We live a dynamic culture whose characteristic is the great movement of its truths. The ancient static culture had definite and definitive truths. These manifestations of erudition and knowledge used to be considered as invariable and irreversible. The professor was generally a teacher-reader of a book. Knowledge decreases as wisdom increases, since the details are absorbed by the principles. The habit of actively using well-understood principles is the final possession of wisdom. Being an adult was not having to study anymore. But that which was valid for a stagnant culture is no longer valid in our time. Hence the increasing importance of education continues. The scholar, the researcher, today must abandon the details and begin to recognize the principles.
A long time ago, the traditional school treasured its essential truths in books and the student obtained from memory rigorous knowledge or categorical truths. A static erudition was transmitted. What was taught remained in force through the years.
The amazing changes that shake our time did not take place: the sciences tear their habitual clothes and interweave their fields. Classical geometry has been escorted by other metaphysical and relativistic reasonings, something similar has happened with logic, scientific truths are surpassed by new ones.
Since Heisenberg 1, the structure of state science has been shaken, and four-dimensional geometry has opened thought to unimaginable dimensions. What we have to transmit today is constantly changing and must be transmitted on the move. We live a dynamic culture whose characteristic is the great movement of its truths. Statics had definite and definitive truths. The evolutionary condition in a dynamic culture is to continue revealing, even at the cost of disavowing recently discovered knowledge.
These manifestations of erudition and knowledge used to be considered as invariable and irreversible. So much so that even relatively changing content was rigorously taught. We could say that this Culture made sense until some years near the end of the last millennium. In our day, ten years equals a century from other times. There is little point in memorizing a large amount of data that changes daily and can be obtained by pressing a button.
If man is thought of as possessing a pattern of behavior, as an intelligent entity, and not as an encyclopedia, it is much more important that he possess the capacity or ability to discover what he ignores. That he can coherently analyze reality, his own environment, that he manipulates principles and not versatile data, that he be apt to create a chart or diagram capable of analyzing any reality that he examines, and not only transmit what others expose. It must inevitably face its constant updating. (Dewey 2 distinguished between education as reproduction and as nutrition). On nutrition we must place the accent.
In times of more static culture and with insufficient books, these had an almost sacred value. The professor was generally a teacher-reader of a book.
How could information that evolves in less time than a study cycle be memorized today?
Today, the ability to continue learning and to update what has been learned (and even to forget what is unnecessarily hardened in memory, to "unlearn" what is learned) matters more. We must bear in mind the metaphysics of knowledge: truly advantageous education provides an understanding of a few general principles that are strongly supported by their application to a wide variety of accurate data. In practice, particular details will be forgotten, but by unconscious common sense, how to apply the principles to immediate circumstances will be remembered.
The function of the University is to enable the student to free himself from the details for the benefit of the principles, the first causes. When I speak of principles, I am not even referring to verbal statements. A principle that we have assimilated is more a mental habit than a formal statement. It becomes the way the mind reacts to the appropriate stimulus in the form of illustrative circumstances.
Nobody goes round the corner if they have their knowledge clearly and consciously present. Learning is often spoken of as if we were keeping an eye on the open pages of all the books we have read, and so when the occasion arises, we choose the convenient page to read aloud to the sky.
We still suffer a paralysis of thought induced in the students by the accumulation, without object, of precise, indifferent and useless knowledge.
The primary purpose of a university professor must be to show himself in his true character, that is, as an ignorant man who thinks, who actively uses that small portion of knowledge. In a sense, knowledge decreases as wisdom increases, since the details are absorbed by the principles. The details of knowledge that are important will be definitively learned in every circumstance of life, but the habit of actively using well-understood principles is the final possession of wisdom.
The differences between an education for memory and data, and an education that is intelligent activity and the search for skills to continue learning and to effectively dispose of information, or conceive the new truth if necessary, must be very clear.
We usually relate studies and learning with children. (This has already been observed by Mannheim 3). Because the oldest was precisely the one who did not have to go to school, the one who had received that basic quota of knowledge, that primordial and definitive dose of truths with which he could now rest easy. Being an adult was not having to study anymore. There was no reason to continue learning. But that which was valid for a stagnant culture is no longer valid in our time. Hence the increasing importance of continuing education.
In traditional thought, the end was only known to the professor. The student had no idea where he was going, or what they were going to teach him tomorrow, or what they were teaching him what they were illustrating for him today.
Man, no matter what his occupation or task, is naturally a philosopher and cannot stop being a philosopher even if he wants to. What happens is that his philosophy, that of the generality of men, is the one that others thought for him and is constituted by the more or less extensive repertoire of ideas and evaluations that he has and from which he lives without noticing them., without worrying about knowing where they come from or what they mean.
The new vision of this education of the nascent century is to achieve thinkers, men and women capable of analyzing reality, the everyday environment.
In the initial school period, the student has been mentally bent over his desk, in the university he will have to stand up and recognize his surroundings. You will have to abandon the details and begin to recognize the principles. Perhaps in this way, we can overcome the insufficiencies of a society that, making effective use of science, is powerless to understand it.
We need to complement the science of physical nature with the dogmas of human reason.
The highest periods of evolution coincide with a being who can inquire into himself and glimpse the infinity of the spirit, his own inner self.
In this way, the understanding achieved by each person who studies, who advances through knowledge, will be transmuted into principles, guiding its owner towards the prelude of wisdom, towards self-knowledge.
This must be our task today.
Notes
1Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901-1976), German physicist and Nobel laureate, who developed a system of quantum mechanics and whose indeterminacy or uncertainty principle has had a profound influence on physics and philosophy in the 20th century.
2John Dewey (1859-1952), American philosopher, psychologist, and educator.
3Karl Mannheim (1893-1947), German sociologist, founder of the sociology of knowledge.
