Victorian Educational Philosophy: The Arnold - Huxley Educational Debate
Of What Knowledge is Of Most Worth?
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Victorian Educational Philosophy: The Arnold - Huxley Educational Debate
Of What Knowledge is Of Most Worth?
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Will reading Hamlet repair an automobile engine?
Will repairing an automobile engine teach us how to drive responsibly?
During the Victorian period, the industrial revolution began to develop technologies that appeared to create a standard of living heretofore unknown. From typewriters to paved roads, the Victorians had clear "nominalistic" proof that they were unique.
Yet, appearance and reality are not the same. Writing in "Dover Beach," Arnold argued that technological progress cannot and should not replace the classical heritage and traditions of the past, while contrasting views suggested that, according to Huxley and Spencer that "the knowledge of most worth" is technical and scientific. And so it goes.
A glance at college catalogs reveals that the educational establishment reflects the debate. A glance at TV commercials in the afternoons reveals advertisements by "technical schools" promising that knowing how to fix a car or program a computer is the ticket to the good life. Liberal arts schools today seem on the defensive. What can they offer one who wishes and must participate in a technologically sophisticated society.
Arnold and Huxley were writing at a time when educational theory consisted of reading Latin and Greek classical literature while, the technologists argued, the world was growing scientifically, with no trained workers. In the United States, we hear frequently the same idea, where in, for example, the Russians putting the first satellite into orbit in 1957 had to mean that American colleges were not training enough scientists and math. majors to compete.
Assignment: Look at the positions of both men. Huxley is a nominalist and Arnold is a realist...
Sources: Huxley, Thomas. Science and Culture Arnold, Matthew. Literature and Science The excerpts are contained in The Norton Anthology of English Literature.Volume II, N.Y.: W.W. Norton, 1986. M.A. Abrams is the general editor.
THIS IS THE POSITION OF HUXLEY:
1. Huxley will argue against the position that a scientific habit of mind is an impediment to the conduct of ordinary affairs.
2. A successful practical man needs a solid, extensive and practical scientific knowledge.
3. ...a thorough scientific education is an absolutely essential condition for industrial progress.
4. [a new scientific knowledge]...shall make no provision for mere literary instruction and education.
5. We are told that a study of physical science is incompetent to confer culture. Science generates a narrow belief, we are told in the applicability of scientific methods to the search after truth of all kinds.
6. Classical education is not of direct value to the student of physical science...A scientific education is at least as effectual for obtaining culture as an exclusively literary education.
7. Criticism means something different from learning or technical skill. It means the possession of an ideal...a theoretical standard. Literature alone is not competent to supply this knowledge.
8. Criticism of life is the essence of culture. Does literature contain the materials for this criticism?
9. Nations will not advance if their common outfit draws nothing from physical science.
10. Huxley makes an analogy: Medieval logic : Renaissance :: Renaissance : natural knowledge
11. It is evident that nature is the expression of a definite order with which nothing interferes, and that the chief business of mankind is to learn that order and govern himself accordingly.
12. This scientific criticism appears to nature and bids the learner seek truth not among words, but things.
13. For those making science their serious occupation like medicine or the business of life, classical education is a mistake.
14. [by Sumner] Wisdom is the result of knowledge, experience, and observation...skill in adjusting means to ends.
15. An educated man does with ease and pleasure all the work that as a mechanism the body is capable of; whose intelligence is a cold logical engine...in smooth working order like a steam engine to be turned to any kind of work, and spin gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind, whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of nature and the laws of her operation, one who is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience, who has learned all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate vileness and to respect others as himself.
ARNOLD WILL ARGUE THIS POSITION IN REBUTTAL:
1. Men of culture and poetry are failing in the subduing of the great and obvious faults of our animality.
2. Poets' ideas of beauty, of sweetness and light, [culture], and a human nature compete on all its sides remains the true idea of perfection still.
3. The modern spirit had destroyed those habits of subordination and the faith in the machine is becoming very manifest.
4. Culture diffuses sweetness and light. The Greeks diffuse sweetness and light, perceiving beauty and truth; they escape fanaticism by appealing to man's moral side at the idea of a comprehensive adjustment of the moral and intellectual sides, an idea which is philosophically valuable to us.
5. We must come to our best at all points...instead of our one thing needful...justifying us in vulgarity, ignorance and violence.
6. Sweetness and light have to do with the side of humanity we call Greek [Hellenic] Plato calls the rue, firm laws [forms] of light and of seeing things as they are.
7 The whole middle class has a conception of things that make us call them philistines, in that they are concerned with making money. How entirely does the narrow and mechanical conception of our secular business proceed from a narrow and mechanical conception of our religious business.
8. People who favor science argue Plato is impractical, especially in the U.S.
9. Arnold quotes Plato: 'An intelligent man will prize those studies which result in his soul getting wisdom.'
10. Should literary education give way to education in the natural sciences? Culture is to know ourselves and the world, to know the best which has been thought and said in the world.
12. Critique of Huxley: Arnold disagreed that classics are of little use for anyone whose object is truth and to be practical.
13. The love of the classics enables us to rightly use reason, and the scientific method...not merely knowing Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Darwin.
14. Natural knowledge omits one thing: the constitution of human nature; the power of conduct, power of intellect, beauty and power of social life and manners.
15. Results of science [Darwin] places us in the sphere of intellect and knowledge, but propositions must be related to our sense of proper conduct and beauty.
16. All men desire the Good--which acts in use when we feel the impulse for relating our knowledge to our sense for conduct and beauty.
17. All knowledge is interesting to a wise man.
18. Literature serves the desire in us that the good should be forever present; literature establishes a relation between new conceptions and and our idea for beauty and conduct.
During the Victorian period, the industrial revolution began to develop technologies that appeared to create a standard of living heretofore unknown. From typewriters to paved roads, the Victorians had clear "nominalistic" proof that they were unique.
Yet, appearance and reality are not the same. Writing in "Dover Beach," Arnold argued that technological progress cannot and should not replace the classical heritage and traditions of the past, while contrasting views suggested that, according to Huxley and Spencer that "the knowledge of most worth" is technical and scientific. And so it goes.
A glance at college catalogs reveals that the educational establishment reflects the debate. A glance at TV commercials in the afternoons reveals advertisements by "technical schools" promising that knowing how to fix a car or program a computer is the ticket to the good life. Liberal arts schools today seem on the defensive. What can they offer one who wishes and must participate in a technologically sophisticated society.
Arnold and Huxley were writing at a time when educational theory consisted of reading Latin and Greek classical literature while, the technologists argued, the world was growing scientifically, with no trained workers. In the United States, we hear frequently the same idea, where in, for example, the Russians putting the first satellite into orbit in 1957 had to mean that American colleges were not training enough scientists and math. majors to compete.
Assignment: Look at the positions of both men. Huxley is a nominalist and Arnold is a realist...
Sources: Huxley, Thomas. Science and Culture Arnold, Matthew. Literature and Science The excerpts are contained in The Norton Anthology of English Literature.Volume II, N.Y.: W.W. Norton, 1986. M.A. Abrams is the general editor.
THIS IS THE POSITION OF HUXLEY:
1. Huxley will argue against the position that a scientific habit of mind is an impediment to the conduct of ordinary affairs.
2. A successful practical man needs a solid, extensive and practical scientific knowledge.
3. ...a thorough scientific education is an absolutely essential condition for industrial progress.
4. [a new scientific knowledge]...shall make no provision for mere literary instruction and education.
5. We are told that a study of physical science is incompetent to confer culture. Science generates a narrow belief, we are told in the applicability of scientific methods to the search after truth of all kinds.
6. Classical education is not of direct value to the student of physical science...A scientific education is at least as effectual for obtaining culture as an exclusively literary education.
7. Criticism means something different from learning or technical skill. It means the possession of an ideal...a theoretical standard. Literature alone is not competent to supply this knowledge.
8. Criticism of life is the essence of culture. Does literature contain the materials for this criticism?
9. Nations will not advance if their common outfit draws nothing from physical science.
10. Huxley makes an analogy: Medieval logic : Renaissance :: Renaissance : natural knowledge
11. It is evident that nature is the expression of a definite order with which nothing interferes, and that the chief business of mankind is to learn that order and govern himself accordingly.
12. This scientific criticism appears to nature and bids the learner seek truth not among words, but things.
13. For those making science their serious occupation like medicine or the business of life, classical education is a mistake.
14. [by Sumner] Wisdom is the result of knowledge, experience, and observation...skill in adjusting means to ends.
15. An educated man does with ease and pleasure all the work that as a mechanism the body is capable of; whose intelligence is a cold logical engine...in smooth working order like a steam engine to be turned to any kind of work, and spin gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind, whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of nature and the laws of her operation, one who is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience, who has learned all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate vileness and to respect others as himself.
ARNOLD WILL ARGUE THIS POSITION IN REBUTTAL:
1. Men of culture and poetry are failing in the subduing of the great and obvious faults of our animality.
2. Poets' ideas of beauty, of sweetness and light, [culture], and a human nature compete on all its sides remains the true idea of perfection still.
3. The modern spirit had destroyed those habits of subordination and the faith in the machine is becoming very manifest.
4. Culture diffuses sweetness and light. The Greeks diffuse sweetness and light, perceiving beauty and truth; they escape fanaticism by appealing to man's moral side at the idea of a comprehensive adjustment of the moral and intellectual sides, an idea which is philosophically valuable to us.
5. We must come to our best at all points...instead of our one thing needful...justifying us in vulgarity, ignorance and violence.
6. Sweetness and light have to do with the side of humanity we call Greek [Hellenic] Plato calls the rue, firm laws [forms] of light and of seeing things as they are.
7 The whole middle class has a conception of things that make us call them philistines, in that they are concerned with making money. How entirely does the narrow and mechanical conception of our secular business proceed from a narrow and mechanical conception of our religious business.
8. People who favor science argue Plato is impractical, especially in the U.S.
9. Arnold quotes Plato: 'An intelligent man will prize those studies which result in his soul getting wisdom.'
10. Should literary education give way to education in the natural sciences? Culture is to know ourselves and the world, to know the best which has been thought and said in the world.
12. Critique of Huxley: Arnold disagreed that classics are of little use for anyone whose object is truth and to be practical.
13. The love of the classics enables us to rightly use reason, and the scientific method...not merely knowing Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Darwin.
14. Natural knowledge omits one thing: the constitution of human nature; the power of conduct, power of intellect, beauty and power of social life and manners.
15. Results of science [Darwin] places us in the sphere of intellect and knowledge, but propositions must be related to our sense of proper conduct and beauty.
16. All men desire the Good--which acts in use when we feel the impulse for relating our knowledge to our sense for conduct and beauty.
17. All knowledge is interesting to a wise man.
18. Literature serves the desire in us that the good should be forever present; literature establishes a relation between new conceptions and and our idea for beauty and conduct.