|
|
||
 |
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||
|
Dr. Adler's Briefing Room - 13 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Many of Dr. Adler's books are available through The Radical Academy Bookstore. Books
by Mortimer J.
Adler
The Center for the Study of The Great Ideas Click Here for New & Used College Textbooks at Discount Prices Click
Here for College Education Information & Study
Resources
Bookstore
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
|
Index:
The knowledge we can derive from science and history, are limited to first-order knowledge by their investigative mode of inquiry. They are incapable of enlarging our understanding by the second-order work, or philosophical analysis, with respect to ideas and all branches of knowledge. Without the contributions made by philosophy, we would be left with voids that science and history cannot fill. Even in the one sphere in which the contributions of science and philosophy are comparable -- our knowledge of reality -- philosophy, because it is noninvestigative, can answer questions that are beyond the reach of investigative science -- questions that are more profound and penetrating than any questions answerable by science. By virtue of its being investigative, science is limited to the experienceable world of physical nature. Philosophical thought can extend its inquiries into transempirical reality. It is philosophy, not science, that takes the overall view. Furthermore, when there is an apparent conflict between science and philosophy, it is to philosophy that we must turn for the resolution. Science cannot provide it. When scientists such as Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg become involved with mixed questions, they must philosophize. They cannot discuss these questions merely as scientists; the principles for the statement and solution of such problems come from philosophy, not from science. For all these reasons, I think we are compelled to regard the contributions of philosophy as having greater value for us than the contributions of science. I say this even though we must all gratefully acknowledge the benefits that science and its technological applications confer upon us. The power that science gives us over our environment, health, and lives can, as we all know, be either misused and misdirected, or used with good purpose and results. Without the prescriptive knowledge given us by ethical and political philosophy, we have no guidance in the use of that power, directing it to the ends of a good life and a good society. The more power science and technology confer upon us, the more dangerous and malevolent that power may become unless its use is checked and guided by moral obligations stemming from our philosophical knowledge of how we ought to conduct our lives and our society.
Only with a sense of that continuity of Western education from the Greeks to the nineteenth century can we fully appreciate the sharpness of the break that has occurred since 1850. During the whole preceding period, education had certain common aims and methods, not unrelated to the fact that it was always restricted to the few. No society up to that time was concerned with the schooling -- much less the education -- of all its people. Thomas Jefferson's proposal to the Virginia legislature in 1817 (not adopted at the time it was made) that "all" the children should be given three years of common schooling at the public expense marks the emergence, in our country at least, of the central problem that our kind of society faces and that it has not yet solved in any satisfactory manner. The American republic in Jefferson's day resembled the Greek republics in the time of Plato and Aristotle in two fundamental respects: (1) economically, it was a nonindustrial society; (2) politically, all men were not admitted to citizenship. Hence for Jefferson, as for Plato and Aristotle and almost all educators in between, anything except the barest beginning of education was for the few who belonged to the ruling class destined for a life of leisure and reaming, not for the working mass, destined for a life of labor, necessary to support a society in which machines had not yet replaced the productive power of human muscle. In a letter to Peter Carr in 1814, Jefferson outlined the basis of a Bill for Establishing a System of Public Education, which he submitted to the legislature in 1817. He wrote:
The suggestion that "all" children, even those destined for labor rather than for the arts and sciences as pursuits of leisure, should be given at least three years of schooling is the beginning of the democratic revolution in this country. But the explosive force of that revolutionary idea could not spread until the economic and political barriers to universal public schooling had been removed. Two basic changes -- in the constitution of government and in the production of wealth -- had to take place before society was fully confronted with the problem of how to produce an "educated people", not just a "small class of educated" men. The two changes, dynamically interactive at every point, were the extension of the franchise toward the democratic ideal of universal suffrage and the substitution of machines for muscles in the production of wealth. An industrial democracy, such as we have in America today, is a brand-new kind of society. It represents the most radical transformation of the conditions of human life that has happened so far. Hence it should not be surprising that the problems of education in an industrial democracy are startlingly new problems and much more difficult than any that our ancestors faced.
Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Book...
|
|||||||
|
The Adler Archive Index |
|||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
|
||
|
|
||
[Homepage] [Newsletter] [Search] [Support the Academy] [Link to Us] [Contact the Academy] [Citing Articles from Our Website] [Privacy Policy & Disclaimer]
Copyright 1998-99, 2000-01, & 2002-03 by The Radical Academy. All Rights Reserved.