and then to maintain that balance among the three constituencies who have a direct interest in the relationship of specialized and general education: society as a whole, individual students, and the university itself.