Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Ways of Knowing

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Reflections on Criticality in Educational Philosophy

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Educational Philosophy and Theory ((PSEPT))

  • 10 Accesses

Abstract

What are some of the different ways of knowing? Why does tradition afford reason and René Descartes’ method such a privileged status? I consider the purchase that rationalistic conceptions of thinking and scientific methods of investigation have in education. I argue that they heavily influence educational research and teaching and learning and that we should question their relevancy before applying them to all our academic disciplines. Where paradigms cross, I argue that scholars should be open to receiving the legitimate findings of colleagues from other disciplines. What objections are there to the supremacy of science and the rationalistic conceptions of human thought? I outline some of the objections arising from the scholarly literature and argue that they need to be taken seriously. Finally, I ask whether there are any other accounts of rationality on offer? I argue that a critical education measures epistemological and ontological gains not simply through the sciences alone, but by incorporating all our forms of knowledge and ways of knowing including moral, hermeneutic, critical, Indigenous and the creative. I touch upon aesthetic ways of knowing.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    René Descartes’ ‘true Method of arriving at a knowledge of all things’ rests on a strict observance of the following four rules:

    • The first of these was to accept nothing as true which I did not clearly recognise to be so: that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitation and prejudice in judgments, and to accept in them nothing more than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly that I could have no occasion to doubt it.

    • The second was to divide up each of the difficulties which I examined into as many parts as possible, and as seemed requisite in order that it might be resolved in the best possible manner.

    • The third was to carry on my reflection in due order, commencing with objects that were the most simple and easy to understand, in order to rise little by little, or degrees, to knowledge of the most complex, assuming an order, even if a fictitious one, among those which do not follow a natural sequence relatively to one another.

    • The last was in all cases to make enumerations so complete and reviews so general that I should be certain of having omitted nothing. (Descartes 1983: 117–118).

  2. 2.

    By way of clarification concerning the sciences, the formal sciences encompass formal systems including logic, algebra, geometry, artificial intelligence and computer science. Deductive, a priori reasoning rather than empirical methodology is key. The natural sciences involve the biological, chemical, physical, geological and cosmological study of natural phenomena. Empirical methodology is employed. There is a cross-over with applied sciences such as engineering and medicine, for example, where scientific methods and scientific forms of knowledge are used to attain practical goals. The social sciences include areas as diverse as law, politics, sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology, history and archaeology.

  3. 3.

    See Descartes’ four rules (set out in Chapter 13, footnote 1 above).

  4. 4.

    See Apple (2019: 90–94), Cohen et al. (2011: 12–13), Eisner (2005: 37–38, 48, 96 and 100–102), Hall and Tandon (2017: 12), Jeffries (2016: 331–333), Noddings (2016: 108, 134–140, 172 and 220–224), Robson (2011: 20–21 and 30–31), Williams (2016: 12–15 and 28–30), and Winch (2009: 49).

  5. 5.

    See Cohen et al. (2011: 21–26), Flick (2014: 25–36), Noddings (2016: 134–140), Punch and Oancea (2014: 338–342), and Robson (2011: 17–20, 25–29 and 162–164).

  6. 6.

    My political and philosophical aims link criticality with the resolution of democratic and social justice issues and this specific approach underlies my investigations in Part III of this book.

  7. 7.

    We are not talking here about fundamental changes in our basic concepts and practices in ways analogous to, say, Newtonian physics being challenged by quantum physics or the theory of relativity.

  8. 8.

    Following convention, titles for Wittgenstein’s works are abbreviated (BB = The Blue and Brown Books and CV = Culture and Value), with section (§) or page number, and with the full citation and initials given in the References.

  9. 9.

    Think how far we have moved away from Plato’s theory of forms, Descartes’ mind–body dualism and the Enlightenment notion of a detached, objective observer.

  10. 10.

    I read ‘educational connoisseurship’ as the educator’s critical abilities to make known, to show, through her use of imagery or writing what is otherwise covert, hidden or implicit; and ‘educational criticism’ to be the requisite effort to reveal these important messages in her lessons.

  11. 11.

    Thomas Wartenberg points out that there is a debate about which particular Vincent van Gogh painting of a peasant’s shoes Martin Heidegger is addressing in his remarks on the subject (see Wartenberg 2005: 151).

References

  • Adorno, Theodor W. (2002) Aesthetic Theory. Translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor. London: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Apple, Michael W. (2019). Ideology and Curriculum. Fourth Edition. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnett, Ronald. (1997) Higher Education: A Critical Business. Buckingham: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barone, Tom and Elliot W. Eisner. (2012) Arts Based Research. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, Inc. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452230627

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Benjamin, Walter. (1998) The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Translated by John Osborne. New York: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berlin, Isaiah. (2013) The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays. Edited by Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer. Second Edition. London: Vintage Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, Louis, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison. (2011) Research Methods in Education. Seventh Edition. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, Andrew. (2018, July) ‘Can Wittgenstein Rescue Educational Research from Science?’ Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the British Wittgenstein Society, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Descartes, René. (1983) The Essential Descartes. Edited by Margaret D. Wilson. New York: NAL Penguin Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eisner, Elliot W. (2005) Reimagining Schools: The Selected Works of Elliot W. Eisner. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fendler, Lynn. (2012) ‘Lurking, Distilling, Exceeding, Vibrating’, Stud Philos Educ, 31: 315–326. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-012-9303-x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flick, Uwe. (2014) An Introduction to Qualitative Research. Fifth Edition. London: Sage Publications Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freire, Paulo. (2016) Pedagogy of the Heart. Translated by Donaldo Macedo and Alexandre Oliveira. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gadamer, Hans-Georg. (2013) Truth and Method. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. Revised Second Edition. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greene, Maxine. (1995) Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education, the Arts, and Social Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greene, Maxine. (2011) ‘Releasing the Imagination’, NJ Drama Australia Journal, 34(1): 61–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/14452294.2011.11649524

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greene, Maxine. (2017) Teaching as Possibility: A Light in Dark Times. In Antonia Darder, Rodolfo D. Torres and Marta P. Baltodano. (eds.) The Critical Pedagogy Reader. Third Edition (494–502). Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greene, Maxine. (2018) Landscapes of Learning. 2018 Special Edition. New York: Teachers College Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, Budd L. and Rajesh Tandon. (2017) ‘Decolonization of Knowledge, Epistemicide, Participatory Research and Higher Education’, Research for All, 1(1): 6–19. https://doi.org/10.18546/RFA.01.1.02

  • Heidegger, Martin. (2002) Off the Beaten Track. Edited and translated by Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jeffries, Stuart. (2016) Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, Thomas Samuel. (2012) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Fourth Edition. London: The University of Chicago Press, Ltd.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Martin, Brian, Georgina Stewart, Bruce Ka’imi Watson, Ola Keola Silva, Jeanne Teisina, Jacoba Matapo and Carl Mika. (2020) ‘Situating Decolonization: An Indigenous Dilemma’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(3): 312–321. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2019.1652164

  • Melville, Herman. (1953) Moby Dick. London: Collins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1967) On The Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, with Ecce Homo. New York: Vintage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1979) Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the early 1870’s. Edited and translated by Daniel Breazeale. London: Humanities Press International, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nietzsche, Friedrich. (2001) The Gay Science. Edited by Bernard Williams. Translated by Josefine Nauckhoff. Poems translated by Adrian Del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Noddings, Nel. (2016) Philosophy of Education. Fourth Edition. Boulder: Westview Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Otto, Rudolf. (1950) The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational. Translated by John W. Harvey. Second edition. London: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peterson, Robert E. (2017) Teaching How to Read the World and Change It: Critical Pedagogy in the Intermediate Grades. In Antonia Darder, Rodolfo D. Torres and Marta P. Baltodano. (eds.) The Critical Pedagogy Reader. Third Edition (382–399). Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Plato. (1997) Complete Works. Edited by John M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Popper, Karl Raimund. (2002) The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Second Edition. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Popper, Karl Raimund. (2011) The Open Society and Its Enemies. Volume 1: The Spell of Plato and Volume 2: The High Tide of Prophecy. Fifth Edition. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Punch, Keith F. and Alis Oancea. (2014) Introduction to Research Methods in Education. Second Edition. London: Sage Publications Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robson, Colin. (2011) Real World Research: A Resource for Users of Social Research Methods in Applied Settings. Third Edition. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rowland, Stephen. (2006) The Enquiring University: Compliance and Contestation in Higher Education. Maidenhead: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. (2007) ‘Beyond Abyssal Thinking: From Global Lines to Ecologies of Knowledges’, Review (Fernand Braudel Center), 30(1): 45–89. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40241677

  • Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. (2014) Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Warburton, Nigel. (2003) The Art Question. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wartenberg, Thomas E. (2005) Heidegger. In Berys Gaut and Dominic Mclver Lopes. (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. Second Edition (147–158). Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, Emma. (2016) The Ways We Think: From the Straits of Reason to the Possibilities of Thought. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Winch, Christopher. (2009) Education, Autonomy and Critical Thinking. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1969) The Blue and Brown Books: Preliminary Studies for the “Philosophical Investigations”. Second Edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. [cited as BB]

    Google Scholar 

  • Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1980) Culture and Value. Edited by G. H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman. Translated by Peter Winch. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. [cited as CV]

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Marc James Deegan

Authors
  1. Marc James Deegan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marc James Deegan .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Deegan, M.J. (2024). Ways of Knowing. In: Reflections on Criticality in Educational Philosophy. Palgrave Studies in Educational Philosophy and Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57330-9_13

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57330-9_13

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-57329-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-57330-9

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation