TO TELL THE TRUTH:
Talking Across the Disciplines
by Curtis L. Hancock

Regardless, educators often exploit this Orwellian state of affairs and use it to absolve themselves from providing a defensible rationale of their educational programs. This evasion cheats the students out of seeing how knowledge is integrated and how the disciplines can relate to one another. A singular advantage of homeschooling is that, because it resists the endless succession of pedagogical fashions that confound educational bureaucracies, and because it can escape the corrosions of relativism, it can develop curricula that rest on sound and enduring philosophies of knowledge. Once knowledge itself is defended, homeschooling can demonstrate that knowledge has many kinds (that there are many ways of knowing) and that it is possible to integrate student learning across the disciplines.

C. P. Snow 1905-1980

When pressed, mainstream educators--those working at large in both private and public school bureaucracies--will retreat somewhat from the extreme view that there is no knowledge of any kind and adopt a more moderate stand. They will strike a compromise reminiscent of C.P. Snow's assessment of education in his book, The Two Cultures: a concession is made that there is genuine knowledge where empirical science is concerned, but other disciplines must consign their subject matter to the realm of mere opinion. While Snow popularly championed this attitude decades ago, it still casts its spell over educators.

This compromise, while philosophically objectionable, is admittedly a mixed blessing. It means, at least, that the integrity of the natural sciences is generally protected in modern curricula. Even when their general relativistic outlook seems to imply it, most educators cannot bring themselves to relegate science to the dust bin of sheer opinion. Still, it is more than a curiosity that some multiculturalists have gone that far. Recently, a colleague procured for me a syllabus of a mathematics course at the State University of New York at Plattesburg on "ethnomathematics," which maintains that mathematics, like everything else presumably, is culturally determined. The syllabus even specifies that one must understand how mathematics involves race, gender, and politics. Of course, no one denies that these things may come into play in how our learning is conditioned--no doubt all kinds of influences operate--but this does not mean that race, gender, and politics have anything to do with the content of mathematics. To suggest it does is absurd. The square root of 16 has no race, gender, or party affiliation. I may have learned the multiplication table in the 1950's at John Adams Elementary School in Oklahoma City, but it is absurd to assert that, on account of that circumstance and origin, my multiplication is irreducibly "Oklahoman." Instead, five times five equal twenty-five for people in all states, and on all continents for that matter.

Nonetheless, for political motives educators will advocate such extremes. Some scholars, at distinguished universities by the way, argue that science has largely been a plot by imperializing Europeans to dominate colonial peoples. Recently, I  received a catalogue from a prominent university press detailing books distinguishing between "Colonial" and "Post-Colonial" Science and between "Northern Science" and sciences in other climes and locales. Mercifully, these voices are in the minority. The majority of educators still point to scientific method as providing genuine knowledge, and they will point to their scientific curriculum as proof that knowledge still finds a place in their academy.

While this concession provides them some cover, it nonetheless abandons a large body of "knowledge" to drift into the vortex of relativism. As I said, the concession to science is a mixed blessing. Educators frequently use this "two cultures" description of the academy as an excuse to politicize the rest of the curriculum. This is why outside of the natural sciences there is so much sophistry and lame ideology in the educational establishment. Once religion, metaphysics, the humanities, and morality are all relegated to sheer opinion--perhaps even reduced to matters of taste--then politics becomes an attractive way to fill the vacuum so as to "integrate" learning. These matters are just "political constructs" after all, educators often tell us. This is one of the reasons for the blatant political indoctrination that passes for education in today's curricula.

Rene Descartes 1596-1650

To combat this reduction of all genuine learning to empirical science and to challenge the resulting claim that all other ways of learning are just "political constructs," it might be first helpful to remind ourselves from where this oversimplification about knowledge originated. It was fashionable long before C.P. Snow. It has its source in the earliest rumblings of modern philosophy, taking us back to the time of Descartes and to Enlightenment thinkers that he spawned. To Descartes the prevailing disagreement among Renaissance philosophers was cacaphonous. He sought to end these interminable disputes by placing philosophy on a new foundation. He observed that mathematics, and the sciences allied with it, such as physics, optics, and chemistry, were beyond dispute. Controversies did not plague mathematics as they did philosophy and

Spinoza 1632-1677

theology. If philosophy, he speculated, could develop after the fashion of mathematics, it too would escape the mire of interminable controversy. This was Descartes' dream: to philosophize à la the mathematician. Philosophia more geometrico demonstrata, his disciple, Spinoza, later intoned: we must philosophize "after the fashion of a geometrical demonstration."

Of course, within a century after Descartes' effort to reconfigure philosophy as mathematics, the European intelligentsia had dismissed Descartes' "dream" as a failure. Sadly, Descartes' efforts had only reinforced the belief that there was, on the one hand, knowledge (mathematics and empirico-mathematical science), while there was, on the other, only objects of sentiment or feelings (religion, metaphysics, aesthetics, and morality). Somehow these latter issues were considered important but were outside the realm of rational discourse. Discourse is relevant in science, but there is no point in attempting to demonstrate matters of sentiment or taste. De Veritate disputandum est; de gustibus non disputandum est. "On matters of truth argumentation has a point, but on matters of taste argumentation is pointless."

At any rate, this attitude about knowledge--which C.P. Snow reiterated in The Two Cultures--is centuries old. It has been used by Enlightenment intellectuals for a long time as an excuse to marginalize religion, metaphysics, and morality. This excuse is often implicit whenever protests of indignation decry any attempt by a theologian to criticize scientific theories and explanations.

Charles Darwin 1809-1882

Religious persons have no right to criticize Darwin, I have heard it said, because religion deals with matters that lie outside the boundaries of scientific examination, where truth and falsehood are real issues. (De Veritate disputandum est.) Religion is about symbols and poetry, expressions of sentiment, not fact. (De Gustibus non disputandum est.). Should the theologian protest, she or he is met with the reply that religion ought to welcome this separation, for if religion is totally different from and irrelevant to science, then science cannot undermine it. Religion and science can never really contradict each other. How do facts refute poetry? Of course, it takes only a moment's reflection to see that this bargain is small consolation for religion, since it removes it of truth-content. This is just one illustration of how this attitude still plays out in education today. Just as religion can be marginalized in this way, so too can philosophy in general, the humanities, aesthetic judgment, and moral understanding.

This reduction of knowledge to science and its accompanying relativism about other ways of knowing has undermined the ability of educators to foster integration across the disciplines, which traditionally was the hallmark of wisdom. Descartes and his progeny have flattened knowledge down to one simple kind: quantitative knowledge. But in order to amplify our students' intellects so that they have a rich, diverse knowledge that can be integrated and can generate wisdom, one must show that there is more under heaven and earth than is dreamed of in this Cartesian philosophy.

At bottom that philosophy of education is best that conforms to our common sense understanding. But it offends common sense to think that mathematical science alone can supply knowledge. For one thing, such a claim is self-refuting. Think about it. That proposition itself is neither a mathematical nor a scientific statement. It is a philosophical claim. So, ironically, if it is true, it is false! Furthermore, it is neither through mathematics nor through science that it can be demonstrated. It is a philosophical declaration only, and a dogmatic one at that.

Aristotle 384 B.C. - 322 B.C.

Secondly, there is no reason to think that our human understanding should be terrorized by the sole standard of mathematics. While mathematical knowledge enjoys a certainty and clarity different from other ways of knowing, it does not follow that non-mathematical ways of knowing are counterfeits. Non-mathematical things can be known even if they cannot be known with the sureness of mathematics. Aristotle observed that it is the mark of the educated person to look at each kind of object and let it convey its own specifications for knowledge. It is fallacious to think that all kinds of knowledge can have legitimacy only if they are parasitic on or if they imitate mathematics. I have good reason to trust my fellow motorist, who waves me into snarled traffic, my barber, who puts a razor to my neck, and my wife, who has sworn her fidelity--and yet I have not used mathematical and scientific methodologies to establish these outcomes. I don't have to. There are other ways of opening our intellects to the intuitions and the evidences of common sense. It is just a prejudice handed down from Enlightenment

Mozart 1756-1791

intellectuals and promulgated by naive (or politicized) educators to say I cannot. Science cannot explain to you why the verse of Shakespeare or the music of Mozart is superior to the "lyrics" or the "compositions" of Hancock. But should I sing a few bars, you would know.   

Escaping the skeptics' and the relativists' oversimplifications about knowledge, we overcome narrow and politically charged modern educational curricula. Buoyed by a vigorous common sense wisdom--that reality is diverse and that its richness is accessible to our senses and our intellects--we can develop curricula that integrate many ways of knowing, mathematical science certainly, but much more besides. There are many disciplines, because there are many ways that real things can show themselves, from diverse vantage points, to the human knower. There are

Cicero 106-43 B.C.

better guides for education than the modernists who have mired us in skepticism. The classical common sense realists--such as, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Plotinus, Thomas Aquinas, who can be encountered in the Great Books--can be our mentors and can give us a better, alternative account of "enlightenment." The primary beneficiaries of this restoration of human knowledge will be our students.        

In spite of their protests, we should not be naive to think that modern educators do not operate with assumptions about knowledge. As my above remarks suggest, their evasions about the nature of knowledge is really just a smokescreen for smuggling in by default a relativist view of knowledge. That, I suspect, is the more likely motive for avoiding the question. I once sat on a curriculum committee in which the Chair declared that "there are as many philosophies of knowledge as there are people sitting on this committee." To which the members on the committee responded: "Nay, there are as many as there are faculty and administrators at this college!" These remarks supposedly ring as truisms, a nod to the fact that knowledge in the last analysis is, like everything else, merely an individual matter. Such talk has resonance in a democratic society, where everyone is free to express his or her views. That is a very good thing, but in popular discourse this freedom often engenders the fallacious argument that, because everyone has a right to his or her opinion, every opinion is as valid as any other. This relativism even extends to what counts as knowledge. Therein lies a powerful clue as to why knowledge is a taboo subject. The belief that there is objective knowledge would compromise the implicit relativism about truth which has for political reasons served education so well in recent decades. Of course, curiously these propositions are put forward as true. Those who pronounce such dictums somehow are allowed their truth claims but the rest of us are forbidden ours. The question of knowledge, in light of this, becomes an embarrassment, for once the subject is addressed directly, then the duplicity of modern education is exposed: on the one hand, educational institutions profess to convey knowledge, on the other, their relativistic view of truth prevents that from really taking place.  Knowledge is like "Cousin It" in the basement, who the family of educators is not supposed to talk about, at least not substantively.

I have always suspected that this evasion also has another motive: if there is no philosophy of knowledge put forward to justify curricula, then educators are not accountable for having failed to satisfy standards of knowledge.

The excuses and the evasions, however, actually camouflage the insinuation of implicit philosophies of knowledge that take root and eventually narrow and undermine the potential of students.There are assumptions about knowledge that always underlie curricula, or the lack thereof. It is important that educational reformers be aware of this. Such awareness enables them to diagnose deficiencies in fashionable educational curricula and to arm themselves against committing similar errors. Such awareness enables them to supply a sound philosophy of knowledge to insure that students integrate their knowledge and can discourse across the disciplines.

One of the more bemusing features of today's educational establishment is that, while the protests are as shrill as ever that education is the remedy for modern ills, modern educators generally labor under so many distortions and errors about what knowledge is that they cannot insure that their students are really being educated at all. Actually, I may have spoken hastily. To say they have distorted conceptions of knowledge may be to credit them too much. It may be more accurate to say they have no views about knowledge at all, at least not explicit ones. It appears that educators generally ignore inquiring about the nature of knowledge altogether. There are reasons for this ignorance and evasion. What knowledge is must be an embarrassing question for modern educators. They have been swamped over recent generations by so many trends and fashions that they must face a daunting task sorting through all this competitive debris (or cacaphony) and separating out what rings true and what does not. Having searched for fashionable bromides rather than a sound philosophy of knowledge, they no longer know even how to launch such a discussion. In the wake of this, the nature of knowledge becomes a taboo subject.

One suspects that education under such circumstances really becomes political indoctrination in disguise, for there is something Orwellian about an education that makes no commitments to knowledge or truth. A few years ago I witnessed a commencement speech by the valedictorian at a distinguished Ivy League university express her gratitude that during her four years at college no professor had the gall to tell her that something was true. It never dawned on her that her time and money were wasted if she invested in an "education" which communicated nothing true. Education comes from the Latin ex-ducere, meaning "to lead out of." The classical presumption is that education leads one out of ignorance to knowledge. But if there is no truth conveyed, there is no knowledge and our valedictorian has been the victim of fraud. Of course, we know she was only joshing. You can bet that she was told all kinds of "truths," during her four years at the university, especially the "truth" that there is no "truth," as well as a litany of politically correct truisms, which the rest of her talk indicated she had imbibed enthusiastically.

Such a sad event--demonstrating that even the best and the brightest can be duped by the pernicious relativism endemic in higher education today--takes place because educators are neither able nor willing to address the nature of knowledge and to explain its possibility. They assert it when it suits them--when they have a political agenda to sustain; they deny it when it is inconvenient--when someone wants to judge their educational programs as smokescreens for cultural and political indoctrination. For, after all, if knowledge is not about reality but is merely a construction of society, then he or she "knows" and "thinks correctly" when social authority authorizes it. That is why I said modern education gets sucked into an Orwellian vortex in the end. 

Beware also the assumption that only science conveys knowledge. This is part of the Cartesian fallout. It is an effective device to marginalize the voice of religion from effective education. Religion is thereby reduced to mere poetry.

Thomas Aquinas believed the disciplines could talk to one another because they had a common object: the truth. What they did was to look at the truth/reality from different perspectives. The disciplines to the extent they have truths complement each other; they do not contradict each other; truth is a unity. Knowledge signifies, if it is authentic, the mind's grasp of reality of the uni-(one) verse. This is a key principle in education, because if one is to be educated, one must be able to integrate what one learns with what one already knows.

Curtis L. Hancock has been surprising his readers for years with his fresh reinventions of classical philosophy. His successful contemporary philosophical dialogue How Should I Live? (co-authored with Randolph M. Freesell) is now in print around the world in multiple languages.  Professor of Philosophy at Rockhurst University, he has also produced a wide array of scholarly publications, in addition to co-authoring the Father Shrader Mystery books. Brilliant!   A Father Shrader Mystery The Case Of Ockham's Razor Audio tapes $21.88 "The rare murder mystery that illuminates the world of ideas with vivacious imagination and wit."    - Edmond Miller

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