Metaphors for learning: George Eliot

"Tom could predict with accuracy what number of horses were cantering behin him, he could throw a stone right into the centre of a given ripple, he could guess to a fraction how many lengths of his stick it wold take to reach across the playground, and could draw almost perfect squares on his slate without any measurement. But Mr Stelling took no note of these things: he only observed that Tom's faculties failed him before the abstractions hideously symbolised to him in the pages of the Eton Grammar...whence Mr Stelling concluded that Tom's brain, being epculiarly impervious to etymology and demonstrations, was particularly in need of being ploughed and harrowed by these patent implements: it was his favourite metaphor, that the classics and geometry constituted that culture of the mind which prepared it for the reception of any subsequent crop.

I say nothing against Mr Stelling's theory: if we are to have one regimen for all minds, his seems to me as good as any other. I only know it turned out to be as uncomfotably for Tom Tulliver as if he had been plied with cheese in order to remedy a gastric weakness which prevented him from digesting it.

It is astonishing what a different result one gets by changing the metaphor! Once call the brain an intellectual stomach, and one's ingenious conception of the classics as ploughs and harrows seems to settle nothing. But then it is open to some one else to follow great authorities, and call the mind a sheet of paper or a mirror, in which case one's knowledge of the digestive process becomes quite irrelevant...

O Aristotle! if you had the advantage of being 'the freshest modern' instead of the greatest ancient, would you not have mingled your praise of metaphorical speech, as a sign of high intelligence, with a lamentation that intelligence so rarely shows itself without metaphor, -- that we can so seldom declare what a thing is, except by saying it is something else?"

George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, 144-145

Knowledge and Civilisation Draft One

Civilisation is a slippery concept, which since the end of the Second World War, has not had much in the way of good press. It is in fact this decline in the resonance the concept had with politicians, the public and the universities and its relationship to pre- and post-war perspectives on knowledge that is the subject of this chapter. The perception that university knowledge had something to do with civilisation now sounds a little naïve, but made sense at a time that civilisation did. But when the war threatened both the experience and the concept of civilisation, as this chapter will explore, the role of knowledge gained new importance as a means of bolstering a fragmenting idea.

You can read more at my first draft of  Chapter One: Knowledge and Civilisation 1939-1957

Don't feel like it right now? Don't worry (I know you were). It will come back again.

Privilege or method?

Academic Freedom, from the Murray report to the present, has been seen as a "tradition". This makes it seem to be a privilege rather than a method. Discuss.

Universities that put people before buildings are bound to succeed

"A university should be a society of teachers and scholars; of teachers who have devoted their lives to the kingdom of the mind, and of scholars who are determined to enter this kingdom. In the pursuit of modern knowledge expensive libraries, large buildings, elaborate equipment and laboratories are necessary. But this should not blind us to the fact that the spirit of the university depends on the men and women who assemble there.

Given a good teacher sitting on one end of a log and an eager student sitting on the other end, the central problem of education is solved: you have the germ of a university.

But the most sumptuous lecture room and the most splendid laboratory do not make a university if the teacher is a pedant and the taught are flippant children sent there to qualify for a profession.

This solution... is not as easy as it appears, because there are too few good teachers and too many flippant students. But a solution is not impossible. Universities which put their money into [people*] before buildings are bound to succeed."

Eric Ashby, Universities in Australia, 1944 pp.75

* In the language of the day, Ashby says "men". Normally I wouldn't change this, but I thought in this instance it was quite distracting

Frail vessels for the precious oil of humanity

"The modern university is a vastly different place from those turbulent houses of medieval scholars. Being concerned with an earthly, not a heavenly, kingdom, the universities have had to shape themselves to a changing society.

They have assumed obligations to industry. They have become encrusted with buildings and offices. In different cities and in different ages they have fulfilled now one function, now another. But through the whole eight centuries it has remained the vocation of universities to uphold and to transmit certain imperishable traditions.

Often they have been frail vessels into which to pour such precious oil of humanity. At one time and another they have betrayed their trust. But the traditions have been preserved, and they have been handed on to Australia. Today our universities, criticize them as you will, are the trustees of Australian intellectual life; despite their weakness, despite their unworthiness for this high office."

Eric Ashby, Universities in Australia, 1944 pp.74-5

War, Science, Civilisation

While significant, the war’s greatest consequences for knowledge did not lie in practical policies like the Reconstruction Training Scheme but in anxieties about the purpose for university-based knowledge. Knowledge was seen to be the foundation for a civilised ideal in which humanity was bonded by rationality. As Bruno Latour has pointed out, 20^th Century wars were each met with shock that civilisation, as Paul Valéry put it, was “mortal”.[1] Revelations of the torture of humans in the name of Nazi medicine were disquieting for the future of science, even though Nazi research was regularly discredited as not “true” science. The Canberra Times, reporting on Nazi science in 1933, implied that genuine science could only function in a democracy.[2] The result of a neglect of true science in Germany, The Argus too-hopefully reported in 1939, would be a reduction in their technological development and military efficiency.[3] In July 1939, in the “hush” before the war started, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said that science, rather than violence, created “true living space”, improving the living standards of people and enabling peace. “Give scientists a chance”, he said, contrasting science’s civilising capacity to:

The barbaric method of forcibly imposing one population upon another and of exterminating or subjugating the vanquished is hopelessly inefficient and out of date.[4]

Latour’s contention that science and rationality were deployed in modernity to instate a false peace, based on a world of naturalised commonalities is evident in Churchill’s newspaper article here. Science had established the “common make-up of genes, neurons, muscles, skeletons, ecosystems and evolution which allowed them to be classed in the same humanity” so that every conflict could be positioned as a result of superstition, passion, prejudice and barbarism, antithetical to the civilisation that science’s objective sameness allowed.[5]

Later, in 1953, Winston Churchill, like so many others, reflected on science differently:

These fearful scientific discoveries cast their shadow on every thoughtful mind.[6]

Research to develop an Atomic Bomb had been conducted in several countries in a clear race that would see knowledge win the war. The United States had invested $2 Billion in nuclear research and development. A media release, prepared after the first successful atomic bomb test in New Mexico (but not released until after the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945), shows that the researchers believed that this knowledge, like all true science, would further civilisation:

Mankind’s successful transition to a new age, the Atomic Age, was ushered in July 16, 1945 before the eyes of a tense group of renowned scientists … Mounted on a steel tower, a revolutionary weapon destined to change war as we know it, or which may even be the instrumentality to end all wars, was set off with an impact which signalised man’s most ambitious estimates.[7]

The Atomic Bomb had shown in the most dramatic way possible that knowledge could win a war. Newspapers were still expressing jubilance at the imminent end of the war after the initial bomb (“The attack on Hiroshima was successful beyond all expectations” read The Argus) when the horrible reality of the bomb trickled through.[8] “Japs say all living things Seared to Death,” read another Argus headline on the 9^th August, the day of the follow-up bombing of Nagasaki.[9] By September, the Sydney Morning Herald’s war correspondent told Australian readers in graphic detail why “Hiroshima reeks of Death.”[10] Democratic science, it seemed, had not ensured humane civilisation in the way anticipated. Civilisation itself seemed uncertain so that post-war reconstruction required more than practical measures to resume a normal national economy: it required, so many thought, intellectual leaders, including scientists, who would also reconstruct the foundations for humane democracy.

---

[1] B. Latour, "War of the Worlds: What About Peace?," in The Cultural Studies Reader 3rd Edition, ed. Simon During (London: Routledge, 2007).

[2] Anonymous, "The Making of Peoples," Canberra Times August 2 1933.

[3] Anonymous, "Germany Less Scientific: The Effect of Nazidom," The Argus, 23 October 1939.

[4] Winston Churchill, "The Hush of Europe: Hitler's Chance to Ponder: July Lights and Shadows," Sydney Morning Herald, 28 July 1939.

[5] Latour, "War of the Worlds: What About Peace?."

[6] Anonymous, "Probabilities of War Pass: Churchill Says Tension Less," Sydney Morning Herald, 5 November 1953.

[7] War Department Washington D.C., "Media Release, Atomic Bomb Test July 16," in Philip Baxter Papers (Sydney: University of NSW Archives, 1945).

[8] Anonymous, "Ultimatum to Japan Is Expected "Surrender or Be Annihilated"," The Argus, 9 August 1945.

[9] Anonymous, "Japs Say All Living Things Seared to Death," The Argus, 9 August 1945.

[10] Antony Whitlock, "Hiroshima Reeks of Death," Sydney Morning Herald, 14 September 1945.

Universities: utilitarian and sublime. Ian Clunies Ross.

Ian Clunies Ross (who is described in wikipedia as "the 'architect' of Australia's scientific boom") at the Centenary of the University of Sydney (1952): excerpts from his oration in his Memoirs and Papers.

"How fanciful must have appeared the rhetoric of William Charles Wentworth, when, moving the Bill for the establishment of the University in 1849 ... 'a long list of illustrious names of statesmen and patriots, of philanthropists and philosophers, of poets and heroes...'

It is noteworthy, and indicative of the change that 100 years have wrought, that Wentworth made no mention of scientists ... indicative not only of the lesser place of science and of the scientist in the hierarchy of university men, but of the appreciation which we have now lost that there was then a unity of knowledge" Memoirs and Papers, pp. 171-2


"This heart-searching is stimulated by the recognition, during and since the war, that the universities have fallen from that traditional high estate in which they exerted a commanding influence on the ideas and ideals of their times. Neither within nor between countries did they provide a rallying point, a vital philosophy with which to counter the evil philosophies of Fascism, Nazism or Communism. In so far as we have gained a respite from the assault of these dark forces, it has not been through any counter-balancing or nobler view of life imparted by the universities and contemporary education, but through recourse to the barbarism of war and the more efficient use of science and technology prostituted to that end." pp 172-173

"If we look back 100 years, we can picture how these imposing buildings must have dominated the straggling town of Sydney; so, too, must the power and purpose of the University have appeared to offer promise of a new view of life and a philosophy of living to the men of that day. Is there, perhaps, an analogy between the present position of the University, encircled by the drabness of a great city, and its decline to an institution whose purpose, in popular estimation, is to teach men how to earn a living rather than a way of living, to acquire learning rather than wisdom?" 173

"We are, I believe, faced with the paradox hat, while the university's main function is sublime, it is at the same time essentially utilitarian: utilitarian in that, from medieval times, the university has sought to meet the needs of society by the training of theologians, doctors, lawyers and .. sublime in that, whatever the nature of vocational training for particular functions or techniques, it sought to provide a system of vital ideas about the university and man's relation to it" 173-174

"It is significant that, today, we seldom think of university men, collectively, as possessed of sound judgement or of a vital system of ideas which unites the past and present in an intelligible whole. We think rather in terms of special skills and techniques; of a celebrated physician, a great engineer, a distinguished physicist or chemist; and woe betide us should we attribute to them wisdom or judgement outside of their technical competence!" 174-5

"...we find ourselves at the height of the scientific age...science is everywhere about us, interpenetrating the whole fabric of life, influencing our minds no less than our bodies, or relations as individuals no less than as peoples. And science tends increasingly to dominate the life and purpose of the universities. Through the achievements of science...the universities must win popular acclaim.

Even at the lowest material level, the sciences must preoccupy the minds of university administrators, since modern science... is an infernally expensive business, so that to you, Mr Vice-Chancellor, it must seem an insatiable monster of ever larger and more threatening proportions.

Society will provide no escape from this predicament, since it recognises that it musy live by science even at the risk of dying painfully by it." p.177

"Science poses the major problem of education because of the very magnitude of its success, so that the ceaseless and bewilderingly rapid proliferation of knowledge forces its votaries into ever-narrowing specialisms. ... what is more, they not only suffer this fate but glory in it: for are not specialists the new elect, the high priests of the cult whose mysteries none may share? Not for them

'To see a world in a grain of sane,

and a heaven in a wild flower'

The grain of sand has become all the world and the heaven they know or seek to know." pp.177-8

"We are confronted, then, with the paradox that, while science, whether pure or applied, must occupy a more commanding place in the universities, it threatens, by its very nature, to accentuate the movement from broad scholarship towards a fragmented and specialist learning; that while scientists and professional men, by virtue of their numbers, education, and the importance of their functions, should take a vital part in the life and thought of their times and in all aspects of human relations which are concerned with administration and government, and the operation of the social organism, they are not only ill-equipped but, as a result of their university training, so permanently mutilated that it is idle to expect anything of them." 178