Scientism is precisely not a focus on the importance of learning all that we can about the natural world in school. This we applaud, and classical education has a lot to tell us about how we can teach our knowledge about nature, our scientia nātūrālis as the medievals would call it, better than we currently do.
Instead, scientism is the trend in the social sciences, like the field of education, to conform to the pattern of the wildly successful hard sciences by proving themselves through data and pure reason alone. If we can prove it through an experiment and logic without appealing to any traditional belief, then we will accept it as true.
Educational schools have become labs, where white-coated practitioners test the latest theories on the millions of children scattered in their suburban and inner-city habitats across America. The best teachers read the educational journals and carefully follow the latest research on how to most effectively manipulate the environments of their subjects in order to attain society’s desired ends. Scientism listens to evidence and data, not to history or philosophy.
Why Scientism Is a Problem
Scientism is a problem because the field of education is not a hard science, but a branch of moral philosophy, scientia mōrālis. Every philosophy of education necessarily relies on a previously established account of what it means to be human. And yet, as Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain document in The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education 2.0:
“The methodologies of the contemporary social sciences implicitly critique traditional moral philosophy by suggesting it relies on assumptions about human nature and human purpose that are not rationally or empirically verifiable…. In actuality… all reasoning in the social sciences depends on a tradition of inquiry, whether Christian, Freudian, or Lockean, as well as personal and communal judgments and assumptions about the nature and purpose of human persons.” (132)
But scientism screens out such foundational questions about man, the good life, and ultimate purpose, in an attempt to be more precise—or precise in a different way—than the subject matter admits of (cf. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics I.3, 1094b12-15).
In so doing, it does not actually attain a neutral, “objective” viewpoint; instead, half-baked philosophies and unexamined assumptions rush back in, as seven demons take the place of the one that was exorcised. Scientism promises us firmer knowledge, not swayed to and fro by the winds of history and the waves of philosophy, but in reality it delivers only ignorance of how we are recycling old ideas by recasting them into new, scientific-looking forms.
For example, Paul Hirst, an educationist of the last generation, popularized a view of “seven forms of knowledge” that was essentially an unacknowledged recycling of Isocrates’ vision of the seven liberal arts. One scholar has documented Hirst’s grave historical inaccuracies in his account of the history of education—all the more disturbing because of the work’s placement in a standard encyclopedia!
James Muir writes,
“Hirst’s ‘history’ of liberal education, though found in a standard reference work, is inaccurate to a degree that it is difficult to exaggerate, and it is now imperative that this article be replaced by an historically informed discussion.”[1]
Unfortunately, this lone voice has not been heeded. Why? Because almost no scholars in education departments are engaged in any meaningful way with the history of educational philosophy.
(Enjoying this article? Read its twin, The Problem of Technicism in Conventional Education.)
The Classical Contrast to Scientism
The classical education movement, at its best, is a way of saying “No!” to the scientism of conventional education, and saying “Yes!” to the rich tradition of philosophical thinking in our past. Being willing to look to the past rather than merely to the lab of educational researchers is a great gain.
Unfortunately, in our recovery movement’s first feeble steps in this direction, we have sometimes fallen into the same pitfalls as Paul Hirst, who attributed a doctrinal abstraction of his own invention (‘classical realism’) to a historical abstraction (‘the Greeks’) without any evidence from their actual writings: “There is little resemblance between the ideas which Hirst attributes to ‘the Greeks,’ and the educational ideas any of them actually held,” Muir points out.[2]
How often have we heard or promulgated similar doctrinal and historical abstractions in our stump speeches on the value of classical education?
To the extent that we attribute our educational ideas to the Greeks and Romans or even to the medievals without the hard, historical work of recovering what Isocrates or Aquinas actually wrote, we may be unwittingly participating in the scientism of our day.
Please do not misunderstand. We may need to use such abstractions and generalizations for heuristic purposes: for instance, an informational meeting for those interested in classical education probably shouldn’t be citing Isocrates, Plato and Quintilian, and distinguishing between their very different philosophies of education! There are times for making a careful contrast between the trends of modern educational practices and those of earlier eras.
However, if in our books, conferences and blogs we do not rise to a higher standard of historical accuracy, then I am afraid, even the classical education movement will be doomed to suffer the repeated recycling of old ideas only partially rediscovered.
Avoiding Scientism in our Classical Recovery Movement
Arguably we have made great strides in this direction in the successive waves of the classical education movement. Clark and Jain, authors of The Liberal Arts Tradition are to be commended for, among other things, their substantive and rigorous research to lay out a paradigm that is based on historical and philosophical analysis of the tradition. No end of commendations and endorsements are due for such a crucial foundation stone for our growing movement (especially the expanded and revised version 2.0). However, their primary goal is still to recover a generalization of the tradition, even if they land at different authors, times and places for various aspects of it.
What about a careful analysis of the practices and philosophy of educational philosophers and practitioners, in the context of their time and place, one author at a time? We have been so concerned with defining what classical education is monolithically that we tend to omit the obvious truth: there have been many classical educations, practiced very differently in various times and places.
A generalization of the tradition is a helpful thing, but it is only as good as the data from which the generalization comes. In other words, our generalizations about classical education rely on our detailed knowledge about specific expressions of classical education. The only way to get a Liberal Arts Tradition 3.0 is to first write a series of books exploring the differences and disagreements in the tradition. (Classical Academic Press has started in this direction with their Giants in the History of Education Series, but these short books are mostly meant to serve as basic introductions and contain little of the detailed historical and comparative analysis I am talking about.)
The only lasting solution to scienticism in education is ultimately an entire Renaissance project in which we return ad fontēs (“to the sources”) in an effort not simply to generalize a definition of what classical education is, but to distinguish between the different visions and practices of the multifaceted tradition. In so doing we will have to be prepared to not like everything we see; we may be forced to engage in some negative judgments on some aspects of the tradition, even as we are inspired and challenged by others.
This would be all well and good and would probably have the positive side effect of making our commendations more winsome to a wider audience. I have known quite a few educators and parents who are slightly put off by some of the overly idealistic and sweeping rhetoric of classical education advocates. They, at least, might be more inclined to take a renaissance movement seriously that was more historically nuanced.
Likewise, we will have to give the devil his due: it’s not as if modern educational research has nothing of value, when burgeoning new disciplines like cognitive psychology and mind, brain and education (MBE) science are taking advantage of legitimate advances in neuroimaging and our understanding of the brain. (I owe my awareness of MBE primarily to Neuroteach: Brain Science and the Future of Education by Glenn Whitman and Ian Kelleher.) In so far as such insights reflect true developments in our understanding of human nature as created by God, we should expect to be able to integrate them with the best ideals and practices of the classical tradition.
This is why at Educational Renaissance we are committed to interacting in a meaningful way with sources of educational wisdom, both ancient and modern. Quoting from Aristotle and Charlotte Mason, Quintilian and John Locke helps keep us honest about what we’re talking about at any one time and avoid the sweeping generalizations so common in our world. Integrating their ideas with those of modern research, while being open to challenging either side, provides both a confirmation of their value and a translation for modern ears.
The Renaissance Solution to Scientism
What I’m calling for in education is something analogous to the Renaissance itself: a recovery of ancient sources of wisdom alongside a host of new advancements in science and technology, art and literature.
Cicero’s famous dictum applies to the classical education movement as a whole: “Nescīre autem quid antequam nātus sīs acciderit, id est semper esse puerum” (“However, not to know what happened before you were born, that is to be always a boy”). To grow up into mature manhood, we must know the history of educational ideas, not in word or in name, but in action and in truth.
This realization should be liberating and exciting, rather than leading us into the despair of what we do not yet know. Hindsight is 20/20 and we have the God-given glory of kings to enable us to surpass our forefathers, should we seriously take on the endeavor of historical inquiry. To use the common analogy, standing on the shoulders of giants can enable us to see further than they did, even if our stature does not match theirs. This is not an encouragement to hubris, but an acknowledgement of our high calling.
As Hamlet said,
“What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world.” (II.2)
It is this Christian humanist vision of humanity in all its glory and possibility that supercharged the work of the Renaissance, and it can function similarly in the educational renaissance we are promoting today.
A great path of discovery lies before us, and after all, Rome was not built in a day. In fact, the recovery process must take time, if only because there is so much educational philosophy to recover. We should ask ourselves the encouraging question of possibility, “How might our schools grow, if we devoted ourselves fully to learning the history of educational philosophy, rather than the watered-down summaries of scientism?” I, for one, hope to find out.
[1] James R. Muir, “The History of Educational Ideas and the Credibility of Philosophy of Education,” Educational Philosophy and Theory, 30, no. 1 (1998): 15.
[2] Ibid., 17-18.
Nota Bene: An earlier version of this article appeared on Forma: The Blog of the CiRCE Institute, February 2015, under the same title: https://www.circeinstitute.org/blog/problem-scientism-conventional-education.
Like this article? Read its twin, The Problem of Technicism in Conventional Education.
Great post! Lots of good ideas. I really appreciate your distinction between social science (more akin to moral philosophy) and the natural sciences. Often we just lazily say that “Science” says something without parsing the differences between the sciences.