Part 7 (1/2)

Such a philosophy does not represent the genuine purport of science It takes the technique for the thing itself; the apparatus and the tery for reality, the method for its subject matter Science does confine its statements to conditions which enable us to predict and control the happening of events, ignoring the qualities of the events Hence itsthem out of account, it does not exclude theion; it only furnishes ress of science was increasinghim to place his cherished ends on a firmer basis than ever before, and also to diversify his activities almost at will, the philosophy which professed to formulate its accomplishments reduced the world to a barren and monotonous redistribution of matter in space Thus the immediate effect of modern science was to accentuate the dualism of matter and mind, and thereby to establish the physical and the huroups Since the difference between better and worse is bound up with the qualities of experience, any philosophy of science which excludes theenuine content of reality is bound to leave out what isand most important to mankind

3 The Present Educational Problem In truth, experience knows no division between human concerns and a purely mechanical physical world Man's home is nature; his purposes and aims are dependent for execution upon natural conditions Separated froences of fancy From the standpoint of human experience, and hence of educational endeavor, any distinction which can be justly made between nature and man is a distinction between the conditions which have to be reckoned with in the formation and execution of our practical aims, and the aims themselves This philosophy is vouched for by the doctrine of biological development which shows thather processes from without It is reinforced by the experie accrues in virtue of an atteested in dealing with natural objects in behalf of social uses Every step forward in the social sciences-the studies tery-shows that social questions are capable of being intelligently coped with only in the degree in which we e hypotheses, and testing them in action which is characteristic of natural science, and in the degree in which we utilize in behalf of the proe ascertained by physics and che problems as insanity, inte, the conservation of natural resources, the constructive use of governood without weakening personal initiative, all illustrate the direct dependence of our important social concerns upon the methods and results of natural science

With respect then to both humanistic and naturalistic studies, education should take its departure fro science as a study of nature apart from literature as a record of hu both the natural sciences and the various human disciplines such as history, literature, econoically, the problem is simpler than the attempt to teach the sciences as mere technical bodies of information and technical forms of physical manipulation, on one side; and to teach humanistic studies as isolated subjects, on the other For the latter procedure institutes an artificial separation in the pupils' experience Outside of school pupils meet with natural facts and principles in connection with various modes of human action (See ante, p 30) In all the social activities in which they have shared they have had to understand the material and processes involved To start them in school with a rupture of this intimate association breaks the continuity of mental development, makes the student feel an indescribable unreality in his studies, and deprives him of the normal motive for interest in them

There is no doubt, of course, that the opportunities of education should be such that all should have a chance who have the disposition to advance to specialized ability in science, and thus devote themselves to its pursuit as their particular occupation in life But at present, the pupil too often has a choice only between beginning with a study of the results of prior specialization where the material is isolated from his daily experiences, or with miscellaneous nature study, where material is presented at haphazard and does not lead anywhere in particular The habit of introducing college pupils into segregated scientific subject matter, such as is appropriate to the iven field, is carried back into the high schools Pupils in the latter si, with difficulties smoothed over and topics reduced to the level of their supposed ability The cause of this procedure lies in following tradition, rather than in conscious adherence to a dualistic philosophy But the effect is the same as if the purpose were to inculcate an idea that the sciences which deal with nature have nothing to do with e part of the co of the sciences, for those who never become scientific specialists, is the result of a separation which is unavoidable when one begins with technically organized subject matter Even if all students were embryonic scientific specialists, it is questionable whether this is the reat majority are concerned with the study of sciences only for its effect upon theirthem more alert, more open- of ideas propounded or suggested,-and for achieving a better understanding of their daily environment, it is certainly ill-advised Too often the pupil co which is too superficial to be scientific and too technical to be applicable to ordinary affairs

The utilization of ordinary experience to secure an advance into scientificthe latter connected with familiar human interests, is easier to-day than it ever was before The usual experience of all persons in civilized communities to-day is intimately associated with industrial processes and results These in turn are so many cases of science in action The stationary and traction stearaph and telephone, the electric motor enter directly into the lives of e are practically acquainted with these things Not only does the business occupation of their parents depend upon scientific applications, but household pursuits, the hts seen upon the streets, embody scientific achievements and stimulate interest in the connected scientific principles The obvious pedagogical starting point of scientific instruction is not to teach things labeled science, but to utilize the familiar occupations and appliances to direct observation and experie of so thes

The opinion soation from the ”purity” of science to study it in its active incarnation, instead of in theoretical abstraction, rests upon aAS ree in which it is apprehended in its widest possible range of s depends upon perception of connections, of context To see a scientific fact or law in its human as well as in its physical and technical context is to enlarge its significance and give it increased cultural value Its direct econo money worth, is incidental and secondary, but a part of its actual connections The irasped in its social connections-its function in life

On the other hand, ”huent sense of human interests The social interest, identical in its deepestwith a e about man, information as to his past, familiarity with his documented records of literature, may be as technical a possession as the accumulation of physical details Menfacility in laboratory uistic y of literary productions Unless such activity reacts to enlarge the iinative vision of life, it is on a level with the busy work of children It has the letter without the spirit of activity It readily degenerates itself into a miser's accumulation, and ahe finds in the affairs of life Any study so pursued that it increases concern for the values of life, any study producing greater sensitiveness to social well-being and greater ability to pro is humane study The humanistic spirit of the Greeks was native and intense but it was narrow in scope Everybody outside the hellenic circle was a barbarian, and negligible save as a possible enemy Acute as were the social observations and speculations of Greek thinkers, there is not a word in their writings to indicate that Greek civilization was not self-inclosed and self-sufficient There was, apparently, no suspicion that its future was at the mercy of the despised outsider Within the Greek community, the intense social spirit was liher culture was based on a substratum of slavery and economic serfdom-classes necessary to the existence of the state, as Aristotle declared, and yet not genuine parts of it The development of science has produced an industrial revolution which has brought different peoples in such close contact with one another through colonization and commerce that no matter how some nations may still look down upon others, no country can harbor the illusion that its career is decided wholly within itself The saricultural serfdoanized factory laborers with recognized political rights, and who make claims for a responsible role in the control of industry-clai the well-to-do, since they have been brought into closer connections with the less fortunate classes through the breaking down of class barriers

This state of affairsthat the older humanism omitted economic and industrial conditions from its purview Consequently, it was one sided Culture, under such circumstances, inevitably represented the intellectual and moral outlook of the class which was in direct social control Such a tradition as to culture is, as we have seen (ante, p 260), aristocratic; it emphasizes what marks off one class from another, rather than fundamental common interests Its standards are in the past; for the aiained rather than widely to extend the range of culture

The reater account of industry and of whatever has to do withare frequently condemned as attacks upon the culture derived from the past But a wider educational outlook would conceive industrial activities as agencies forintellectual resources reater solidity to the culture of those having superior resources In short, e consider the close connection between science and industrial development on the one hand, and between literary and aesthetic cultivation and an aristocratic social organization on the other, we get light on the opposition between technical scientific studies and refining literary studies We have before us the need of overco this separation in education if society is to be truly democratic

Summary The philosophic dualism between man and nature is reflected in

the division of studies between the naturalistic and the humanistic with a tendency to reduce the latter to the literary records of the past This dualism is not characteristic (as were the others which we have noted) of Greek thought It arose partly because of the fact that the culture of Ro borrowed directly or indirectly from Greece, and partly because political and ecclesiastic conditions ee as that was transmitted in literary documents

At the outset, the rise of modern science prophesied a restoration of the intie of nature as theBut the more immediate applications of science were in the interests of a class rather than of men in common; and the received philosophic formulations of scientific doctrine tended either to mark it off as merely material from man as spiritual and immaterial, or else to reduce ly, the tendency was to treat the sciences as a separate body of studies, consisting of technical infor the physical world, and to reserve the older literary studies as distinctively huiven of the evolution of knowledge, and of the educational schened to overconition of the place occupied by the subject matter of the natural sciences in hues upon the Christian Church pp 43-44

Chapter Twenty-two: The Individual and the World

1 Mind as Purely Individual We have been concerned with the influences which have effected a division betork and leisure, knowing and doing,up the subject matter of education into separate studies They have also found formulation in various philosophies which have opposed to each other body and e and practice, physical mechanism and ideal purpose Upon the philosophical side, these various dualisms culminate in a sharp demarcation of individual minds from the world, and hence from one another While the connection of this philosophical position with educational procedure is not so obvious as is that of the points considered in the last three chapters, there are certain educational considerations which correspond to it; such as the antithesis supposed to exist between subject matter (the counterpart of the world) and method (the counterpart ofpurely private, without intrinsic connection with the s, it will be shown in this chapter that the dualistic philosophy of mind and the world implies an erroneous conception of the relationshi+p between knowledge and social interests, and between individuality or freedom, and social control and authority The identification of the mind with the individual self and of the latter with a private psychic consciousness is comparatively modern In both the Greek and ard the individual as a channel through which a universal and divine intelligence operated The individual was in no true sense the knower; the knoas the ”Reason” which operated through him The individual interfered at his peril, and only to the detriree in which the individual rather than reason ”knew,” conceit, error, and opinion were substituted for true knowledge In Greek life, observation was acute and alert; and thinking was free ally the consequences of the theory were only such as were consequent upon the lack of an experiage in knowing, and be checked up by the results of the inquiries of others Without such liability to test by others, the minds of men could not be intellectually responsible; results were to be accepted because of their aesthetic consistency, agreeable quality, or the prestige of their authors In the barbarian period, individuals were in a still e was supposed to be divinely revealed, and nothing remained for the minds of individuals except to work it over after it had been received on authority Aside from the more consciously philosophic aspects of these movements, it never occurs to any one to identify mind and the personal self wherever beliefs are transmitted by custoious individualism The deepest concern of life was the salvation of the individual soul In the later Middle Ages, this latent individualism found conscious formulation in the nominalistic philosophies, which treated the structure of knowledge as soh his own acts, and mental states With the rise of economic and political individualism after the sixteenth century, and with the development of Protestantishts and duties of the individual in achieving knowledge for hie is holly through personal and private experiences As a consequence, ht of as wholly individual Thus upon the educational side, we find educational reforne, Bacon, Locke, henceforth vehe which is acquired on hearsay, and asserting that even if beliefs happen to be true, they do not constitute knowledge unless they have grown up in and been tested by personal experience The reaction against authority in all spheres of life, and the intensity of the struggle, against great odds, for freedom of action and inquiry, led to such an emphasis upon personal observations and ideas as in effect to isolate mind, and set it apart from the world to be known

This isolation is reflected in the great developy-the theory of knowledge The identification ofup of the self as soulf between the knowing e was possible at all Given a subject-the knower-and an object-the thing to be knoholly separate from one another, it is necessary to fraet into connection with each other so that valid knowledge may result This proble upon theupon the world, becaht

The theories that we cannot know the world as it really is but only the impressions made upon the mind, or that there is no world beyond the individual e is only a certain association of the mind's own states, were products of this preoccupation We are not directly concerned with their truth; but the fact that such desperate solutions idely accepted is evidence of the extent to whichuse of the term ”consciousness” as an equivalent for mind, in the supposition that there is an inner world of conscious states and processes, independent of any relationshi+p to nature and society, an inner worldelse, is evidence of the sareater freedoht in action, was translated into philosophic subjectivisanization It should be obvious that this philosophic nificance of the practicalits transcript, it was a perversion Men were not actually engaged in the absurdity of striving to be free fro for greater freedoreater power to initiate changes in the world of things and fellow beings; greater scope of reater freedom in observations and ideas implied in movement They wanted not isolation from the world, but a more intimate connection with it They wanted to forh tradition They wanted closer union with their fellows so that they ht combine their respective actions for mutual aims

So far as their beliefs were concerned, they felt that a great deal which passed for knowledge was merely the accumulated opinions of the past, much of it absurd and its correct portions not understood when accepted on authority Men must observe for themselves, and form their own theories and personally test them Such a ma as truth, a procedure which reducedin truth Such is theof what is sometimes called the substitution of inductive experi for deductive In so with their iriculture, manufacture, etc, had to be based upon observation of the activities of natural objects, and ideas about such affairs had to be checked, to sos there was an undue reliance upon ly And this observational-experimental method was restricted to these ”practical” matters, and a sharp distinction e or truth (See Ch XX) The rise of free cities, the development of travel, exploration, and co co business, threw men definitely upon their own resources The reformers of science like Galileo, Descartes, and their successors, carried analogousthe facts about nature An interest in discovery took the place of an interest in syste” received beliefs

A just philosophic interpretation of these hts and responsibilities of the individual in gaining knowledge and personally testing beliefs, no matter by what authorities they were vouched for But it would not have isolated the individual from the world, and consequently isolated individuals-in theory-from one another It would have perceived that such disconnection, such rupture of continuity, denied in advance the possibility of success in their endeavors As rown up, and always ent, or gain , sis and values (See ante, p 30) Through social intercourse, through sharing in the activities eradually acquires a mind of his own The conception of mind as a purely isolated possession of the self is at the very antipodes of the truth The self achieves s is incarnate in the life about hie anew on its own account

Yet there is a valid distinction between knowledge which is objective and i which is subjective and personal In one sense, knowledge is that which we take for granted It is that which is settled, disposed of, established, under control What we fully knoe do not need to think about In common phrase, it is certain, assured And this does notof certainty It denotes not a sentiment, but a practical attitude, a readiness to act without reserve or quibble Of course we e-for fact and truth-at a given ti which is assuranted in our intercourse with one another and nature is what, at the given ti on the contrary, starts, as we have seen, fro, searching attitude, instead of one of h its critical process true knowledge is revised and extended, and our convictions as to the state of things reorganized Clearly the last few centuries have been typically a period of revision and reorganization of beliefs Men did not really throay all trans the realities of existence, and start afresh upon the basis of their private, exclusive sensations and ideas They could not have done so if they had wished to, and if it had been possible general imbecility would have been the only outcoe, and critically investigated the grounds upon which it rested; they noted exceptions; they used new ht data inconsistent hat had been believed; they used their iinations to conceive a world different from that in which their forefathers had put their trust The as a piecemeal, a retail, business One problem was tackled at a time The net results of all the revisions amounted, however, to a revolution of prior conceptions of the world What occurred was a reorganization of prior intellectual habitudes, infinitelyloose from all connections would have been

This state of affairs suggests a definition of the role of the individual, or the self, in knowledge; namely, the redirection, or reconstruction of accepted beliefs Every new idea, every conception of things differing froin in an individual New ideas are doubtless always sprouting, but a society governed by custoe their development On the contrary, it tends to suppress them, just because they are deviations fros differently from others is in such a coenerally fatal Even when social censorshi+p of beliefs is not so strict, social conditions may fail to provide the appliances which are requisite if new ideas are to be adequately elaborated; or they may fail to provide any material support and reward to those who entertain them Hence they remain mere fancies, romantic castles in the air, or aiination involved in the modern scientific revolution were not easily secured; they had to be fought for; many suffered for their intellectual independence But, upon the whole, modern European society first permitted, and then, in soed the individual reactions which deviate from what custom prescribes Discovery, research, inquiry in new lines, inventions, finally caree tolerable However, as we have already noted, philosophic theories of knowledge were not content to conceive mind in the individual as the pivot upon which reconstruction of beliefs turned, thusthe continuity of the individual with the world of nature and fellow arded the individual mind as a separate entity, complete in each person, and isolated froitimate intellectual individualism, the attitude of critical revision of forress, was explicitly formulated as a moral and social individualism When the activities of mind set out from customary beliefs and strive to effect transforeneral conviction, there is no opposition between the individual and the social The intellectual variations of the individual in observation, iencies of social progress, just as conforency of social conservation But when knowledge is regarded as originating and developing within an individual, the ties which bind the nored and denied

When the social quality of individualized mental operations is denied, it becomes a problem to find connections which will unite an individual with his fellows Moral individualism is set up by the conscious separation of different centers of life It has its roots in the notion that the consciousness of each person is wholly private, a self-inclosed continent, intrinsically independent of the ideas, wishes, purposes of everybody else But when men act, they act in a common and public world This is the problem to which the theory of isolated and independent conscious s, ideas, desires, which have nothing to do with one another, how can actions proceeding from theoistic consciousness, how can action which has regard for others take place?