Fifty Major Thinkers on Education

From Confucius to Dewey

Joy Palmer, Liora Bresler, David Cooper, Joy Palmer, Liora Bresler, David Cooper

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134735945
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In this unique work some of today's greatest educators present concise, accessible summaries of the great educators of the past. Covering a time-span from 500 BC to the early twentieth century each essay gives key biographical information, an outline of the individual's principal achievements and activities, an assessment of their impact and influence, a list of their major writings and suggested further reading. Together with Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education, this book provides a unique reference guide for all students of education.

ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD 1861–1947

The solution which I am urging, is to eradicate the fatal disconnection of subjects which kills the vitality of our modern curriculum. There is only one subject-matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations.¹

Alfred North Whitehead, known mainly as a mathematician and philosopher, was one of the most widely read, most quoted, and least understood philosophers of the twentieth century.² He is best remembered for his collaboration with Bertrand Russell, from 1910 to 1913, on Principia Mathematica, a three-volume treatise on mathematics and logic. White-head’s views on education can be found scattered in his essays and books, but he did not write a coherent exposition of his philosophy of education in one book where it could be easily read and understood. His best-known educational writings are in The Aims of Education, a collection of lectures delivered between 1912 and 1928. The focus of Whitehead’s later work, after 1925, is on metaphysics and the development of a cosmological doctrine wherein reality is a process in time.

His English ancestors were yeomen, fishermen and farmers. Those of his forefathers who did not inherit land had become local schoolteachers, clergymen and doctors. At that time no higher education was required for these professions. Alfred North’s grandfather, Thomas, was a remarkably enterprising man who was widely read in both history and mathematics. He became a schoolmaster and Church of England clergyman and founded Chatham House Academy in Ramsgate, on the Isle of Thanet, Kent, England. He was the first in the family to give his sons a university education. Thomas’ son, Alfred, became an Anglican clergyman as well and took over from his father as headmaster of Chatham House Academy when Thomas accepted the post as Deputy Mayor of Ramsgate at 63.

Alfred North was born on 15 February 1861, at Ramsgate. He was the youngest of Alfred Whitehead and Sarah Buckmaster’s four children. He was considered to be a child in delicate health, though he was his father’s favourite and was genuinely adored by his siblings. His early years were spent at Ramsgate in his father’s tutorage where tangible links with visible historical artifacts pervaded Alfred North’s early experience and thought. It is said that St Augustine converted the Saxon King Ethelbert to Christianity near Ramsgate in 597 under an oak tree that survived until the early nineteenth century. Only sixteen miles away from Ramsgate is Canterbury Cathedral, where English bishops have been consecrated since the thirteenth century.

In September 1875, when Alfred North was 14, he left home to attend Sherborne School, where he stayed for five years. Both of his brothers had preceded him. At Sherborne he received an excellent classical education in Latin and Greek and some mathematics. He read poetry, especially the work of Wordsworth and Shelley.

Cambridge (1884–1910) – mathematics as a discipline

In 1880 Alfred North received a scholarship to attend Trinity College at Cambridge University. There he concentrated on mathematical studies. In 1884 he was elected to join the ‘Apostles’, an élite discussion club with lifetime membership, founded by Tennyson in the 1820s. Intellectual originality, honesty and having an open mind were the traits most praised by the club. The kinds of questions discussed most often were philosophical rather than political ones. Alfred North began lecturing in mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1884. He was much admired by his students as an engaging and forceful lecturer and a pleasant and caring person. He was intrigued by the intellectual discipline of mathematics. One of his first scholarly interests was stimulated by Hermann Gunther Grassmann’s work. (Victor Lowe, Whitehead’s biographer, ³ claims there is no more striking case of genius-neglect in the history of mathematics than the case of Grassmann’s obscurity.) Grassmann proposed a consistent formal mathematical theory of n-dimensional space that has uses beyond those of three-dimensional geometry. With his study of Grassmann’s theory, Whitehead began his lifelong interest in the exploration of the fundamental nature of mathematics. He was not content with formulae and their applications or the science of mere number and quantity. During the late 1880s he was preoccupied with the extension of Grassmann’s and others’ novel ideas in logic, mathematics and the philosophy of science. In 1989 he published his first book, A Treatise on Universal Algebra, an investigation of systems of abstract mathematical ideas applied to physics.

On 16 December 1890, when he was 29, Alfred North Whitehead married Evelyn Wade. She was almost 25. They had four children, all born in Cambridge: North, 1891; Jessie, 1893; an unnamed son who died at birth; and Eric,1898. Eric, the youngest, was shot down in March 1918, during World War I.

Whitehead is most widely known for his collaboration with Bertrand Russell on the three large volumes of Principia Mathematica published in 1910, 1912 and 1913. Russell had been Whitehead’s pupil at Cambridge and was 13 years his junior. Russell and Whitehead began their collaboration shortly after 1900. In this work they held that mathematics is less a science of quantity than a deduction from formal logic. Their ideas were much discussed and assessed, but the most common conclusion is that the effort was a failure. Victor Lowe (1985) assesses the voluminous work as follows:

‘One of the great intellectual monuments of all time’ is the stock assessment of Principia Mathematica. Monuments aren’t alive, and the book had little influence on living mathematics. Its presence did have the beneficial effect of putting an end to mysticism about mathematics. New developments, which began shortly after its publication, had much to do with its lack of influence. The distinction between mathematics and metamathematics became important; but Principia contained no metamathematical theory of its system.⁴

Bertrand Russell (1956) recalled his years of studying under Whitehead and then his collaboration with Whitehead on Principia Mathematica:

Throughout the gradual transition from a student to an independent writer, I profited by Whitehead’s guidance. … When, in 1900, I began to have ideas of my own, I had the good fortune to persuade him that they were not without value. This was the basis of our ten years’ collaboration on a big book no part of which is wholly due to either. … In England, Whitehead was regarded only as a mathematician, and it was left to America to discover him as a philosopher. He and I disagreed in philosophy, so that collaboration was no longer possible.⁵

London, 1911–23 – nature and human nature: how do we learn?

In 1911 Alfred North moved from Cambridge to University College, London, to teach mathematics. His reason for moving was that he was ‘in a groove’ at Cambridge and he wanted fresh challenges. In 1914 he became a professor at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in Kensington. During his years in London, he turned his attention to problems of education and applied mathematics. He questioned how people think, and eventually this led to questions of human nature. He began to ask how and why it happens that people learn and how learning can be improved. He wrote several lectures on education between 1912 and 1928 and published them in 1929 in The Aims of Education. Although his main personal concern was mathematics education, he applied his ideas about education to other disciplines such as technical education, science, art, literature and the classics.

His continuing interest in nature and science at this time was mainly concerned with physics; the meaning of relativity; and mathematical concepts such as space, time and motion. Whitehead criticized the mechanistic view of reality and Newtonian physics that portrayed atoms that were moved locally by other particles but that were otherwise unmoved. He thought that Einstein’s formulations relied on too narrow an empirical base. During this period he wrote An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge (1919), The Concept of Nature (1920), and The Principle of Relativity (1922). Alfred North’s own theories about relativity were not accepted by physicists of his time, partially because of his refusal to take into consideration the means by which we measure spatio-temporal relations.⁶

Harvard University, 1924–47 – mathematics, science and religion: what does it all mean?

In 1924, when Alfred North was 63 years old, he accepted an offer from Harvard for a five-year appointment to teach philosophy. He retired from Harvard in 1937 and remained in Cambridge, MA, until his death on 30 December 1947, at 86. His wife, Evelyn, lived until 1961.

At Harvard Whitehead’s work attained lasting success. He moved away from strictly formal logic and explored more general questions in Science and the Modern World (1926) and Adventures of Ideas (1933). He became preoccupied with religion in this final phase, an interest well expressed in two books, Religion in the Making (1926) and Process and Reality (1929). In all, he wrote seven books during the Harvard years. His ideas about the nature of reality are presented more technically in Process and Reality (1929) and are more easily accessible in Symbolism (1927), Adventures of Ideas (1933), and Modes of Thought (1938). After his retirement, his home in Cambridge became a meeting place for visitors who enjoyed his originality of mind and the constant warmth of his personality.

Overview of Whitehead’s views on education

Whitehead was influenced by his early study of the classics. He was especially interested in Plato’s philosophy. In ‘Nature Lifeless’, an essay in Modes of Thought (1938), he wrote, Plato’s ultimate forms, which are for him the basis of all reality, can be construed as referring to the metaphysical necessity which underlies historic accident.’ Whitehead attempted to reconcile the differences between science and human experience. He ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Alphabetical list of contents
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• Confucius, 551–479 BCE
• Socrates, 469–399 BCE
• Plato, 427–347 BCE
• Aristotle, 384–322 BCE
• Jesus of Nazareth, 4 BCE–AD 29
• Saint Augustine, 354–430
• Al-Ghazzali, 1058–1111
• Ibn Tufayl, c. 1106–85
• Desiderius Erasmus, 1466–1536
• Jan Amos Comenius, 1592–1670
• John Locke, 1632–1704
• John Wesley, 1703–91
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712–78
• Immanuel Kant, 1724–1804
• Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, 1746–1827
• Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759–97
• Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762–1814
• Wilhelm von Humboldt, 1767–1835
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770–1831
• Johann Friedrich Herbart, 1776–1841
• Friedrich Wilhelm Froebel, 1782–1852
• John Henry Newman, 1801–90
• John Stuart Mill, 1806–73
• Charles Darwin, 1809–82
• John Ruskin, 1819–1900
• Herbert Spencer, 1820–1903
• Matthew Arnold, 1822–88
• Thomas Henry Huxley, 1825–95
• Louisa May Alcott, 1832–88
• Samuel Butler, 1835–1902
• Robert Morant, 1836–1920
• Eugenio María de Hostos, 1839–1903
• Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844–1900
• Alfred Binet, 1857–1911
• Émile Durkheim, 1858–1917
• Anna Julia Haywood Cooper, 1858–1964
• John Dewey, 1859–1952
• Jane Addams, 1860–1935
• Rudolf Steiner, 1861–1925
• Rabindranath Tagore, 1861–1941
• Alfred North Whitehead, 1861–1947
• Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, 1865–1950
• William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, 1868–1963
• M.K. Gandhi, 1869–1948
• Maria Montessori, 1870–1952
• Bertrand Russell, 1872–1970
• E.L. Thorndike, 1874–1949
• Martin Buber, 1878–1965
• José Ortega y Gasset, 1883–1955
• Cyril Lodovic Burt, 1883–1971