Science – Soul Needs

How do we know what we know? – visit the EXPLORATORIUM

How do we know what we know? Check out this wonderful site dedicated to the process and discoveries of science.


	For most of us, science arrives in our lives packaged neatly as fact. But how did it get that way? Science is an active process of observation and investigation. Evidence: How Do We Know What We Know? examines that process, revealing the ways in which ideas and information become knowledge and understanding. In this case study in human origins, we explore how scientific evidence is being used to shape our current understanding of ourselves: What makes us human—and how did we get this way? The EVIDENCE process section is HERE The main site is HERE

Some brain links for teachers – including lessons

Out of personal interest I am putting together some links to do with the human brain. Those that contain lessons are uppermost.

http://www.pfizer.com/brain/teachers_html.htmlhttp://www.teachers.tv/video/19829

http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_05/d_05_cr/d_05_cr_her/d_05_cr_her.html

Brain-gym info

http://www.brainwise.co.uk/home/index.html

Plus some Mind-mapping sources

http://www.collegedegree.com/library/college-life/99-mind-mapping

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Being human – an American high school principal´s view

Many years ago a copy of this letter came my way – supposedly issued by a high school principal to his/her teachers on the first day of school.

It was seminal in the development of my world-view – and it is worthy of re-circulation;

Dear Teacher

     I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness:

        Gas chambers built by learned engineers.

        Children poisoned by educated physicians.

      Infants killed by trained nurses.

        Women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates.

        So, I am suspicious of education.

My request is: Help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmans.

Reading, writing, arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

Triadic forms: Texts and our construction of meaning

Within the SunWALK model at the heart of this site (summaries are HERE ) I suggest that we all communicate at any one time in one of three voices – the subjective I voice of the Creative (Arts), the moral WE voice of the Caring (Humanities) – and the objective IT voice of Criticality (as in Scientific investigation, practical criticism and philosophical inquiry). I suggest that education, and personal well-being, is a matter of achieving balance between those three voices – because they each energize the others. I also suggest that wisdom is a balance of these three – at least practical, common sense, day-to-day wisdom.

The three ‘voices’ correspond to other triadic forms – Kant’s three inquiries for example. Another three concern how meaning is derived from text. This topic is brilliantly introduced on Daniel Chandler’s website at the University of Wales (Aberystwyth). He says;

The range of theories about where meaning emerges in the relationship between readers and texts can be illustrated as a continuum between two extreme positions respectively, those of determinate meaning and completely ‘open’ interpretation, thus:

* Objectivist: Meaning entirely in text (‘transmitted’);
* Constructivist: Meaning in interplay between text and reader (‘negotiated’);
* Subjectivist: Meaning entirely in its interpretation by readers (‘re-created’).

It may surprise some readers that anyone could adopt either of the extremes as a serious theoretical position. However, there are prominent theorists whose positions are at least close to these poles. For David Olson and other ‘formalists’ the meaning of a text is ‘contained in’ the text, and it must be ‘extracted’ by readers. Such a model of communication is ‘transmissive’: meaning is seen as something which can be ‘transmitted’ from a ‘sender’ to a passive ‘receiver’. As one moves towards the other pole the model of communication becomes more of a process of ‘negotiation’ or ‘construction’ (variously referred to as a ‘constructionist’, ‘constructivist’, ‘social-interactive’ or ‘dialogical’ model). In formalist theories meaning resides in texts ; in dialogical theories meaning is a process of negotiation between writers and readers (Holquist 1983). Those who stress negotiated meaning argue that the meanings of texts are neither completely predetermined nor completely open, but are subject to certain constraints. Some commentators refer to influences on the process of making meaning such as ‘a preferred reading’ – which may be represented in the text as ‘an inscribed reader’ or may emerge in ‘interpretative communities’. Individual readers may either accept, modify, ignore or reject such preferred readings, according to their experience, attitudes and purposes. This whole attitudinal spectrum towards meaning- making with texts parallels that relating to the nature of reality: ranging from objectivism, via intersubjectivity, to subjectivism.

As I have mentioned elsewhere understanding, and upholding, these various triadic approaches is vital to upholding an inclusive, universalist, world view and a balanced understanding of reality. It is also the antidote to fundamentalism and to various other sicknesses that plague us.
To be developed.

The ‘SunWALK PhD’ is HERE

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To read the rest of Daniel Chandler’s introduction – and much more – go HERE

A very interesting article on identity, prepared by Chandler for the OU, is HERE

Inspiring quotations for PhD thesis

Like heroes and heroines certain key sayings inspire us. Here I’m assembling the ones that have meant most to me.

As I re-find them I am putting the NEWEST at the top:

From my thesis;

The four texts that contributed to the leitmotif that, I hope, makes, of the thesis parts, a whole

Text 1)

“The larger the island of knowledge, the longer
the shoreline of mystery.” Unknown author

Text 2)

The search for reason ends at the shore of the known;
on the immense expanse beyond it
only the sense of the ineffable can glide.
It alone knows the route to that
which is remote from experience and understanding.
Neither is amphibious:
reason cannot go beyond the shore,
and the sense of the ineffable
is out of place where we measure, where we weigh…….

Citizens of two realms, we must all sustain dual allegiance:
we sense the ineffable in one realm;
we name and exploit reality in another.

Between the two we set up a system of references,
but can never fill the gap.
They are as far and as close to each other

As time and calendar, as violin and melody,
as life and what lies beyond the last breath.

The tangible phenomena we scrutinize with our reason,

The sacred and indemonstrable we overhear

with the sense of the ineffable.

Heschel A. J. (1971), Man is Not Alone, New York: Octagon Books p.8

Text 3)

Tao, the subtle reality of the universe

cannot be described.

That which can be described in words

is merely a conception of the mind.

Although names and descriptions have been applied to it,

the subtle reality is beyond the description.

One may use the word ‘Nothingness”

to describe the Origin of the universe,

and “Beingness”

to describe the Mother of the myriad things,

but Nothingness and Beingness are merely conceptions.

From the perspective of Nothingness,

one may perceive the expansion of the universe.

From the perspective of Beingness,

one may distinguish individual things.

Both are for the conceptual convenience of the mind.

Although different concepts can be applied,

Nothingness and Beingness

and other conceptual activity of the mind

all come from, the same indescribable subtle Originalness

The Way is the unfoldment of such subtle reality.

Having reached the subtlety of the universe,

one may see the ultimate subtlety,
the Gate of All Wonders.

Ni, Hua-Ching (1997), The Complete Works of Lao Tzu, Santa Monica, USA: Seven Star Communications – Tao The Ching (‘Chapter’ 1)

Text 4)

….set then yourselves towards His holy Court, on the shore of His mighty Ocean, so that the pearls of knowledge and wisdom, which God hath stored up within the shell of His radiant heart, may be revealed unto you….
(Baha’u’llah: Proclamation of Baha’u’llah, Pages: 8-9)

“The utterances of the heart — unlike those of the discriminating intellect — always relate to the whole.” (Jung)

Also from the thesis;

Introduction to Chapter 1 – an ‘overture’

By way of a short introduction I want to ‘sound’, as in an overture, certain ‘notes’, or themes or resonances. They are from writers, and a film-maker, whose statements have come to mean a great deal, in the struggle to search out my own story, and its meaning educationally.

Autobiography is a journey inward. St Augustine said:

Men go to gape at mountain peaks, at the boundless tides of the sea, the broad sweep of rivers, the encircling ocean and the motion of the stars; and yet they leave themselves unnoticed; they do not marvel at themselves.
St. Augustine, Confessions X2

Autobiography is not entirely a matter of re-collecting objective facts: it is re-creation as well as re-collection, but it is a seeking after a kind of truth; the truth of authentically being in oneself. Peter Abbs (1974 p. 7) calls autobiography: the search backwards into time to discover the evolution of the true self. It is, as such, about self-knowing, but something beyond the fripperies of the ego. Baha’u’llah, Founder of the Baha’i religion, in one of His own writings, cites a tradition from Islam: He hath known God who hath known himself. (Baha’u’llah: Gleanings, MARS database3 p.178).

For the theistically religious the more we come to know our true selves, the closer we come to the Divine within us, and vice versa. I make no claim, beyond a few faltering steps, but the ideas continue to inspire.

The ‘Thesis Poem’
I have chosen the following poem by Seamus Heaney (1996 p.14) as ‘the poem’ for the thesis because it shows beautifully how we resonate now, in relation to what we sensed and experienced as children. It also shows how, through metaphor, the objective connects with the subjective to thrill, to the very quick of our being.

About the poem, ‘Personal Helicon’ Pelligrino (2003 p.1) explains;

Mount Helicon is a mountain in Greece, that was, in classical mythology, sacred to Apollo and the Muses. From it flowed two fountains of poetic inspiration. Heaney is here presenting his own source of inspiration, the “dark drop” into personal and cultural memory, made present by the depths of the wells in his childhood. Now, as a man, he is too mature to scramble about on hands and knees, looking into the deep places of the earth, but he has his poetry – and, thank God, so do we.

Of course if Heaney was reading it we would have that wonderful voice, like an aromatic tree giving up the sap, and perfuming the air with all the good things from the soil.

Personal Helicon by Seamus Heaney
for Michael Longley

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.
One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.
A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.
Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.
Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

Later I take up the issues of resonance, and of objective and subjective meaning combined in metaphor, and the power of the subjective in personal history, to continue to generate the new in the meaning-making we do. The darkness echoes, as we stare into the part darkness of the self, and its memories – we stare, each a big-eyed Narcissus.

The final ‘sounding’, or theme, in the Introduction to Chapter 1 concerns identity and the moment, which lives on, and in which the past continues to create. The piece is by Jorge Luis Borges4, who says:

Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made
up of a single moment – the moment in which a man finds
out, once and for all, who he is.

The one moment could conceivably be a choice – as in Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life where a group of 22 people are suspended between earth and heaven with a week to answer the important question: “What is the one memory that you choose to carry into the afterlife?” When each chooses his or her memory, this is all that will be remembered for eternity.

Professionally, the lesson, or pair of lessons, upon which this thesis is, in part, an extended reflection contains the one memory I would choose. Ideally it would be the whole of the two ‘story’ lessons.

If it was reduced just to seconds it would be the moment that one ‘deviant’ boy offered an explanation of the possible symbolic meaning of the two fishes that I had drawn on the blackboard. One fish was a line drawing, the other a similar shaped fish, but its shape was delineated via chalk shading (i.e. from ‘the outside’).

“Mr P I think one fish represents bounded imagination, and the other stands for unbounded imagination.”

His brilliantly insightful comment was the jewel in the crown of an outstanding lesson in which the class and I, so I felt, was as ‘one-mind’, intellectually sharp but attitudinally contemplative, in ‘cross-over’ from extreme left-brain and extreme right-brain engagement – and here he was, the boy always in trouble with various teachers, speaking my as yet unrealized thoughts, and riveting me to that moment.

It was the supreme moment, within the supreme experience in a life-time of teaching, and it was, as Jack Nicholson and the movie title say, ‘As good as it gets’.

One key quotation is missing from this section. It is; “The larger the island of knowledge,the longer the shoreline of mystery.” Anon. I now find that in a piece of his work Bill Viola was inspired by;

“The Self is an ocean without a shore. Gazing upon it has no
beginning or end, in this world and the next.”
Ibn al’Arabi (1165 – 1240)

The ocean and island metaphors, the limitless Self, the fathomless self, the moment and memories, ‘After Life’, self-knowledge and the impossibility of knowing the Self – all these and more are essential threads in my attempt too present in SunWALK a model of what it is to be positively and fully human as well as a model of how education can be intrinsically spiritualizing without the narrow sectarian religion.

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Three Blogs: Quaker Agitation, Heliotroping and radical America

Came across three impressive blogs all on the same day so here they are;

1 The first is that by the ‘Quaker Agitator’. He has a mighty blogroll of other sites that he values.

2 The Heliotrope concetrates on ‘Philosophy, science, progression, prose‘.

3 You will get a good taste of radical views in America at Les Enrages.org

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Wilber, heart-knowing, head-knowing, and the 3 ‘voices’ through which we engage with reality

Heart-knowing, head-knowing, and the 3 ‘voices’ through which we engage with reality

The three intrapersonal ‘voices’ of human engagement, have previously been presented as Caring, Creativity and Criticality.

Our Caring, Creativity and Criticality ways of engaging are developed through internalizing the voices of parents and family and then all of the Humanities, the Arts and the Sciences experiences we have at school and in the wider society.

Corresponding to the three voices we have three ways of knowing:

1 the ‘social-others-centred’ way of knowing – in the case of Caring

2 the ‘subjective-creative-mystical’ way of knowing – in the case of Creativity and

3 the ‘objective-reasoning-scientific’ way of knowing – in the case of Criticality

So;

Caring, the ‘social-others-centred’ way of knowing = the internalized voice of the Humanities, and is about engaging with reality via the moral viewpoint

Creativity, the ‘subjective-creative-mystical’ way of knowing = the internalized voice of the Arts, and is about engaging with reality via the subjective viewpoint

Criticality the ‘objective-reasoning-scientific’ way of knowing = the internalized moral voice of the ‘Sciences’ and is about engaging with reality via the (supposed) objective viewpoint.

NB Criticality is wider that what is normally meant by the Sciences and scientific methods. It includes philosophy and such activities as Eng Lit criticism. Why? Because it is about reasoning and other ‘left-brain’ objective activities. The participant assumes the position of being objective and is learning or teaching about phenomena – s/he is not learning or teaching in the phenomena – a distinction that correlates with that between ‘knowing that’ (Paris is the capital of France) and ‘knowing how’ (being able to dance a response to a tragic event).

Heart-knowing and head-knowing, left-brain and right-brain

Heart-knowing, the ‘subjective-creative-mystical’, is seen as partly an innate, intuitive way of knowing and seems to relate to right-brain activities.

The ‘methods of the ‘objective-reasoning-scientific’’voice’ seem to relate to right-brain activities.

The third form, i.e. social knowing, is seen as deriving from the cultural interpersonal matrix of family and community relationships, internalized as the Caring seems to draw upon both sides of the brain (as do architects!).

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NB All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

‘Practical theory’ re: Jane’s Short Story, meaning, interpretation, stories, meta-thinking, the teacher – and generating an antidote to fundamentalism!

Teachers, and other professionals, deal in a) texts (written and other kinds) and b) discourse about their meaning and interpretation with students every day.

When we engage with texts we do so in one of three voices – the philosophical-scientific, the creative or the moral-caring. This article comprises the first of a few reflections about hermeneutics in relation to the process of teaching – and in relation to the SunWALK model and ‘what it is to be fully and positively human’ – the main focus of this site.

‘Essentially, hermeneutics involves cultivating the ability to understand things from somebody else’s point of view, and to appreciate the cultural and social forces that may have influenced their outlook. Hermeneutics is the process of applying this understanding to interpreting the meaning of written texts and symbolic artifacts (such as art or sculpture or architecture), which may be either historic or contemporary.’ Wiki

1 It makes sense for middle school children, and above, to come to understand that texts represent possible meanings and ‘critiques’ represent readings of texts. It might also be useful from this to understand that readings can both change over time in our lives, but principles might remain constant.

Developing meta-thinking via periodic re-visits to a useful text

There are calls for teachers to help children to achieve meta-thinking and one enjoyable way is to re-visit a story in succeeding years with the discourse centred around such questions as;

“How do you read the story?” and

“How do you feel what you’ve learned over last year has changed your views and, what you value – in relation to the story?” and

“In what respects have you, and your thinking, changed and developed over the last year?”and

“How do you read the story now compared to when you first ‘met it’ – what’s stayed the same and what has changed?”

One re-visiting was to Jane’s Short Story in a Roman Catholic middle school. Jane’s Short Story was posted to this site yesterday (8^th Aug 2007). I wrote Jane’s Short Story to see how good Year 7 children (11 to 12 year olds) were at de-constructing and critiquing a piece that was deliberately stream-of-consciousness, oblique and cryptic! They surprised me the first time we used the story as a text and they also impressed me with their reflections on how their thinking had developed and the differences they saw on their second encounter.

Such work is also an antidote to the shallowness and superficiality that blights much of what children suffer in school. If you treat children as profound thinkers they show that they are profound thinkers – that’s part of the genius of the process in Lipman’s Philosophy for Children

What’s the connection with the SunWALK model?

PFC Philosophy for Children is the exemplary programme for the ‘IT’ voice, the objective mode of engaging with truth. The spirit flows even more powerfully if we combine IT engagement with working with the ‘I’ voice of creative expression. This means that the children can treat the text, including occasionally pieces by the teacher and/or other pupils both as literary text and as philosophical text. Switching back and forth between the two activities and the two treatments of text becomes a very powerful mode of teaching – including for the third voice, that of the moral and other-centred i.e Caring.

What’s the connection with fundamentalism?

There are many including;

Once you have separated out the different forms of truth-telling, the IT voice of philosophy and science, the ‘I’ voice of Creativity and the ‘WE’ voice of Caring you no longer have to defend texts in inappropriate and very dangerous ways. Treating religious texts as the supreme sources of inspiration for acting with justice, truth, beauty and goodness makes sense. Treating such texts as finite and fixed in their meaning as if they were simply mathematic formulae doesn’t.

It is we who make the meaning, not God – which is why we should always be tentative in how we assert our interpretations (including this one!). Sacred texts are gifts of meaning-making possibilities. Of course part of the texts is time-related and part constitutes eternal realities, but understanding what we are doing as we engage in objective, subjective or moral truth-seeking helps minimize confusion.

Literalism is the denial of God because it is the denial of meaning-making possibilities in relating to sacred texts – it limits the text to fixed and finite meaning – and tends to take us away from the focus on the need to act in the world with justice, truth, beauty, goodness – and all of the other so-called names and attributes of God.

It also allows people to start believing that the ‘others’ have broken whatever covenant is deemed to have existed so that no ‘rules’ of war’ need be complied with.

Its only in early life that we can prevent the kind of indoctrination of hatred for others. Understanding that spirituality, be it theistic or humanist, is simply the process of gaining the will to act morally is vital. Understanding the ‘voices’ with which engage and the texts that we engage with are all either objectively focused or subjectively focused or morally focused is vital in developing the truly mature mind-set and world-view.

Reason and Revelation, Religion and Philosophy – the pre-eminence of Socrates in Baha’i Writings

Source Richard Dawkins – bete noir of many religionists. Source

‘Faith in religion’ and ‘the reason and logic of philosophy’ are in direct opposition – right? We might be forgiven for thinking this is so, given some of what comes out of religions – and out of philosophers. One religion at least seems to elevate philosophy to a high status and to give a pre-eminent position to Socrates in particular. Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Baha’i religion, speaks in glowing terms of Socrates;

…… Socrates … was indeed wise, accomplished and righteous. He practiced self-denial, repressed his appetites for selfish desires and turned away from material pleasures. He withdrew to the mountains where he dwelt in a cave. He dissuaded men from worshipping idols and taught them the way of God, the Lord of Mercy, until the ignorant rose up against him. They arrested him and put him to death in prison. Thus relateth to thee this swift-moving Pen. What a penetrating vision into philosophy this eminent man had! He is the most distinguished of all philosophers and was highly versed in wisdom. We testify that he is one of the heroes in this field and an outstanding champion dedicated unto it. He had a profound knowledge of such sciences as were current amongst men as well as of those which were veiled from their minds. Methinks he drank one draught when the Most Great Ocean overflowed with gleaming and life-giving waters. (Baha’u’llah: Tablets of Baha’u’llah, Page: 146

Depending on how you read phrases like ‘he drank one draught when the Most Great Ocean overflowed with gleaming and life-giving waters’ Baha’u’llah seems to elevate Socrates to a station akin to that of a prophet.

In my SunWALK model reason (using the senses + reasoning) and revelation are seen as two of the ways by which we come to know. Others are;

a) tradition in the sense of the contents of the repositories of Art, Sciences and Humanities and the living traditions that are exercised in various communities.

b) caring by which I mean our heart consciousness that derives from the relationships in which we are embedded and the love and other positive qualities we have received from those with whom we have relationship. (Without having received love it is very difficult to love.)

Interesting piece by Dawkins HERE

Knowledge, Knowing and the Unknowable: Head, Heart and the Mystery of Our-selves

Ver 2. as at 4th Aug 2007

PREFACE

This was written as a summary of some of the discussions held during a recent course run with 9 wonderful young women and men. So first and foremost this is for Poppy, Ellie, Jono, Saha, Natalie, Paddy, Jody, Kenny – and Davey.

This is what I feel/think I’ve learned so far;

WHAT’S WRONG?

Because of its lopsidedness and excessive specialization modern science, and thought generally, has got us into a mess. The mess is characterized by our consciousness and life being fragmented, mechanical and excessively materialistic. We need to create a new ‘post post-modernism’ that combines the positives from modernism, post-modernism and pre-modernism.

First of all we have to chose a starting point – because all of life is a circling matrix of connectedness.

THINKING AND FEELING AND BEING – AND BEING ‘MORE THEN’

I am – therefore I think. (Variation on Descartes’ starting point).

We are/You are – thereby I am. (Variation on a Swahili saying).

I am supported in my existence by all of the relationships in which I am embedded – including my ‘significant others’, and those I chose to lead me, and those with whom I chose to identify – so as to become like them or at least possess some of their qualities.

Our being is much more than our thinking, reason and logic – we are 51%, or more, feelings.

Unless our capacities for feeling are attenuated, blunted or simply under-developed.

We are known and knowable – but also exist at levels that are beyond the knowable.

That is we are, in the depths of our being, a mystery to our selves – and to each other.

Thinking is one way to engage with other/s, or the self – and with reality.

Thinking is what we do as part of being – sometimes it is more, and sometimes less, than the feeling/s we are also generating/experiencing. One or the other is in dominance at any one time.

Thinking and feeling are simply different forms of the single human spirit that flows through each of us – and apparently around that ‘space’ we call our inner world or interiority.

What would be a sensible name for the single flow of spirit that switches back and forth between ‘heart’ and ‘mind’? I suggest ‘heart-mind’. ‘Heart-mind’ actually has a long history in Chinese thought.

‘Heart-mind’ is preferable to ‘heart’ and ‘mind’ as some sort of separated ‘organs’.

Heart-mind is interiority – conscious thoughts and feelings, + re-callable memories + that which normally remains in the sub-conscious, such as painful memories.

HEART-MIND (THE ONENESS OF THINKING AND FEELING) AS THE 3 ‘I’, ‘WE’ AND ‘IT’ VOICES OR MODES OF ENGAGING WITH REALITY – AND OF CIOMMUNICATING WITH EACH OTHER

Thought and feeling however don’t account for the fact that we communicate with each other, at any one time, in one of three voices; ‘I’. ‘WE’ and ‘IT’ .

Sometimes our heart-mind/spirit switches into the I mode of artistic-subjective expression and engagement with reality.

Sometimes it switches into the WE mode of caring and other-focused action.

Sometimes it switches into the IT mode of scientific-objective investigation and engagement with reality.

We switch back and forth with great rapidity – unless we are in a meditative state or dreamless sleep. The other 2 voices are always ‘running in the background’.

THE ‘I’, ‘WE’ and ‘IT’ VOICES CORRESPOND TO CREATIVITY, CARING and CRITICALITY

I suggest that the term ‘thinking’ is better thought of as three separate ways in which we engage with reality, with each other – and our selves.

Thinking in the sense of Criticality (inc. philosophy, science maths, Eng. Lit, etc.) is one way for the human spirit to engage with reality. The other two are Caring and Creativity.

Caring focuses on moral truth as caring – action for the sake of others.

Creativity is concerned with subjective truth as a way to engage with reality – its voice says “This is how it has been for me, this is how it looks for me – standing in my ‘skin’.

Criticality focuses on objective truth – in which reasoning and logic are especially important.

Thought and feeling/s are two sides of a single coin – each transforms into the other moment by moment in the dynamics of the heart-mind. This is evident in simple introspection.

Heart-mind, is however socialized into the 3 I, WE and IT voices.

All 3 have cognitive and affective charges at any one time.

The I WE and IT voices are internalizations/socializations of parental voices, school and community voices.

The cultural ‘repositories’ that correspond to the I,WE and IT voices we call the Arts, Humanities & Sciences.

The moral voice is an internalization of early caring and experience – with conscience as the internalization of the parental voice.

There may be sensible connections to be made between left and right brain hemispheres and the UIT and I voices.

It seems sensible to connect the I voice and the mystical since both involve unitive experiences.

In dealing with the Critical IT way of engaging with reality we deal in concepts – but we might agree with Heschel who says “Concepts are delicious snacks with which we try to alleviate our amazement.”

CONCEPTS AS ‘DELICIOUS SNACKS’ – AND ‘AMAZEMENT’ AS THE UNITIVE STATE OF THE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE

Amazement is the state of union, the unitive state which in its elevated forms is the mystical.

The mystical needs to be recognized as a normal, every-day even, part of being human. It needs de-mystifying and de-rarefying. It is not the sole prerogative of the exceptional such as Joan of Arc or of those who unhelpfully hear voices.

The basic experience is embedded in every day language as when we say, “It took me out of my-self.”

In normal, conceptual, busy-busy life we have a strong sense of ego/self/me-me. But sometimes I forget my self – through a unitive experience.

As the gospel song says;

I’m gonna lay down my heavy load

Down by the riverside

I’m gonna lay down my heavy load

Down by the riverside

Gonna study war no more.

One reading of the ‘heavy load’ is the small self, the ego, the ego boundary that keeps us in the relative hell of separation and pain and suffering.

Contemplation or perhaps deeper meditation is what takes us to the unitive state.

But I don’t think permanent self-loss is the goal because the dynamic lies in going back and forth between the unitive and the duality that is most of everyday life.

In fact I believe that our knowing comes as a consequence of the dynamic that arises from going back and forth between the unitive and duality

LOGIC IS WHAT WE NEED WHEN WE RETURN FROM THE STATE OF AMAZEMENT/MYSTICAL UNION

Logic is a good servant but insufficient as an overall master explanation of what we are, or what amounts to truth.

For example logic can be used impeccably to support the view that God exists, and equally for the view that there is no God.

Logical constructions, like journeys, always start somewhere.

That ‘somewhere’ in our intellectual-spiritual journeys, and dialogue with each other, is always a set of assumptions and viewpoints.

DEVELOPING A NEW PARADIGM – AND REALIZING THAT THE INADEQUACIES OF THE OLD PARADIGM LIE IN ITS SET OF ASSUMPTIONS (BECAUSE THEY LARGELY LIE UNTESTED)

The assumptions, like a geographical position, always imply a world-view.

The assumptions are largely untested like the 9/10ths of the ice-berg that is below the surface.

The world-view can include a range of other assumptions including what it is to be human, what constitutes reality, what is good or bad etc.

The new paradigm that is struggling to be born is characterised by wholeness, flow and realizations of the spiritual nature of being human – the opposites of fragmentation, the mechanistic and the excessively materialistic. Above all it centres on realizing to a much deeper and higher forms answers to the most important of all questions; “What is it to be (fully and positively) human?”

REALIZING UNITY – PERSONALLY OR COLLECTIVELY – IS HELP BY THE GIFT OF WISE VOICES

Individually our happiness depends on our integration – of heart and head, of identity and purpose, of personal development and service to others. One key secret is realizing that mind and body and spirit are all one and the same – the singleness of the life-force, chi, the human spirit.

Collectively we also need deeper realization of unity – that unity is based on the existential reality of being human. Like millions of others I learned this from Shakespeare. Scots would add Robbie Burns.

Unity can not in the social political sphere be achieved through philosophy or theology, both of which depend on reason and logic. Why? Well as the ancient saying goes, ‘The longest journey in the world is from the human head to the human heart, but the shortest journey in the world is from the human heart to the human head.’

Unity can only be achieved via a commitment to the existential reality of being human. We are all human. We strive for a better life. We have loved ones and we all suffer grief and loss……………….

Our theology and philosophy are only games (of reason and logic) that we play – on the ‘foundation’ of incomplete certainty, not-knowing and mystery – and they must take second place to realizing our existential human oneness – and truth and beauty and goodness.- and above all justice as our over-riding interior ‘conditioner’ as well as the chief conditioner in the social and political realms.

Deep unity is realized through our existential sameness. The ‘healthy doubt’ is vital in matters of theology and philosophy. Doubting, just a modicum not a flood, is healthy when it functions as a cousin of tentativeness and humility. Absolute certainty is the condition of the fundamentalist – and the fascist and terrorist. Unity requires something other than closed minds and cold hearts. The co-existence of humility – but without a collapse into the hell of relativity, political correctness and effete values now displayed in so many Western countries. But our unity lies in the state of not-knowing, not in hard and water-tight (heart-tight?) convictions;

“We are united by our doubts and divided by our convictions.” Sir Peter Ustinov

Excesses of certitude cut us off from truth and can lead to horrors of cruelty – the Nazis were certain that Jews, and Gypsies were sub-human.

“Certitude divides and diversity unifies…..We have to elevate religion above politics…..”

H.R.H. Prince El-Hassan Bin Talal of Jordan BBC Newsnight 9th Feb 2006

I am because we are. I am ultimately in a state of not knowing. I see through a glass not darkly, but with imperfect vision – this being an inevitable consequence of being finite.

Speaking personally I can’t live fully up to the truth, beauty, goodness, justice and mystery that I’ve learned (about) so far. This means that I, like us all, need forgiveness; hearts embrace, minds take a stroll together before parting. I/we need for-give-ness as part of the love through which to gain the will to walk on!

Go well.

Roger

Dr Roger Prentice

World-views: understanding our own and other peoples’ world-views

Source

World-view – making clear our own world-view

To be developed.

“Certitude divides and diversity unifies…..We have to elevate religion above politics…..”

H.R.H. Prince El-Hassan Bin Talal of Jordan BBC Newsnight 9^th Feb 2006

“The world presents itself in two ways to me. The world as a thing I own, the world as a mystery I face. What I own is a trifle, what I face is sublime. I am careful not to waste what I own; I must learn not to miss what I face. We manipulate what is available on the surface of the world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the world. We objectify Being but we also are present at Being in wonder, in radical amazement.” A. J Heschel
In this section I intend to do two things. Firstly I will make clear my own world-view as it now is. Secondly I will make clear those questions that need to be asked and answered in consciously holding a world-view.

In this process I hope to also identify some of the excesses, and some of the inadequacies that cause so much suffering and grief.

Understanding our own (developing) world view is vital.

It is essential to self-understanding – and to avoiding self-deception.

It includes our our sense of the whole/Whole – the cosmology, and theology.

It includes what we attribute to the culture in which we have grown up and what we attribute to our essential nature – and what is meant by ‘reality’.

Our philosophy – and our behaviour in the world – rests upon, and is shaped by, our world-view.

For the time being the following chart is helpful;

Five Worldviews

A very useful discussion is to be found at SEE http://www.xenos.org/classes/papers/5wldview.htm

They say;

It sometimes seems as if there are more philosophical and religious views than any normal person could ever learn about. Indeed, there are more than six thousand distinct religions in the world today. However, some people are surprised to find that the world’s religions and philosophies tend to break down into a few major categories. These five world-views include all the dominant outlooks in the world today.

REALITY

MAN

TRUTH

VALUES

Chart is adapted from Christianity: The Faith That Makes Sense by Dennis McCallum (Tyndale).

To Myth or not to Myth, that is the question

Notes on ‘To Myth or not to Myth, that is the question’.

TASK: Explore how the passages below represent experience of the ‘whole and the parts’, mythos and logos, myth and reality etc.

Ken Wilber says;
‘When Spirit is de-mythologized, it can be approached as Spirit, in its Absolute Suchness (tathata), and not as a cosmic Parent. p 214 The Simple Feeling of Being

I take this to be much the same as an appeal to de-anthropomorphise our ‘God-talk’.

Karen Armstrong gives us a compassionate, highly condensed, view of the way that myth has figured in human history and development in her; A Short History of Myth. Compare also;

1) Abraham Joshua Heschel (1971), Man is Not Alone, New York: Octagon Books p.8

‘The search for reason ends at the shore of the known;
on the immense expanse beyond it
only the sense of the ineffable can glide.
It alone knows the route to that
which is remote from experience and understanding.
Neither is amphibious:
reason cannot go beyond the shore,
and the sense of the ineffable
is out of place where we measure, where we weigh…….

Citizens of two realms, we must all sustain dual allegiance:
we sense the ineffable in one realm;
we name and exploit reality in another.
Between the two we set up a system of references,
but can never fill the gap.
They are as far and as close to each other
As time and calendar, as violin and melody,
as life and what lies beyond the last breath.

The tangible phenomena we scrutinize with our reason,
The sacred and indemonstrable we overhear
with the sense of the ineffable.’

2) Ni, Hua-Ching (1997), The Complete Works of Lao Tzu, Santa Monica, USA: Seven Star Communications – Tao The Ching (‘Chapter’ 1)

‘Tao, the subtle reality of the universe
cannot be described.
That which can be described in words
is merely a conception of the mind.
Although names and descriptions have been applied to it,
the subtle reality is beyond the description.

One may use the word ‘Nothingness”
to describe the Origin of the universe,
and “Beingness”
to describe the Mother of the myriad things,
but Nothingness and Beingness are merely conceptions.

From the perspective of Nothingness,
one may perceive the expansion of the universe.
From the perspective of Beingness,
one may distinguish individual things.
Both are for the conceptual convenience of the mind.

Although different concepts can be applied,
Nothingness and Beingness
and other conceptual activity of the mind
all come from, the same indescribable subtle Originalness
The Way is the unfoldment of such subtle reality.
Having reached the subtlety of the universe,
one may see the ultimate subtlety,
the Gate of All Wonders.’

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

SunWALK a model of (holistic) education in a nutshell

SunWALK a model of (holistic) education

The SunWALK model of
spiritualizing (or humanizing) pedagogy sees
human education as: the
storied development of
meaning, which is
constructed, and de-constructed,
physically mentally and spiritually, through
Wise & Willing
Action, via
Loving and
Knowing – developed in
Community, through the
‘Dialectical Spiritualization’ of
Caring,
Creativity &
Criticality processes, all undertaken in the light of the
‘Sun’ of chosen higher-order values and beliefs, using best available, appropriate
content.

So Sun = the values we internalize through which we read the world and see the path ahead.

WALK = Wise and Willing Action driven by Loving and Knowing.

We do the WALKing in the light of the ‘Sun’.

Working with such a model enables teaching and learning to be a spiritualizing/humanizing process and reduces the tendency for education to be just materialistic, mechanistic and atomistic.

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

TOO CONDENSED? – LONGER VERSIONS HERE!

DIAGRAM of the SunWALK model

Fundamentalist science and alchemical religion: a holistic take on ‘Intelligent Design’ versus the ‘modern-scientific mindset’

Draft updated 15.11.07

Fundamentalist science and

alchemical religion:

: a holistic take on ‘Intelligent Design’ versus the ‘modern-scientific mindset’

The politico-religious movement that advocates ‘Intelligent Design’, and its rejection by some scientists, is just one of the less bloody battles going on in our world. Is there a solution to this conflict, since it plugs in to other battles that involve a great deal of blood-letting? What and how should we be teaching in schools that might help prevent or heal the conflict between ‘Intelligent Design’ and what has been called the MWM (Modern Western Mind-set)?

The ‘Intelligent design’ people make the mistake of using dubious science to promote their religious views and end up, as Karen Armstrong has said, with bad religion as well as bad science. Ill-chosen, or ‘plain wrong’, science would seem to be a fundamentalist as well as a fundamental mistake.

Unqualified literalism is seen as one of the chief destructive characteristics of fundamentalism. Another is belief in ‘textual inerrancy’. However Terry Eagleton, in Beyond Theory, has pointed out, that as soon as a text and a (subjective) human being come together the idea that a text can remain absolutely, objectively, ‘fixed’ is inevitably shattered. Each person has a unique history and each textual engagement is therefore unique. (You can only have the cultural records of previous agreements about ‘readings’). Truth and comm-unity codes then become a matter of agreement and mutuality. Of course to maintain a fundamentalist position it also helps if we switch off all critical faculties – to swallow teaching that is falsified through over-simplification, as well as by literalism.

The mystical heart of the religious can only be expressed in parable, allegory and symbol. Even if required actions are crystal clear – be loving, be good etc. When religion falls to fundamentalist levels there is – in effect – no longer the need for the individual to be a responsible, autonomous human being. In such a case we can relieve ourselves of the burden of self, not through transcendent experience, but through the capitulation of obedience to an imposed, fixed, interpretation. Then religion is as false as the promise, and premises, of alchemy.

On the other hand scientists, when they also happen to be materialists, only value one kind of knowing – the rational-empirical. They invalidate other ways of knowing – rather as women have been invalidated throughout history. Might there might be a connection here?

Extreme denial of other ways of truth-telling by those who have turned the MWM into a creed can be as fundamentalist as religious extremism. Materialistic scientists, and other MWM de-valuers, need to open up to respecting the positives that can flow from other ways of knowing.

What can help toward a solution? Karen Armstrong, most recently in her A Short History of Myth has argued for a re-balancing through a modernised form of mythos to counter-balance the current form of logos. Mythos is not just a matter of myth, as detractors like to argue. The origin of ‘mythos’ relates it to speech, narrative, plot, or dialogue. I would also see it as closer to ‘heart-knowing’, to the imagistic and the ‘gestaltic’. It is a mode of knowing that flows from apprehension of the whole with a subsequent moving toward the particular.

It would be good to have the two, or more, ways of knowing validated and seen as complementary. On the head-knowing and heart-knowing front there might be useful correlations with left-right hemisphere brain functioning – but only if you get the philosophy and the science in good balance!

Instead of complementariness gradually, in the MWM since the Age of Enlightenment, the only valued, and therefore the only valid, way of thinking has come to be a matter of starting, proceeding and ending, in measurable ‘bits’. But being human is always far more than what can usefully be measured. This monopolism rightly upsets ‘good’ religionists as well as extremists – so much so that they mistakenly reach for bits of science.

Before the MWM became a monopoly, in the West, ‘the whole’ had value complementary to knowledge of parts. The ‘ology’ of biology, zoology and geology was the whole – in relation to the particulars of ‘bio’, ‘zoo’ and ‘geo’. It accepted as we do that the ‘ology’, the whole, is always more than we can comprehend, but humility like mutual respect is in short supply. To re-new this lost balance requires first a re-legitimization of a modernised understanding of mythos. It is true that literature, film and the plastic and performing arts have kept us spiritually connected to the mythic but the language to re-factor mythos into our various discourses has to be re-discovered.

Were we to have legitimated forms of mythos and logos, the arts and religion, on the one hand and science-reason-logic on the other hand could then be explored in many kinds of complementary relationship. Mythos and logos, the arts and sciences, characterise two ways of truth-discovery as well as truth-telling.

The third way to truth is a matter of agreements. A community’s agreements, and our internalization of those agreements as conscience and moral sensibility, is the third voice, the moral. All three are ways to enable us to engage in reality.

Truth and reality might usefully be seen as one but it is vital that truth-telling be seen as multiple. When truth-telling is seen as being of three kinds (at least) the two camps have a way to unite. Ken Wilber has called these three the I, WE and IT ways of knowing truth and reality.

The ‘I voice’ of the arts speaks of reality perceived via subjective truth-telling. It, of course, often uses mythos, symbol, allegory and metaphor.

The ‘WE voice’ of the humanities, speak about the moral aspects of reality via what we might call ‘community truth’. ‘Community truth’ is, of course, negotiated according to the society’s political structure. In academe religion is often classed as one of the humanities.

The ‘IT voice’ of the sciences uses the objective truth-telling of empirical methods. But we are always more than we can usefully measure.

Philosophy which used to combine all truth-telling voices, and from which the ‘fragmentation’ of subjects sprang is all but lost. Matthew Lipman, the developer of ‘Philosophy for Children’, sees the restoration of philosophy as the means to restore wholeness. I prefer to add the contemplative and transcendent as well. Philosophy starts with “I wonder”; the mystical with just “wonder”.

If religion has a purpose it is to generate spirituality. If spirituality has a purpose it is to convert good feeling into good action. If religion doesn’t lead to justice, truth, beauty and goodness, etc., we are better off without it.

Religion however is in some ways closer to art than to the humanities. The ‘studying about’ versus ‘studying in’ distinction is vital here. Spiritual and moral competency comes through ‘practice and action’ not just through academic knowledge. But religion, or at least first hand religious experience – John Hick’s definition of the mystical – can only, like art, be subjective. Ideally it is universal enough to be agreed upon, agreement being necessary in all knowing/ knowledge as Wittgenstein pointed out. This is why common ground needs to be established, and expanded, and ‘perennial philosophy’ re-looked at. However we can I believe agree only on our human predicament – we all love, hope, need security etc. We can go a bit further with recognizing matters of justice, truth, beauty and goodness, but theology is (rightly) too subjective. Academic theology is often just a version of bean-counting.

In education the experiential is vital; doing religion, or at least spirituality, is just as important as learning about religions. If the violent possessiveness and exclusiveness that many people of religion feel could be eased then a pan-religious, meta-religious spirituality could be developed – without denying others their beliefs. In such a ‘non specific-faith-group’ form of spirituality the widening and deepening of consciousness might have a chance. A sense of reverence, a sense of the sacred, a sense of transcendence might then be part of all children’s entitlement Qualities such as respect and humility, that can help inoculate against such negatives as racism, might then thrive a bit more. We can’t go on forever relying on David Beckham and Thierry Henri to band-aid a bad situation.

All truth systems only provide degrees of certainty. Demanding scientific certainty of the metaphysical is dangerous – usually to others as minorities – as well as plain impossible to achieve. The ‘healthy doubt’ is vital not just to enable respect for others but to prevent our own excesses. Absolute certainty requires a ‘narrowing of the hearteries’ as well as a closing of the mind. It also prevents humility.

The ‘IT voice’ of the sciences uses reason and the empirical to reveal reality via objective truth. But isn’t the overbearing assertion that this, and only this, has human value just as fundamentalist as Christian or Islamic extremists? Deifying science and reason can lose us the better part of our humanity. Debasing religion has the same effect.

All three truth-telling voices need to be validated through working with each other and by avoiding making claims from the ground and viewpoint of each other. Religion that pretends to be scientific can end up in an embarrassment of scientism. However each way of knowing can inspire and support the others.

In the case of religion and beliefs the proof is always in the pudding. Personally I don’t care what a person believes so long as it leads to virtuous action – to the ‘I WE and IT voices’ manifested in the world as some expression of beauty, goodness or truth all conditioned internally as well as externally by the spirit of justice.

Can extremist-fundamentalist mindset ever be transformed – its in virtually every religion? I saw a flicker of hope on an edition of The Daily Show. Jon Stewart interviewed an ex- fundamentalist, Bart Ehrman, who had been converted to having an open mind! Although the show’s large audience may well believe that Stewart’s satire get’s nearer truth than ‘straight’ news programmes – (is that an I, WE or IT voice?) – Stewart gave Ehrman a largely admiring and straight interview.

Ehrman was an evangelical Episcopalian (see http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6301707.html ) but through serious studies of the Bible shifted to a ‘happy agnostic’ because of what he found – that the Bible, far from guaranteeing inerrant comfort for the literalist, was a ‘living document’ derived from an almost limitless number of changes effected by copiers of texts down through the ages. His book Misquoting Jesus has become a best seller. It is not clear whether he has received any death threats – or faeces.

The poison of religious hatred can only be overcome step by step, perhaps person by person. Education is vital to such a healing. We could all help in making clear the ideas that separate out the roles of Wilber’s ‘I, WE and IT’ voices.

Shouldn’t we teach these basic different kinds of ‘truth-telling and truth investigation’ ideas in every school? Better still shouldn’t they be a way of teaching in every school? As someone interested in holistic education I see the need not just for the theoretical acceptance of other ways of knowing but also for the praxis that enables them to be combined in discourse by all teachers of all subjects.

In my own teaching in schools I found that using the three voices in ‘creative dialogue’ within the subject discourse of English, and Philosophy for Children, a produced amazing results in pupil performance. A fuller account of this way of teaching is at https://sunwalked.wordpress.com/

There just remains the task of persuading the two camps and, oh yes, HM Government and its TTA.

Dr Roger Prentice

Email: rogerprentice AT bigfoot.com

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

Metanexus Institute

‘Tao’ by Andrew Ilachinski

I can recommend two offerings from the Metanexus Institute. Firstly they host a range of articles and secondly they are running a ‘competition’ organised by Andrew Ilachinski that draws together philosophy and visual art.

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

Sue Stack Presentation – 2nd half

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NB All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

Sue Stack presentation

A very interesting presentation on Science and Soul by Dr Sue Stack

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NB All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

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