Universal Education and the University

The idea of a university is the logical outgrowth of the idea of the collegium. This is the idea that people should get together to engage in educational discourse, edifying each other and those who are in attendance but not otherwise engaged. A university is just a collegium with a larger ambit; or as formulated in the USA, a college with the 'will teach postgrad courses and grant postgrad degrees' role tacked on.

The graduates of such a collegium or university could then become professors, that is, people who had thrashed out their ideas, threshed out the chaff from their ideas, and trashed the bad ideas, so as to be able to profess something worth professing. The whole idea was to go through the process first and then go out into the world to make it a better place (or not).

This was why most universities of old grew up as relatively cloistered environments akin to monasteries. The word 'edifice' from Latin aedificium (what they called libraries, mostly) reflects that. Sadly, many modern buildings are edifices that do not edify (much as many sacrifices these days do not make sacred).

In the early days only people who valued education went into such institutions. This changed when education was seen as imparting economic value to graduates. Then getting the degree became more important to the majority of the world than actually going to a college or university. And, as with watches, clothing and the luxury versions of all such consumer goods, labels also became worth something.

However, there are many simple tests of educational quality. Some come with counter-tests.

For example, ask a student whether there is such a thing as absolute truth. If that student replies in the negative, then ask whether this negative is absolutely true. On the other hand, an educated mind can juggle n+1 contradictory ideas in n sections of the brain while working out how to verify and hold on to n-1 of them for further analysis.

A good institution will have made students who, formerly unable to survive a battery of these simple tests, can do so by the time they graduate. For students who could already survive such a battery, the institution will have made them able to design and deploy such tests themselves.

All this, of course, leads to a society where ideas are thrashed, threshed and trashed more accurately and usefully. Or in theory, that's what should happen. Universally.

Dharmaratna

It was many years ago that I first came across this particular term. It is Sanskrit in origin, and I encountered it because I had a friend who bore it as a name.

Dharma, of course, is a concept of that which is right and hence supports what ought to be the nature of things. It is duty, devotion, discipline; it comes from the Sanskrit root dhri, 'to uphold or sustain'. Ratna means 'jewel' or 'gem' — it is something that is crystalline and bears its essence in the most exact and excellent way.

The idea of dharmaratna, then, is the idea of 'the essence of universal law'. It is that in which we live and move and have our being. Some things never change.

This is one such thing.

Simplicity

The ancients made a virtue of simplicity. Traces of this remain even in this age of complexity; when a scientist or mathematician says a solution is 'elegant', it might mean 'symmetrical', 'solves more problems than it creates', or 'easily understood'. Most often, 'elegant' is 'simple' of sorts – lacking complexity of form while containing depth of meaning.

Theology is a simple discipline in any religious context; if the faith is beyond apprehension, or beyond the exercise of simple reason, it necessarily discriminates against the simple and casts doubts on its own claim to universality. Christianity, with its priesthood of believers, can make at least that claim; Science, in that sense, can also do that. If the theological or logical complexity is too great, the body of practice must be too arcane to be universal.

This is a fundamental paradox that strikes at the heart of claims to perfection. If a body of practice or belief is perfect, it must be accepted completely by everyone – the Baldur principle. If it is not, it is not yet perfect. On the other hand, if it is universally accepted by any possible measure and by every possible adherent, it becomes axiomatic – and thus is no longer a justified body of belief or practice, but part of the system by which other things are justified.

The consequence of this situation is that all religion is flawed, unless a specific case of religion can be shown to meet the test of universality. If it does, it is no longer religion, but axiom. The only way to resolve this is to begin with axioms. The first axiom of a religious universe cannot be, "There is a God." We have to begin at the simplest level, by assuming that things exist, and that causation is possible but not necessary for all things.

But if we do that, then there is no necessary conclusion. Which means that if we live in a religious universe, we either have to accept God-who-is-not-axiomatic, or leave logic out of it. It all leads me to believe that God is impugned by atheists for the simple reason that He cannot be dealt with in a comprehensive way. He's beyond comprehension of any sort (although not apprehension in all its myriad ways), which is either a cop-out, or the greatest truth of all.