Some Possible Misunderstandings of the Philosophy
Dewey Dykstra, Professor of Physics
(1 Feb 2001)
The theory of knowledge presented in the course philosophy document is not unique to the PHYS 100 course. There are a number of people who have written about these ideas in the last several decades. Perhaps the person whose ideas appear to most closely resemble those expressed in the course philosophy document is Ernst von Glasersfeld. He calls the philosophical position concerning the nature of knowledge, radical constructivism. He has published many articles, book chapters and several books on the subject. (A reference you can look up for starters is at the end of this short piece.)
For the last ten years I have been able to observe the various interpretations people have of these ideas upon initially reading von Glasersfeld and as they have attempted to make sense of the course philosophy document. In the case of von Glasersfeld one of the more common initial impressions is that he is saying that there is no truth; that in fact everybody makes up their own world; that there is no “real” world. Applied to education this is expressed as letting the students do whatever occurs to them to do since everybody makes up their own truth anyway. In the case of the PHYS 100 course the assumption is that everyone should just do what occurs to them. There are or should be no rules since each of us makes up our own minds. Yet, these are not what either von Glasersfeld or I intend.
It is easy to understand then why some get very “testy” when Dykstra comes along in lab and acts like the “process nazi” he warned he was going to be the second week in lab. How can this be? We thought that the course philosophy document said or we thought Dykstra said in class that everything is up to us!
Now that we have come up against an apparent discrepancy we have several choices. We can ignore it and hope it will go away. We can decide that actually Dykstra mislead us and really didn’t mean what he said. Or, it is possible that it isn’t quite completely clear yet what Dykstra is intending us to understand about this philosophy and how it works in the course. If it is one of the first two possibilities then the honeymoon is all over and the course isn’t really going to be all that different. This leaves us with a pretty bleak future. There might be yet other possibilities, but what if it is the third possibility? How could this be that some number of folks in the class have significantly misunderstood the philosophy document? Didn’t Dykstra write twelve pages trying to tell us what he meant? Why can’t he say what he means in twelve pages? What did he REALLY mean?
The Problem of Communication:
How could the communication in twelve pages have failed? For some time people who study communications have realized that when someone makes the sounds we call speech, or the gestures which accompany speech, or writes symbols on a surface which we call writing, meaning is not carried with the sound from the speaker’s throat to the listener’s ear. Meaning is not in the gestures. It is not in the symbols on paper which we call letters and words. Instead, the speaker or writer has constructed a meaning in his or her head and can at best only attempt to trigger or influence the listener or reader to construct a similar meaning in her or his head. The meaning does not travel through space with the sound and it is not on the paper in the ink. The speaker constructs meaning from his or her existing view of the world based on his or her total life experiences so far. The listener or reader then attempts to construct meaning of the sounds or symbols based on his or her own existing, but very different, view of the world based on his or her total life experiences so far which are not the same as those of the speaker or writer. Luckily much of the time this works out so that we generally feel that the process results in the listener or reader apparently constructing for themselves a sufficiently similar meaning to that intended by the speaker or writer that we are satisfied that the process “works.” It even looks like the meanings are transferred from speaker or listener. Yet, it is the failures of the process which reveal that this transfer or transmission of meaning interpretation is not a particularly good model. It does not explain why the failures happen. The scheme in which the listener or reader constructs as best he or she can what they think the speaker or writer means explains both the successes and the failures of communication.
(It’s getting quite cumbersome to use this “speaker or writer,” “listener or reader” form so for simplicity’s sake I’ll just refer to “speaker” and “listener.” Just remember the same thing could be said with “writer” and “listener” substituted.)
How does this apply to our present “problem?” If the speaker is talking about ideas which the listeners have not really encountered before, then it is practically impossible for the speaker to come up with a set of words and gestures which will automatically trigger all of the listeners to construct exactly the same ideas the speaker has. As we listen we construct meaning out of our own personal collections of ideas about the world which we have come to associate with the sounds we call spoken words, but these meanings are not necessarily those intended by the speaker. We have all experienced such miscommunications. Imagine the following. We overhear someone talking about drinking tea and eating a biscuit. Most of us in the U.S. would imagine that this is a conversation about breakfast. But, what if the speaker were from England? These same words would in all likelihood NOT be about breakfast, but about afternoon tea! Yet, at least for a while we are likely to be perfectly satisfied that we understood what the person was talking about and that the person was talking about breakfast!
So how do we decide when we think we know what someone is talking about? Generally just as with the farmer and the seeds, we decide that our “scheme” representing what someone else means has passed several tests. This is more than just hearing what the other person says once or reading one example of their writing. We have to see whether or not their future words match the “scheme” we have come up with. We have to observe what they do. When their subsequent words or behavior do not match the “scheme” we have constructed, what do we conclude? Well, either they are being inconsistent or the scheme we constructed was not a good one. How do we decide? We have to engage the other person somehow over the discrepancy we feel we have noticed. Interestingly enough, generally the person will say that they are being consistent. Just as generally it is indeed possible to formulate eventually at least one “scheme” for understanding the person’s actions, hence they generally are being consistent according to at least one view or scheme.
This same source of miscommunication can occur over the word, “biscuit,” or the word, “acceleration,” or any other word, just as it can occur over much more complex entities as a philosophy of knowledge to be used in a course. So, maybe this is why twelve pages did not accomplish the whole job of communicating the course philosophy, we each have to construct our own complete “scheme” of it through multiple attempts at communicating and multiple tests of our “schemes” against what happens in class.
Now you might notice that this view of the problem of communication is very consistent with the view of the nature of knowledge advertised in this course. From page 3 of the course philosophy document…
“Knowledge
as Explanatory Stories Which We Generate.
In this
course, knowledge is probably something entirely different than in any science
course you have experienced previously.
For the purposes of this course, knowledge can be thought of as
“stories” we make up to explain our experiences. In a sense it is the meaning we make of
our experiences. Meaning is not in the experiences. It comes from our own minds. Since we make
the meaning or the explanation for ourselves, it cannot be “discovered
out there”. It can change as
we think and interact with each other about the experiences and as we have
further experiences. We can think
of these explanations or meanings on two levels. One is the personal level, the explanation or meaning we
make up to associate with experience.
The other level is “public,” the meaning we come to
“take-as-shared” between us when we interact with each other about
our respective meanings for common experiences.”
It applies to our knowledge of other people and their ideas just as it applies to our knowledge of physical phenomena. It is about what and how human beings know.
So why or under what circumstances do we construct new schemes? Generally, we keep the schemes that work. We change ones that do not work. But, we sometimes take a long time to get around to it. A Swiss psychologist by the name of Jean Piaget suggested a theory that makes a lot of sense. He pointed out that it appears that people do not change their ideas about things until they decide their ideas do not work. They notice that something does not match how they expected things to be and they become disturbed to some degree. Piaget called this sense of disturbance, disequilibration. He noticed that people tend to respond so as to reduce this sense of disturbance. They “walk away from it” or avoid it in some way, in which case they do not change their schemes in particular OR they stop and consider the situation, imagine and test out some alternative schemes and when they find one that works satisfactorily to explain this novel situation, they are satisfied, re-equilibrated, and they move on. He called these processes of generating and adopting new schemes, self-regulation and accommodation.
So, considering this process and the problem of communication what should someone who is trying to “share” new or different ideas with others expect? If these new or different ideas really are new and different to the others, then first, he or she should not expect the initial attempt at expressing the ideas in words to be completely successful at getting the others to “know” the ideas. Second, he or she should expect the listeners to generate understandings that instead are consistent with the listeners’ existing views and life experiences. Third, as a result, as the speaker continues to work with the listeners it is very likely that the listeners are going to be surprised at some of the subsequent words and actions of the speakers. After all so far the listeners have constructed schemes to model the speaker’s ideas which while they initially appear to be good schemes will turn out not to accurately predict what the speaker says or does. How should everybody respond, the speaker and the listeners? If they want to be successful at understanding each other, they need to tolerate the resulting disequilibration with its attendant ambiguity (remember those dispositions for success in the course) and begin the process of self-regulation and accommodation; inventing new schemes of understanding what the speaker means and testing them.
Some Implications:
…a
different atmosphere in the course and a different view of professional
behavior on the part of the instructor.
Normal schooling lulls us into a sense of confidence and trust in situations that are very calm and not very challenging or disturbing because the prevailing belief is that we “learn” best under these conditions. Sadly this sort of schooling doesn’t value asking us to confront or challenge our existing ideas, hence we leave such schooling with new words, jargon, which we come to apply to essentially the same beliefs about how the world works that we had when we started school. Because the learning intended in the PHYS 100 course is the different type of learning that Piaget was talking about, then the experience is about disequilibration, self-regulation and accommodation. This is very different than normal schooling which preaches that students learn best who are undisturbed and who are asked to take many, many small steps to build up to bigger gains.
The consequence of this difference is that in this course in a number of ways the instructor’s role is to attempt to direct your attention to your own existing ideas in places where you are likely to find those ideas do not work. The approach is not one that keeps you calm and comfortable. It is one that is intended to maximize the possibilities that you will disequilibrate and then to make an environment in which it is conducive for you to consider and test new alternative schemes to find ones that work better than the ones that left you disequilibrated. It is not about having quick easy answers available. It is about being tough and analytical, but fair, about proposed ideas.
It has been suggested by many students over the years in this course that to disturb the students, to push on them when they attempt to avoid the disequilibrations in order to get them to confront these disequilibrations and resolve them, that such behaviors by the teacher is unprofessional. The teacher should be nice and kind to the students and never be a source of discomfort to the students. This belief is certainly consistent with normal schooling. Unfortunately, given the philosophy of knowledge and the type of learning valued in this course, it would be profoundly unprofessional for the teacher NOT to attempt to establish disequilibration among the students and for the teacher not to constructively attempt to push on students to get them to deal with the disequilibrations. This is not to say that the instructor is justified in pushing a student “over the edge.” Yet, all of us tend to avoid the unknown and the strange, hence there is a great tendency to avoid dealing with disequilibrations. Left to our own devices and given the kind of schooling we have been lulled into, we are less likely to do the kind of learning intended in this course. The instructor in this situation is morally obligated to attempt to constructively push the students in order to help them make the changes in understanding of the world that they can.
If the instructor did not “push,” then many students would make little or no changes and little or none of the potential value of the course would result.
It is very easy to jump to the conclusion that if we’re talking about what happens in normal science classes, then we must be talking about the opposite. If it’s not about what the scientists say, then we can decide anything we want. If it’s not about following the directions given to us in normal lab activities, then we can just do whatever we want. This has been called “either, or” thinking by the famous Educational Philosopher, John Dewey, a kind of binary value system. But, this is not the case in this situation. What is being talked about in the course philosophy document is NOT the opposite of normal school science in this respect. It is DIFFERENT, but not opposite. So, it’s not about “anything goes” and not about what passes in the normal scheme of schooling as science, independent or creative thinking.
What the course is about is getting you to focus on your ideas some very particular aspects of the phenomena and on testing these ideas in a very structured way. This focus on your ideas and structured approach to testing your ideas is NEITHER what is done in normal school science NOR is it the opposite of what is done in normal school science. Each activity in lab is about some particular issue or aspect of a phenomenon. Each individual question in the activity is about this particular example of the phenomenon. Each question is intended for you to examine your own ideas and the ideas of your lab partners about THIS particular aspect of the phenomenon.
You can always decide to go your own way, but it’s a lot like signing up for a swimming course, but not knowing how to swim, and deciding that you’d rather shoot shotguns at little clay disks thrown in the air. You might get better at hitting those little clay disks, but don’t be surprised when the final is about swimming and you fail the swimming test on the final. It should also not come as too much of a surprise that the swimming instructor will tell you not to discharge the shotguns in the pool area. This latter is the equivalent of Dykstra being the “process nazi” as he told you he would be the second week in lab…and has shown you he is in lab so far.
So the course
attempts to get you to examine your own ideas about particular aspects of the
phenomena and the ideas of your classmates about these same things. In a structured way with a particular
sequence of issues you are being asked to test the ideas against the phenomena
the ideas are about. In this
process you are asked to very critically compare your ideas against your
observations, and those of your classmates, against your mutual experiences
with the phenomena. When you
notice differences between your initial ideas and the experiences with the
phenomena, you are asked to participate with your classmates in devising changes
or substitutions to those initial ideas than might explain the experiences more
accurately and to test the ideas to see how well they fit. Then you will be asked to participate
in decisions about these new or changed ideas to try to come to some consensus
as to ones that fit together into a simple, easy to use, yet accurate scheme
for explaining the phenomenon. It
is not about guessing or coming up with what scientists say or consulting any
other authority. It is about us
coming up with our own ideas that, accurately as we can make them, fit our
mutual experiences with the phenomena and about us all, to the maximum extent
we can, manage coming to an understanding of this grand scheme that we can all
take-as-shared.
Disequilibrations are sometimes stressful. Most of us have had little practice dealing with them in classroom settings. When we get emotional we don’t always treat those around us the way we normally do. Emotions get higher than normal. But, if we avoid them, we avoid the learning that is supposed to go on in this course. The best policy is to face these situations and not take it personally. People will get upset with Dykstra and each other. Dykstra is not always perfect at these things, but he is willing to live through the high emotions and when the “dust settles” he is willing to let “bygones be bygones.” This is because he knows how great the results are when we have self-regulated. If we cannot let anybody be disequilibrated because we can never know when somebody will get “steamed” about it, then we have to sacrifice the learning. We cannot afford to sacrifice the experience of this kind of learning.
The really, powerfully, good thing about disequilibrations is that they can result in really profound changes in understanding and ideas. Such experiences are not to be avoided, but actively searched out and savored for the rich possibilities of new ideas and new views of the world. They are worth every bit of tension and frustration that one might feel along the way!
In the course philosophy document there are extensive comments describing specific procedures intended in lab and in discussion in class. In retrospect this is not consistent with the notion that what is being advocated is a kind of laissez faire approach on the part of the instructor; that just any action or approach on the part of the students is fair game. Should we conclude that those who made this assumption about the course, that anything is fair game, did not read thoroughly the course philosophy document? My experience leads me to say NO. It seems that the “either, or” reflex in reasoning seems to be sufficiently powerful in people to explain the fact that a significant number of folks often jump to this conclusion about the course which does not match how the course is actually conducted. In normal schooling so often the “either, or” pattern of reasoning is allowed to suffice and is hardly ever critically analyzed. We get such practice at it that it becomes natural and unquestioned. It leads people to formulate a “scheme” of understanding the course, which though predictable and understandable in its origins, is not what the course turns out to be. Just as with the farmer and the seeds it is a scheme that seems reasonable for a time, but we end up tossing out because it does not happen to pass the experimental test.
It is truly the case that everyone in the class CAN participate in this process and they CAN do well in the exams. These disequilibrations are not failures. They are signs of learning and learning opportunities. It is up to you. YOU have to do it. No one can do it for you.
The following book is in the library and has references to many of von Glasersfeld’s other works and those of people who believe in a similar fashion.
Glasersfeld, Ernst von. (1995) Radical Constructivism: A Way of Knowing and Learning. Washington, DC, Falmer Press.