Children’s Education, Institutions of Learning, Technology and Wisdom Inquiry: Global Challenges and Methodological Perspectives

Abstract

This paper is about the rationality of methodological variance, where changes in method and methodology of science may be warranted/triggered by the urgency of finding alternatives to the methodology currently in fashion that fails to address the relevant and pressing problems (Pandit 1983, 1991, 1996, 2002a, b; Pandit and Dosch 2013). It deals obliquely with Maxwell‘s (2010, pp. 667–690) criticisms of Pandit (2010a, b), offering only a bare sketch of appraisal of his methodological proposals of AOE, AOR and WI, not only as going beyond SR but as better alternatives to dominant methodologies such as that of Karl R. Popper (1934, 1945, 1957, 1959, 1963, 1969, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1982a, 1982b, 1983 and 1994), without rehearsing or recycling Maxwell‘s well-known arguments in great detail (Maxwell 1974, 2004, 2005, 2009a, 2009b, 2010, 2014, 2016a, b, 2018, 2019). More importantly, how these proposals improve upon the eighteenth century Enlightenment idea of learning from scientific progress how to achieve social/cultural progress towards an enlightened world (Maxwell 2009a, b), i.e., a world that is sensitive to problems of living and human well-being, is discussed. Having dealt with such problems in Pandit (1995, 2005, 2006a, b, 2007a, b, c, 2008, 2010a, b, c, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016a, b, 2017b), the present appraisal is limited to the rationality of understanding, or better of rethinking, academic inquiry within the wider contexts and reaches of wisdom inquiry, with particular reference to the pressing global problems including those problems that are traceable to ETS progress, which is itself often found to violate the principle of interconnectedness across nature (Pandit 2001, 2006b, 2012, 2016a, 2016b, 2017b).