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The Mortimer J. Adler Archive |
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The only standard we have for judging all of our social, economic, and political institutions and arrangements as just or unjust, as good or bad, as better or worse, derives from our conception of the good life for man on earth, and from our conviction that, given certain external conditions, it is possible for men to make good lives for themselves by their own efforts. Mortimer J. Adler |
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Adler
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The Foundations of the Philosophy of Education, by Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D. (Continued)
A great contemporary geneticist, Theodosius Dobzhansky of Columbia University, dramatically carries that point one step further in a book called Genetics and the Origin of Species. He says that if all possible genetic combinations or genotypes -- every possible configuration of genes and chromosomes -- were to be expressed in somatypes (that is, given full bodily expression), and all somatypes, representing genotypes, were to exist contemporaneously, there would be no species, no varieties, no genera, nothing! There would be just one line of individual differences, a flat spectrum. In other words, biological classification is based upon gaps, upon breaks, upon the absence, not the presence, of things. Now this is very important because two species belonging to the same genus must differ in degree only. Though they are called species, and look like kinds, if all the extinct and possible forms could be replaced between them, there would be a continuous gradation of individual differences -- in degree! Hence, Darwin argues, if man descended with the anthropoid apes from a common ancestral form, with modification through descent and the extinction of intermediate varieties, this can be proved by demonstrating that man now differs in degree, and degree only, from apes or higher mammals. If he does differ in degree only from apes or higher mammals, that is at least a supporting reason for believing that he could have originated in this material way. And so, Darwin argues -- I think incorrectly -- in chapter after chapter using the best evidence he has, that human and animal behavior differ in degree. It could have been the case, he says, that we had the kind of origin which would permit us to be differentiated specifically by the absence of intermediate forms that makes us look different in kind when we are only different in degree. The point about Darwin is that his mode of reasoning is right. The only way the problem can be solved by anybody is to compare the present nature of man with the present nature of the brute or animals and ask whether they differ in degree or kind. It is impossible to answer the question in any other way. One can argue from a conclusion about man's nature based upon contemporary observations of behavior to a hypothesis about origin. The origin can never be proved. If one starts with a hypothesis about origin and tries to argue from it to conclusions about man's nature, how can the hypothesis be proved? It cannot! There is never going to be any evidence to establish the point about origin. The fossil remains do not do it. They beg the question, because fossil remains can only be interpreted if there is already a hypothesis. How can they be put in a series? Even to talk about "missing links" begs the question. The reference to the fossil remains described as missing links supposes that there is a hypothesis about origin. So I say, throwing out as totally irrelevant all paleontological evidence of the last hundred years, that the argument is still as Darwin put it: Can we observe man and animals now, and answer the question, do they differ in degree or in kind? Here there is a reasonable difference of opinion. I think I can show that the evidence of observation makes it much more probable that man differs from the brute in kind rather than in degree, but this is an open question. Let me illustrate. I think this is a mixed question of science and philosophy because, though you and I observe animals and men, we do not make perfect observations. For example, a great biologist, Robert Yerkes, at the Yale Primate Laboratory in Winter Park, Florida, worked for fifteen years on the speech of the chimpanzee. Our common experience does not tell us anything about the speech of chimpanzees, so we must go to the work of Dr. Yerkes. I will summarize his results very quickly. He found that the chimpanzee makes about 125 separate, identifiable, repeatable sounds. This is the scientific data. Next we must ask the philosophical question: Do the chimpanzees speak or not, in an unequivocal meaning of the word speech? My answer, taking into consideration all of Dr. Yerkes' data, is, no, they do not. Speech in the unequivocal sense of human speech involves parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adverbs, and conjunctions. It involves syntax. Dr. Yerkes' observations did not turn up one chimpanzee sentence. This is of the utmost importance. The so-called speech of the chimpanzee, while quite extraordinary, is a series of ejaculations of the kind we make when we are in deep pain. When we are in fear, or anger, or pain, we cry out; so do chimpanzees. But this is not human speech. We make animal outcries, but the chimpanzees do not make sentences. On the day when the first sentence uttered by a chimpanzee is reported, I will say that Darwin is right. The question is open; it is not a question that is going to be settled now. Scientists have every right to say let us do more research. My difficulty is that I cannot positively infer, in the absence of certain behavior, the absence of power. I wish I could. I wish I could say that because chimpanzees and other mammals do not do certain things, they lack the power. I can only say that it is highly probable that if in thousands of cases, and for thousands of generations, animals have not behaved in a certain way, they lack the power which we infer is present in men because they do behave in a certain way. But it is only probable. It will take until the end of time to find the answer. Nevertheless one must act in terms of probabilities, and I say that the probability, at the moment, in terms of all the available evidence, is very high that Darwin is wrong in his hypothesis about the origin of man. Now, if we give up Darwin's hypothesis, there is only one other we can turn to. I think this is the reason why most people obstinately want to hold on to Darwin. The only other hypothesis about the origin of man is a theological one. If man is by nature rational and free, and essentially distinct from the brute, then he is specially created by God, and that is all there is to it. Emergent evolution has no alternative that will stand up. If we conclude from the evidence that the nature of man is this, we are led from that evidence to the theological hypothesis of creation just as definitely as we are led from Darwin's conclusion to Darwin's hypothesis. I must add that I am speaking not of the creating of man in both body and soul, but in soul only, for there is every reason to believe, in terms of the evidence -- embryological evidence in this case -- that man's body had a perfectly natural evolution exactly as Darwin described. But at a certain point in the natural formation of the human body through descent and modification, the infusion of a rational soul marked the instant of man's existence on earth. Whoever cannot swallow that must swallow Darwin, with all the consequences. There is no other choice. To go one step further, the one thing I would expect this audience to agree on -- and I should be very shocked if it didn't -- is that one cannot accept both Genesis and Darwin. I know all the attempts to gloss over this problem, and I am not concerned with the order of days or any of the difficult problems of exegesis in Genesis. I am concerned with only one passage, the passage which says that God made man "in His own image." There is no passage in Genesis which says that God made anything else in his own image. The meaning of "His own image" is that he made man a person. A "person" means, theologically, a substance with intellect, reason, and free will. Man resembles the "image" of God because he is a person, and man alone is a person. Every other being is a thing. If Darwin is right, this is not true, and no attempts to get rid of the socalled conflict between science and religion can possibly change it. If Darwin is right, Genesis is wrong; and the consequences for Christian doctrine and the subject of our discussion, the Christian philosophy of education, are even greater than they are for the secular, natural philosophy of education. I do not know how there could be a Christian philosophy of education that did not have among its premises the propositions that God made man in his own image, that man is a person, destined to a personal goal different from any goal a thing might have. I do not know the meaning of the doctrine of the Incarnation, the doctrine of personal immortality, the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, any of the things in the Creed if Darwin is right. And yet, to my amazement, most people go on holding their religion in one hand and their science in the other, unaware, uncognizant, turning their eyes away from the contradiction which stares them in the face. In this particular case, I think the contradiction is resolvable simply on the grounds that philosophical criticism of any competence would show that Darwin is wrong. If I may have one moment more, I would like to make two more points. I said at the beginning that there had been one great change in educational philosophy in the last hundred years, a change not produced by science or connected with science except indirectly. That is the coming into being of industrial democracy. Industrial democracy, whose indispensable godfather is obviously science, never existed until the twentieth century, and had its bare beginnings in the nineteenth. It is the society taking as its principles that all men are treated as equals in the political order; the equal status of citizenship with suffrage; and the access of all men to free time or leisure through the industrial emancipation of human beings from toil. Its educational result has been enormous. In 1900, ten per cent of the children of high school age in the United States were in school. In 1950 the figure was over 85 per cent. In 2000 more than 95 per cent of the eligible young people will be in college. In 1850 the hours of work were fourteen hours a day. Children went to work at the age of seven and they worked until they dropped. In 1950 work starts late and ends early and the norm is forty hours a week. In the year 2000 it is going to start later, end earlier, and add up to twenty hours a week. All this has the most extraordinary -- and frightening -- significance for the problem of education. Anyone who is not scared out of his wits by what I'm going to say isn't seeing the picture. In the past, a small body of men, less than 10 per cent of the population, were free men. The rest were slaves, servile, a faceless mass of subhuman beings. No one paid any attention to them as far as schooling was concerned, as far as culture was concerned, as far as civilization was concerned. Those free men who had political power had free time. They were liberally schooled, and their being liberally schooled enabled them to use their free time, in their adult life, in the liberal pursuits of leisure which are the pursuits of art and science, the institutions of the Church and of religion. This is what the Greek citizens did, what the Roman patricians did. This is what Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, and Thomas Jefferson did. They were the free men; the rest were forgotten. Today we have a society in which all men are destined to be free -- just as free as the Greek citizens and the Roman patricians, with more free time, more comfort, more power, more convenience, with as much political power. What is the educational consequence of this? What demand does it make upon education? It means giving every child of normal intelligence a liberal schooling through the bachelor of arts degree, without any vocational training whatsoever, and seeing that every adult after his liberal schooling continues with liberal learning for a lifetime. If this is not done, the free time, the power, and the lack of training in how to use them will result in the most morally degraded and corrupt society imaginable, one that will be destroyed more completely than any atomic bomb could possibly destroy it. And yet there is not one educator in the world who has the faintest notion at the moment of how to give all children liberal schooling. It is not being done. The opposite is being done. The problem is not even being faced yet. I cannot say with what horror I view the acceptance of the Conant report, which turns our eyes away from the problem. It is a vile thing. The problem must be faced. The problem is that of truly educating every child, not just the gifted. Schooling the gifted child is no problem. It has been done successfully in the past, and it can be done again. Our problem is a new one. We have to take every child and give it the full treatment. Children come to us as containers. Some are quart containers, some are pint containers, and some are half-pint containers, and some are, perhaps, even quarter-pint containers. And we all know that a quart of liquid cannot be put into a pint container. Equal educational treatment means putting a quart of liquid into the quart container, a pint of liquid into the pint container, and half a pint of liquid into the half-pint container. One thing more! If cream, thick cream, represents the substance of liberal schooling, the teacher is not doing the job if he pours cream into the quart container and dirty water or skimmed milk into the pint container. The job is to put a quart of cream into the quart container, and half a pint of cream -- the same substance -- into the half-pint container. When I say this to teachers, they look at me as though I were crazy. They say, "You know, you're forgetting about that half-pint container. There is a very narrow opening at the top, and cream is very thick. You can't get it in, and it flows over the side." My answer to that is: get a funnel. The invention of the funnel is the problem, but a funnel is what we will have to invent to get cream in half-pint containers, If cream is easily poured into quart containers, we must find the devices for seeing that cream gets into halfpint containers too. The problem is not just one for the teachers and the educators. It is the problem of our society. Plato said very wisely, at the end of the Republic, that what is honored in a country is cultivated there. I do not think American education can be made better until American society is made better, and I mean by this, the general moral and spiritual tone of our whole national life. The things we value in this country are reflected in the way we school our children. The American parent, not the teacher, is the number-one enemy of the school system. The American parent sacrifices and saves and sends his child to school and college for absolutely the wrong reason: that it is going to help him get ahead in the world, make more money, get a better job. That is why the schools are so bad. The parents' minds must be changed. Education has nothing to do with earning a living or getting ahead in the world in the gross physical sense. But as long as the parents make these demands on schools and school boards, the faces of educators will never be turned to the real problem. As a country and as a people we must understand the order of values which would make it possible to have a school system or a schooling that understood the pursuits of leisure, that understood what the good life is on earth. As long as we think the goods of the body are the highest order of good it is impossible to make sense of leisure. We do not make sense of leisure in America: we have instead a group of simpleton pleasures, recreation, amusements, play, idleness, time-killing; none of which is leisure at all, but the very opposite of leisure. But the misunderstanding of leisure in this country, again, is merely a reflection of the low state of American understanding of the order of goods, and what goods there are in human life. So if you ask what are the problems of education in our time, I say again, these problems and how these problems, in turn, bear on the formation of educational theory of our time, the understanding of democracy, the understanding of leisure -- these are the problems. And I am saying how schooling and education bear on these problems and how these problems, in turn, bear on the formation of educational philosophy, just as the problem of Darwin's being right or wrong has a profound bearing on the principles of educational philosophy, both secular and Christian. Source: Philosophy is Everbody's Business, Winter 2004, published by The Center for the Study of The Great Ideas
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