Stanford University's new Symbolic Systems Program is an interdisciplinary undergraduate program focusing on understanding the nature of intelligent behavior. It brings together the disciplines of cognitive psychology, logic, computer science and artificial intelligence, philosophy, and linguistics in a newly emerging field of research concerned with the structure, content, and processing of information. Lingustics plays a central role in the program because, as the systematic study of human language, it can contribute greatly to the development of a general theory about how information is conveyed through symbols. The field of linguistics also deals with an exceptional range of phenomena, and is intellectually and practically accessible to an undergraduate student, making it an especially suitable vehicle for teaching undergraduates how to evaluate theories. (MSE)