ALLUSION has already been made to the conflict of natural science with
literary studies for a place in the curriculum. The solution thus far
reached consists essentially in a somewhat mechanical compromise whereby
the field is divided between studies having nature and studies having
man as their theme. The situation thus presents us with another instance
of the external adjustment of educational values, and focuses attention
upon the philosophy of the connection of nature with human affairs. In
general, it may be said that the educational division finds a reflection
in the dualistic philosophies. Mind and the world are regarded as two
independent realms of existence having certain points of contact with
each other. From this point of view it is natural that each sphere of
existence should have its own separate group of studies connected with
it; it is even natural that the growth of scientific studies should be
viewed with suspicion as marking a tendency of materialistic philosophy
to encroach upon the domain of spirit. Any theory of education which
contemplates a more unified scheme of education than now exists is under
the necessity of facing the question of the relation of man to nature.
1. The Historic Background of Humanistic Study. It is noteworthy that
classic Greek philosophy does not present the problem in its modern
form. Socrates indeed appears to have thought that science of nature was
not attainable and not very important. The chief thing to know is the
nature and end of man. Upon that knowledge hangs all that is of deep
significance--all moral and social achievement. Plato, however,
makes right knowledge of man and society depend upon knowledge of the
essential features of nature. His chief treatise, entitled the Republic,
is at once a treatise on morals, on social organization, and on the
metaphysics and science of nature. Since he accepts the Socratic
doctrine that right achievement in the former depends upon rational
knowledge, he is compelled to discuss the nature of knowledge. Since he
accepts the idea that the ultimate object of knowledge is the discovery
of the good or end of man, and is discontented with the Socratic
conviction that all we know is our own ignorance, he connects the
discussion of the good of man with consideration of the essential good
or end of nature itself. To attempt to determine the end of man apart
from a knowledge of the ruling end which gives law and unity to nature
is impossible. It is thus quite consistent with his philosophy that he
subordinates literary studies (under the name of music) to mathematics
and to physics as well as to logic and metaphysics. But on the other
hand, knowledge of nature is not an end in itself; it is a necessary
stage in bringing the mind to a realization of the supreme purpose of
existence as the law of human action, corporate and individual. To use
the modern phraseology, naturalistic studies are indispensable, but they
are in the interests of humanistic and ideal ends.
Aristotle goes even farther, if anything, in the direction of
naturalistic studies. He subordinates (ante, p. 254) civic relations
to the purely cognitive life. The highest end of man is not human but
divine--participation in pure knowing which constitutes the divine life.
Such knowing deals with what is universal and necessary, and finds,
therefore, a more adequate subject matter in nature at its best than in
the transient things of man. If we take what the philosophers stood
for in Greek life, rather than the details of what they say, we might
summarize by saying that the Greeks were too much interested in free
inquiry into natural fact and in the aesthetic enjoyment of nature, and
were too deeply conscious of the extent in which society is rooted in
nature and subject to its laws, to think of bringing man and nature
into conflict. Two factors conspire in the later period of ancient
life, however, to exalt literary and humanistic studies. One is the
increasingly reminiscent and borrowed character of culture; the other is
the political and rhetorical bent of Roman life.
Greek achievement in civilization was native; the civilization of the
Alexandrians and Romans was inherited from alien sources. Consequently
it looked back to the records upon which it drew, instead of looking
out directly upon nature and society, for material and inspiration.
We cannot do better than quote the words of Hatch to indicate the
consequences for educational theory and practice. "Greece on one hand
had lost political power, and on the other possessed in her splendid
literature an inalienable heritage. It was natural that she should turn
to letters. It was natural also that the study of letters should be
reflected upon speech. The mass of men in the Greek world tended to lay
stress on that acquaintance with the literature of bygone generations,
and that habit of cultivated speech, which has ever since been commonly
spoken of as education. Our own comes by direct tradition from it. It
set a fashion which until recently has uniformly prevailed over the
entire civilized world. We study literature rather than nature because
the Greeks did so, and because when the Romans and the Roman provincials
resolved to educate their sons, they employed Greek teachers and
followed in Greek paths." 1
The so-called practical bent of the Romans worked in the same direction.
In falling back upon the recorded ideas of the Greeks, they not only
took the short path to attaining a cultural development, but they
procured just the kind of material and method suited to their
administrative talents. For their practical genius was not directed to
the conquest and control of nature but to the conquest and control of
men.
Mr. Hatch, in the passage quoted, takes a good deal of history for
granted in saying that we have studied literature rather than nature
because the Greeks, and the Romans whom they taught, did so. What is the
link that spans the intervening centuries? The question suggests that
barbarian Europe but repeated on a larger scale and with increased
intensity the Roman situation. It had to go to school to Greco-Roman
civilization; it also borrowed rather than evolved its culture. Not
merely for its general ideas and their artistic presentation but for
its models of law it went to the records of alien peoples. And its
dependence upon tradition was increased by the dominant theological
interests of the period. For the authorities to which the Church
appealed were literatures composed in foreign tongues. Everything
converged to identify learning with linguistic training and to make
the language of the learned a literary language instead of the mother
speech.
The full scope of this fact escapes us, moreover, until we recognize
that this subject matter compelled recourse to a dialectical method.
Scholasticism frequently has been used since the time of the revival of
learning as a term of reproach. But all that it means is the method of
The Schools, or of the School Men. In its essence, it is nothing but a
highly effective systematization of the methods of teaching and learning
which are appropriate to transmit an authoritative body of truths.
Where literature rather than contemporary nature and society furnishes
material of study, methods must be adapted to defining, expounding, and
interpreting the received material, rather than to inquiry, discovery,
and invention. And at bottom what is called Scholasticism is the
whole-hearted and consistent formulation and application of the methods
which are suited to instruction when the material of instruction is
taken ready-made, rather than as something which students are to find
out for themselves. So far as schools still teach from textbooks and
rely upon the principle of authority and acquisition rather than upon
that of discovery and inquiry, their methods are Scholastic--minus the
logical accuracy and system of Scholasticism at its best. Aside from
laxity of method and statement, the only difference is that geographies
and histories and botanies and astronomies are now part of the
authoritative literature which is to be mastered.
As a consequence, the Greek tradition was lost in which a humanistic
interest was used as a basis of interest in nature, and a knowledge of
nature used to support the distinctively human aims of man. Life found
its support in authority, not in nature. The latter was moreover an
object of considerable suspicion. Contemplation of it was dangerous, for
it tended to draw man away from reliance upon the documents in which the
rules of living were already contained. Moreover nature could be known
only through observation; it appealed to the senses--which were merely
material as opposed to a purely immaterial mind. Furthermore, the
utilities of a knowledge of nature were purely physical and secular;
they connected with the bodily and temporal welfare of man, while the
literary tradition concerned his spiritual and eternal well-being.
2. The Modern Scientific Interest in Nature. The movement of the
fifteenth century which is variously termed the revival of learning
and the renascence was characterized by a new interest in man's present
life, and accordingly by a new interest in his relationships with
nature. It was naturalistic, in the sense that it turned against the
dominant supernaturalistic interest. It is possible that the influence
of a return to classic Greek pagan literature in bringing about this
changed mind has been overestimated. Undoubtedly the change was mainly
a product of contemporary conditions. But there can be no doubt that
educated men, filled with the new point of view, turned eagerly to
Greek literature for congenial sustenance and reinforcement. And to
a considerable extent, this interest in Greek thought was not in
literature for its own sake, but in the spirit it expressed. The mental
freedom, the sense of the order and beauty of nature, which animated
Greek expression, aroused men to think and observe in a similar
untrammeled fashion. The history of science in the sixteenth century
shows that the dawning sciences of physical nature largely borrowed
their points of departure from the new interest in Greek literature.
As Windelband has said, the new science of nature was the daughter of
humanism. The favorite notion of the time was that man was in microcosm
that which the universe was in macrocosm.
This fact raises anew the question of how it was that nature and man
were later separated and a sharp division made between language and
literature and the physical sciences. Four reasons may be suggested. (a)
The old tradition was firmly entrenched in institutions. Politics,
law, and diplomacy remained of necessity branches of authoritative
literature, for the social sciences did not develop until the methods of
the sciences of physics and chemistry, to say nothing of biology, were
much further advanced. The same is largely true of history. Moreover,
the methods used for effective teaching of the languages were well
developed; the inertia of academic custom was on their side. Just as the
new interest in literature, especially Greek, had not been allowed at
first to find lodgment in the scholastically organized universities, so
when it found its way into them it joined hands with the older learning
to minimize the influence of experimental science. The men who taught
were rarely trained in science; the men who were scientifically
competent worked in private laboratories and through the medium of
academies which promoted research, but which were not organized as
teaching bodies. Finally, the aristocratic tradition which looked down
upon material things and upon the senses and the hands was still mighty.
(b) The Protestant revolt brought with it an immense increase of
interest in theological discussion and controversies. The appeal on both
sides was to literary documents. Each side had to train men in ability
to study and expound the records which were relied upon. The demand for
training men who could defend the chosen faith against the other side,
who were able to propagandize and to prevent the encroachments of the
other side, was such that it is not too much to say that by the middle
of the seventeenth century the linguistic training of gymnasia and
universities had been captured by the revived theological interest, and
used as a tool of religious education and ecclesiastical controversy.
Thus the educational descent of the languages as they are found in
education to-day is not direct from the revival of learning, but from
its adaptation to theological ends.
(c) The natural sciences were themselves conceived in a way which
sharpened the opposition of man and nature. Francis Bacon presents
an almost perfect example of the union of naturalistic and
humanistic interest. Science, adopting the methods of observation and
experimentation, was to give up the attempt to "anticipate" nature--to
impose preconceived notions upon her--and was to become her humble
interpreter. In obeying nature intellectually, man would learn to
command her practically. "Knowledge is power." This aphorism meant that
through science man is to control nature and turn her energies to the
execution of his own ends. Bacon attacked the old learning and logic as
purely controversial, having to do with victory in argument, not with
discovery of the unknown. Through the new method of thought which
was set forth in his new logic an era of expansive discoveries was to
emerge, and these discoveries were to bear fruit in inventions for the
service of man. Men were to give up their futile, never-finished effort
to dominate one another to engage in the cooperative task of dominating
nature in the interests of humanity.
In the main, Bacon prophesied the direction of subsequent progress. But
he "anticipated" the advance. He did not see that the new science
was for a long time to be worked in the interest of old ends of human
exploitation. He thought that it would rapidly give man new ends.
Instead, it put at the disposal of a class the means to secure their old
ends of aggrandizement at the expense of another class. The industrial
revolution followed, as he foresaw, upon a revolution in scientific
method. But it is taking the revolution many centuries to produce a new
mind. Feudalism was doomed by the applications of the new science, for
they transferred power from the landed nobility to the manufacturing
centers. But capitalism rather than a social humanism took its place.
Production and commerce were carried on as if the new science had no
moral lesson, but only technical lessons as to economies in production
and utilization of saving in self-interest. Naturally, this application
of physical science (which was the most conspicuously perceptible
one) strengthened the claims of professed humanists that science
was materialistic in its tendencies. It left a void as to man's
distinctively human interests which go beyond making, saving, and
expending money; and languages and literature put in their claim to
represent the moral and ideal interests of humanity.
(d) Moreover, the philosophy which professed itself based upon science,
which gave itself out as the accredited representative of the net
significance of science, was either dualistic in character, marked by
a sharp division between mind (characterizing man) and matter,
constituting nature; or else it was openly mechanical, reducing the
signal features of human life to illusion. In the former case, it
allowed the claims of certain studies to be peculiar consignees of
mental values, and indirectly strengthened their claim to superiority,
since human beings would incline to regard human affairs as of chief
importance at least to themselves. In the latter case, it called out
a reaction which threw doubt and suspicion upon the value of physical
science, giving occasion for treating it as an enemy to man's higher
interests.
Greek and medieval knowledge accepted the world in its qualitative
variety, and regarded nature's processes as having ends, or in technical
phrase as teleological. New science was expounded so as to deny the
reality of all qualities in real, or objective, existence. Sounds,
colors, ends, as well as goods and bads, were regarded as purely
subjective--as mere impressions in the mind. Objective existence was
then treated as having only quantitative aspects--as so much mass in
motion, its only differences being that at one point in space there was
a larger aggregate mass than at another, and that in some spots there
were greater rates of motion than at others. Lacking qualitative
distinctions, nature lacked significant variety. Uniformities were
emphasized, not diversities; the ideal was supposed to be the discovery
of a single mathematical formula applying to the whole universe at once
from which all the seeming variety of phenomena could be derived. This
is what a mechanical philosophy means.
Such a philosophy does not represent the genuine purport of science.
It takes the technique for the thing itself; the apparatus and the
terminology 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 its mechanical and quantitative character. But in leaving them out
of account, it does not exclude them from reality, nor relegate them
to a purely mental region; it only furnishes means utilizable for ends.
Thus while in fact the progress of science was increasing man's power
over nature, enabling him 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 humanistic studies as two disconnected groups. Since the difference
between better and worse is bound up with the qualities of experience,
any philosophy of science which excludes them from the genuine content
of reality is bound to leave out what is most interesting and 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 from such conditions they become
empty dreams and idle indulgences 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 that
man is continuous with nature, not an alien entering her processes from
without. It is reinforced by the experimental method of science which
shows that knowledge accrues in virtue of an attempt to direct physical
energies in accord with ideas suggested in dealing with natural objects
in behalf of social uses. Every step forward in the social sciences--the
studies termed history, economics, politics, sociology--shows that
social questions are capable of being intelligently coped with only
in the degree in which we employ the method of collected data, forming
hypotheses, and testing them in action which is characteristic of
natural science, and in the degree in which we utilize in behalf of
the promotion of social welfare the technical knowledge ascertained by
physics and chemistry. Advanced methods of dealing with such perplexing
problems as insanity, intemperance, poverty, public sanitation, city
planning, the conservation of natural resources, the constructive use of
governmental agencies for furthering the public good 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 from this close interdependence. It should aim
not at keeping science as a study of nature apart from literature as
a record of human interests, but at cross-fertilizing both the natural
sciences and the various human disciplines such as history, literature,
economics, and politics. Pedagogically, 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 man who wishes to become an expert
in a given field, is carried back into the high schools. Pupils in the
latter simply get a more elementary treatment of the same thing, 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 man,
and vice versa. A large part of the comparative ineffectiveness of
the teaching 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 most effective procedure. Considering that the great majority
are concerned with the study of sciences only for its effect upon
their mental habits--in making them more alert, more open-minded, more
inclined to tentative acceptance and to testing of ideas propounded
or suggested,--and for achieving a better understanding of their daily
environment, it is certainly ill-advised. Too often the pupil comes
out with a smattering 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
scientific material and method, while keeping the 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
steam engine, gasoline engine, automobile, telegraph and telephone, the
electric motor enter directly into the lives of most individuals. Pupils
at an early age are practically acquainted with these things. Not only
does the business occupation of their parents depend upon scientific
applications, but household pursuits, the maintenance of health,
the sights 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 experiment, until pupils have
arrived at a knowledge of some fundamental principles by understanding
them in their familiar practical workings.
The opinion sometimes advanced that it is a derogation from the
"purity" of science to study it in its active incarnation, instead of
in theoretical abstraction, rests upon a misunderstanding. AS matter of
fact, any subject is cultural in the degree in which it is apprehended
in its widest possible range of meanings. Perception of meanings 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 economic application, if by economic is meant something having
money worth, is incidental and secondary, but a part of its actual
connections. The important thing is that the fact be grasped in its
social connections--its function in life.
On the other hand, "humanism" means at bottom being imbued with an
intelligent sense of human interests. The social interest, identical in
its deepest meaning with a moral interest, is necessarily supreme with
man. Knowledge 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. Men may keep busy in a variety
of ways, making money, acquiring facility in laboratory manipulation, or
in amassing a store of facts about linguistic matters, or the chronology
of literary productions. Unless such activity reacts to enlarge the
imaginative 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 a man prides himself
on what he has, and not on the meaning he 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 promote that well-being 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 limited by the fact that higher 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
same revolution has abolished agricultural serfdom, and created a class
of more or less organized factory laborers with recognized political
rights, and who make claims for a responsible role in the control of
industry--claims which receive sympathetic attention from many among 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 affairs may be formulated by saying that 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 aim is to preserve what has been
gained rather than widely to extend the range of culture.
The modifications which spring from taking greater account of industry
and of whatever has to do with making a living are frequently condemned
as attacks upon the culture derived from the past. But a wider
educational outlook would conceive industrial activities as agencies for
making intellectual resources more accessible to the masses, and giving
greater solidity to the culture of those having superior resources.
In short, when we 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 overcoming 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 Rome and of barbarian Europe was not a native product,
being borrowed directly or indirectly from Greece, and partly because
political and ecclesiastic conditions emphasized dependence upon
the authority of past knowledge as that was transmitted in literary
documents.
At the outset, the rise of modern science prophesied a restoration of
the intimate connection of nature and humanity, for it viewed knowledge
of nature as the means of securing human progress and well-being. But
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
mind to a subjective illusion. In education, accordingly, the tendency
was to treat the sciences as a separate body of studies, consisting of
technical information regarding the physical world, and to reserve
the older literary studies as distinctively humanistic. The account
previously given of the evolution of knowledge, and of the educational
scheme of studies based upon it, are designed to overcome the
separation, and to secure recognition of the place occupied by the
subject matter of the natural sciences in human affairs.
1 The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church. pp.
43-44.