Normal Science Graduates Too Many Sophomores

[coberst]

Normal Science Graduates Too Many Sophomores

 

Sophomoric—conceited and overconfident of knowledge but poorly informed and [intellectually] immature

 

American culture enshrines and ritualizes hubris.

 

Hubris—exaggerated pride or self-confidence

 

Specialization is a boon to narrow mindedness.

 

Our culture is permeated with an obsessive desire to acquire stuff. We educate our self so as to gain quick entry into the race for the acquisition of more stuff than our neighbor. We are going to hell in a shopping cart because our educational system focuses attention upon the practical problem of preparing our self for the race to efficiently produce and consume more stuff.

 

Normal science, i.e. those sciences controlled and guided by paradigms, which I guess are primarily those based upon the sciences of physics and chemistry, have been so successful in meeting their respective goals that we have placed this form of intellectual inquiry on too high a pedestal. We have become deluded into thinking that the methods utilized by these sciences are not only the best but the only useful means for acquiring valuable knowledge.

 

It is human nature to be attracted to the mere appearance of things; the survival of many kinds of animals is dictated by the ability of the male and female to attract one another resulting from the colors and forms of eye appeal. We dress in the morning often based upon what type of trial we are facing; we gain a sense of confidence when we are confident of our appearance.

 

Our culture provides us little incentive to examine the common principles of our nature in such matters as morality and aesthetics. Such principles represent the very foundation for our actions. We finish our formal schooling without even rudimentary comprehension of these fundamental aspects of our nature. Not only do we finish our schooling with this fundamental ignorance but we leave schooling with a disdain and dismissive attitude of such matters.

 

We finish schooling with a prejudice against our self. We develop a satisfaction only when we think of our self as being surrounded by objects and laws independent of our self. We finish school unaware of the psychology which is the instrument of our speculations about these laws and principles. We aggressively dismiss the exclusively “subjective and human department of imagination and emotion…we have still to recognize in practice the truth that from these despised feelings of ours the great world of perception derives all its value, if not also is existence…had our perceptions no connection with our pleasures, we should soon close our eyes on this world”.

 

I think that specialization is perhaps a necessity but it is not necessary, nor is it health, for us to graduate sophomores who lack the rudimentary knowledge of fundamental human capacities and limitations. Also the self congratulatory attitude resulting from a mistaken hubris leaves us handicapped in any effort to develop a sophisticated comprehension of our problems after our school daze are over.

 

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. (Mohandas Gandhi)

 

Quotes from “The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory” by George Santayana

[coberst]

It seems to me that our educational system has graduated far too many individuals who have not been educated but have been propagandized into thinking that the reality that they have been taught in their specialized study represents the most significant part of reality. It is like implanting into the mind that Kansas is the center of the world.

 

Our educational system is so preoccupied with producing good workers that it fails to graduate sophisticated intellects that are not only prepared but eager to discover what the rest of reality is all about.

 

Our educational system has graduated individuals who are not only grossly ignorant of reality beyond their own specialty but are arrogant in that ignorance.

 

Saul Bellows wrote in his introduction to “The Closing of the American Mind” by Allan Bloom “Professor Bloom’s book makes me fear that the book of the world, so richly studied by autodidacts, is being closed by the “learned” who are raising walls of opinions to shut the world out.”