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by Mortimer J.
Adler
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by Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D.
I think that I shall be expressing the negative voice in the threesided discussion being carried on in this session of the seminar. I should like briefly and at once to state the propositions that constitute the theses I would like to defend. They are as follows: 1. That there is no such thing as scientific philosophy. The phrase "scientific philosophy" is intrinsically self-contradictory. 2. That empirical science has little if anything to contribute to the formation of a philosophy of education. 3. That there are no recent advances or contemporary developments in science which are exceptions to this thesis. 4. That the foundations of the philosophy of education are to be found in the whole of theoretical and practical philosophy and nowhere else, and 5. That the only significant change in the philosophy of education that has occurred in the last hundred years has been brought about by the advent of industrial democracy. In other words, if one were really concerned with a fundamental revision of our educational thinking one would not look to science either for help or for stimulation. One would be concerned with the effect on education of a brand new society, a society which has come into existence in less than a hundred years as a result of the most important revolution in the history of mankind. That affects education. But science, as I understand it -- with all its magnificent achievements -- contributes absolutely nothing to the formation of an educational philosophy. I must beg your leave to spend a little time at the beginning to make a clear distinction between science and philosophy, and then show you what, in my judgment, are the basic propositions in the philosophy of education, and where they have their foundations in philosophy as a whole. Next, I would like to comment, point by point, on what bearing science might conceivably have on these basic propositions. Finally, I wish to deal with the one significant change in the philosophy of education that has occurred in the last hundred years. I will begin with a brief attempt to distinguish the whole of science, as we understand it in the contemporary world, and philosophy. In the seventeenth century and earlier, the words science and philosophy were used interchangeably. In fact, most of the great scientists of the seventeenth century, men like Huygens, Galileo, and Newton, would have called themselves natural philosophers. "Philosophy" was the word; "science," the Latin scientia, simply meant a branch of the philosophical science, one of the sciences. But since Newton's day, since the seventeenth century and since certain philosophical developments of the eighteenth, a sharp distinction has occurred -- quite properly, by the way. The two disciplines are, I think, related, but they are independent of one another. Let me give you the principles for making this distinction. If science and philosophy are two independent disciplines, their independence arises from the fact that each discipline has a characteristic method, which enables it to investigate an object appropriate to that method, and answer the questions that can be asked about that object and answered by that method. To illustrate this by taking a simple case, consider mathematics as science X, or discipline X, and consider experimental physics as discipline Y, or science Y. Now, without going into the details of the mathematical method and the experimental method, it is perfectly clear that the method of mathematics is competent to answer certain questions, and the experimental method is competent to answer others. But, by experimentation, no properly mathematical question can be answered at all; and, by mathematics -- by the method of mathematical research or analysis -- no properly experimental question can be answered at all. The method of mathematics is restricted by its range of competence to the objects of mathematical inquiry, as the method of experimental physics is restricted to the objects of experimental inquiry. This does not prevent there being the hybrid science, the great science of our day, mathematical physics. The union of these two in no way changes the fact of their independence as disciplines. Moreover, to make this illustration a little clearer, when two disciplines are independent (as mathematics and experimental physics are, so that each by its method is only competent to answer certain questions and not others), then one discipline by its method cannot criticize the findings of another. If the experimenter cannot answer mathematical questions, neither can he criticize the answers given by the mathematician. Only another mathematician, using the method of mathematics, is able to criticize proposals of solutions to mathematical problems. Similarly, the mathematician qua mathematician is totally incompetent to criticize the solution of experimental problems. It takes another experimenter, using the method, to do that. Let us take two practical examples, that of the civil engineer and that of the physician. No one in his right mind would ask an engineer to sit at the bedside of a person who was ill. No one in his right mind would consult a physician about the stresses and strains that must be considered in building a bridge. Why not? Because everyone recognizes the limited competence of the physician to solve certain practical problems, and the limited competence of the engineer to solve certain other practical problems. No one would go to the engineer for criticism of the physician's prescriptions. Perfectly obvious. The two are independent, and their independence comes from the limitations of their methods. These limitations of method limit the competence of the practitioners. Having given these two examples, I say that philosophy and science are related as science X to science Y; that philosophy and science as a whole -- these two basic disciplines in our culture -- are related in a way analogous to engineering and medicine. The method of philosophy limits it as much as it provides it with competence. There are questions the scientist can answer and questions the scientist cannot answer at all. There are questions the philosopher can answer and questions the philosopher cannot answer at all. And I would like before I finish to come to the questions that religion can and cannot answer; because, in the large picture, religion too has a firm but limited competence. It can answer some questions, not others. And it is very important to know that the questions religion can answer are those that science and philosophy cannot answer at all. So much for the superstructure. It is more difficult in the brief time allotted to make sure that we understand what the method of science is, and what the method of philosophy is, and how these two methods limit their respective disciplines. Perhaps the easiest way is to say that the method of philosophy is that of armchair thinking (just as the method of mathematics is that of armchair thinking), whereas the method of science requires active research. To put it another way, the philosophical method is non-investigative. Philosophy investigates nothing, if one means by investigation a deliberate process of observation to obtain data outside the field of common experience. My crucial term here is "common experience." By "common experience" I mean that sense experience, the body of observation, that comes to any human being by virtue of his being alive -- and awake. Every moment of our lives, you and I, together with all the other members of the human race, have the common experiences of mankind. We share the falling of the leaf, the dying of the sparrow, the rainstorm, the sunlight, the changes of the day, the changes of the seasons, the growth of animals and men. These are common experiences about which, for certain purposes, no additional data are needed. The essential difference between science and philosophy is that as long as men stay with the common experiences of mankind, no science arises at all. Philosophy has a total foundation in the common experience of mankind and needs no special data obtained by investigation. Science does not begin until the frontiers of experience are opened by the addition of data obtained by methodical research, contrived for the sake of getting data that would never be obtained in the ordinary experience of mankind. Let me use these terms in a summary fashion. The investigative method of science limits it to solving what I would call descriptive problems about the phenomenal world. Science can explain nothing. It can describe. Its laws are descriptive laws. It can formulate the ways in which phenomena are related, and by "phenomena" I mean exactly what science means by "phenomena": I mean the "appearances." The great astronomers of the early days, from Ptolemy down to Copernicus, had a phrase that expressed the meaning of scientific hypotheses. In effect a scientific hypothesis was to "save the appearances," the appearances being the phenomena. They meant to save them in the sense of formulating them in an intelligible fashion. This is what science does; and science can never do anything more than this until the end of time. If the method of science is an investigative getting of data by observation, no matter how scientific theories develop or what hypotheses spring into men's minds, it will be saving the appearances in the end. Now philosophy, having no investigation, gathering no data, staying with common experience, does not develop by broadening the area of experience and formulating relationships between phenomena. It develops by taking common experience and delving underneath the appearances to questions about the reality of things. I will not illustrate the kind of problems that scientists solve and the kind of questions they answer. You know from your knowledge of physics, chemistry, or biology the kind of problems to which the laws and hypotheses of empirical science provide answers. But let me explain what I mean by a philosophical question. Let me take an obvious thing, the fact of change, a fact common, in some sense, to both science and philosophy. I drop something. Now, when Galileo, the scientist, is concerned with the free fall of a body, he does not ask the question -- though he has an answer to it from his philosophical education -- of what motion is. He does not ask what constitutes mutability, what constitutes local motion. These are not scientific questions. No research can answer them. What does Galileo want to know? He wants to know what the law of the fall is, what the relation of velocity is to time and space. He is concerned to establish the units of time, the units of space, the intervals traversed in that free fall. What are the intervals of time and space? What is the velocity accruing? These are questions no philosopher can answer. You cannot do it just by thinking about local motion. You need to observe; you need Galileo's water clock, his inclined plane, and all his experiments. This is a perfectly clear example of the total difference in method. The philosopher asks, what is change? Under what conditions is anything mutable? What is mutation? The scientist, on the other hand, asks, how does velocity accumulate, accrue? What is the law of that relationship? Certain questions are totally beyond the competence of science, and fall within the field of philosophy, because by reflective analysis of common experience answers can be proposed. Such questions as what does it mean for anything to exist, what existence is, what the properties of existing are -- these are questions that are not and cannot be answered by science. If they can be answered at all, it is by the method of philosophy. This very question I am discussing, the difference between science and philosophy, is a very good case in point. It is a philosophical question. No scientist in the world can have anything to say about what science is in relation to philosophy. He has no competence here. If he wants to talk about the difference between science and philosophy, he must talk as a philosopher or not talk at all. Obviously the great questions about the existence of God, the nature of God, the nature of the human soul, its freedom, its immortality, are philosophical questions that go beyond the reach of science, now and forever. I have stayed for a moment within the range of theoretical philosophy, and I think that what I have said is clear. Much clearer is the incompetence of science in the practical field. No ethical or political question, no question that involves good and bad, right and wrong, or ends, is at all within the competence of science. These are not investigative questions. The whole range of economics insofar as economics is a moral and not a descriptive, empirical science is philosophical, and open only to philosophical answers. This, by the way, has a great bearing on the utility of philosophy and science, and a bearing on education. Throughout all the years that I taught undergraduates, I can remember that in every philosophy course, at the end of a few weeks, a bright student would say, "Mr. Adler, this is all very interesting, but tell me, what is philosophy useful for?" And since I knew exactly what the student meant by the word "use," I always said, "In your sense of the question, philosophy is totally useless." The reason I said that was because in his question the student borrowed the meaning of utility from the utility of applied science. In the sense in which a science is useful, philosophy is useless. Conversely, in the sense in which philosophy is useful, the sciences are useless. It is important to know the sharp distinction of those utilities. Philosophy is morally or practically useful; science is technically or artistically useful. Let me use the Greek words praxis and techne. Practical utility is the utility of knowledge in the direction of human conduct. Praxis is action, not making. The utility of philosophical knowledge is in this sphere of human practice: the moral life, the conduct of men in society. Philosophical knowledge has its usefulness in that it directs human conduct to its proper end. What is the utility of scientific knowledge? It is entirely productive. It turns out things. It in no way directs human life because it has no direction to give human life. Scientific knowledge -- techne, meaning "art," in the sense of production -- makes things, from bridges to cures, and never can make anything else. This, I think, in our material civilization is what causes the adoration of science. It is the giver of all these gifts. But the gifts are strictly limited to things produced. The point I have just made is of maximum significance for the philosophy of education. It has been said that the educator is producing men. I dislike this phrase, because men are not produced. The educator is not producing men, he is directing men; and to understand the difference between producing things and directing men is to see at once that science has no application whatsoever to education. It cannot affect the direction of men in any essential sense. Philosophical knowledge is involved in educational philosophy, because philosophy is concerned with the direction of man. Before I go on, I think you will be interested in a brief consideration of where religion stands in relation to science and philosophy. What are the questions which religion can and does answer that neither science nor philosophy can answer, now or ever? It would seem that the specific contribution of religion in the order of theoretical knowledge is in regard to questions that can be answered by faith and faith alone. Any religion which does not claim to have a deposit of revealed truth would have nothing unique to say whatsoever, for any religion that does not claim to have a deposit of revealed truth can be reduced to philosophy. Many, many modern religions and most religions in the East, are nothing but philosophies in disguise. They call themselves religions because they suffuse their theories with spirituality and emotion, but this is not the distinction of religion. Its distinction lies in the fact that it has a source of knowledge which exceeds the knowledge of science and philosophy, because while the latter comprise the things that men discover by the natural processes of their minds and senses, religion includes the things men cannot discover, but can learn only if God reveals them. Otherwise there is no religion. There are questions that science and philosophy have never answered. There are questions that religion can and does answer. On the practical side, what good is religion? What use is it? It is not useful productively, and it is not essentially useful in the practical sphere. It does involve morals and practical discipline, but that is not its point. If it were religion would be indistinguishable from moral philosophy. What is the distinctive utility of religion? What would not exist if religion did not exist? Only one thing -- the help man needs from God. If religion does not provide access to grace, it does not provide anything unique. If the instrumentalities of grace were not provided, if the whole of the liturgy, the whole of worship were not for the sake of obtaining help that cannot be gotten any other place, then religion would have no use beyond that of moral philosophy. All of the points that I have just made are totally unaltered by the developments in the empirical sciences in the last hundred years. Magnificent though they have been, none of them changes the picture I have just shown. I have not, up to this point, added a qualification. I now want to add one. There are some mixed questions. Just as, in jurisprudence, there are mixed questions of fact and law -- questions of fact for the jury, questions of law for the judge, the tribunal -- so there are some mixed questions of science and philosophy. There are some questions where common experience is not enough, and where the scientific data that have been added must be examined and criticized by the philosopher. One such mixed question is relevant to our problem this morning. In fact, nothing could be more relevant to the examination of education and philosophy. But let me touch on the basic propositions in the philosophy of education and their philosophical foundations. In the spring of 1941, on a campus a little north of here, in a very pleasant auditorium, I engaged in a debate with Paul Schilpp. The subject of the debate was "Are There Absolute and Universal Principles on Which Education Should be Founded?" I took the affirmative and Dr. Schilpp took the negative. A year later, I was invited to contribute to the yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. That year the NEA was engaged in a symposium on the philosophy of education, and I wrote a piece in defense of the philosophy of education which follows out the same general thesis I undertook to defend in my debates with Bertrand Russell and Dr. Schilpp. I have some passages from these documents which I should like to read into the record at the appropriate places. In both these documents I propose a definition of education which -- though I know these are strong words -- I regard as indisputable. Perhaps the phrases can be changed but I am at a loss to see what education is other than this. I have never heard any other definition offered as an alternative; and I cannot imagine how one could, in fact, offer an alternative. Let me read you two formulations. The one from the yearbook is, "Education is the process by which those powers of men that are susceptible to habituation are perfected by good habits, through means artistically contrived, and employed by any man to help another or himself to achieve the end in view." And a somewhat shorter version, from the debate, is, "Education is the process whereby a man is changed for the better, whereby a man helps himself or another to become a good man, which is something he can be, though not perhaps as readily as being a bad man." Now, the points that are indisputable are these: First, education produces or causes a change. I cannot imagine anyone saying, "No, as education goes on it changes nothing." Second, it causes a change in men. I cannot imagine anyone saying, "No, education causes a change, but not in man." Because it changes man, it changes him for the better or for the worse. I cannot imagine anyone saying it causes a change for the worse. So the definition, I think, is almost self-evident. Education is that which causes a change in man for the better. What is meant by a change for the better? That is a problem within the definition but the definition itself is absolutely fundamental. I will go one step further and define a "change for the better." It must be a relatively permanent change. One that lasts a day is useless. And relatively permanent changes are habits -- the perfections of powers, the determinations of native capacity. Of course there are good habits and bad habits. Obviously a change for the better involves good habits -- virtues, not vices. So it should be perfectly clear to anyone who will think for a moment that the immediate goal of education is the acquisition by any individual of what we call virtues. I hope that in this group I can use the word virtue as synonymous with good habit: the intellectual and the moral virtues, the virtues of the mind -- understanding, knowledge, wisdom, art -- the virtues of character, of the will, such as courage, temperance, and justice. Taking this definition of education, the causing of men to be better men, to be virtuous intellectually and morally, what are the problems educational philosophy has to solve? Obviously, they are problems involving the nature of man and his specifically human powers. They are problems of defining, specifying clearly what the virtues are. And if there is another problem, it has a bearing on the phrase I used before when I said that education is a process brought about by means "artistically contrived." It is: What is the nature of human learning, with which the arts of teaching and/or learning must co-operate in the formation of good habits? First nature, then art; the order is very important. The nature of learning defines the range of powers with which we work in the formation of good habits; what art does is secondary.
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