The Historic Background of Humanistic Study

Ancient Greek thinkers, represented by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, were not uniform in their views on the relation of humans and nature; but this relation never took the deeply dualistic form that it tends to assume among modern thinkers. Socrates rejected natural science as a distraction from the profoundly more important questions of the nature and aim of human life. Plato elevated science and philosophy over literary studies, but believing humans to be embedded in a natural cosmos he held that knowledge of nature ultimately served understanding of the ultimate purpose of human life. Aristotle believed the purpose of human life was contemplation after the fashion of gods, which meant knowledge of what is universal and necessary; hence laws of nature made better subject matter than the transient affairs of humans. Dewey concludes that despite differences in the details, the views of ancient thinkers together show that

In later ancient periods the prestige of literary studies rose as culture became more retrospective and politics and rhetoric dominated public life. Though Greece had lost political power, Hellenistic and Roman civilizations looked backward to Greek ideas and Greek literature for learning and cultural development; and extensive Roman administrative activities augmented the importance of textual records. The significance accorded speech, text, and recorded history diverted attention from nature to literature and letters.

If Greek tradition continues today to influence literary education as something separate from science, it remains to identify the means of transmitting that influence through the intervening centuries; and Dewey finds it in Scholasticism or the methods of the Church-controlled institutions of learning in medieval Europe. Europe repeated the Roman model and borrowed ideas, art, and law from the Greeks; but this reliance on tradition was reinforced by the dominance of the Church, whose authority lay in texts composed in foreign languages. As a result, learning became identified with mastery of the literary languages of authoritative texts, and educational methods emphasized definition and interpretation of texts rather than inquiry into nature and inventive creation. And this gave rise to Scholasticism, which is, according to Dewey, “the whole-hearted and consistent formulation and application of the methods which are suited to instruction when the material of instruction is taken ready-made, rather than as something which students are to find out for themselves” (MW 9: 289). Scholastic methods are employed, thinks Dewey, whenever instruction comes from textbooks, depends on the principle of authority, and regards learning as acquisition rather than inquiry. This Scholastic inheritance, of course, sacrifices the Greek humanism that fostered keen interest in nature. In fact, attention to nature threatens to upset any scheme built upon texts taken as already complete in themselves. Hence, it is not inquiry into nature but rather deference to authority that is the foundation of Scholasticism, because it ensures the continued significance of texts and the power of those who interpret them.

The Modern Scientific Interest in Nature

The fifteenth-century revival of learning in Europe stimulated new interests in human life and its relation to nature, and educated readers appreciated Classical Greek literature for its spirit of freedom and the order and beauty it observed in nature. This inspired the sixteenth-century rise of scientific inquiry into physical nature and a naturalistic perspective that regarded humans as epitomizing patterns found in the broader physical universe.

But this history, Dewey acknowledges, re-emphasizes the question of how humans and nature later came to be divided, and how science and humanities came to occupy opposite poles. He proposes four reasons: the established institutions that shaped concrete living, the theological conflicts occasioned by the Protestant revolt, the conception of natural sciences and understanding of inquiry in a pre-scientific social context, and the way philosophy took up the new science:

1. (a) Established institutions: First, political, legal, and diplomatic institutions remained tied to tradition and authoritative texts because there were no social sciences to propose solutions for problems in these areas. Second, educational institutions remained firmly scholastic, with teachers rarely trained in sciences and scientists working outside of teaching institutions; additionally, the well-established methods of language instruction ensured that when Greek literature finally was widely taught it was assimilated to older traditions rather than allowed to further inspire scientific inquiry into nature. Third, aristocratic tradition remained strong and maintained its disdain for manipulating material things and attending to the senses, both of which are required for effective experimental science.

2. (b) Protestant revolt: The revolt against the Catholic Church resulted in continual theological controversies that attracted much attention and generated great intellectual effort. All sides in these disputes appealed to authoritative literature and so required defenders well trained in textual interpretation. Dewey observes that by the seventeenth century, training in languages and literature was guided by theological concerns and employed in religious education and controversy; and methods developed in this context rather than in the fifteenth-century renascence of naturalism have shaped the path of language and literature education to the present.

3. (c) Conception of natural sciences: Science, in spite of its ability to explode prejudice and dogma (LW 5: 115), was conceived and applied according to traditional (and so pre-scientific) ideals; and this promoted rather than eliminated divisions between humans and nature. While science is able to give humans new ends – that is, new social ideals shaped by communal inquiry and not limited by overwhelming want of security or education – it was instead made to serve the old, narrow ends of one class, which survived and enriched itself by exploiting another class. “Production and commerce,” writes Dewey, “were carried on as if the new science had no moral lesson, but only technical lessons as to economies in production and utilization of savings in self-interest” (MW 9: 292). This, in turn, strengthened the reputation of science as being coldly materialistic and indifferent or even hostile to concerns of human well-being. Since science was generally restricted to serving pecuniary interests and its moral lessons of the import of co-operation and free communication were often ignored, advocates for languages and literature assumed the role of articulating moral interests and human ideals (ideals which typically served the aristocracy, who benefited from the economic exploitation of science).

   The restricted application of science is a problem that Dewey addresses throughout his works. In Individualism Old and New (Reference Dewey and Boydston1930), he writes that science “touches our dealings with things but not with one another. We use scientific method in directing physical but not human energies” (LW 5: 114–15). The result is that we control energies of nature but we do not control the use of science; rather, “the resources of the science and technology that have mastered the physical forces of nature […] control us” (LW 5: 86).Footnote ² Dewey’s point is that this limited application of science leaves many matters under control of traditional beliefs rather than intelligent inquiry. When problems designated non-scientific (because they are designated moral or social or logical, for example) are relegated to guidance by tradition and prejudice, then only problems designated as physical benefit from scientific inquiry (though only in a limited way). This division between problems that science applies to and problems left to tradition and prejudice, of course, deepens the divide between nature and humans.

   Much of Dewey’s philosophical work aims at extending the influence of intelligent inquiry over activities harmfully directed by tradition, myth, and prejudice. His instrumentalism or experimental thinking, as articulated in Studies in Logical Theory (1903)Footnote ³ and Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938), is an understanding of logic in evolutionary terms. It applies lessons from successful scientific methods to an understanding of thinking and inquiry, taking ideas as means or tools to be tested and refined in the concrete activities of solving problems. His Ethics (1908, rev. 1932), written with James Tufts, gives up the idea of one all-encompassing moral theory that can resolve all moral conflicts, focusing instead on growth as an intelligent inquirer into concrete moral problems. Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920) and The Quest for Certainty (1929) attempt to liberate philosophical activity more broadly from the historical limitations that have promoted dualisms and supported prejudices and superstitions. The need for the liberation of philosophy by a genuine scientific attitude can be seen in the next historical reason for the separation of humans and nature.

4. (d) Philosophy: The way philosophy took up the new science was, on Dewey’s view, hardly scientific, and it promoted a separation of human concerns and physical nature. Philosophies claiming to be based on science were either dualistic – dividing mind (which represented human concerns) and material world (which represented physical nature) – or mechanistic – reducing everything to matter in motion and regarding significant human concerns illusory. Dualistic philosophies had the effect of investing language and literary studies with authority over morals and meanings since these were designated elements of mind, and science studied only what was recognized as matter. Mechanistic philosophies contributed to the unfavorable view of science as hostile to human concerns by portraying science as denying reality to perceptual qualities and feelings and so granting reality only to quantifiable characteristics such as length, mass, velocity, etc. “Such a philosophy,” writes Dewey, “does not represent the genuine purport of science. It takes the technique for the thing itself; the apparatus and the terminology for reality, the method for its subject matter” (MW 9: 293). In other words, mechanistic philosophy does not take mathematics as a method for dealing with natural forces but rather as a revelation of the absolute reality of nature; but the plausibility of such a conversion of mathematics relies necessarily on faith rather than fullness of experience for its sanction. In the case of both dualistic and mechanistic philosophies, no connection between science and humanities could be reasonably maintained.

The Present Educational Problem

Resolving the conflict between science and humanities requires rejecting ideas that separate experience from nature and acknowledging the character of experience gained through scientific inquiry. Biological science shows that humans are continuous with nature; we have developed in and because of natural conditions.Footnote ⁴ This is demonstrated by the experimental method through which knowledge develops and grows as we actively attempt to direct natural forces according to ideas that have arisen through interaction with those forces.Footnote ⁵ Hence, “experience knows no division between human concerns and a purely mechanical physical world” (MW 9: 294); experience is, as remarked earlier, an integrated unity. The human being is part of that unity and “not an alien entering [nature’s] processes from without” (MW 9: 294).Footnote ⁶ This means that social questions are as amenable to scientific inquiry as questions about physical nature.

The vital connection between humans and nature, thinks Dewey, points the way for education, which “should aim not at keeping science as a study of nature apart from literature as a record of human interests, but at cross-fertilizing both the natural sciences and the various human disciplines such as history, literature, economics, and politics” (MW 9: 294–5). Education should bring together science and human interests, which, observes Dewey, is how students have their experiences outside of educational institutions: our social activities always involve – depend on and influence – knowledge of material nature. The fruits of science and our everyday lives are intertwined, and Dewey points out the pervasive industrial processes that “are so many cases of science in action”: engines, transportation, communication technologies (MW 9: 296). Our livelihoods, homes, health care practices, and normal vistas all show intimate connections with scientific principles. These cases of science in action, according to Dewey, make the best starting points for scientific instruction. Students will benefit more from first understanding these familiar cases than from beginning with something branded “science” by an educational institution.

This pedagogical approach, by placing scientific facts in their human contexts, cultivates perception of the fuller meanings of scientific material, which increases the significance and cultural value of science. Such perception is directly tied to Dewey’s definition of “humanism” as “an intelligent sense of human interests” (MW 9: 297). Having this humanistic sense includes perceiving how things relate to or affect social conditions, or how, in Dewey’s words, they function in life. Cultivating this sense requires an ever-expanding imaginative vision of possible experiences, that is, an increasing understanding of how people in situations different from your own are affected by technologies, policies, art works, economic arrangements, or whatever you are considering. Though literature traditionally has been thought to promote this humanistic sense, Dewey notes that literary studies actually may deaden this sense when they become narrow, technical, and self-enclosed. He further states that any “study so pursued that it increases concern for the values of life, any study producing greater sensitiveness to social well-being and greater ability to promote that well-being is humane study” (MW 9: 297). Cultivating a sense of human interests does not depend on any particular subject matters but rather on whether a given subject matter – whether it be designated literary or scientific or something else – is considered in an increasingly broad and living context.

For example, Marion T. Jackson’s (Reference Jackson2003) 101 Trees of Indiana: A Field Guide opens with a story of the demise of the American chestnut tree due to a fungal pathogen (Cryphonectria parasitica) believed to have come from Asia on infected plants. The author provides a living context by recounting his excitement in 1939 at joining his older siblings on a chestnut gathering expedition only to be disappointed when a persistent sore throat prompts his mother to keep him home. The next year there were no chestnuts to gather because the parasite had killed the local trees, and in a few more years none remained in the state. So, his missed opportunity turned out to be the last opportunity to gather chestnuts.

The story shows how the tree-destroying parasite and its global journey to the United States disrupted social activities and eliminated a meaningful element of the landscape for Indiana residents. The geography of the damage to the American chestnut tree takes on meaning when the affected lands are presented as occupied by actual human beings whose lives were integrated with the rhythms of the tree and who experienced a tangible and lasting disappointment at its loss. The prospects for recovery and present work to reintroduce blight-resistant forms of the species take on significance when placed in a history of change in human activities. And as an introduction to a field guide, the story suggests the importance of documenting the trees of an area and the possible rich experiences lying in actual exploration of forests and parks.

A view that accepts the division between humanities and science might see such a presentation of autobiography and history as stage setting to make the facts of science easier to swallow.Footnote ⁷ On this view, facts of nature, such as the elimination of the American chestnut by a fungal parasite, are in themselves indifferent to human concerns; and human interests in such facts could be only adventitious. When interests are regarded in this way, that is,

Then education risks becoming so-called edutainment, in which shallow pleasure is used to beguile students so that some detached facts might be retained like coins in a bank rather than taken up to solve concrete problems. And this serves to intensify the conflict between humanities and science by making science seem hard and sterile and humanities seem soft and vague, a distraction from the facts.

But on Dewey’s view of experience, in which human beings and the natural environment are inseparable in existence and are what they are because of their ongoing interaction, the story shows how interest is intrinsic to the facts. The fact of the trees succumbing to a parasite is undeniably of human interest; it is discriminated as a fact from the experienced situation precisely because that fact has value. The story demonstrates the human value of disciplined scientific inquiry, namely as a response to invasive parasites, disease, and destructive changes that harm human beings. Educationally, the story increases the significance and cultural value of science and promotes an intelligent interest in human values. It is an example of humane study that Dewey advocates because it increases concern for the values of life and produces sensitiveness to social well-being as it relates to a lost species of tree.

Dewey notes that Greek humanism lacked this growing sensitiveness, because of its reliance on slavery and economic exploitation. The older humanism limited imaginative vision by ignoring economic and industrial conditions; it cultivated an aristocratic culture that distinguished classes rather than promoting common interests. Dewey observes that

Class divisions promote the split between science and humanities, and the aristocratic ideal of culture lingers today in curricular contests between artificially separate subject matters.

But Dewey sees democratic potential in the aftermath of the science-led industrial revolution “which has brought different peoples in such close contact with one another through colonization and commerce that […] no country can harbor the illusion that its career is decided wholly within itself” (MW 9: 297–8). Education can develop this potential by taking up commercial and technological activities as opportunities for educating workers and also increasing the stability of culture for all. When education does in fact overcome the curricular separation of science and humanities, it will actively promote a more democratic society.Footnote ⁸