Donald Schön’s theory of reflective practice has been extensively referred to and has had enormous impact in education and related fields. Nonetheless, there continues to be tremendous conceptual and practical confusion surrounding interpretations of reflective practice and philosophical assumptions underlying the theory. In this paper, I argue that one of the original contributions of reflective practice is the theory’s attention to an embodied reflective dimension. In this regard, the influences of Michael Polanyi and Gilbert Ryle, within Donald Schön’s classic work, (...) are examined and shed light on a unique embodied reflective dimension within the theory of reflective practice. This paper suggests that the notion of an embodied mode of reflection is a useful way to conceive of the original contributions that Schön brings to understandings of reflective processes in professional education. Such understanding is crucially important to practical applications of the theory amidst widespread confusion in educational contexts. (shrink)

Although the success of Habermas’s theory of communicative action depends on his dialogical model of understanding in which a theorist is supposed to participate in the debate with the actors as a ‘virtual participant’ and seek context-transcendent truth through the exchange of speech acts, current literature on the theory of communicative action rarely touches on the difficulties it entails. In the first part of this paper, I will examine Habermas’s argument that understanding other cultural practices requires the interpreter to virtually (...) participate in the “dialogue” with the actors as to the rationality of their cultural practice and discuss why, according to Habermas,such dialogue leads to the “context-transcendent truth”. In the second part, by using a concrete historical example, I will reconstruct a “virtual dialogue” between Habermas and Michael Polanyi as to the rationality of scientific practice and indicate why Habermas’s dialogical model of understanding based on the methodology of virtual participation cannot achieve what it professes to do. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between epistemic integrity, virtue, and authority by offering a virtue epistemological reading of the defences of non-scientific beliefs, practices, and traditions in the writings of Paul Feyerabend. I argue that there was a robust epistemic rationale for those defences and that it can inform contemporary reflection on the epistemic authority of the sciences. Two common explanations of the purpose of those defences are rejected as lacking textual support. A third “pluralist” reading is judged more persuasive, (...) but found to be incomplete, owing to a failure to accommodate Feyerabend’s focus upon the integrity of scientists and the authority of science. I therefore suggest that the defences are more fully understood as defences of the epistemic integrity of scientists that take the form of critical exposures of failures by scientists to act with integrity. An appeal is made to contemporary virtue epistemology that clarifies Feyerabend’s implicit association of epistemic... (shrink)

There are three approaches to the Kuhn-Polanyi relationship: their ideas are the same, can be reconciled, or profoundly diverge. This article seeks to show that both share a tradition of paideia. Kuhn espouses scientific revolutions while Polanyi stresses reform and continuity within a Platonic worldview.

While scientific terms lack the stability of physical objects, they are generally far more stable than the various meanings associated with them. As a consequence, they tend to carry older conceptions alongside those more recently acquired, thereby exerting an effective drag against conceptual change. I illustrate this claim with an analysis of the shifting meanings of the term genome, originally used to refer to a collectivity of genes, but more recently to an organism’s complement of DNA. While genes were originally (...) regarded as effectively autonomous formal agents, and DNA as collections of genes, contemporary research suggests that an organism’s DNA constitutes a far more complex system designed to adapt and respond to the environment in which it finds itself. (shrink)

Michael Polanyi names Augustine as inaugurates of his “postcritical”philosophy. To understand what this means by exploring creation in the Confessions will clarify complex problems in Augustine and articulate theological implications in Polanyi. Specifically, it will show why an autobiographical account of conversion ends speaking of creation; how creation can thus be understood as “personal” language; how creation can be recovered in a time preoccupied with conversion; how conversion and creation are linked with incarnation, hermeneutics, and confessional rhetoric; and it will (...) suggest a contemporary use of creation language that connects the scientific and the religious. (shrink)

The paper considers the role of universities as actors in regional development, and the implications for approaches to knowledge, including knowledge construction. The new role for universities requires the production of knowledge, which relates to the needs of the region. Particular attention was given to the Agder region of Norway, and Agder University College.

How engineers know, and act on that knowledge, has a profound impact on society. Consequently, the analysis of engineering knowledge is one of the central challenges for the philosophy of engineering. In this article, we present a thematic multidisciplinary conceptual survey of engineering epistemology and identify key areas of research that are still to be comprehensively investigated. Themes are organized based on a survey of engineering epistemology including research from history, sociology, philosophy, design theory, and engineering itself. Five major interrelated (...) themes are identified: the relationship between scientific and engineering knowledge, engineering knowledge as a distinct field of study, the social epistemology of engineering, the relationship between engineering knowledge and its products, and the cognitive aspects of engineering knowledge. We discuss areas of potential future research that are underdeveloped or “undone.”. (shrink)

This paper places certain religious ideas of Eastern Christianity about our relationship to nature critically against techno-scientific thinking and practice. Specifically, the two focal issues of the discussion are the concept of religious sin, on the one hand, and the peculiarly modern fusion of science and technology, resulting in the novel phenomenon of techno-science, on the other. Two corresponding theses are advanced: that of sin as an epistemic, and not as a moral, error, and that of the “Eucharistic” viz., celebratory (...) relation with God. The paper then proceeds to trace significant parallels that may be discerned between the Orthodox theological view and Heidegger’s position on technology, and metaphysics more generally, culminating in the suggestion that the way out of the ‘danger’ of technology as techno-science must be found in art or religion. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The period of government‐sponsored research and development, involving military and industrial intervention in academic life, especially in the USA, was brief and yet its characteristics were declared universal by two historians of science there, Derek J. de Solla Price and Thomas S. Kuhn, who justified coercion and boredom in research work organized hierarchically. The reform of work movement is now attempting to introduce ideas in the opposite direction. Clearly, the institutions of big science should be interested in the improvement (...) of the quality of research done on their premises and in the changes in world situation which might greatly change the agenda of research. To that end research into the general character of big science is very advisable and may be instigated either by large research institutions or by some of their umbrella organizations which may create incentives and alter the character of big science radically to everybody's advantage. (shrink)

. Implicit in the cognitive social learning model of personality as articulated by Walter Mischel, Albert Bandura, and others, is an epistemology which emphasizes the activity of the mind in the construction of knowledge. Using Mischel's five person variables as an outline, the epistemic implications of this model of personality are developed and then illustrated by application to William James's typology of the religious personality and to the current debate over hermeneutic and empirical approaches to studying human behavior. This approach (...) explicates the connection between personality characteristics and epistemological approaches in terms of cognitive social learning theory. (shrink)

Integration of music in an academic university teaching setting is an example of how artistic practice and competences have potentials to resonate beyond the immediate discipline. The article explo...

Michael Polanyi argues in Personal Knowledge (1958) that conceptual frameworks involved in major scientific controversies are separated by a `logical gap'. Such frameworks, according to Polanyi (1958: 151), are logically disconnected: their protagonists think differently, use different languages and occupy different worlds. Relinquishing one framework and adopting another, Polanyi's scientist undergoes a `conversion' to a new `faith'. Polanyi, in other words, presaged Kuhn and Feyerabend's concept of incommensurability. To what influences was Polanyi subject as he developed his concept of the (...) logical gap? The answer, as unfolded in this article, is twofold: Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande and the Confessions of St Augustine. (shrink)

This paper compares Hayek and Polanyi on spontaneous social order. Although Hayek is widely believed to have first both coined the name and explicated the idea of ?spontaneous order?, it is in fact Michael Polanyi who did so. Numerous differences emerge between the two thinkers. The characterisation of spontaneous order in Hayek, for example, involves different types of freedom to those advanced by Polanyi. Whereas Hayek (usually) portrays spontaneous order as a single entity, which is equivalent to free society as (...) a whole ? the free?catallactic society ? Polanyi by contrast is disposed to conceive of spontaneous orders as sub?units or components within free society as a whole. These and other aspects of their thought ? including the distinction between spontaneous and planned social orders ? are reviewed and criticised. (shrink)

Popper, Polanyi and Duncker represent the widely held position that theoretical and experimental scientific research are motivated by problems to which discoveries are solutions. According to the argument here, their views are unsupported and - in light of counter-instances, anomalous chance discoveries, and the force of curiosity - over-generalized.

Born in 1918 in New York, awarded a doctorate in analytical chemistry (1944), Leonard K. Nash enjoyed a distinguished career at Harvard, holding a chair of chemistry from 1959 to 1986. Conducting research in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, Nash authored successful textbooks, some of which remain in print (e.g. Elements of Chemical Thermodynamics, and Elements of Statistical Thermodynamics).This essay describes the theory of science that Nash developed in a book he published in 1963, The Nature of the Natural Sciences. The (...) present author is of the view that Nash's neglected theory is worth retrieving, as one that is likely to kindle the interest of historians of metascience on several counts. Part of .. (shrink)

C. P. Snow’s “The Two Cultures” controversially contrasted science and literature, suggesting that neither scientists nor literary intellectuals have much in common with, and seldom bother speaking to, the other. Responding to Snow, Michael Polanyi argued that specialization has made modern culture, not twofold but manifold. In his major work, Personal Knowledge, Polanyi explained that branches of modern culture have personal knowing and knowledge in common, and there is extensive cross-pollination of ideas. He also, in this book, saw the branches (...) of culture as disparate intellectual frameworks that are divorced from one another. (shrink)

Fundamentismus und Skeptizismus-Anarchismus sind zwei entgegengesetzte Positionen in der traditionellen Erkenntnistheorie und in der modernen Wissenschaftstheorie. Zwischen ihnen gibt es einen dritten Standpunkt, den Evolutionismus. Beispiele sind zwei neuere Arbeiten von Putnam und Stegmüller . Im Gegensatz zum logisch-statischen Fundamentismus berücksichtigt der Evolutionismus auch dynamische und naturalistische Ansätze. Stegmüller folgend entlehnen wir in der vorliegenden Untersuchung aus der Sprachphilosophie pragmatische Gesichtspunkte, um die logische Syntax und Semantik, die Werkzeuge des Fundamentismus, zu ersetzen. Wir zeigen die Kraft der Pragmatik bei der (...) Behandlung von Problemen wie Erkenntniswachstum, Begriffswechsel, Theorien- und Bedeutungsdynamik, wissenschaftliche Entdeckung und besonders beim Problem der Inkommensurabilität. Unser nicht-fundamentistischer Vorschlag ist ein heuristisches Modell, das auf der modernen genetischen Theorie basiert. (shrink)

This article explicates, in a concrete, step-by-step manner, some procedures that can be followed in phenomenologically analyzing interview data. It also addresses a number of issues that are raised in relation to phenomenological research.

Learning about ‘nature’ has particular significance for education because the idea of nature is an important source of inspiring meaning‐rich experience and creation. In order to have meaningful experiences in learning and living, this paper argues for a personal subject‐related lifeworld approach to the learning of ‘nature’. Many authors claim that the lifeworld‐led learning approach helps to enrich educational experience. However, there can be various interpretations of the lifeworld approach, as the concept of lifeworld is diversely understood. This paper proposes (...) a personal, subject‐related lifeworld approach from a Husserlian‐Merleau‐Pontian perspective. I suggest that it holds great potential for improving our current curriculum which suffers from meaning‐impoverishment. This paper comprises the following parts: the elucidation of the lifeworld approach to learning, a demonstration of the flaws of current curricula by discussing and analysing the Taiwanese curriculum guidelines, and an exposition of the contribution of the Husserlian‐Merleau‐Pontian lifeworld approach towards improving our current curriculum. (shrink)

Modernity has imposed on many of us, and perhaps especially on academics, a habit of silence with regard to what John Rawls called deeply held ‘comprehensive’ moral beliefs. According to Rawls and his many disciples, the survival of liberalism depends upon the bracketing of comprehensive beliefs whenever we step into the public sphere. And in the field of higher education, that would have to include the classroom, the lab, the library carrel, the hotel conference suites where we confer and exchange (...) ideas, as well as the vast academic publishing apparatus. I would like to call attention to the way that the supposed requirement of the Rawlsian silence is being challenged, not just by conservative critics but even by such a staunch defender of conventional liberalism as Jürgen Habermas. Second, if Habermas and the other critics are right, then a fortiori, the public university—perhaps the most representative and exemplary of all the institutions of civil society—ought to welcome the infusion of relevant but closely held beliefs, including religious ones, in carrying out its research and teaching responsibilities. (shrink)

Modernity has imposed on many of us, and perhaps especially on academics, a habit of silence with regard to what John Rawls called deeply held ‘comprehensive’ moral beliefs. According to Rawls and his many disciples, the survival of liberalism depends upon the bracketing of comprehensive beliefs whenever we step into the public sphere. And in the field of higher education, that would have to include the classroom, the lab, the library carrel, the hotel conference suites where we confer and exchange (...) ideas, as well as the vast academic publishing apparatus. I would like to call attention to the way that the supposed requirement of the Rawlsian silence is being challenged, not just by conservative critics but even by such a staunch defender of conventional liberalism as Jürgen Habermas. Second, if Habermas and the other critics are right, then a fortiori, the public university—perhaps the most representative and exemplary of all the institutions of civil society—ought to welcome the infusion of relevant but closely held beliefs, including religious ones, in carrying out its research and teaching responsibilities. (shrink)

The inductive argument from the falsity of most past scientific theories (more than 100 years old) to the falsity of most present ones is defensible, I argue, if it is modified to account for the degrees of theoreticity or observationality in such theories, and the extent to which they are hedged. The case of descriptive astronomy is examined to show that most of the true theories of the 1890s were high in observationality and/or significantly hedged. The false theories of that (...) period, however, were not even approximately true. Apparently, scientists are more interested in supplanting theories with improved observations than in producing true theories. (shrink)

Between the fourth and the recent fifth IPCC report, science as well as policy making have made great advances in dealing with uncertainties in global climate models. However, the uncertainties public decision making has to deal with go well beyond what is currently addressed by policy makers and climatologists alike. It is shown in this paper that within an anthropocentric framework, a whole hierarchy of models from various scientific disciplines is needed for political decisions as regards climate change. Via what (...) is sometimes referred to as ‘uncertainty cascade’ in the technical literature, the uncertainties of various models accumulate in the input to political decision making. This paper aims to chart the uncertainties in the multi-disciplinary enterprise of current climate modeling in broad strokes. It is shown that the uncertainty cascade makes it impossible to quantify uncertainties in the form of probability estimates. Moreover the paper highlights how global climate models fail to provide probability estimates. A better treatment of the uncertainties of climate predictions on the political level would require an overhaul of the current IPCC practice that separates the various scientific fields in various working groups. (shrink)