The Matter With Things. Chapter 13. Institutional science and truth.

McGilchrist opens this chapter with these two aptly chosen quotes which pinpoint the key arguments he is making in this chapter.

‘Most human institutions, by the purely technical and professional manner in which they come to be administered, end by becoming obstacles to the very purposes which their founders had in view.’ (William James, 1909, A Pluralistic Universe)

‘Specialization is for insects.’ (Robert Heinlein, 1973, Time Enough for Love)

This chapter is a bit different to others In The Matter With Things as it focusses less on hemisphere correlates and is not heavily reliant on the hemisphere hypothesis. Instead McGilchrist explores the question of whether we can trust science’s claims on truth and examines the limitations of the institution of science.

I recognised most of the key points McGilchrist makes in this chapter as I think would anyone who has a background in research and publication, especially but not solely if these are related to science. Many of the same issues arise in humanities disciplines. McGilchrist discusses the limitations of the institutions of science under four headings; Specialisation and its impact on original thinking; How reliable is scientific evidence? The problems of publication; and Peer review.

Specialisation and its impact on original thinking.

‘Science is a victim of its own extraordinary success’. (p.502) The explosion of scientific knowledge has led to increasing specialisation, such that scientists can only be an expert in a small area. When even a very good scientist talks about science, unless he is talking about his own area, he is taking it on trust/authority. We need to think about the worthiness of this trust/authority.

Specialisation drives scientific disciplines apart, leads to ‘narrowness, technicalisation and fragmentation, at the expense of breadth, humanity, and synthesis’ (p.508). McGilchrist argues that whilst of course we need specialists, we also need generalists. We need both the flies eye view and the birds eye view. He describes this as follows:

‘If perceiving shapes is how maths and science progress, as I believe it is, you will see those shapes only by rising above the hole where you are digging. The view in the valley floor is good, but if you never climb, you will not know that there are many other valleys, and mountain ranges nearby, which are not only beautiful in themselves, but help you see why good work needs to be done down in the valley floor at all.’ (p.504)

Specialisation also leads to specialised jargon.

‘Increasingly, the heavily acronymic jargon of research papers seems to me to present an almost impenetrable barrier to anyone other than the most highly specialised reader, and even then, if they are to get anything out of the exercise, they must have a huge capacity to tolerate boredom’. (p.507)

(McGilchrist’s writing often makes me smile 😊)

How reliable is scientific evidence?

In this section McGilchrist discusses the problems involved in interpreting data, taking mirror imaging (a way of knowing what is going on in the minds and brains of people) as an example. Brain activity scans are difficult to read accurately. The data require interpretation and therefore cannot be assumed to be objective or truthful. Every way of looking at the brain has its limitations. Whenever you are looking at a complex system, you can’t assume that the bit you are looking at is the crucial one. We should use as many ways as possible to look at the brain, and not rely solely on scanning.

In scientific research, for a result to count as important it must be replicable, reliable, and reproducible, but ‘A survey of 1,576 researchers across scientific disciplines published in Nature revealed that more than 70% of researchers had tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and more than half had failed to reproduce their own experiment.’ (513)

A widely cited paper by John Ioannidis (2005) – ‘Why most published research findings are false’, concludes that most research is not adequately designed to prove what it claims to show, that ‘The hotter the scientific claim, the less likely the research findings are to be true’, and that ‘the greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a scientific field the less likely the research findings are to be true’.

There are now huge temptations (in terms of financial and reputational rewards) to commit anything from a minor misdemeanour to recognisable fraud (fabrication of results), and McGilchrist provides examples of these in this chapter.

McGilchrist also includes an Appendix (3) on the reliability of public health policy which makes for interesting reading. If you have cut salt out of your diet, you might want to think again, or read the Appendix!

The problems of publication

Most academics will recognise the exhortation to Publish or Perish!

Institutions put enormous pressure on their staff to publish, whether or not they have anything to say; quantity is more important than quality, as is publishing in high impact journals. This leads to corner cutting and inflation of claims. It also leads to a focus on writing short papers rather than books, which take a long time to write and require fallow periods. McGilchrist’s view is that this is ‘inimical to free thinking.

‘Scientific thinking gets crystallised too early, before it has had a chance to broaden and deepen; there is no longer a chance for ideas to evolve, to enter the necessary fallow period of unconscious gestation, without being prematurely forced into explicit form, and worse still in sliced form, so that what might have come to be a dawning new Gestalt is forever lost. And in the end, science is not about producing data so much as thinking, to which the acquisition of data can be only a prelude or addendum.’ (p. 516/517)

This pressure to publish can also lead to deliberate gaming of the system, where authors chase citations by working in ‘highly populated’ areas of science (even though ‘it is estimated that only 20% of cited papers have actually been read’, p.158), or even pay to have their work published in predatory open journals (See Beall’s list ) As soon as there is payment for publication, the whole system is corrupted.

And then, there are the fake papers. McGilchrist devotes Appendix 2 to some of these – papers such as those that are created by computer programs but nevertheless succeed in getting published, despite being, literally, gibberish.

So, we may ask, what happened to peer review?

Peer review

How effective is peer review? Richard Smith (Editor of the BMJ) wrote that far from being an objective, reliable and consistent process, peer review is ‘a subjective and, therefore, inconsistent process ….. something of a lottery’. (Smith, 2006, ‘Peer review: a flawed process at the heart of science and journals). As McGilchrist states:

‘Bias is intrinsic to human life. We just waste a lot of time and money pretending we’re avoiding it, and then kid ourselves that the outcome was ‘objective’ – a more dangerous position, because it introduces complacency and is a much more difficult thing to fight, precisely because of its appearance of objectivity’. (p.529)

Peer review is a laborious progress which takes up researchers’ time, which is given for free, and so takes them away from their own work. Interestingly, McGilchrist tells us that until the 1930s/40s peer review was never part of the publication process. Papers were reviewed by the editorial committee. Einstein, for example, refused to subject his work to peer review – only one of his 310 publications underwent peer review. Presumably once was enough to convince him of the flaws in the process.

There is also evidence that peer review can be prone to bias against innovation and radical new ideas, such that no-one wants to publish a paper that will rock the boat. Those who step out of line pay a huge price. In addition, reviewers have been shown to regularly fail to spot major errors in research, such that the process is obviously open to fraud.

The bottom line is that science is not exempt from human fallibility.

McGilchrist ends this chapter by discussing the need for a new paradigm, one that recognises that the essence of good science is originality and original thinking takes time. Science cannot avoid operating under the existing paradigm, ‘because, without such a paradigm, its findings could not cohere’ (p.536) but working within the prevailing paradigm also ‘militates against those great insights that change the direction of scientific history, despite this being widely believed to be precisely what science is about.’ (p.536)

McGilchrist believes that contemporary science is not scientific enough in that it is not willing to be aware of its limitations. On the concluding page of this chapter, McGilchrist defends science in the following terms:

‘Science is, or should be, a source of wonder that opens out our understanding of the world and gives us one of the touchstones on the path towards truth. Just because science cannot answer all our questions does not mean that it is not the very best way to answer some of them, and a helpful contributor to answering many more. And that there is corrupt practice in science does not make it different from any other human enterprise.’ (p.544)

For discussion of this chapter between Iain McGilchrist and Alex Gomez-Marin, see

References

McGilchrist, I. (2021). The Matter With Things. Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. Perspectiva Press.

A HYMN OF LOVE TO THE WORLD – Braiding Sweetgrass

We are almost at the end of 2022, and I do not want to let the year end without mention of this book – Braiding Sweetgrass – by Robin Wall Kimmerer. For me this has been the best book I have read this year. I had better qualify what I mean by ‘best’. It is a beautifully written book – beautiful prose with the feel of poetry. It is easy to read, but by no means superficial; in fact, it is the exact opposite – a deeply meaningful book. It is the book that has had the most impact on me this year. I will never think about Nature, and plants, in the same way again. It is a book full of wisdom and love. It is indeed ‘A hymn of love to the world’ as is quoted by Elizabeth Gilbert on the front cover. Sweetgrass symbolises healing, peace, and spirituality. The three cords of the sweetgrass represent mind, body, and spirit.

Source of Image: https://www.chq.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/CLSC_BraidingSweetgrass.jpg

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a decorated botany professor, a scientist with a non-orthodox approach to science. She currently works as a Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology in New York, but most significantly she is the Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. She comes from a Native American background, Potawatomi heritage, and this informs her life and work as a botanist and her approach to science and to our planet.

In her book Kimmerer takes a story telling approach, and through these stories we learn to think of plants not as separate from ourselves, not as ‘things’ we dominate or a resource that we plunder, but as living beings like ourselves with whom we should live in harmony, in the spirit of love, gratitude and reciprocity. Most plants already live with each other in this way, and they can be our teachers. Most importantly, she passes on the teachings of her forefathers in the idea of ‘The Honourable Harvest’; that is, we only take from the ‘Earth’ what we need and use natural resources responsibly. And not only do we not ‘take more than we need’, but we give back, and exist with plants in a relation of reciprocity and gratitude. Robin Wall Kimmerer recounts many stories in the book to illustrate this point.

Source of image: https://www.robinwallkimmerer.com/

The book is so rich with wonderful ‘teachings’ that I could not possibly do justice to it here. If you are a scientist, there are lessons for how to include ideas of beauty and reciprocity into the analytical world of science. If you are a botany teacher there are lessons for how to step back and allow plants to teach your students. If you are a mother, there are lessons you can draw on from how Nature acts as a mother. If you are a gardener, there are lessons you can learn about which plants thrive when planted next to each other and why. If you are a conservationist, there are lessons you can learn about collaboration, cooperation and listening. If you are a medic, there are lessons you can learn about the gift of plants. If you are an artist, there are lessons to be learned from the beauty of Nature.  If you are spiritual, there are lessons you can learn from the legend of Skywoman Falling.

Source of image: https://convergenceus.org/2020/09/15/my-skywoman-fall-again/https://convergenceus.org/2020/09/15/my-skywoman-fall-again/

I would not have come across this book had it not been for the Philosophy of Education Reading Network – the last book of the year to be read and discussed by the group. In our online meeting (zoom) at the beginning of this month, the book was introduced by Louise Hawxwell, who posed these thought-provoking questions for us to discuss, beautifully presented in a lovely set of slides:

You can see from these slides and the questions that Louise asked, that there is far more in this book than I have discussed here. I have barely scratched the surface. Braiding Sweetgrass is a book that deserves to be read many times and it is certainly a book that I will be thinking about when working in my garden next year or caring for my house plants, not to mention reflecting on my personal relationships with humans and non-humans in my life.

References

Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass. Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants. Penguin Random House, UK.

Postscript

The first book to be read by the Philosophy of Education Reading Network in 2023 (Tuesday 17^th January, 7.00 pm, zoom details posted on Twitter, @PhilofEd) will be Miseducation. Inequality, Education and the Working Classes (21^st Century Standpoints) by Diane Reay

The Matter With Things. Chapter 12. The Science of Life: a study in left hemisphere capture

This chapter is about the problem (as McGilchrist sees it) with biology, biologists, and the life sciences – namely that they view the world as inanimate and mechanistic, and until very recently have ‘been stuck in a mid-Victorian mechanistic vision that physics abandoned over a hundred years ago’ (p.431).

At the beginning of this chapter McGilchrist is at pains not to comes across as attacking life scientists, writing:

‘Please don’t get me wrong. I have nothing but respect and admiration for the ingenuity and hard work of my colleagues in the life sciences, and am exhilarated by the ever-growing body of knowledge about the natural world. It manifestly proves itself to be useful in myriad ways and, fairly obviously my thinking too depends heavily on the broad reliability of recent scientific evidence about the brain and mind. Nevertheless there is a problem’. (p.432)

And nevertheless for me the chapter comes across as ‘having a go’ at life scientists, principally for their view of the organism as a machine. This is not a surprise. I have often heard McGilchrist criticise the life sciences. He feels there is a mental apartheid between what they see and describe, and officially what they are allowed to describe and imagine. Scientists should be describing what they see rather than what they think they ought to see. This mismatch in language arises, McGilchrist says, because life scientists persist in describing organisms using the language of machines, the language of programmes and codes. ‘… if you ask biologists explicitly, they will, with a few exceptions, cleave to the machine model; but when you listen to what they are saying, implicitly they abjure it.’ (p.436). Normative terms full of value laden ideas pervade the whole of the discussion about life. The life sciences have been captured by the left hemisphere, which views the world as a machine.

The main bulk of this chapter is devoted to exploring and explaining why organisms (that includes us!) are not machines. I first heard McGilchrist discuss this in 2018. In this chapter he greatly expands on what he said then, citing many biologists, positively and negatively, but the list of main points remains almost the same, if slightly re-ordered and re-organised.

Why organisms are not machines

1. On-off

An obvious point but so little talked about is that an organism cannot be turned off. If an organism is ‘switched off/stopped’, it dies. It is more like a flame than a machine said J.B.S. Haldane. It is more like a process than a thing.

Organisms are not made. They become. You can take them apart, but you cannot put parts together to make an organism. All machines must have instructions that pre-exist their making.  A machine does not generate instructions to make itself in the process of becoming itself.

McGilchrist spends some time debunking the idea of genetic programming and that heredity is defined by genetics, saying that DNA is one of the most inactive of all proteins. It is a storehouse on which the cell can draw. The cell is not a blind robot doing the bidding of the DNA. It draws on DNA to make intelligent decisions. We know that genes are not always main players by observing that fruit flies in which the genes for development of eyes have been removed, will after a few generations of interbreeding develop eyes once more, despite not having the gene. (p. 466)

McGilchrist does not support Dawkins’ idea of the ‘blind watchmaker’. ‘… organisms are not at all like a watch; and evolution ‘simply does not proceed like a watchmaker, blind or otherwise’ (Nicholson, 2014). (p.485).

• Motion vs stasis

To remain the same, an organism must change all the time. Organisms are stable metabolic flows of energy and matter. The metabolism of a cell is the way in which it remains the same. A machine is static until it is switched on, but an organism is in a state of constant flux. Process and flow are at its core. ‘Life is not a rearrangement of already known nuts and bolts, but the constant creation of something radically new.’ (p.447)

• Non-linearity

Machines follow instructions in a sequential way, but living things are complex non-linear systems, that are constantly correcting themselves. An organism is not pushed from behind following a sequence of pre-determined steps but is constantly unfolding itself and constantly correcting itself.

‘In a classical mechanism, causation is linear and can be clearly outlined. However, in biological systems, causation tends to follow not straight lines, but spirals, involving recursive loops, and multiple causes leading to multiple effects across a network, with sometimes competing factors cross-regulating one another, reciprocally interacting, and in ways we do not understand taking information from the whole. …. Context is everything.’ (p.447/8)

‘A machine is a chain and is dead’. ‘An organism is a flow, and is alive’. (p.449)

• Not one-way action – maybe not even interaction?

Cause and effect in organisms are not one-way, but reciprocal. The process is reverberative, back and forth. In the video where Alex Gomez-Marin and Iain McGilchrist discuss this chapter (see below), Iain refers to the microbiologist Kriti Sharma, describing her book, Interdependence, as fascinating, and quoting her as writing that ‘the cell is not exactly reacting to an environment, but is reacting with an environment, as oxygen reacts with iron and where both are transformed.’ (p.453) Sharma describes this process as mutual constitution – each becomes what it is in the act of creation, each is causative of the other, causality is reciprocal.

• The ‘parts’ are themselves changing

In a machine the parts do not change with their context. The machine changes when switched on, but the parts do not. In an organism the parts (if you can call them that) are constantly changing according to the context. They respond to different environments to produce different effects. Organisms are ‘antifragile’ systems functions just the right side of chaos. ‘… antifragility, which thrives on flexibility, makes small adjustments and thereby not only survives but evolves.’ (p.457). Living beings perhaps should be called living becomings, always in process, always in flow.

• The influence of the whole

An organism is a process, which unlike a machine, has no clearly defined parts. An organism in reality is an indivisible unity. The influence of the whole on the parts can be seen in the case of injured organisms that can heal and regenerate their injured parts. One of the most extreme examples of this is in the case of flatworms, which have a centralised brain with true synaptic transmission. If these worms are decapitated, then not only can they grow a new head and brain, but the new brain preserves the memories of the decapitated brain.

 Another striking example of the influence of the whole given by McGilchrist is in relation to the structure of the heart and the development of the septum in the foetus. McGilchrist quotes biologist Craig Holdrege (p.445)

‘Before the heart has developed walls (septa) separating the four chambers from each other, the blood already flows in two distinct ‘currents’ through the heart. The blood flowing through the right and left sides of the heart do not mix, but stream and loop by each other, just as two currents in a body of water. In the ‘still water zone’ between the two currents, the septum dividing the two chambers forms. Thus the movement of the blood gives parameters for the inner differentiation of the heart, just as the looping heart redirects the flow.’

The structure of the heart is as much a result of flow as the cause of it.

• Imprecise boundaries

A machine has clear boundaries and distinctive parts, but processes do not have boundaries; they overlap. Symbiotic life forms are the rule rather than the exception and this require collaboration and cooperation, two of the main characteristics of life and its evolution. Organisms are complex systems involved in a combination of competition and cooperation. ‘Such a relationship in which division and union are fruitfully balanced, is what we mean by collaboration.’ (p.471)

• Boot-strapping

This point repeats what was briefly mentioned above. Machines do not and cannot make themselves. ‘… the instructions for making the machine cannot themselves be the product of the very machine they are designed to make.’ (p.471), but as Griffiths and Stotz (2018) paraphrasing Oyama (2002) write (quoted by McGilchrist on p.472)

‘… the developmental information expressed in the organism is not present in the starting point of development, but is itself created by the process of development, through feedback from the current state of the organism to the states of the resources that will influence future development.’

McGilchrist goes on to complete this chapter (another 30 pages) with a discussion of why the machine model has proved so attractive, the dreadful question of purpose, attempts to save the machine model in biology, and the question of whether the stream of life is a better model.

Very briefly the machine model is attractive because of its simplicity, familiarity, ease of use and past success in delivering the goods. It ‘encourages the sense that we can easily understand what life is and learn to control it.’ (p.474).

The dreadful question of purpose (teleology) is a problem for the life sciences. Haldane is quoted as saying ‘teleology is like a mistress to a biologist; he cannot live without her but he’s unwilling to be seen with her in public.’ (p.477). The purpose that McGilchrist is talking about ‘is nothing extrinsic, but rather intrinsic potential that is fulfilled within a process as the process unfolds.’ (p.479). This idea of teleology requires biologists to focus not on things but on processes, in which there are no plans or predetermined steps. ‘A purpose here is not a plan. It is a tendency inseparable from – woven into, as it were, the fabric of – a life, which leaves all the detail, and even the final outcome, undetermined’ (p.478) just as a woman can purpose to be a mother but cannot determine or predict the path that will be taken. In attempting to save the machine model, orthodox biologists attempt to brush the issue of purpose under the carpet.

Finally, McGilchrist returns to his argument that the trouble with biology is that it focusses on things rather than on processes and flow, quoting von Bertalanffy writing as long ago as 1952, ‘…. In biology there is no rigid organic form as a bearer of the processes of life; rather there is a flow of processes, manifesting itself in apparently persistent forms.’ (p.490)

This is a long chapter, about 70 pages, in which McGilchrist provides a lot of evidence and notes to support his arguments, more than I personally needed, but perhaps enough to convince biologists that there are problems with the machine model for the study of life. There is a suggestion towards the end of the chapter that ‘we should banish from our speech and writing any use of the word “machine” as an explanation or definition of anything that is not a machine.’ (p.496).

I have barely skimmed the surface of the content of this chapter in these notes, and any errors in this post are mine. The videos in which Alex Gomez-Marin and McGilchrist discuss each chapter of this book, The Matter With Things, provide helpful in summaries of the key points. I find it useful to watch them alongside reading the chapters.

References

McGilchrist, I. (2021). The Matter With Things. Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. Perspectiva Press.

Mackness, J. (2018) E-Learning 3.0: The Human versus the Machine (Blog post)

Flourishing as the aim of education – Kristján Kristjánsson

Flourishing would seem an obvious aim of education. To me it’s an indictment of our times that Kristján Kristjánsson felt he needed to write a lengthy book to justify this and that there needs to be a special department at the University of Birmingham, UK, to study and research this. I would hope that it would be obvious that flourishing should be the aim of education, but clearly not.  

Kristján Kristjánsson is Professor of Character Education and Virtue Ethics Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham. He is not alone in thinking that flourishing should be the overall aim of education, but his perspective is unique. He attempts to bring a Neo-Aristotelian view to flourishing as the aim of education. In other words, he wants to bring Aristotle’s account of flourishing up to date.

For Aristotle flourishing is more than well-being. Kristjánsson agrees with this and spends some time explaining why flourishing cannot be equated with happiness, writing that it is possible for a person to be happy but not flourish, or a person to be unhappy and yet flourish.

For Aristotle certain external conditions need to be in place for flourishing. Some of these are:

• Close parental attachment and good upbringing/education
• Good government, ruling in the interests of the people, and a just constitution
• Enough wealth to make sure we do not come a cropper
• A complete life: namely a life in which we do not die prematurely
• Health, strength, and even minimal physical beauty
• Friends and family

I would question some of these, for example, a complete life, but we must remember that when Aristotle was writing people did not live to the age of 100 or beyond. For Kristjánsson, Aristotle’s account is not enough; for him we have to go beyond Aristotle’s attempts to describe what flourishing means, but he is concerned that the idea of flourishing can become ‘bland’ in educational accounts and has written (2021) ‘A threat of bland truisms hovers constantly over educational accounts of flourishing ….. The concept of flourishing becomes like a shopping trolley that everybody can fill with his or her random choice of goods.’ As such Kristjánsson attempts specificity in a long definition, which I have heard/seen described (I can’t remember where now) as reading like an insurance policy.  This is Kristjánsson’s definition:

Human flourishing is the (relatively) unencumbered, freely chosen and developmentally progressive activity of a meaningful (subjectively purposeful and objectively valuable) life that actualises satisfactorily an individual human being’s natural capacities in areas of species-specific existential tasks at which human beings (as rational, social, moral, and emotional agents) can most successfully excel. (Kristjánsson, 2020, p.1)

Kristjánsson (2020, p.35) goes beyond Aristotle in suggesting that a flourishing education must involve

• Engagement with self-transcendent ideals and experiences of awe-filled enchantment
• Moral elevation
• A clear personal sense of meaning …

… but as mentioned above it does not have to be accompanied by subjective well-being and a person does not have to be fully virtuous to flourish.

This suggests to me that students need spiritual experiences in education in order to flourish. This seems to be supported by William Damon’s research (2008, cited by Kristjánsson on p.43) in which he found from surveying 1200 young people between the ages of 12 and 26, and interviewing a quarter of them in depth, that only 20% of them were fully purposeful. Approximately 25% were ‘dreamers’, about 30% were ‘dabblers’ and 25% were disengaged.

What can teachers do to support flourishing in education? Opinion on this is divided, with some thinking that teachers should become agents of social change, and others that this is not the job of teachers, and that instead they should be good role models. Can teachers do this without flourishing themselves? Do teachers have the necessary moral language and moral identity? Do teachers have meaning in their lives? Do they have a sense of purpose? Have they been adequately trained for this?

And what about a curriculum for flourishing? John White, 2011 (cited in Kristjánsson, p.32) thinks that we should tear up the curriculum and start again; we should not carve the curriculum up into discrete subjects but teach all subjects through themes, such as climate change. Kristjánsson’s view is not as radical as this, but he does think that flourishing should permeate the whole curriculum and influence every salient educational decision taken within the school. He also thinks that teachers should provide students with the space to have ‘peak experiences’ and expose them to the ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness. Students should be encouraged to keep an open mind and explore new ways of seeing (Kristjánsson, 2021).

This book was discussed by the Philosophy of Education Reading Network earlier this month. I don’t think I would have read it had it not been on their list, even though I fully agree that flourishing should be the overall aim of education. The book is very long and academic, and I wonder how many full-time working teachers would have the time to read it. Kristjánsson wants teachers to read it, as at the end of every chapter he has included a list of questions under the title ‘Food for thought for practitioners’. These questions are worth considering and discussing.

Our PhilofEd zoom meeting to discuss this book was introduced by Kenny Primrose who has recently completed his Masters in Character Education at the University of Birmingham with Kristján Kristjánsson as his tutor. Kenny posed three questions for the group:

• To what extent does Kristjánsson’s theory/view of flourishing provide a helpful and normative ideal for educators, when compared to other governing aims of education?
• How would an education system with flourishing as its core aim look different? (Chapter 2 includes radical proposals like White’s; does flourishing require a radically different approach politically, institutionally and pedagogically?)
• A significant difference in K’s theory from other Aristotelian ideas is the addition of experiences of awe/transcendence, which seek to enchant a fairly flat idea of flourishing. To what extent is this a realistic and fair aim for educators, and what would this entail?

I liked Kenny’s questions. For me they focussed on the main concerns for teachers whilst at the same time being broad enough for those who had not had the time or inclination to read the book to be able to join in the discussion. And given that it transpired that not one member of our small group (about six of us if I remember correctly) had enjoyed the book, there was still plenty of discussion. I am glad I engaged with the book. I think the work that Kristjánsson is doing has to be important. He has appealed to colleagues and readers (2021) to help move flourishing discourse forward in order to make it enrich educational policy and practice. I would appeal to him to make his work more accessible to every day full-time teachers.

References

Kristjánsson, K. (2020). Flourishing as the Aim of Education: A Neo-Aristotelian View. London: Routledge

Professor Kristján Kristjánsson: Four Accounts of Flourishing as the Aim of Education (2021)

Damon, W. (2008). The path to purpose: How young people find their calling in life. New York: Free Press.

White, J. (2011). Exploring well-being in schools: A guide to making children’s lives more fulfilling. London: Routledge.

Achille Mbembe. Out of the Dark Night

This month’s book for discussion by the Philosophy of Education Reading Network was Achille Mbembe’s ‘Out of the Dark Night. Essays on decolonization’ – a striking title and an equally striking book cover.

In preparation for this discussion, I listened to Mbembe talk about his book to Theory from the Margins, on You Tube. The text under the video on the You Tube site, provides a brief outline of Mbembe’s work and ideas, which I won’t repeat here.

Out of the Dark Night was first published in French in 2010, the year when most African countries celebrated 50 years of independence. It is a set of reflections on what happened to aspiration for self-determination in countries in Africa. Decolonization is the central theme. Mbembe says this is more profound than coming into independence as it has implications for our ways of viewing the world.

Mbembe goes on to say that we cannot talk about decolonization without saying something about the concept of colonization. Historically the expansion of colonialization had to do with the broader question of who does the earth belong to? This question is still with us. European powers decided that Earth belonged to them and carved out spheres of domination and influence, but Earth doesn’t belong to Europe. It belongs to all who inhabit it.

Colonial expansion was a planetary project, not only earthly, driven in large part by national states, private companies, and monopolies. It had to do with re-allocation of resources by those who had the largest technological advantage. Therefore, decolonization must be a planetary project; it cannot be focussed on just one region. Decolonization is a radical openness of and to the world. It has nothing to do with partitioning of the world but is a radical embrace of the world and all who inhabit it. We deny the fact that we humans all evolve with the biosphere, we depend on it and are defined by it; therefore, we owe each other a debt of responsibility and care. Colonialism is a disavowal of that care and responsibility.

Technological escalation has led to the emergence of a form of capitalism that today is computational.  We are now in the age of the algorithm, and the escalation of this is threatening to turn us all into artefacts. It is important to keep in mind that colonialism relied on racial subsidies. Technologies of racialization are ever more insidious, ever more encompassing, as world becomes a huge data emporium. Tomorrow racialization will be generated through data.

Decolonization and de-racialization are not the concern of Africa only. They are also valid for Europe, the USA, Brazil, and other parts of the world. They are of concern because of the aggressive resurgence of white supremacy, the emergence of populism and nationalism, the weaponization of difference and identity, and symptoms of deep distrust of the world fostered by transnational forces which are capable of making the whole world inhospitable for many.

A key element in the ongoing history of colonialism is techno-molecular colonialism. The world is a vast field of data awaiting extraction. We have a different kind of colonialism ahead of us, one which is about the extraction and capture of data.

Decolonization is more than a slogan. It needs to attend to these shifts, particularly in relation to the Anthropocene and computational technologies. Decolonization has to be a real movement.

There was more in this talk than I have written about here and the questions asked at the end were also interesting.

The Philosophy of Education Reading Network discussion, focussed on more academic aspects of the book and its implications for education. The discussion was led by Rowena Azada- Palacios who asked us to consider the following questions:

Source of Image: Rowena Azada-Palacios powerpoint presentation

These were not easy questions to answers and the discussion itself was hesitant. I think this may have been for fear of offending or ‘treading on toes’. Within the group we had participants who had been subject to colonialism in their own life history, participants who had been subject to oppression in other forms and in countries other than Africa, and yet other participants who were raised by parents and grandparents who were colonizers. I, for example, come from a background closely associated with the British Raj.

In relation to the implications for education, one of the participants mentioned that she finds it very difficult to get her students to engage with the topics of colonialism and racism. It seems to me that this is a topic that requires well-established mutual trust for fruitful discussion, but Mbembe’s ideas and thinking offer an open approach which may be helpful.

References

Mbembe, A. (2021).  Out of the Dark Night. Essays on Decolonization. Columbia University Press.

Bulelani, J. (2021). Review: Achille Mbembe, ‘Out of the Dark Night’. Theory, Culture and Society

The Black and White Photography of Chris Killip

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about the black and white photography of Sebastião Salgado. I have always been a person who loves colour, particularly in any form of artwork, but at the time I was struck by the power of Salgado’s work. I didn’t think any of his photos would be as striking or as effective in portraying his message if they were in colour.

This week I have come across another black and white photographer, who I have never encountered before, who strikes me as having taken equally powerful photos, but in a completely different context – Chris Killip.  Chris Killip was born a few months before me in 1946 and died in October 2020 from lung cancer. Much of his photography focusses on the lives of working-class people living in North-East England, where I went to school. I have strong memories of sharing my bus journey home from school in County Durham with miners coming off their shift. My memory is of a bus full of big, silent men, black with soot from the pit.  I wonder now if this is an accurate memory, because it must mean that they had no access to washing facilities before returning home, or perhaps they did but preferred to go home to wash.

I remember once being ill (gastric flu) when returning home from school on a crowded bus full of miners; standing room only. I threw up whilst standing in the aisle. Apart from taking a few steps away, no-one moved a muscle and complete silence remained on the bus. On reflection, I can only assume that they were all exhausted. And when I think of this, and some other aspects of my childhood in North-East England, my memory is in black and white, so I can see why Chris Killip was a black and white photographer. These images below, of copies of his photographs, show the power of his work and how appropriate it was to work in black and white. I just can’t imagine them being as powerful in colour.

(Source of all images: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-63163667 )

The Photographer’s Gallery in London, UK,  is currently showing a retrospective exhibition of Killip’s work, which will remain open until the 19^th February, 2023. If I lived nearer London, I would try and visit this exhibition, but I still live in the north of England.

For further information about Chris Killip see:

Chris Killip – https://www.chriskillip.com/

Williams, Megan (2022). A new Chris Killip retrospective adds depth to his remarkable career. https://www.creativereview.co.uk/chris-killip-retrospective-photography-exhibition/

Diane Smyth (2022) “History is what’s written, my pictures are what happened” https://www.magnumphotos.com/events/exhibitions/chris-killip-retrospective/

The Matter With Things. Chapter 11. Science’s Claims on Truth

Another interesting and enjoyable chapter in this very long book, which I am not even halfway through, despite having bought it very shortly after publication in November 2021. At this rate it will be 2024 before I finish it!

As mentioned before, the book is in three parts. The first part is made up of nine chapters and a coda, in which McGilchrist writes about The Hemispheres and the Means to Truth. I have yet to finish reading the last two chapters of Part 1, but for notes on Chapters 2 to 7, see https://jennymackness.wordpress.com/the-matter-with-things-2/

In Part 2 McGilchrist writes about The Hemispheres and the Paths to Truth. In the first chapter, Chapter 10, he explores the question What is Truth? . Chapter 11, Science’s Claims on Truth is the second chapter. So far, I am enjoying Part 2 more that Part 1.

The main thrust of this chapter is that in the West, recent history has seen a move away from religion to science, and more particularly, to scientism (the belief that science will one day answer all our questions), in our search for truth. But, says McGilchrist, there are intrinsic limits to science, which tends to make exaggerated claims, use models that distort, and succumb to institutional pressures. Science has come to be thought of as the only path to truth and a discussion of its limits is often not welcome. Whilst McGilchrist is emphatic about the value of science, his concern is that it can’t answer the big questions; it can’t, for example, tell us what it means to be in love. Science finds it hard to deal with all that is experiential, but most of what we value in life is experiential, not observable, or measurable. The bigger the human meaning, the less science can offer. What we are asking science to do is to give us information/data but can that be converted into an understanding and what part does science play in the achievement of an understanding? Science can answer questions where explicit, mechanistic explanations are required, but not where understanding is required.

Explanation, metaphor, and models

Science cannot escape using models and metaphors because they are the basis of all understanding, so science depends on metaphors derived from concrete experience. All understanding depends on metaphor. Science uses models. Models are simply extended metaphors. The choice of the model is critical because:

‘We never just see something without seeing it as a something. We may think that our theories are shaped by observations, but it is as true that our observations are shaped by theories. This means that we can be blind to some very obvious things in our immediate environment. We don’t look where we don’t expect to see, so that our expectations come to govern what we can see.’ p.410

In the past the dominant model was a tree, a river, a family – something in the natural world. These days the dominant model is the machine (as favoured by the left hemisphere). The machine model is science’s defining paradigm, but it is a form of metaphor, and not all metaphors are good metaphors. All models are only a partial fit. A model determines not only what we do see but also what we don’t see, and we affect the model. No one model will ever be the perfect fit. We need to try and test different models, even though we may ultimately need to jettison them. Ideas of 100% truth cannot be sustained. In science certain things will be neglected. We may think that only things that are quantifiable are real (a left hemisphere perspective), but we have to rethink objectivity.

Objectivity

We cannot do without objectivity, but it is easily misinterpreted. To quote McGilchrist:

‘Science provides us with that objective knowledge by taking ‘us’ out of the picture, so removing subjective distortion from its objective presentation of how, in itself, the world actually is.’ p.413

We have already seen, however, that this aspiration to take ‘us’ out of the picture is compromised by the fact that science can’t get going without metaphor and metaphor is something from which ‘we’ cannot possibly be divorced.’ p.413

‘Objectivity is always someone’s position, situated somewhere and making some assumptions.’ p.414

Objectivity should be able to inhabit a lot of different perspectives – we ought to try to see from different perspectives.

Between us and the world there is always the barrier of our brains, and since we have two hemispheres in our brains each with their own view of the world, there are at least two views that science must take into account.

All methods rely on our judgements and values, even though these can’t be measured. Science frequently passes over what can’t be measured. It can’t cope with things that are imprecise or can’t be generalised. When considering objectivity, we need a more nuanced interpretation which recognises that existing answers are inadequate and provisional; there are always alternative answers. There are no whole truths, only half-truths, and context is of critical importance. Science tends to take things out of context. In trying to make science robust, we veer unstably between black and white positions, but we shouldn’t make statements that are too great or absolute. Instead of trying to make science robust, we should make it anti-fragile.

Hidden Assumptions

There are many assumptions in science. Science assumes that everything is understandable in physical terms, but science’s explanations both reveal and conceal. Sometimes assumptions are justified, but we must acknowledge them. Science can do very, very much, but not everything. As mentioned above, it cannot answer the very big questions, about values, meaning and purpose in life. Science is far from having all the answers – it is alive, provisional, and uncertain.

On p.420 McGilchrist quotes Max Planck as saying – ‘we have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.’

The scientific method

The scientific method is a myth. A belief in the notion of scientific objectivity, has led to a loss of imagination in science, but science requires imagination to come up with fruitful hypotheses. Chance and serendipity, intuition and inspiration play important roles in science.

Great discoveries are often made through images and metaphors rather than through chains of logic. Big insights are not made by following a logical linear sequence of steps, but by things like pattern recognition. Results can come in a flash of intuition and often precede arguments. Good hypotheses always ‘go beyond’ the immediate facts.

‘….. this does not discredit science in any way: it shows, instead, what an exciting and humbling business science is. We collaborate with nature, and with fortune, pay attention and learn from her. We neither withdraw the human element, as the myth of the scientific method implies, nor force nature to our preconceived ends.’ p.425

‘…. Just because what we rightly take to be scientific truths are not ‘objective’ in the sense that nothing human, contingent, and fallible enters into them, this does not mean they have no legitimate claim to be called true. … truth is never objective ….. All knowledge whatsoever is contextual and contingent. p. 429

Scientists must have faith, and science must be aware of its own limits.

For a discussion about this chapter between Iain McGilchrist and Alex Gomez-Marin, see:

References

McGilchrist, I. (2021). The Matter With Things. Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. Perspectiva Press.

The Matter With Things. Chapter 10. What is Truth?

‘I believe that, despite our always contributing to the reality we experience, there is something apart from ourselves to which we can be true – that reality, in other words, is not purely made up by the brain. There is a relationship there – something to be true to.’ (McGilchrist, 2021, p.379)

In the first chapter in Part 2 of The Matter With Things, Iain McGilchrist explores the relationship between the hemispheres and paths to truth , which he sees as science, reason, intuition, and imagination

But what is truth ? We will never fully know and there is no one overarching definition.

McGilchrist claims that each hemisphere has a different approach to truth, because each hemisphere experiences the world differently, but these approaches are not equally valid. The right hemisphere has an intuitive embodied awareness of the world – the world ‘presences to us through the right hemisphere’; the left hemisphere experiences the world as a mental re-presentation from which we are quite separate.

For the left hemisphere truth is a ‘thing’, an element there for us to find, something outside of ourselves that represents correctness. Here is how McGilchrist describes this approach to truth:

‘Truth, this thing, would be conceived of as existing in the realm of subjectivity (in the mind) as a suitable representation of something conceived of as existing in the realm of objectivity (outside the mind). From this point of view, the way to approach truth would be to start with a secure set of facts, and then work upwards by rules of logic, to a series of other facts, putting one secure item on top of another, to build the pyramid of (represented) truth. In principle this truth would be impersonal, something that could be transmitted, as it stands, directly to another; timeless and unchanging – and independent therefore of context; ultimately single, in that if the path is rigorously followed, everyone should reach the same conclusion; and ultimately perfect, precise and certain – theoretically attainable goals that are not yet achieved, so the argument would go, only because we have not yet concluded our deliberations.’ (p.382)

The other idea about truth, the right hemisphere’s perspective, is that of unconcealing, clearing away misconceptions, and opening a space to make contact with the truth. From this perspective truth is a process, not a thing achieved by confirming one element to find the next element. From this perspective truth has a relational aspect and is an encounter with reality. From this perspective, truth is a process that is continuous and alive, intrinsically incomplete, and uncertain.

The right hemisphere, ‘…. Instead of seeing a subjective realm and an objective realm which should as near as possible mirror one another, [sees] a constant reverberation between two (never completely distinct) elements within our consciousness – thoughts and experiences – whereby they ‘answered’ or co-responded to, one another this ever better accord, or attunement, would be the evolving truth’ (p.384)

Truth is neither wholly independent of us, nor wholly made up by us; truth is not dissociated from the speaker, but in ‘the betweenness’. But betweenness is not the same as compromise. We need both opposed positions, both the left hemisphere and right hemisphere ‘s perspectives; they are mutually necessary but not equally veridical. The left hemisphere’s vision is limited; the right hemisphere’s is more capable of disclosing reality.

The test of truth is whether or not we are caught out by experience, whether it corresponds with the totality of our experience. Truth does not exist by analysing elements that are in relationship, but in the whole relationship; but the fact that we don’t know the whole of truth, doesn’t mean that the facts that we do know aren’t true; we can only establish some things as truer than others.

Truth is not a proposition but a disposition and is related to trust. We live in a post-truth era, an era in which trust, and truth are suffering from an epidemic of decay. McGilchrist believes that the basis for our decision making is the two different perspectives of the hemispheres. In Part 2 of The Matter With Things he looks at the strengths and limitations of the paths to truth through these different perspectives, starting in this first Chapter 10 with the question What is Truth. McGilchrist feels that it is a disaster that science and philosophy have separated from one another, and in these chapters tries to bring them together.

Part II opens with a quote from Alfred North Whitehead (1938, 87)

A philosophic outlook is the very foundation of thought and of life. The sort of ideas we attend to, and the sort of ideas which we push into the negligible background, govern our hopes, our fears, our control of behaviour. As we think, we live. This is why the assemblage of philosophic ideas is more than a specialist study. It moulds our type of civilisation.

There is more in this chapter than I have written about here. See for example McGilchrist’s discussion of presencing versus re-presentation (p.380), correspondence and coherence theories of truth (p.387) and the subject-object divide (p.393). Also see his discussion about this chapter with Alex Gomez-Marin.

References

McGilchrist, I. (2021). The Matter With Things. Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. Perspectiva Press.

Whitehead, A.N.  (1938). Modes of Thought, New York: Macmillan Company. Reprinted New York: The Free Press, 1968.

Mackness, J. (2016). Where Can We Go for Truth? (Blog post)

Mackness, J.  (2018) Truth in a Post-Truth Age. (Blog post)

The Matter With Things. Chapter 7. Cognitive Intelligence

I enjoyed this chapter. 

There are many aspects to intelligence. In Chapter 6, McGilchrist explored social and emotional intelligence as the means to truth. In this chapter he focusses on cognitive intelligence. Intelligence, he says, is difficult to define, but ‘we all know intelligence when we meet it, even if we can’t pin it down’. However, he does quote Linda Gottfredson’s definition published in the Wall Street Journal in 1994 and subsequently in the journal Intelligence in 1997:

Intelligence is a very general mental capacity which, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings – ‘catching on’, or ‘making sense’ of things, or ‘figuring out’ what to do. (Gottfredson, 1997)

Intelligence is about understanding, and understanding is the strength of the right hemisphere. It is not the left hemisphere’s forte. The left hemisphere’s forte is carrying out procedures. Both hemispheres working together are likely to be superior to either working alone.

As we know ‘general’ intelligence (g) is commonly measured using IQ tests, but general intelligence includes both ‘fluid’ intelligence (Gf), and ‘crystallised’ intelligence (Gc). ‘Crystallised’ intelligence is more culture bound and context dependent, whereas ‘fluid’ intelligence, as the name suggests, can be applied to any new situation or problem, and responds to stimuli more quickly correlating strongly with faster reaction times.

In this chapter McGilchrist argues that ‘fluid’ intelligence is in decline, but according to the ‘Flynn effect’, general intelligence is increased between the 1930s and 1990s. McGilchrist’s question is therefore, if we in the West are relying more and more on the left hemisphere, and it is the right hemisphere that is responsible for fluid intelligence, arguably the more important intelligence, then shouldn’t IQ be declining rather than increasing?

It is unsurprising that several factors need to be considered; these include environmental factors, such as better nutrition in early childhood and more years in school, and the well-recognised practice of ‘teaching to the test’, which could well result in the population simply getting better at taking the test rather than an improvement in IQ levels. There is also the recognised problem of grade inflation in schools and universities. All these factors could account for the noted increasing IQ levels.

More recently a ‘reverse Flynn effect’ has been noted. Since the 1990s research suggests that IQ levels have not only plateaued but are declining by two to three IQ points per decade. There is now evidence that even when there was thought to be a rise in IQ levels, in fact what was happening was that the gains were at the lower end of the cognitive development spectrum, but there were large losses at the highest level. Flynn now believes that the increasing IQ scores seen between the 1930s and the 1990s, were related to a corresponding increasing tendency to see the world through ‘scientific spectacles’, so there was bias built into the IQ tests in favour of a particular way of thinking; higher scores went to people who can express things in a scientific way. For McGilchrist this privileges the left hemisphere’s way of looking at the world, but people with high IQs rely on the right hemisphere.

McGilchrist concludes this chapter by writing on p.238

Evidence from a number of sources suggests that the right hemisphere contributes the majority, not just of emotional and social intelligence, but also of what is ordinarily meant by intelligence (IQ) – cognitive power, or g. This appears to be particularly true among children and adults of the highest intelligence.

In the following video, McGilchrist discusses this chapter with Alex Gomez-Marin

References

McGilchrist, I. (2021). The Matter With Things. Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. Perspectiva Press.

Gottfredson, L. S. (1997). “Mainstream Science on Intelligence (editorial)”, Intelligence, 24: 13–23

Søren Kierkegaard –‘The Father of Existentialism’

Unfinished sketch of Kierkegaard by his cousin Niels Christian Kierkegaard, c. 1840 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard)

I have recently had the opportunity to spend three days away from home with a small group of people discussing the life and work of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855). Before going, I didn’t have much interest in Kierkegaard. I just hoped for a few days respite, in a beautiful location, where my meals would be provided, and the conversation would be stimulating.  The topic could have been anything, but at the time when I could go away without causing too much disruption at home, the course happened to be on Kierkegaard.

This is where I stayed (Higham Hall in the Lake District in Cumbria UK):

And this is an image of the course description and our wonderfully tolerant tutor, Darren Harper

There were only seven of us on the course, six women and one man (two, if you include Darren too, so eight of us in total in the group), but goodness what a diverse group. Most importantly there was only one person who professed to have ‘faith’ in God. There was a Quaker who said she did not believe in God (a Nontheist Quaker), one strong atheist and a couple of others who appeared to be atheists, one agnostic and two undeclared. This information about the group turned out to be important in relation to discussion about Kierkegaard.

The reason I have started this post with a bit of background information is that, for me, one of the things that seemed to be a stumbling block for some in being openly receptive to Kierkegaard’s work, was an understanding that he was a man of his time, i.e., the context in which he lived and worked was necessarily influential, just as the context in we were meeting as a group and the make-up of that group were influential in how discussion proceeded and the success of the course.

In preparation for this course, we were asked to read Clare Carlisle’s biography – ‘Philosopher of the Heart. The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard’. I still haven’t read the whole book. I managed to get about halfway through before the course started and looked at some secondary sources, for example this short School of Life video (6.46 mins)

Somewhere in her writing Clare Carlisle says that she both ‘loves’ Kierkegaard but also finds him irritating, or words to this effect. I can’t find the exact quote now, but I know what she means. Had I met Kierkegaard in person, I think I would have found him irritating in the sense that he was intensely self-absorbed, but also, I found myself warming to him as I found out more about him, and I admire his courage. He was a lone voice in his time.

At that time Denmark was in a period of change. This was the Romantic era, following the Enlightenment, a time when the Lutheran Church in Denmark distrusted philosophy and was dominant, and when Hegel’s philosophy was all the rage. But Kierkegaard thought Hegel’s work too theoretical. Kierkegaard’s main questions were around what it means to be human in the world. In this sense he was the ‘father of existentialism’ although Kierkegaard himself wouldn’t have known the word ‘existentialism’ or where his ideas might lead, or that he would be a recognised and respected philosopher in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. He was not a popular figure in his time.

Kierkegaard observed society in Copenhagen and in his travels to Berlin and posited that many people lived the ‘aesthetic life’. For him this meant a pleasure-seeking life ruled by passion, not necessarily a bad life, but simply not enough. An alternative was to live an ‘ethical life’, which meant serving the community and following society’s and the Lutheran Church’s rules and conventions. For Kierkegaard, neither of these were enough. For him, Christianity requires more than living the good life, or following the Church’s conventions. It requires an authentic relationship with God, which can only be achieved through a leap of faith.  This means living a life of uncertainty because God is beyond logic, proof, and reason. Faith and the religious life cannot be taught, explained, or required, but are reached individually through life experience and self-exploration.

I am aware that what I have written is a massive over-simplification of Kierkegaard’s ideas, but it was this idea of a leap of faith, advocated by Kierkegaard, which seemed to annoy and get under the skin of some members of the group on my course. This and the fact that Kierkegaard uses the Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac to exemplify this leap of faith, which was regarded by one member of the group as an abhorrent story, and which has for years, in her view, terrified young children. This led to a fascinating discussion on the benefits or otherwise of religious education in schools.

In fact, the whole course was full of fascinating discussion and highly stimulating. What I really appreciated about it was that although there was a programme for the course – on Day 1, to be introduced to Kierkegaard’s book ‘Fear and Trembling’, on Day 2 to be introduced to his book ‘Either/Or’, and on Day 3 to discuss his legacy – the tutor only loosely stuck to this programme and allowed discussion to roam. Other fascinating discussions were about the place of love in marriage (Kierkegaard broke off his engagement to Regine Olsen because he felt that marriage would become boring after the first flush of romantic love and sexual desire and prevent him from engaging in his main passion, writing); about decision making, about boredom, about belief and doubt, music and language – and more.

So having gone on the course with little more than the desire to have a bit of a rest, I came away with a much greater appreciation of the contribution that Kierkegaard has made to the history of philosophy and existentialism. I know I have not said much about this in this post, but the School of Life video gives a good overview and I have included a few references below.

References

Carlisle, C. (2019) Philosopher of the Heart. The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard. Penguin.

Wikipedia has entries on both of Kierkegaard’s books, Fear and Trembling and Either/Or

Fear and Trembling Spark Notes Study Guide

Either/Or Spark Notes Study Guide

Ethics Explainer: Existentialism