Teaching and Learning > DOCUMENTS
Aneta Karageorgieva - 'The Cult of Knowledge'
George Macdonald Ross
Comments
Peter Beron (1799-1871) was a key figure in the history of Bulgarian education. He flourished at the time when the Bulgarians were striving to establish their own church, language, and educational system after the retreat of the Ottoman empire. He represented the coincidence of the renaissance and the enlightenment. He learned Latin and Greek, and saw himself as a follower of Aristotle. But he also went to Germany, where he studied philosophy and science, and became qualified as a doctor. Heavily influenced by D'Alambert and Diderot, he developed an all-embracing philosophical and scientific system, in which all phenomena were explained scientifically. The system was published first in German in his Slavonic Philosophy of 1855, and then in French in the 7-volume Panepisteme.
However, his main influence was through a primary-school textbook covering the whole syllabus, which he wrote in demotic Bulgarian, and which remained in use for almost a century. Science was started in the first grade, and the aim of education was a harmonious personal development, for which scientific knowledge was essential. The educational programme was essentially secular, since he believed, with Aristotle, that God had no concern with the details of life on Earth. Peter Beron's scientism and secularism probably paved the way for a ready acceptance of Marxism in Bulgaria.
However, we need to distinguish between two senses of 'scientism'. Philosophical scientism is the view that philosophy as a discipline should be modelled on science. Non-philosophical scientism rejects humanism, or philosophical, religious, artistic, or commonsense explanations of phenomena. Philosophy might be on the side of science in some respects (e.g. the rejection of superstition); but it is also the function of philosophy to assess science critically, and it might be on the side of the humanities in other respects (e.g. the claim of science to be the only valid form of explanation).
The fall of Marxism has led to a reaction against both philosophy and science. Science students are against philosophy and the arts; and philosophy students are against science and the analytic tradition in philosophy, and are interested in philosophy only as a way of life (practical ethics, existentialism, hermeneutics, etc.). This raises the question of whether our students should be made to read texts about science.
Discussion
It was questioned whether the fall of Marxism has in fact led to a rejection of philosophy - in some countries, there is a renewed interest in Marxist philosophy.
It was agreed that the divorce between science and philosophy was important everywhere, and it was suggested that this became a problem after the scientific revolution in the eighteenth century. People are afraid of what they cannot understand, and science has become highly specialised. In general, education focuses on knowledge, skills, and attitudes, and tends to neglect emotions and the senses. Even Aristotle, despite the definition of the human as a rational animal, stressed the importance of sensory experience and memory as aspects of knowledge.
Genuine education involves more than knowledge, but education in freedom. There is no longer any consensus as to a single scientific method, and the teaching of science itself is being radically reformed so as to include ethical and emotional elements. Children are being given more science than in the past, and their scientific knowledge provides matter for philosophical discussion. This tendency is reinforced by an increasing number of debates between scientists and philosophers in the media. As Lyotard maintains, there are many kinds of knowledge, and these include what children learn outside the classroom.
This page was originally on the website of The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies. It was transfered here following the closure of the Subject Centre at the end of 2011.
