A Whiteheadian Theory of Creative, Synthetic Learning
Ronald P. Phipps
1.1
The interaction among Process thinkers from the
East and West holds great promise to help liberate the creative
potentials of our cultures to cooperatively contribute to the
advancement of human civilization. The most general
expression of this potential resides within the realm of education,
which embraces all forms of human inquiry and human curiosity.
My own academic work centers on the philosophy of theoretical
physics and the creation of an alternative theory to the reigning
dogmas of 20th century physics, namely relativity
theory, quantum mechanics, string theory and the big bang
theory. Specifically I have developed, under the influence of
process philosophy, a vision of an infinite and open universe,
infinite and eternal in its spatial and temporal magnitudes and
manifesting a dynamic orderliness from which is derivative infinite
qualitative variety at the core of being.
In this metaphysics, the quest for causal orderliness amid
qualitative variety indeed is primary and reductionism’s quest to
suppress and reduce apparent qualitative variety to: 1)
qualitative sameness of constituents and 2) immense geometric
variety is secondary and limited, though often of philosophic and
scientific value. The philosophical hypothesis that both
qualitative variety and orderliness are omnipresent and fundamental
to the core of Being in an infinite and eternal universe is
relevant to the philosophic perspective underlying the theory
of creative, synthetic learning.
Today I want to talk about the creative application of process
philosophy to educational reform.
2.1
Among western Process thinkers, Alfred North Whitehead holds a
unique place for the depth of his creative originality and the
broad scope of his contributions to intellectual history ranging
from:
1) mathematical logic expressed in Whitehead
and Russell’s monumental Principia Mathematica which, in the
judgment of the great German mathematician David Hilbert, was
“history’s crowning achievement of axiomatization of systems,”
2) theoretical physics, where Sir Arthur
Eddington, the great British astro-physicist, judged Whitehead to
have produced insights more profound than Einstein’s, to
3) metaphysics, where at Harvard, Whitehead
developed the most coherent, consistent, creative,
comprehensive and challenging philosophic system in human
history.
Whitehead, having creatively bridged intellectual disciplines
and the continents, attained a position which should warrant our
thoughtful attention to his theory of education. Moreover, we
should seek to creatively develop and apply Whitehead’s theory to
reform and transform current systems wherever such systems restrain
the advance of wisdom and understanding.
3.1
Whitehead criticizes the uselessness of reforming
educational systems without a clear conception of the attributes
which you wish to evoke in the living minds of students. The
characteristics which must be the aim of meaningful educational
reform include:
• Integrity and
independence of thought;
• Deep and relentless
curiosity;
• Coherency of
thought;
• Respect for the
collective genius that is the legacy that the past bestows upon the
present;
• An abiding sense of
romance, adventure and delight in discovery;
• Compassion;
• Integrative
thinking;
• A bold, courageous
and challenging spirit willing to question entrenched intellectual
and cultural presuppositions;
• Ability at
problem-solving;
• Creativity;
• Students who are
readers and, moreover, thinkers;
• Imagination capable
of envisioning novel phenomena, relationships and modes of
orderliness.
A copy of Rodin’s great statue The Thinker stands before the
library at Stanford University. The Thinker’s hands are not
occupied holding books, but it is upon his hands that his head
rests, lost in deep contemplation. Reading must be
subservient to thinking, for without independent, reflective and
contemplative thinking, reading, for Whitehead, degenerates into
effete bookishness. Whitehead’s personal assistant at
Harvard, the former President of the American Philosophy
Association, Professor Henry S. Leonard, challengingly observed
“the trouble with American intellectuals is that they read too much
and think too little.”
In this talk I want to begin the development of a Whiteheadian
Theory of Creative Synthetic Learning. I define this theory
as “the guidance and nurturing of students upon journeys of
curiosity amid communities of problems, journeys which are resolved
in adventures of discovery and generalization of insight.”
The key concepts are:
1) Journeys of curiosity;
2) Communities of problems;
3) Adventures of discovery;
4) Generalization of insight.
4.1
Education has two concurrent functions. The
first is to transfer into the present the trillions upon trillions
of collective acts of discovery throughout the globe and history
which form the intellectual legacy which history bestows upon the
present. The second function is to instill the lure and the
romance felt in the present by living, active students for
discoveries and generalization of insight in the future.
If educational systems address only the first function and
neglect the second, students are rendered passive and education
becomes, in Whitehead’s metaphor, “like a trunk, passively stuffed
with articles” or like a passive, caged and force fed Beijing duck
– delicious, but without a future. It is the second function
that makes education alive, as students become active explorers of
future possibilities. Curiosity becomes the engine
driving creativity.
It is only under conditions where the roots of curiosity are
nurtured and those roots spread widely and penetrate deeply that
societies become vigorous, vibrant, creative and innovative.
5.1
A Whiteheadian theory of creative and synthetic learning is
consistent with Whitehead’s broader philosophic perspectives.
Whitehead’s philosophy of process and organism emphasizes that the
constituents of the world are processes which exist in
interdependent relationality with other events which together
constitute still broader, enveloping and interacting
communities. Events arise from multiplicities of antecedent
events and their characters are developed from multiplicities of
variables. Inherent within events are rich and multiple
potentialities to influence the character of those succeeding
events which will constitute a given event’s causal future.
The universe is rich in qualitative variety, orderliness, causal
potentiality and openness. Within communities of events there
is the perpetual perishing and the perpetual emergence of events,
the perpetual frustration and the perpetual realization of
potentials for causal efficacy that are compatible for co-existence
within, but incompatible for co-realization by, the events
constituent of the universe. It is precisely because of the
structure of our universe of communities of dynamically interacting
events and communities of ideas and forms that synthetic learning
is necessary for the advance of knowledge and wisdom.
6.1
China’s history is one of immense and glorious contributions to
world civilization. Whitehead notes with profound
appreciation the creative and innovative role which the people of
China have played. The encyclopedic work of Professor Joseph
Needham of Cambridge University regarding the history of science
and civilization in China describes the breadth and depth of
scientific innovation and intellectual creativity which occurred in
Chinese history. For a long period of time, however, that
creativity has been largely stifled and stagnant.
Whitehead, in Science and the Modern World, like other
observers of intellectual history, notes and ponders this
comparative stagnation .
The causes of this phenomenon are both external and
internal. China, for several centuries, was the victim of
predatory European imperialism and Japanese fascism, and Japan’s
and Europe’s talons penetrated deeply into the soul of the Chinese
nation. Preceding the time of China’s victimization by
external empires, China’s culture also exhibited a national
chauvinism which led Chinese scholarship to fixate geographically
upon China, conceived as the Middle or Central Kingdom, and
temporally upon China’s accomplished past not its creative
potentials for the future. The failure to look beyond either
its spatial borders or beyond its temporal past, were underlying
factors in creating the weakness which allowed the victimization of
China, a victimization which brought to its people such immense and
heart breaking suffering; poverty and stagnation during the
17th through the 20th centuries.
Following Golden Centuries of discovery, innovation and
invention, the comparative stagnation suffered by Chinese society
was also a consequence of an entrenched, underlying philosophy and
morality based upon hierarchies. Officials were subservient
to the Emperor, the people subservient to officialdom, the young to
the authority of the old, the female to the male, the student to
the teacher, the future to the past and innovative discovery to the
feudal Confucian examination system. Progressive and vibrant
social development reduces such retrogressive hierarchies.
Government is subservient to the people’s interests and democratic
dialogue, discussion and decision making processes supercedes the
authoritarianism of officialdom, the old exists in service to the
positive potentials of the young, the female and male are co-equal,
the teacher’s function is to elicit the creativity of the student,
the past guides and enriches the future and examination systems are
secondary to processes of discovery, curiosity, creativity,
innovation, invention and profound and fresh insights.
The transformation of China, beginning in the middle of the
20th Century, is widely acknowledged as an astounding
feat in world history. No one talks today of China as “the
sick man of Asia.” Despite the impressive achievements of the
Chinese people, China’s contributions to path-breaking discoveries
and its articulation of new theoretical vistas, are largely
underdevelopment or merely nascent. The persistence of this
gap between China’s potential and its achievements in respect to
original research and path-breaking innovations lingers in the
present. This gap harms both China and the larger world to
which China may contribute.
China today stands at the crossroads between: i) remaining
a largely imitative but powerful economic force, and (ii) restoring
its historic position as a world center of creativity, innovation
and invention. Whether or not China can integrate systems of
creative synthetic learning within its educational processes and,
thereby, infuse and inspire students with a deep sense of the
intrinsic value and romance of learning will determine if China
takes the path of imitativeness or the path of innovation.
6.2
This choice is relevant to China but not peculiar to
China. Developing meaningful methods to evaluate talent is,
of course, relevant to all nations. However, the deeper
imperative concerns not the evaluation of talent but the
development of creative talent, synthetic thinking and relational
understanding. When creative synthetic learning is absent
from the ethos and spirit of societies, and their educational
systems, those societies either decay or stagnate into
mediocrity. In contrast, when creative synthetic learning
characterizes and impels a society’s educational system, that
society will liberate its positive potentials and contribute to the
creative advance of human civilization.
The role of curiosity is fundamental. The great Harvard
scientist E. O. Wilson cites curiosity as “the greatest of all
human virtues.” Curiosity is indeed intrinsic to, and thus,
inherent within, all complex forms of life. The intensity of
curiosity differs both among and within species, but the active
presence of curiosity is essential to both the survival and
advancement of all complex life forms.
The German mathematician of the infinite, George Cantor,
centered his doctoral dissertation upon the theme “in mathematics
the art of asking questions is more valuable than solving
problems.” The German mathematician David Hilbert challenged
the world of mathematics in the beginning of the 20th
century with “23 fundamental unanswered mathematical
problems.” Whitehead, throughout his writings on education,
speaks of the evocation of curiosity. He speaks of curiosity
as the engine to discovery. Countless discoveries have arisen
in human intellectual history because someone asked a question not
asked before, someone challenged an entrenched presupposition of
thought, someone altered a set of variables, someone synthesized
concepts or observations, which previously were detached,
fragmented, and, thereby, in Whitehead’s view, inert.
7.1
Education, if it is to infuse students and teachers with the
lure of future discoveries, must inspire and guide students upon
journeys of curiosity. There are 3 types of journeys:
One is the solitary, contemplative and reflective journey
illustrated in the famous walks of Louis De Broglio, the Nobel
Laureate, who developed quantum wave theory. The second type
of journey is typified by the collaboration of a team, such as
Whitehead and Russell’s collaboration in creating the magnus opus,
Principia Mathematica, or that of the young Einstein and his
wife in pondering the questions of light that led to relativity
theory. The third type of journey is the extensive, broader
and often international collaborative effort that is expressed
when, for example: 1) hundreds of scientists examine data from
particle accelerators; 2) cosmologists simultaneously examine and
collect data from astronomical observatories located throughout the
globe; 3) data is gathered on global weather patterns and global
environmental conditions; or 4) data on the economic trends both
within and among the world’s nations is compared. Educational
systems can and should expose students to each of these fundamental
forms of journeys of curiosity and their ultimate interplay one
with another.
While group journeys of curiosity of type 2) and 3) are
invaluable, we cannot underestimate the vital role of
contemplation, of mulling problems over, of pondering and lingering
over data and concepts. Einstein once remarked, “It is not
that I am so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems
longer.” Creativity, synthesis of ideas, cogency of thought
and discovery necessitate that concepts, axioms, data and theorems
deeply enter both conscious and unconscious mental processes.
Thus is the valuable lesson to be learned from the contemplative
sage.
7.2
It should be noted that teachers can and should be
co-participants with their students on these journeys of curiosity
and adventures of discovery. The teacher may be a guide but
need not be a figure of dominance, hierarchy or
authoritarianism. Indeed, the student must have the freedom
to point out new vistas of beauty and intrigue not previously
noted. Whitehead points out that science is almost wholly
“the outcome of pleasurable intellectual curiosity.” We should
always remember there are no bad questions. What is bad is
the suppression of questioning. Even questions that may seem
on the surface to be simple may require profound and powerful
concepts for their fuller understanding. For example the
question why 1 plus 1 equals 2 required the mathematical logic of
Principia Mathematica for its deeper understanding and more
final elucidation.
7.3
The discernment and the cultivation of these creative abilities
for discovery are essential. And yet the discernment and
cultivation of creative abilities, it must be noted, does not enjoy
a direct and consistent correlation with skillfulness at “test
taking.” The impulse, the initiative, the ability, the
curiosity, the creativity, and what Whitehead stresses as the
“passion” for discovery, need to be nurtured and evaluated through
multiple modalities not confined to, nor constricted by, skill at
taking standardized examinations. This is an important matter
for China’s educational system, but also for Western educational
systems that are degenerating into an excessive and compulsive
obsession with examinations to the sacrifice of the cultivation of
curiosity and discovery skills as integral to progressive and
effective educational systems. The integration of
intellectual skills and active curiosity is an integration absent
from many educational systems that emphasize a narrow form of
pragmatism as their guiding educational philosophy.
7.4
It is important for all cultures, including Chinese culture
which has revered the “aged” and the “sage,” to recognize that
wisdom, insight, profundity and creativity are not confined to the
aged. The capacity for creative synthetic insights is what we
must consider in assessing genius, not age. Reverend Martin
Luther King proclaimed, “It is by the content of one’s character,
not the color of one’s skin that humans should judge each
another.” The success of education similarly must be assessed
by deeper and more revealing criteria. Experience is of great
value but so too are independence of thought and freshness of
insight.
Chinese culture, under the weight of Confucianism, revered the
learned sage with the “300 li white beard.” Yet Sir Isaac
Newton invented both calculus and classic physics by the time he
was 25. Einstein invented the Theory of Special Relativity by
the time he was 25. Though I disagree with both the logic and
narrowness of this theory, Einstein asked questions about the
prevailing presuppositions concerning Time, Space and Light that
were not asked before. In the asking and challenging of those
presuppositions, Einstein opened new vistas on fundamental physical
phenomena and processes of transformation among forms of energy
that are present in the very structure of the Universe.
Lord Byron composed great poems before he died in his
twenties. Mao Zedong challenged Soviet dogma that revolution
must arise in the cities and be led by an urban proletariat and
instead aroused and conducted a revolution in the countryside that
liberated China from foreign and domestic forms of oppression with
had caused centuries of heartbreaking poverty. Jesus was
crucified at 33 but had already created a body of moral teaching
and theology urging our world to greater compassion and
humility. Countless examples of youthful genius exist that
range across cultures, religions, historic periods and
ethnicities.
8.1
It is the intellectual spirit and gift of challenging prevailing
presuppositions, asking questions not asked before, synthesizing
and integrating both phenomena and concepts that were separate,
creating new and fresh solutions which educations must value and
stimulate in students, teachers and our broader human family.
We must do so irrespective of age, gender, race or the moment of
time during which curiosity is alive, active and irrepressible.
The emergence of curiosity accompanies the very inception of
life for all complex species. The function of education
systems and creative synthetic learning is to ensure that
educational systems do not stifle or diminish, but instead
intensify, deepen and broaden that curiosity already inherent in
life during its nascent stages.
Intellectual genius throughout history, and especially during
intense periods of intellectual ferment, innovation and discovery,
challenged, questioned and overcame prevailing dogmas and
prevailing presuppositions of thought. Genius always widens,
broadens and deepens the range of phenomena to which new theories
apply. In passing from the stage of journeys of curiosity to
the stage of adventures of discovery, genius envisions and discerns
previously unobserved and unimagined patterns manifested within an
increasingly diverse set of phenomena. For example Newton’s
classic laws of motion cover all speeds, all weights, all distances
and all accelerations or decelerations of speed for all entities
with mass. The adventure of discovery leads to higher
generalization of insights.
While the main emphasis of the theory of creative synthetic
education concerns the achievement of generalization of insight,
creative synthetic education also concerns insight into and
illumination of particular phenomena. It does so in 2
respects. Firstly, by enhancing human discernment of general
patterns we can illuminate the particular. Secondly,
Whitehead’s philosophy conceives all concrete phenomena as emerging
from antecedent fields of events. Within such causative and
generative fields are expressed a multiplicity of variables that
collectively, but with diverse relative significance, causally
influence the characters of the concrete in its full particularity
and individuality.
It is inadequately appreciated that these journeys of curiosity
must be taken within the environment of communities of related
problems and related phenomena. Whitehead criticizes
“teaching small parts of a large number of subjects” and sees such
an approach to learning as constituting the passive reception of
disconnected ideas not illumined with any spark of vitality.
He correctly admonishes that “the main ideas introduced into a
child’s education should be few and important, and let them be
thrown into every combination possible.” Whitehead’s student
at Harvard, Professor Victor Lowe from Johns Hopkins University,
comments:
“He stressed getting a living understanding of a few
interrelated abstract ideas by using them in a variety of ways so
as to develop an intimate sense for their power.”
There is among today’s educational theories growing and proper
attention to the possibilities and value of interdisciplinary
studies. However, what is lacking is a deeper appreciation
and implementation of the need for study of communities of problems
within an intra-disciplinary context. When Whitehead
speaks of throwing ideas into every possible combination he is
talking of changing variables, tweaking variables, altering
environments within which similar phenomena occurs. This is
the natural process of active curiosity and inquiring minds.
It is, furthermore, the phenomenon that allows discovery and
generalization of insight. It is the antithesis of detached,
isolated, fragmented facts passively absorbed by students.
Whitehead speaks of “the process of discovery as the process of
becoming used to curious thoughts, of shaping questions, of seeking
for answers, of devising new experiences, of what happens as the
result of new ventures.” The new ventures are constituted
through the alteration of variables. The shaping of questions
concerns the consequences of changing variables and changing the
environments within which phenomena develop. This is what
constitutes journeys of curiosity amid communities of
problems. Whitehead’s metaphysics in all its manifold
dimensions, including education, stresses the centrality of
community to all concrete and real entities. No entity dwells
devoid of community nor in pure, exclusive privacy. The
reality of community pertains to both (i) concrete events in the
contingencies of their relations and (ii) abstract entities like
eternal objects, characteristics and numbers in their necessary,
logical and mathematical relations. Community and contrasts
of character are integral to all existence.
Therefore, generalization of insight expresses awareness of
general patterns exhibited among a plethora of phenomena within
which diversity and variability are universally found.
Generalization represents abstraction from the concrete, i.e.,
abstraction from communities of related phenomena.
8.2
The advancement of knowledge, we must recognize,
requires the continuous discourse between the abstract and the
concrete. The discourse with the concrete must be with
increasingly open systems within which greater variability is
exhibited, allowing modification and refinement of the initial
abstractions and the initial generalizations. The creative
advance of human knowledge requires this continuous discourse as
knowledge must always retain an aspect of tenuousness.
Whitehead insists that we understand the relation between abstract
concepts and the concrete world from which those abstractions are
derived. But those abstractions can only be derived from
continuous journeys of curiosity amid wide and open systems of
problems, phenomena and variables.
9.1
Whitehead, cites the danger “I do not think that it is possible
to take a whole class very far along the road of precision without
some dulling of the interest. It is the unfortunate dilemma
that initiative and training are both necessary, and the training
is apt to kill initiative.” It is the thesis of the theory of
creative, synthetic education that the solution to this dilemma
resides in developing forms and structures so that research becomes
part of a continuum of the entire educational process.
Research, despite its own challenges, becomes that breath of fresh
spring air that relieves the tedium of training. The
integration of research and training, of novelty of thought and the
absorption of accumulated knowledge, is essential to the joy of
education.
Without this rhythmic integration in education, the vitality of
education is diminished and the soul and enthusiasm of students are
drained. Adventures of discovery and generalization of
insight drive research and sustains and nurtures intellectual
interest and enthusiasm.
One of the key imperatives of creative synthetic education
involves exposing students to the profound distinction between
processes of discovery of what is not known versus the learning of
that which has already been discovered. Whitehead instructs
us: “from the very beginning of his education, the child should
experience the joy of discovery, the discovery which he has to
make, is that general ideas give an understanding … of that stream
of events which pours through his life.”
This theory helps to explicate Whitehead’s more general
persuasion that there must be a rhythm to educational
processes. He sees this rhythm as vaguely analogous to
Hegel’s theory of development through the stages of thesis,
antithesis and synthesis. Whitehead calls these stages:
• The Stage of
Romance
• The Stage of
Precision
• The Stage of
Generalization
The stage of Romance is constituted by journeys of curiosity
amid related problems. The stage of Precision is the stage of
adventures of discovery through the gathering and synthesis of
concrete data and the variables manifested within that data.
The stage of Generalization is when through the creativity of
intellect and the gift of intuition, the gathering and synthesis of
data eventuates in generalization of insight. If education
does not thrust students at all stages of the education experience
into the process of discovery, education will deny the student the
romance of learning.
9.2
It is, we stress, only within a context of creative synthetic
education that learning becomes an intrinsic, not an extrinsic
factor in a student’s life. Whitehead speaks of the love of a
subject in and for itself. Innovative and creative societies
depend upon the internalization of the motivation of
learning. That internalization depends upon the free reign of
curiosity and the romance and adventure of discovery.
Whitehead summarizes the significance to historic development of
these ideas in the general proposition, “we subdue the forces of
nature because we have been lured to discovery by an insatiable
curiosity.”
The creative advance of our global community depends upon the
internalization of the love of learning and the free, vigorous and
relentless pursuit of knowledge and wisdom gained at the successful
commencement of journeys of curiosity.
One of the most profound experiences of my education was a class
in the Calculus, taught to very gifted mathematical students by a
Professor who coached the leading university math team in North
America. He thrust upon his students a fundamental question
of calculus which had vexed mathematicians and eluded discovery for
2 millennia. For one week students dwelt in a state of
ignorance, of trial and error, of advance, retreat and advance
again, until, we were able to discern some fundamental techniques
of the calculus discovered by Newton and Leibniz in the
17th century. Perhaps this group of students could
have learned the relevant techniques in an hour. Instead, we
spent a week struggling and searching in our ignorance. This
was at once frustrating, exciting and ultimately
exhilarating. We tasted the difference between the processes
of learning what was discovered and the exhilarating process of
discovery itself. Awareness of this distinction is a
priceless contribution to the education process. It engenders
both respect for the cumulative nature of knowledge and thirst for
new and yet more advanced knowledge.
Part of the educational process itself involves deepening
students’ awareness that education as a process proceeding stage by
stage from lower to higher levels of truth, understanding, wisdom
and generality of understanding. Students must come to
incorporate the awareness that without the active exploration of
communities of problems, generalization and discovery are
themselves impossible and without generalization of insight, wisdom
eludes attainment.
Whitehead metaphorically describes the continuous discourse
between the abstract and the concrete, the data and the
generalization, “like angels ascending and descending Jacob’s
ladder to heaven.” Only by broadening the range of variables
investigated can generalization become both more accurate and
powerful.
10.1
Whitehead stresses that education should begin and end in
research. Similarly he says that “philosophy begins in
wonder, and when it does its work well, the wonder remains.”
Our theory of creative, synthetic learning modifies Whitehead’s
dictum so that education not only begins and ends in research, but
that research should be omnipresent constituting a continuum
throughout the entire educational process. The arena within
which journeys of curiosity occur is life itself, including
schools. The communities of problems differ among subjects
and disciplines. They also naturally differ relative to the
student’s stage of learning, interests and level of
knowledge. Yet the principle remains the same.
The implementation of this theory of creative synthetic learning
requires the continuous creation of communities of problems among
which students’ curiosity may roam. Schools and teachers must
guide the formation of appropriate and compelling
communities. The initiative and interest of the students
themselves must be welcomed as an essential part of the creation of
those communities which: 1) excite the enthusiasm; 2) express
the interests; and 3) rouses the initiative of the individual
student, the small team of students, or the broader community of
students collectively taking those journeys of curiosity aiming at
adventures of discovery and generalization of insight.
Students and teachers as co-participants can both chart and modify
the path of the journey. There should be no great wall
separating teacher as authority and student as passive
receptor. The journeys must be dynamic and collegial in their
conduct.
With colleagues in North America, China and Europe, we are
developing illustrative examples of communities of problems
appropriate for students of various ages in such fields as
mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, botany, literature,
history, archeology, environmental studies, metallurgy, civil
engineering and aesthetics. The creation of these communities
of problems is an area where, Whitehead would insist local autonomy
must be exercised by local schools and teachers developing
curriculum under specific local conditions. The methods,
forms, structures, arenas, systems to generate appropriate
communities of problems and ways to guide students on these
journeys, allow diverse ways to pursue the general goal in the
context of specific local conditions, needs and interests.
Gifted student programs, advanced research classes, research
projects, research contests, and/ or special schools oriented
towards developing creative synthetic learning and research are
among the many forms and methods that need to be systematically
integrated in national educational systems. It is not the
case that these forms are entirely absent, but neither are they
present in substantive, systematic and adequate forms within
prevailing educational structures in either the West or the
East.
Effective class curricula that achieves the aims of education
described earlier cannot be constituted by a mere succession of
exercises and facts. Class curricula must be formulated with
the awareness that students are living, dynamic, exploring humans
opening to the wonders of the universe. Each class must
continuously receive the life enhancing breath of curiosity and
with regularity experience challenging research processes.
Great teachers have always intuited and applied these general
principles and, thereby, inspired a passionate and enduring love of
learning among their students. But educational systems need
these principles more integrated into, and continuously present
within, the educational process from its inception through its
maturation.
Creative synthetic education provides the philosophic
perspective and the systematic methodologies and modalities to
fully liberate the potentials for discovery and therewith the
advance of human civilization from lower to higher stages of
knowledge and wisdom.
10.2
The examples of journeys of curiosity we can provide represent
merely a suggestive and infinitesimal set of communities of
problems among the broad and infinite domains of communities of
problems available for intellectual inquiry. The broader set
is limited only by human imagination and the contemporary stage of
human understanding and insight.
The American philosopher John Dewey established experimental
schools associated with the University of Chicago, so too the
theory of creative synthetic learning can be associated with
teaching universities in China, Europe, North America, South
America, Africa, etc. Such schools and programs can serve as
living laboratories.
Teaching universities and affiliated secondary and primary
schools can individually or cooperatively develop a variety of
forms, structures and systems, and a plethora of communities of
problems, in diverse academic fields which can guide and stimulate
academic systems to guide students upon intellectual journeys that
nurture the curiosity inherent to life and thereby allow curious
minds to experience both the elation of discovery and the power of
generalized insight.
11.1
There is an important distinction to be drawn between
Whitehead’s philosophy of the open and infinite, and pragmatic
philosophy which has influenced much of American educational
theory. Pragmatism, as is often interpreted and applied,
ultimately condemns itself, not by its emphasis upon consequences,
which emphasis is consistent with Whitehead’s philosophy, but
through its emphasis in evaluating consequences based upon closed
rather than open systems of events. The evaluation of
policies by reference to closed and narrow systems of events
often leads to disjunctive economic, educational and social
development, realizing negative and discordant potentials among
events that are transformed from the potential to the actual as a
consequence of the implementation of “pragmatic policies.”
There is a relevant metaphor between the environmental crisis
confronting the earth and contemporary educational systems which
may be adept at generating groups of great “test takers” but
ineffective in developing the collective genius of society.
It concerns the difference between the tactical and the neglected
strategic goals of economic and/or educational processes.
A century ago, 90% of Americans were farmers, whose lives were
conducted within small radii of local communities. The
development and popularization of the car utilizing fossil fuels
led to the development of a social infrastructure displaying an
unprecedented dispersion of home, work, recreation, and
shopping. The geographic arena within which individual life
occurred was immensely expanded and the dynamic pulsation of that
circle became frequent and intense.
Within the closed system of the first decades of this
fundamental infrastructural transformation, a sense of individual
freedom and power emerged. But now, American working adults
spend an enormous amount of their daily time in stressful commutes
between home, work, school, shopping and/or recreation. These
commutes lead to high annual death rates of about 50,000 per year
and many more serious and permanent injuries. With respect to
family life, the amount of time fathers spend with children and
husbands with wives has been profoundly reduced, leading to great
strains on family stability and interpersonal relationships.
Furthermore, since carbon dioxide is a heat trapping gas, and this
unprecedented infrastructure causes enormous expenditures of fossil
based energy needed to move mass, the global atmosphere is becoming
saturated with heat-trapping gases. A leading British
environmental scientist concluded that global warming is
concurrently proceeding at the rate predicted by the worst-case
scenario. He also characterized global warming as a real, not
a hypothetical, “Weapon of Mass Destruction,” which, furthermore,
is a terrorist weapon that strikes with total unpredictability as
to the place, time and form of attack: a drought, a flood, a
hurricane, a fire, a scorching heat wave or a protracted
freeze.
When viewed from a pragmatic, narrow and closed system of
events, the fossil fuel car and the dispersed infrastructure it
allowed, represented freedom and mobility. From a broader and
more open set of events, this change in society’s infrastructure
constitutes a strategic danger to the viability of the global
environment. The failure to view matters from an open and
dynamic perspective rooted in a philosophy of process and
relationality results in disjunctive and discordant development
rather than integrative and harmonious development. From the
perspective of open systems, what appears in the initial stages of
development as integrative and harmonious may degenerate into
disjunctive and discordant development.
In respect to educational systems that emphasize standardized
test taking, we may observe several parallels with the stress
resultant upon the changes in society’s infrastructure.
Enormous stress arises upon the individual students.
Similarly great strain occurs in the relation between parent and
child as the parent’s expectation for their child’s future is
concentrated in the quality of their performance during a few days
testing in the student’s life. There is also too often a
correlative “polluting” of the educational environment in which the
values of prestige, money, fame and position become the extrinsic
motivation of learning overwhelming the purity of the love of
learning, the exercise of curiosity, the delight of discovery and
the reverence for learning. There are numerous and poignant
stories of how Japanese students focus incredible energy to pass
tests to gain university admission which, once gained, ironically
often leads to insipid efforts and achievements during the
university experience. The extrinsic value has replaced the
intrinsic value of learning and, therewith, the death knell of
creativity sounds.
The absence of research and creative synthetic learning within
the continuum of educational processes underlies the reason that
many prodigies become intellectually sterile adults and why far too
much graduate research constitutes empty, obscure and superficial
exercises in pedantry, rather than achievements illuminating
intellectually significant topics of research.
12.1
Educational systems must “reform the reforms” and new reforms
must weave the bright strands of creative, synthetic learning
throughout the educational process from its inception to its
conclusion. Education will then better perform its dual
functions of: (1) first transmitting, with appreciation and
respect, the knowledge and wisdom of the past, gained by antecedent
adventures of discovery; and (2) allowing the present to feel the
lure of future discovery. Educational experiences within
which are found the brilliant strands of such learning foster and
sustain the enthusiasm for learning and concurrently there is a
deepening and purifying among students of the passion for
discovery.
12.2
The lure which the future exerts in the present upon students
and teachers is a lure that should not diminish but rather
intensify with time and with increased knowledge. Neither
intellectual arrogance, nor smugness has any proper or positive
role to play given the complexity and immensity of reality. A
five year old child recently asked his father, “Dad, what is
infinity minus 100?” The infinite minus any finite number is,
of course, infinite. Humanity’s collective genius and
knowledge, however dazzling, remains finite and our ignorance
remains infinite.
12.3
To the extent that methods and modalities of creative synthetic
learning intensifies that lure to future exercises of curiosity and
discovery, societies are able to contribute to the creative advance
of human civilization. There is an ancient Chinese saying “In
the heavens above are many stars. On the earth below, one
people.” It is increasingly clear that it is to that one
integrated, interacting and interdependent global community that
the creative advance of human civilization must contribute.
With neither the Earth’s environmental nor our educational policies
and practices do we want narrow, “pragmatic” and short term bursts
of success. We want strategic and integrative modes of
development. In education, that means we must liberate
humanity’s collective genius.
13.1
After Whitehead left Cambridge University and the University of
London, Harvard for the first time waived its mandatory
retirement policy. There were two things worth noting.
In the midst of creating his great philosophic works integrating
mathematical logic, theoretical physics and philosophy, students
observed that whenever they met Whitehead, he would ask “What are
you working on, what are you thinking about?” And secondly,
it was said “Though he was the oldest person at Harvard, he was the
youngest.” His spirit and mind were the most active, the most
vibrant, the most profound, and the most embracing of new
inquiries.
China is the world’s oldest continuous civilization and China
made enormous contributions to human knowledge, discovery and
innovation, as did ancient Greek civilizations, ancient Egyptian
civilization, Europe in its Renaissance, India, Persian and Muslim
civilization during other historic periods.
The world needs renewal on many fronts, including in the arena
of education. The world needs rekindling of the spirit of
innovation, boldness and creativity of thought. The world
needs synthesis of ideas, fresh generalization of insight and more
profound discoveries if the world is to creatively advance.
The education reforms of China, India and other ancient cultures
must contribute to this liberation of curiosity, freshness of
discovery and increase in wisdom. Humanity as a whole needs
that freshness, vitality and insatiability of curiosity that
characterizes youthfulness, whatever the historic age or whatever
the culture which the spirit of insatiable curiosity inhabits.
14.1
Synthetic thinking, we must note, is not antagonistic to
analytic thinking. Whitehead and Russell’s Principia
Mathematica is indeed one of history’s most vigorous and
monumental works in analytic thinking and Whitehead’s Process
and Reality is a monumental example of synthetic
thinking. But analytic thinking without synthetic thinking is
form without substance.
In contrast, synthetic thinking untempered and unsculpted by
analytic thinking is substance without form, clarity, coherency and
cogency. At best synthetic thinking devoid of analytic
thinking is evocative, but not illuminating of truth.
Educational systems need to encourage the integration of analytic
and synthetic thinking, the harmony of form and
substance.
14.2
During the 20th century, analytic thinking dominated
much of western philosophic and political thinking.
Philosophers, with the exception of Alfred North Whitehead, became
immersed in analytic modes of thought and abandoned the synthetic
and speculative modes of thought that had historically
characterized the philosophic tradition. Philosophy
increasingly assumed an acquiescent and passive position towards
science. Philosophy became more concerned with the
methodologies of science and less with the substance of scientific
concepts and premises. Philosophy’s major concern became to
interpret and justify science rather than to challenge and offer
creative constructive alternatives to the concepts, axioms,
theorems and presuppositions underlying contemporary science.
It is, however, only by exercising its traditional role of seeking
coherency where incoherency prevails, illumination and consistency
where the bizarre reigns and breadth of vision where narrowness of
perspective prevails that synthetic philosophic insights can help
transform science.
When synthetic and creative thinking are active and vital,
visions of new phenomena, new relations and new modes of
orderliness emerge. While new and more coherent concepts and
axioms may help interpret known phenomena and data, the central and
creative function is to envision of phenomena, new relations and
new laws of nature and order. It reflects the difference
between brilliance and creative genius. Creative synthetic
learning seeks to provoke and nurture creative genius and the
opening of fresh vistas of inquiring and understanding. It is
crucial to instill the capacity to see beyond prevailing principles
and known phenomena.
15.1
It is important for educational systems to be imbued with a
sense of the relevance and importance of theory to all fields of
intellectual inquiry. The narrow emphasis upon practice and
pragmatism misconceives and distorts the relationship between
practice and theory.
When concepts, axioms, theorems and presuppositions are
critically and constructively examined and transformed to achieve
greater coherency, consistency and cogency, and when
generalizations of generalizations (theories) are developed that
attain greater comprehensiveness, such quantum leaps in theoretical
understanding inevitably lead to new practical results, new
technical innovations, new engineering applications and the
perception and creation of new kinds of phenomena. Theory
begets practice. Students should be made keenly aware of the
role that the transformation of theoretical understanding plays in
transforming practical reality. There are innumerable
examples of the power of good theories to transform practice.
But refinement in theoretical understanding necessitate the
continuous discourse between practice and theory; that discourse in
turn requires the pro-active engagement of educators and their
students with both the realm of practice and the realm of
theory. From the throne of powerful theories constructive
transformations of practical reality invariably flow.
The capacity of China and India to contribute to theoretical
innovation should be neither neglected nor underestimated.
The 21st century will witness the replacement of Great
Walls separating theoretical creativity by the erection of Great
Bridges allowing the 2-way flow of ideas, data and theories.
This global interaction necessitates the appreciation and the
arousal of the potential for creative genius in the realm of theory
by the East. It also requires that the West experiences the
further integration and revival of European genius so that the
world does not suffer either a brain drain nor a concentration of
intellectual talents within narrow geographic or cultural
boundaries.
Whitehead was particularly sensitive to this need. The
metaphysics Whitehead developed based upon process and organism,
community and relationality, polar contrasts not strict
dichotomies, openness not closeness, variety not sameness, is a
philosophy very akin to traditional Eastern modes of thought.
From a Whiteheadian perspective we anticipate enormous theoretical
contributions from the East.
The last two-thirds of the 20th century witnessed
disjunctiveness and discordance in economic and social
development. Two world conflagrations occurred as did the
Great Depression. The Holocausts of both Europe and the East,
environmental degradation, cultural decay and other forms of
discordance characterized much of world history during the
20th century.
In the realm of theory, the heretical became the new orthodoxy
and the new dogmas, like older dogmas, became unassailable.
The bizarre and
the incoherent were often taken to the nth degree and the result
was mistaken for illumination.
The world in respect to issues of international relations,
economic integration, environmental protection and development of
fundamental theoretical understanding requires new harmonies and
greater coherency. The theory of creative synthetic learning
aims to contribute to the arousal of humanity to create new
harmonies of harmonies in our cultural, intellectual and practical
life.
16.1
Conclusion
Journeys of curiosity resolved in adventures of discovery
represent experiences that are both intellectual and
emotional. It is the depth and purity of curiosity that: 1)
impels the lure to discovery and 2) generates and sustains the
determination and perseverance needed to overcome obstacles and
transverse the twists and turns, rises and falls, dead ends,
retreats and advances inevitably encountered in the process of
discovery. Communities of problems also provoke a sense of
wonder and humility in the conscious presence of the plethora of
phenomena constituted by such communities. Adventures of
discovery spark exhilaration. The attainment of
generalizations of insight evokes that quietude of wisdom that
arises when we discern patterns of orderliness among phenomenon,
which previously was perceived merely in their randomness and
differentiation. Generalizations of insights display the
bonding, synthesis and connectedness of phenomenon where mere
separateness was first presumed to dwell. In the perception
of the bonding, synthesis and relationally of being, reverence for
the diversity expressed in creation enters the human soul.
Creative, synthetic learning leads students and teachers alike to
experience the emotions of wonder, humility, lure, joy,
determination, exhilaration and reverence. It is these
emotions and cultivated instincts that synthetic creative learning
aims to develop and which sustain self-motivation and learning for
its intrinsic, rather than extrinsic, value to the human mind,
heart and soul.
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