Disciplinary Philosophies 101

Just for a moment, if I were asked to be in charge of teaching a course like The Disciplines: Philosophies of Knowledge, I would take a deep breath and then say, "No." Or maybe, just say, "Know."

Why?

Because it has occurred to me that teaching this to students guarantees, under the majority of present systems of education, that they become largely independent of all but the best teachers. The rest would be superfluous, and that would upset them for various reasons – loss of authority, power or control; loss of prestige; loss of meaningful exertion (or pretense thereat); and of course, loss of income, logically speaking.

But let's just for the sake of argument say that I was going to do it. What would I include?

I think it would be hard. We'd have to begin with the earliest forms of knowledge, forms dating back to times before formal education (or at least, literate formal education). How to see. How to listen. How to tell a story. How to remember. How to hunt and/or find something. Magic. Cooking. Sex. Life. Farming. How to make stuff. How to make things out of the stuff you made.

And then, we'd have to look at literacy and numeracy, and their descendants. Then systems, patterns, relationships – and how to invent them, create them, modify and confuse them. The art of religion, the religion of art. The alchemy of beauty, the beauty of alchemy.

Then it occurs to me. We of the old pantheon did try very hard to do it. And it was all set aside. Too difficult for the children, some people said. Whoever they were. And that brings me back to the beginning of this odd post. "No."