Pragmatism with a More Scientific Spirit

Reviewed by: Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University Harvey Hill Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University. By Thomas Albert Howard. (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2006. Pp. 468. $135.00.) Reviewing a book devoted solely to Protestant theology in the nineteenth century would perhaps be odd in a journal dedicated to Catholic history. But a book about the making of the modern German university is not, given the remarkable influence that the German university has had on educational institutions throughout the world. The history of the German university in the nineteenth century is surely relevant to the history of higher education more generally, including the history of Catholic higher education. The book under consideration should interest historians of Catholicism for another reason as well.Howard successfully defends what he calls "the foundational thesis" of his book: that the history of the modern university and modern theology "profoundly hang together" (p. 10). As the title indicates, Howard stresses Protestant, not Catholic, theology when he argues that theologians in Germany reconceived of theology as "critical,academic,scientific and . . . statist" rather than "apologetic, practical, confessional, or ecclesial" (p. 408). Even in German universities, Catholic theologians did not typically go as far as their Protestant colleagues in allying themselves with the state rather than with institutional churches. But many Catholic theologians and religious historians, both within and outside Germany,adopted the critical, scientific norms that were the hallmark of academic theology in the Protestant universities of Germany. Indeed,one of the central issues of the so-called "Modernist Crisis,"for example, was the relationship between the scientific authority of the Catholic scholar and the dogmatic authority of the Church.Howard's book provides helpful context for understanding some of the complex issues raised by this episode. [End Page 392] In his discussion of the modern German university, Howard particularly emphasizes two developments: the growing "political authority of the state and . . . social authority of science" (p. 14). State agencies took the lead in reforming German universities and controlled both the funding and the hiring process for professors. By and large, government ministers used this influence to promote "science," that is critical scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Exactly what Germans meant by "science"evolved over time, but throughout the century, virtually all German scholars assumed that science was naturally progressive and open-ended, and that a central scholarly task was therefore the expansion of knowledge.This assumption has been the ideological basis for modern research universities. For theology,Howard emphasizes its "Janus-faced"character.On one hand,the constantly growing erudition and rigor of scientific theology in Germany gave German Protestant theologians an impact and an audience that went far beyond Germany itself. On the other hand, the influence of the theology faculty within the German university itself steadily eroded over the course of the century, ultimately forcing theologians to defend the very existence of scientific theology within the university from both secular and neo-orthodox challengers. Howard ends his book by noting that "this formidable epoch's questions and issues . . . remain alive and well, particularly those concerning the relationship between theology and the university; between deeply held articles of faith and critical-scientific understanding; between the traditions of Christianity and their public, cultural expression; in short, between what Schleiermacher had called the 'religious interest' and the 'scientific spirit'" (p. 418). Indeed they do, and, if this book cannot hope to resolve these questions, it can certainly help us to understand them better. For that,we can be grateful. [End Page 393] Harvey Hill Berry College Copyright © 2008 The Catholic University of America Press

The ideas behind Peircean pragmatism are how to think about signs and representations (semiosis); logically reason and handle new knowledge (abduction) and probabilities (induction); make economic research choices (pragmatic maxim); categorize; and let the scientific method inform our inquiry. The connections of Peirce’s sign theory, his three-fold logic of deduction-induction-abduction, the importance of the scientific method, and his understanding about a community of inquiry have all fed my intuition that Peirce was on to some fundamental insights suitable to knowledge representation. The very generalizations Peirce made around the somewhat amorphous designations of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness seemed to affirm that what he was genuinely getting at was a way of thinking, a method of ‘decomposing’ the world, that had universal applicability irrespective of domain or problem. We can summarize Firstness as unexpressed possibilities; Secondness as the particular instances that may populate our information space; and Thirdness as general types based on logical, shared attributes. This knowledge representation is like Peirce’s categorization of science or signs but is broader still in needing to capture the nature of relations and attributes and how they become building blocks to predicates and assertions. Scholars of Peirce acknowledge how infused his writings on logic, semiosis, philosophy, and knowledge are with the idea of ‘threes.’ Understanding, inquiry, and knowledge require this irreducible structure; connections, meaning, and communication depend on all three components, standing in relation to one another and subject to interpretation by multiple agents in multiple ways.

Received 28 April 2014Received in revised form21 May 201428 May 2014Accepted 28 May 2014The purpose of this study is to investigate theoretically the meaning and features of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) based on the views of Peirce and Dewey, and to explore the implications of CoI in science education. The meaning and features of CoI are: (a) inquiry in CoI is initiated with faithful doubt; (b) inquiry in CoI finishes with faithful belief; (c) inquiry in CoI attempts to find out the best explanation and solution regarding the practical effects of objects; (d) as an ideal community, CoI is required to be one that inquires continuously without definite limits; (e) as an actual community, CoI requires its members’ open communication to find the best explanation and solution. Based on these features of CoI, the Community of Inquiry in Science Classroom (CoI-SC), “the classroom community for the purpose of transforming the state of faithful doubt into the state of faithful belief, in relation to natural phenomena or objects, and where the members share objectives as participants continuously attempt to find out the best explanation and solution by open communication, considering fallibility and the practical effects of objects”, was suggested. The condition for implementation of the CoI-SC, “‘interest’, ‘openness’, ‘rigor’, ‘fallibilism’, ‘participation’, ‘inquiry without definite limits’”, were also suggested. Finally, several suggestions for the science curriculum were given.

In Charles Peirce on Ethics, Esthetics and the Normative Sciences, I argue that Peirce was motivated to develop a normative science of ethics because of his growing concern with the corruption of science in the Gilded Age, and the recognition that the pragmatic maxim entailed an amoral instrumentalism. Rather than taking a Kantian approach to resolve the latter issue, he adopts an Aristotelian one, engaging in a search for an ultimate end that could order all other ends. What is right is what would be conducive to that end. As such he sees the necessity of a science of esthetics which would study such an end. However, rather than eudaimonia as the highest end, Peirce sees reasonableness as the summum bonum. Although barely sketched by Peirce, I argue that its principal sense is that of an ongoing process of self-correction away from error. In regard to this end, what is most important is the design of practices and the establishment of habits of conduct and sentiment most conducive to self-correction. For this reason, a proper community of inquiry with these features ought to be established, armed with the general methodology of science to assess the norms that guide the experiments of living together. Assurance that communities of inquiries are moving away from error and toward improvement is based on a convergence theory of truth.

We have a responsibility as science educators to work with young people to enact education that enables collective rebalancing of relationships between humans and more-than-humans that are disturbed by human-induced climate change. However, to date, climate change education has not been prioritized in school science at a policy, curricula, classroom and community level, due to an aesthetic which does not sufficiently value climate science or recognize the social impacts of science as part of the discipline. We argue in this conceptual research paper from a pragmatist perspective that an aesthetic shift is required to include science as part of climate change education as a transdisciplinary endeavor that focuses on addressing socio-ecological challenges through student agency and community action. We explore the synergy between science education aesthetics and climate change aesthetics as we advocate for a transformative aesthetics of climate change education. We do so through a process of reflection on and conceptualization of our stories of climate change education in Australia. We propose that such an aesthetic (how we ought to value) should not be considered in isolation but rather that it forms the basis for the ethics (how we ought to conduct ourselves) and logic (how we ought to think) of young people being with us in a community of inquiry in the Anthropocene. We argue that we (teachers and students) ought to conduct ourselves in loving ways toward human and more-than-human kin that necessitates that we think as a community of inquiry to address the challenges of the Anthropocene. In doing so we suggest that we can realize a radical pragmatist meliorism for climate change education that is underpinned by the three normative sciences, the most foundational of which is aesthetics.

Spirituality and science are regarded by many thinkers as two separate realms. Prominent among them is Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) who has said, ‘I must limit knowledge in order to leave room for faith’ (Kant, p.29). He created two realms – a realm of scientific knowledge and another realm of faith, morality and religion. What we normally call science is that which we can observe, experiment with, analyse, measure and prove. From that perspective, spirit or spirituality may be the last thing to be found under any microscope. The science of spirituality may not be so easily measured from the parameters used in normal science. I propose the role of logic between spirit and science. The insight into this proposal comes basically from the Upanishads in which the distinction has been made between para vidya and apara vidya at the level of knowledge and between Nihshreyas (attainment/fulfillment) and Abhyudaya (achievement) at the ethical level. The same dristi can be found in Avaita Vedanta traditions from medieval to modern India. However, in Western philosophy, post Renaissance, particularly during the Enlightenment, we come across a distinction between science and religion. This distinction, on the basis of principles, emerges as two separate realms in Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781) as quoted above. In its further development, we find that Hegel's Science of Logic places logic as the middle term between spirit and science. This is the position of Absolute Monism.

1. The spatial and temporal characteristics of arm movements in two (X-Y) dimensions were studied in three rhesus monkeys a) during the acquisition of an aiming motor skill, b) under conditions of spatial and temporal uncertainty, and c) when the location of the target changed during the reaction or movement time, from 50 to 400 ms after the presentation of the target. 2. The acquisition of the aiming skill was marked by an exponential reduction in the spatial variability of the movement trajectories. The reaction time remained virtually unchanged, whereas the peak velocity increased by a small amount. The skill was transferred appreciably to the other hand within a short period of training. 3. Handpath variability increased under conditions of spatial uncertainty. Temporal uncertainty in target presentation had no effect. Reaction time did not change significantly in either condition. 4. Change of target location during the reaction or movement time elicited a graded movement toward the first target, followed by reversal of direction and movement to the second target. The duration of the movement toward the first target was a linear function of the time that elapsed from the presentation of the first target to the change of targets (interstimulus interval, ISI): the later the change occurred, the longer the movement toward the first target. In contrast to the gradation of hand movement with change in target location, the eyes always fully made a saccade to the first or second target. 5. The trajectory of the initial hand movement deviated occasionally toward the second of the two targets when the interstimulus interval was short and the targets were adjacent. 6. No marked delays were observed, beyond the reaction time, when responding to the first or the second target. A large increase in peak velocity was attained after reversing the movement, i.e., on the way to the second target. 7. The results of this study indicate that the process that generates the aimed movement becomes less variable with practice and is influenced by the uncertainty of the subject about the location of the target but not by the time of its appearance. 8. The orderly modification of the movement produced by change in target location suggests that the aimed motor command is emitted in a continuous, ongoing fashion as a real-time process that can be interrupted at any time by the substitution of the original target by a new one. The effects of this change on the ensuing movement appear promptly, without delays beyond the usual reaction time. No appreciable “psychological refractory period” is observed under these conditions, and the second stimulus has continual and effective access to the process generating the aimed arm movement,

Education for sustainable development has been regarded as a lifelong learning process and an integral part of quality education. To this end, this study aims to examine the implementation of online learning communities and deliberate practice in a blended learning context, to improve English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ learning performance and engagement. Specifically, in addition to the traditional offline courses, the online film clip watching and writing tasks were adopted to ascertain the role of deliberate practice and the dimensions of the community of inquiry (COI) framework were adopted to examine the perceived effectiveness and improved performance. A quantitative study was carried out, involving 67 undergraduate freshman English course students from one university at northeastern Taiwan. The findings of this study indicate that there is statistically significant correlation between the three dimensions of community of inquiry, perceived learning and learning engagement. Moreover, teaching and cognitive presence are more predictive of students’ perceived learning. Finally, this study also illustrates practical implications, to facilitate students’ learning for sustainable development competency in blended learning contexts.

Peirce’s idea of an unlimited community has been usually analyzed from its role in science and the normative ideal of truth. However, it is essential to understand the role of the community of inquiry in light of the other normative sciences, aesthetics and ethics, since according to Peirce, any endeavor to know that is not guided by the esthetical ideal of admirable per se should not be considered as proper science, but as a power tool to benefit some elite. This article aims to analyze Peirce’s idea of community of inquiry in light of sentimentalism and the normative sciences in order to evidence that such community is not elitist, but open, insofar as it is also lured by the summum bonum and the admirable per se. Finally, we provide a more organic reading of Peirce’s work, opening the way to consider possible consequences of this position from an ethical and political perspective.

In the first part of the overview the author draws on the papers in this issue to support the argument that school violence is but one form of social violence with which modern life confronts us. Without ‘modeling’ from the top down, it is hard to imagine how viable programs for violence prevention in schools can be developed and implemented. Coercion is the rule within most social systems, with the exception of families where secure attachments dominate. In secure organizations social influence is exercised in a framework dominated by an awareness of the mental states, concerns, thoughts, and feelings of individuals within the system—that is, a capacity for mentalization. The creation of a peaceful learning environment requires enhancement of the child's consciousness of his or her own awareness of others' awareness of him/her. In the second part of the overview the author questions whether all violence is understandable in these ways or in any way at all. He suggests for reconsideration the classical psychoanalytic notion of threat as a manifestation of a destructive drive. He speculates that violence may occur in two ways and for two reasons which are often conflated and confused. A psychoanalytic theory of this second type of violence is briefly outlined.

Objectives: Mental contamination refers to a psychological sense of contamination involving internal feelings of dirtiness and is often accompanied by negative emotions such as distress, disgust and anxiety. Research has shown that recalling or imagining immoral situations or thoughts can evoke feelings of mental contamination. Research has also shown that obsessive compulsions have a dissociative element and that dissociation may impact treatment effectiveness. This study experimentally evoked mental contamination and aimed to assess if dissociative experiences are related to mental contamination and to assess if they have the potential to predict susceptibility to mental contamination. Design: Non-clinical participants (N = 134) completed outcome measures assessing dissociative experiences, obsessive compulsive traits and traits of mental contamination. Participants recalled immoral acts, intrusive thoughts/images and imagined wearing a jumper of an immoral individual and rated state mental contamination feelings of internal dirtiness, general dirtiness, anxiety, urge to wash and disgust on visual analogue scales before and after each induction task. Results: Feelings of mental contamination were successfully evoked in the three induction tasks with the jumper task evoking highest mental contamination symptoms. Results provide evidence to support the hypothesis that dissociative experiences predict susceptibility to mental contamination, that dissociative experiences are positively correlated with trait and state mental contamination and that state mental contamination is positively correlated with trait mental contamination and obsessive-compulsive traits. Dissociative experiences explain significant variance in state mental contamination beyond obsessive-compulsive traits in indices of internal dirtiness following imagined tasks. Conclusions: Idiosyncratic induction tasks are successful for experimentally evoking feelings of mental contamination in non-clinical populations. The results produce evidence for a relationship between dissociative experiences and state and trait mental contamination as well as obsessive compulsive traits. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

The development of informatization has led to many advances in traditional education. The development of the economy has caused many new problems in today’s early childhood education. In traditional early childhood education, the management model that emphasizes the leading role of teachers has been difficult to solve new problems in early childhood education. It is proposed to introduce information technology into early childhood education, and to enhance intellectual development, safety management and teamwork spirit in early childhood education through information technology, multimedia technology, information monitoring technology and human-computer interaction technology in information technology. Children’s own development benefits and needs to start, giving children space. Independent exploration, training children’s scientific exploration, scientific exploration ability and scientific spirit.

Integrating ideological and political education into professional courses in higher education institutions is currently one of the popular research directions in the field of education. This paper takes the physics major course electrodynamics as an example, mainly studying the integration of ideological and political education into the teaching of electrodynamics courses. The in-depth exploration of ideological and political elements in the electrodynamics course has provided teaching objectives that combine ideological and political connotations. Based on this, the teaching content is reconstructed, the teaching mode is adjusted, and visual teaching resources are introduced to reflect on and practice the teaching of electrodynamics. The purpose is to cultivate students’ scientific knowledge, scientific thinking, scientific exploration, and scientific spirit, establish students’ correct outlook on life, world view, and values, enhance their sense of national responsibility, and fully leverage the educational function of the electrodynamics course in the physics major.

Peirce's formal rhetoric is the least developed of his three branches of semeiotic. I argue that Peirce intended formal rhetoric to be a general theory of inquiry. Peirce recognized that semeiotic requires a cooperative effort by inquirers guided by certain methodological and normative principles and was thus one of the three normative sciences. Thus formal rhetoric is subject to normative considerations. The purpose of this paper is to give some body to the skeleton outline originally provided by Peirce. I start with an outline of his formal rhetoric and conclude that Peirce appeared to treat three dimensions of inquiry ·. 1) a proper community of inquirers; 2) a proper method of inquiry; and 3 ) the proper goals of inquiry. Each of these three dimensions has a normative aspect which makes the connection between semeiotic and ethics much clearer. The most important factors in scientific inquiry have been the moral ones such as love of truth and recognition of science's social and public nature. These normative factors have an impact on inquiry in at least three respects: 1 ) the ethos of the community of inquiry; 2 ) the cultivation of feelings and sentiments, forms of communication, and the virtues of inquirers; and 3) the goals of inquiry necessary for success in the long run. The normative aspect of inquiry leads to speculative rhetoric which privileges certain forms of communication and certain goals of inquiry. Spelling these out in detail leads to Peirce's novel point that pure reason or pure logic alone is not enough to discover knowledge, but that it requires the effort of a historical community of inquirers, cooperating in the right sort of community

Liberation Theology: A Pragmatist Perspective