[Lonergan_l] education fragments
Doug Mounce
While helping my teenage twins study, I noticed that in chemistry they
used the Law of Conservation with the Kinetic Theory, and in history they
only used characters and events, to describe and explain foundations and
classification schemes.
The kids grasped how experience gives rise to this understanding about
Law, and they accepted the theory as they had hints about how it could be
proven, but does anyone teach Law and Theory in history? I know I didn't
when I was in a formal program, but I'm not sure I could teach it now
without the Law of GEM and the subject/object Theory. regards, Doug
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Doug Mounce
Well, I've come to a point where I'll probably say something in a class
I'm taking at Church. The lectures, by Phillip Cary with the Learning
Company, on the history of Christian theology, broadly present the
difference between East and West as acts by Augustine and Anselm using
logic to explore the nature of the Trinity while those in the East say
it's "too much logic" and reject those later Councils.
The course obviously is introductory, and most of the class is hearing
about these concepts for the first time. I think Cary has a similar view
to mine about Augustine's doctrine of election producing an anxious
experience of grace. I'm influenced by Webb's approach using Lonergan's
intentionality analysis in a hermeneutic of greek trinitariansism, and
Augustine's anxious circle of metaphor.
Has anyone else read these works, or have insight about Lonergan's view?
Lonergan himself, in the last lines of that portion of his *De Deo Trino*
translated into English as The Way to Nicea has said, "Given that later
systematisation, however, it is only with the greatest difficulty that we
who have inherited it can come to understand how the ante-Nicene authors
could in fact have said what in fact they did say" (1976: 137).
Joe F
Suppose chemistry were taught from personalities. One could discuss
the first modern chemist Lavoisier and his fate and show illustrations
of him administering oxygen to patients with respiratory ailments in
those early days. Then ask how he got to know about oxygen. Pasteur
went about giving shots to people bitten by rabid dogs. How did he
come to know about fermentations and the germ theory? That might
motivate a discussion of oxygen and carbon dioxide.
Joe
Doug Mounce
Phil McShane
I would advise not to get too far away from the twin's
life, SO, do something like Lonergan does in Method. Start with their
diaries and work towards their stories. BUT keep the languge twsaisted
towards their experience. When I was teaching this to young ladies we use to
find it fascinating to take an old wedding photo, "read it" 20 years later,
find the weave of the stories, the meaning of the people in the photo etc.
The basis of the story of oucrse is the ups and dowsn of whether people were
attentive to each other, intellgent, truth-loving, adventurous in their
planning whither of holidays or just dinners together, whata goals were
operative in the lives. The big danger in teaching "Lonergan" is that
Lonergan asks poeple to attend to themselves. So, yes, I would starat 2/3
rds of the way down page 182 of Method .. go on to 184. Then filt back to
MIT, 73, go fro inc anrante meaning to elements .... BUT always
experientially .... let them finhd the patterns of their own quests at their
age. From section 7 you could go to dable a bit inm section 10, which gives
a broad run at history. All this, of courses, when written up by you and
them, would make a nice handbook on the subject!!
Phil
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07:37:00
Sally McShane
this actually follows up on my advice re
history. What Augustine was at was self-attention, not logic. You might find
useful my article on the Trinity in Theological Studies 1962 ..... but the
challenge is to get people to read themselves which reading scripture. Since
you obviously have the trans, Collected Works vol 11, isn't it? - you can
find a good direction in the Scholion on Scripture at the end. If you havn't
got the trans I have a copy of that piece in my computer. The challenge is
to be experiential, to ask oneself about - slowly and "whatilly" - one's
understanding, one's speaking, one's giving one's word, one's listening.
Otherwise the group gets lost in learned debate.
Phil
----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Mounce" <mou...@uw.edu>
To: <loner...@skipperweb.org>
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07:37:00
Doug Mounce
Phil, thanks for the advice, I'll take it! I hopefully aim at getting
them to attend to themselves, and theory can wait, but what do you think
of Lonergan's idea of history?
Phil McShane
a hurried reply ... but first, re chemistry: you might
find Cantower 28 section 4 useful: re teaching chemistry from a current
grade 12 text.
Secondly, there is a massive problem here of identification, and by "here" I
also mean the website. It relates to Lonergan's talk of linguistic feedback
.... you and I, in the later culture, are to be luminously talking about
ourselves ..... it is a matter e.g. of leaving behind Panini and the
grammarians of Alexandria and England and relocating the interrogatives as
parts of speech ... so yes, with the twins the self-discovery of their own
wonder [ being killed in many classes, as no doubt you have noticed.]
Now re Lonergan on history.... he has good stuff elsewhere, but the two
chapters in Method are sort-of patched in to fill a gap.... they are not
"functionally orientated" ... .you are better going it alone, with the start
from story telling, the listener getting it "together", puzzling over
whether it is really true, etc..... as I say, use the early parts of chapter
8 in MIT.
And my best to the twins! I hope you warn them not to speak up in class
about insights, or concepts being different from memorized defintions etc
etc .... alas, they have to go with the flow to survive!
Phil
Catherine B. King
I like Phil's examples and suggestion. However, when he says to be careful
about what the twins say, I think Phil is talking more about the college
experience than the K-12 experience. I doubt a K-12 teacher would think
anything off-putting about children talking about their insights and
concepts, images, etc. My guess is that most teachers would be delighted
in, and are more resonant with, the reality of the learning experience in
their students than they are with the bad theories that are out there, even
though those children's expressions of their own experiences, and the
teacher's resonance with them, don't often dovetail well with the present
assessments and testing environment.
Also, most teachers and even principals in K-12 don't have publications with
bad philosophical underpinnings that they must defend. :o)
Catherine
Joe F
I don't presume to tell anyone how to raise their kids, I have my own
headaches. But I know that others have the knack. I don't.
But I thought it would good to start with the facts even if it might
be regarded that facts are already out there now and don't have
motivational properties of their own. And then when the facts are
known, the further determinations that make for concrete objectivity
could fall into play and the wonder could be unfolded from a naive
'holy cow' childish form of wonder to 'directed inquiry' which is the
more intuitive and mature form of wonder. Lonergan says this about
wonder:
"It is the wonder which Aristotle claimed to be the beginning of all
science and philosophy. But no one just wonders. We wonder about
something."
It's wondering about something worthwhile which makes for the wonder
that is of value. For that reason and on that basis it seemed like a
good idea at the time to give children in general something worth
wondering about, if only for starters. Good children in general get
turned on by the possibility of making a difference I find.
Freud for example claims to have been inspired by Darwin's explaining
power when still in the 'gymnasium', saying that he found in Darwin
hope for understanding the world. According to Lonergan Freud
discovered the genuine category of the psychogenic and his motivation,
I learned, was his not only his respect for his teacher Charcot and
compatriot Joseph Breuer but also a desire to be compassionate to
aphasic patients for whom deterministic sciences held out little hope.
So he didn't just wonder. He hoped, he healed. He wanted to help
someone. So I hold that it is the proper motivation to start with the
facts. And maybe i now go practice what I preach because we have
teenage twins too. Let me reach out to their humanity and then their
wonder. God bless.
Joe F
Is there a real distinction between Eros of the Mind and wonder?
Lonergan writes: “For there is...an eros of the mind. Without it there
would arise...no wonder”. INSIGHT p.74
Therefore wonder proceeds from, arises from, this 'eros of the mind'
if without an eros of the mind there would not arise wonder. And to
make sense of that sentence they must be really distinct. And if
distinct, eros of the mind precedes or is in some sense prior to
wonder.
But this same eros of the mind then transcends wonder and unfolds
into directed inquiry:
“It is the wonder which Aristotle claimed to be the beginning of all
science and philosophy. But no one just wonders. We wonder about
something.” Lonergan INSIGHT p.9
Lonergan writes:
"As a man cannot divest himself of his animality, so he cannot put off
the Eros of his mind. To inquire and understand, to reflect and judge,
to deliberate and choose..."
The eros of the mind seems to precede wonder and then transcend wonder
to unfold and include inquiry, thus a full expression of human
motivation appeals to the eros of the mind which precedes wonder.
The eros of the mind must engender wondering but processes to a
further unfolding. And although as Lonergan puts it, Aristotle claims
that wonder is the basis of philosophy. The substance of philosophy
must be the Eros of the mind which seems really distinct from wonder.
I admit it is must be an inadequate real distinction but nevertheless
a real distinction.
Joe
Doug Mounce
would be delighted, as am I, right?, but now I am obliged to send a
story about school kids in the hope that you like it.
In any case, I read the Cantower 28, and section 4 in detail. Hey,
there's a picture of Phil on the site I hadn't seen before.
Apologies-in-advance for these fragments, but MiT in Google books
doesn't have page 184 boo hoo.
What is education? Weren't the Hebrews the first ones to really
start schools?
Doug Mounce, MRFM Manager, 206-418-9591
Joe F
the transition from a pre-scientific to a scientific heuristic
structure. So the delight that leads to fully unfolded directed
inquiry into chemistry must be a delight in measurement. I wonder
where Faraday got his sense of wonder. The young Michael Faraday, one
of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had
to largely educate himself. At fourteen he became apprenticed to a
local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his
seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts'
The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the
principles and suggestions that it contained. He developed an interest
in science, especially in electricity. In particular, he was inspired
by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet. Those books
must have been so boring, so dusty and uninviting but this guy read
them.
Joe
Joe
Joe F
On 11/5/09, Joe F <172...@gmail.com> wrote: