Bloom’s taxonomy has become a pedagogical orthodoxy in schools. This paper challenges Bloom’s assumptions about thinking (the cognitive domain) and willing (the affective domain). A careful examination of ancient and medieval understandings – and of Thomas Aquinas’ contemplative taxonomy in particular – demonstrates how Bloom’s taxonomy is both disordered and reductionistic. The thesis of this paper is that, if education is to be truly aimed at our “highest happiness,” we must begin, in some small ways at least, to relate our (...) educational efforts to the pursuit of wisdom. This pursuit, it is argued, involves engaging components of thinking and willing that transcend Bloom’s taxonomy. (shrink)

The practice of mindfulness is a contemplative practice that has been implemented in educational settings as well as in various models of treatment for stress and other conditions. This paper examines how Western scientific psychology has participated in this implementation and the dangers to the practice and concepts of mindfulness inherent in shifting a practice from the cultural and philosophic ground in which it developed to another ground and another discourse. Some caveats for implementing contemplative practices are considered.

The question has long confounded philosophers and scientists, and it is this so-called explanatory gap between biological life and consciousness that Evan ...

Inventions of Teaching: A Genealogy is a powerful examination of current metaphors for and synonyms of teaching. It offers an account of the varied and conflicting influences and conceptual commitments that have contributed to contemporary vocabularies--and that are in some ways maintained by those vocabularies, in spite of inconsistencies and incompatibilities among popular terms. The concern that frames the book is how speakers of English invented (in the original sense of the word, "came upon") our current vocabularies for teaching. Conceptually, (...) this book is unique in the educational literature. As a whole, it presents an overview of the major underlying philosophical and ideological concepts and traditions related to knowledge, learning, and teaching in the Western world, concisely introducing readers to the central historical and contemporary discourses that shape current discussions and beliefs in the field. Because the organization of historical, philosophical, theoretical, and etymological information is around key conceptual divergences in Western thought rather than any sort of chronology, this text is not a linear history, but several histories--or, more precisely, it is a genealogy. Specifically, it is developed around breaks in opinion that gave or are giving rise to diverse interpretations of knowledge, learning, and teaching--highlighting historical moments in which vibrant new figurative understandings of teaching emerged and moments at which they froze into literalness. The book is composed of two sorts of chapters, "branching" and "teaching." Branching chapters include an opening treatment of the break in opinion, separate discussions of each branch, and a summary of the common assumptions and shared histories of the two branches. Teaching chapters offer brief etymological histories and some of the practical implications of the terms for teaching that were coined, co-opted, or redefined within the various traditions. Inventions of Teaching: A Genealogy is an essential text for senior undergraduate and graduate courses in curriculum studies and foundations of teaching and is highly relevant as well for students, faculty, and researchers across the field of education. (shrink)

In the seventeenth century, a vision arose which was to captivate the Western imagination for the next three hundred years: the vision of Cosmopolis, a society as rationally ordered as the Newtonian view of nature. While fueling extraordinary advances in all fields of human endeavor, this vision perpetuated a hidden yet persistent agenda: the delusion that human nature and society could be fitted into precise and manageable rational categories. Stephen Toulmin confronts that agenda—its illusions and its consequences for our present (...) and future world. "By showing how different the last three centuries would have been if Montaigne, rather than Descartes, had been taken as a starting point, Toulmin helps destroy the illusion that the Cartesian quest for certainty is intrinsic to the nature of science or philosophy."—Richard M. Rorty, University of Virginia "[Toulmin] has now tackled perhaps his most ambitious theme of all.... His aim is nothing less than to lay before us an account of both the origins and the prospects of our distinctively modern world. By charting the evolution of modernity, he hopes to show us what intellectual posture we ought to adopt as we confront the coming millennium."—Quentin Skinner, New York Review of Books. (shrink)

Citing the benefits of meditation as a means of improving and honing concentration skills, the author of Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground Up is aimed at ...

This new edition of Logic and Transcendence, his most important philosophical work, is a fully revised translation from the French original and contains:.

The Embodied Mind provides a unique, sophisticated treatment of the spontaneous and reflective dimension of human experience.