A Problem-Based Approach to Teaching Early Modern Philosophy

This post is based on a panel presentation about Teaching Modern Philosophy for the Society of Modern Philosophy group session at the recent Eastern Division meeting of the APA.

By Kirsten Walsh — University of Calgary

1     Introduction

In the 1870s, the University of Cambridge received an important donation: the Portsmouth family were willing to donate Newton’s papers to the University Library.  In 1888, following a “lengthy and laborious” process, the Cambridge committee assigned to the task of sorting through Newton’s papers delivered their verdict: Cambridge only wanted the scientific papers—the rest, namely the alchemical and theological papers, were of ‘no great value’.  Those papers remained in the attic of the Portsmouth mansion until 1936, when they were sold at auction.  It is significant that not a single institutional buyer attended the auction.  Eventually, the majority of the papers were acquired by two men: Abraham Yahuda and John Maynard Keynes.  Both recognised the importance of these papers, and by the 1960s, most material was available to the public.

I introduce this story to illustrate a point about frameworks.  They are often introduced for good reasons—to highlight particular aspects of an event, historical period, or discipline.  But, by directing our attention towards certain things, we ignore others.  After Newton’s death in 1727, his niece Catherine Conduitt and her husband John did a superb PR job.  They cultivated the image of Newton as the genius scientist, and hid away the bulk of his papers—an enormous amount of religious and alchemical work that didn’t fit their framework of rational, objective science.  This was almost certainly done with good intention: to preserve Newton’s reputation from charges of heresy.  And it ensured that scholars continued to study Newton’s scientific and mathematical work.  However, this same framework led the Cambridge committee to dismiss the bulk of Newton’s work, and, until recently, few scholars have recognised these manuscripts for what they are: serious scholarship which displays deep connections with his work on mechanics and optics.

Frameworks play an important role in the development of philosophy.  They help decide the scope and direction of research, setting the terms for the study of the history of philosophy.  They also play a role in how we, as contemporary philosophers, see ourselves and our field’s development.  Finally, they influence pedagogy: how and what we teach.  Take the rationalist-empiricist distinction (hereafter ‘RED’), for example.  The RED’s historical narrative has played a key role in setting the scope and direction of research and teaching in early modern philosophy, and has influenced the contemporary philosophical emphasis on ‘core’ epistemology.  Frameworks such as the RED have shaped our field in ways that we often don’t even notice.  Many scholars have criticised the use of such frameworks.  They argue that frameworks distort our understanding of the history of philosophy.  Though, many argue that the extent to which this occurs, and the damage it causes, varies depending on the framework.  And they suggest that reliance on such frameworks is counterproductive to many of our pedagogical aims.  Although, it should be noted that many scholars who criticise the use of frameworks in professional philosophy advocate their use in teaching philosophy.[1]

In this paper, my concern is with a particular set of biases: those relating to the kinds of skills we want our students to acquire.  One of the challenges of teaching history of philosophy is that our pedagogical goals are diverse.  We want our students to learn about historical ideas, figures and texts, and to develop an interest in the history of philosophy.  But we also want our students to develop historical skills, such as those required to read and evaluate primary texts and manuscripts, and philosophical skills, such as the ability to construct, reconstruct and assess arguments.  These latter skills are especially important, since they are transferrable—the vast majority of our students won’t become historians of philosophy or even philosophers, but general philosophy skills have all sorts of useful applications.  And yet these skills are frequently neglected in history of philosophy courses, from which students walk away with some names, dates and a knowledge of the ‘general shape’ of things (usually with a tacit belief that modern philosophy was developed by a small group of wealthy white men).  In framework-based courses, the focus on grand narratives and complete philosophical systems typically does not lend itself to the development of historical and philosophical skills.

I offer an alternative to framework-based teaching.  Instead of structuring our courses around grand narratives, or complete philosophical systems, we may take a much more localised approach: present arguments and theories as clusters of solutions to some particular problem.  I call this a problem-based approach, and argue that it offers pedagogical payoffs that are lacking in the more traditional approaches.  Before we continue, however, two caveats are in order.  Firstly, I do not pretend to be offering a new approach to teaching history of philosophy.  Indeed, many of you will already be doing many of the things I suggest—especially in upper level courses.  But I do think it’s worthwhile making this approach explicit, and noting the pedagogical benefits of the approach.  And so, secondly, I do not take credit for this approach.  The approach I describe, the benefits I identify, and the course I outline were all developed in discussion with other teachers of early modern philosophy.  In particular, the course I use as an example was conceived by Dana Jalobeanu, and developed by Dana, Michael Deckard and I when we co-taught it last Spring.

So here’s how I’m going to proceed.  I’ll start by identifying some of the well-known problems with the traditional, framework- or narrative-based approach.  I’ll argue that, while there are better and worse frameworks available, many pedagogical problems don’t just go away by switching frameworks.  I’ll then outline the features and pedagogical payoffs of a problem-based approach.  Finally, I’ll conclude by offering some examples of problem-based courses.

2     Problems with ‘Grand Narratives’ and system-based approaches

The RED’s historical narrative has played a key role in setting the scope and direction of research in the history of ideas, the teaching of early modern philosophy, and even in the contemporary philosophical emphasis on ‘core’ epistemology.  Traditionally, philosophers from the early modern period have been divided into Rationalists and Empiricists.  Let’s remind ourselves of the traditional narrative. According to this story, successive figures in each camp developed the epistemological positions of their predecessors (e.g. Carruthers, 1992, Cushman, 1911, Lennon & Dea, 2014). Moreover, each camp rejected the central claims of the opposing one.  And so, the early modern period can be characterised as two separate, dialectically opposed, progressions.  This back-and-forth ended when Kant combined the insights of both rationalism and empiricism in his new Critical Philosophy.  This distinction, and its complementing narrative, has come increasingly under scholarly attack.  Critics of the RED hold that the distinction introduces three biases into early modern scholarship (Vanzo, 2013){Vanzo, 2013 #187}:

• The epistemological bias. Histories of early modern philosophy based on the RED tend to overemphasise the role of epistemological commitment in the central doctrines, developments and disputes of early modern philosophers.
• The Kantian bias. Histories of early modern philosophy based on the RED tend to overemphasise the lack of common ground between the two camps, and Kant’s role in drawing the early modern period to a close.
• The classificatory bias. Histories of early modern philosophy tend to overemphasise the extent to which all or most early modern philosophers can be classified as either empiricists or rationalists.  This has led to some unconvincing classifications and a failure to recognise the extent to which ‘rationalists’ were influenced by ‘empiricists’ and vice versa.

In short, reliance on the RED has distorted our understanding of early modern thought and the ways in which our field has developed.

Recently, the ‘Otago School’ has offered an alternative framework: the distinction between Experimental and Speculative Philosophy (hereafter the ‘ESD’).  To put it very briefly, speculative philosophy states that natural phenomena can be explained without recourse to systematic observation and experiment, and encourages the use of hypotheses and conjectures in the construction of metaphysical systems.  In contrast, experimental philosophy states that natural phenomena can only be explained after observations have been collected and ordered—thus, experiment plays a vital foundational role in natural philosophy.  These are not simply new labels for old categories.  Where the RED is an epistemological distinction focusing on knowledge’s ultimate source and justification, the ESD is methodological and explanatory: it asks how we go about generating knowledge and explaining natural phenomena (and, for a number of 18^th-century philosophers, moral phenomena).[2]

The differences between these frameworks become clearer when we ask: what was the main driver of change in early modern philosophy?  Insofar as the RED gives us an account of what mattered in early modern philosophy, it generates stories about foundational, a priori investigation into the nature of knowledge.  In contrast, the ESD tells stories of philosophical progress driven by scientific achievement, technological development and methodological innovation.  These are two very different narratives about the development of early modern thought.  Moreover, they emphasise the contributions of different historical figures, the RED emphasising the canonical seven—Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Kant—and the ESD emphasising figures such as Boyle, Hooke and Newton.  On the RED, scientific advancement is at best a side-show, on the ESD it is the main event.[3]

The ESD doesn’t introduce any of the above biases, and so it has certain advantages over the RED.  However, presumably it is a mistake to think that any one factor has played a privileged role in shaping intellectual history.  Thus, arguing that the history of philosophy is methodology-driven, rather than epistemology-driven, creates far too stark a dichotomy.  And drawing out this distinction between the RED and the ESD demonstrates that our traditional early modern philosophy courses, where we teach the rationalists and the empiricists, present extremely biased accounts of the history of philosophy.  And, while the ESD can avoid the particular biases presented by the RED, it runs the risk of introducing its own biases.

Frameworks such as the RED and the ESD generate grand narratives.  And so, in a framework-based course, we tend to introduce historical figures one at a time, focusing on names, dates, and developing an understanding of their complete philosophical systems.  The problem here isn’t so much that we are teaching simplifications and distortions.  It’s true that, a lot of the time, these narratives are false, or not the whole truth—figures tend to be shoehorned, certain key figures and features of particular views are ignored or avoided.  But we can’t teach everything.  Indeed, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is no teacher’s maxim.  We must be selective, otherwise students would drown in the details.  In short, simplifications and distortions are necessary.[4]  However, the focus on grand narratives, I argue, is problematic for three reasons.  Firstly, by focussing on grand narratives, we omit most of the messy details.  But in doing so, we miss all the fun—the personalities, the criticisms (the clever and the snarky), the comments scribbled in margins.  If we want to cultivate in our students a love for the history of philosophy, then these details are worth preserving.  Secondly, to do justice to the grand narrative in a single semester, we really only have time to focus on a few key figures.  But in doing so, we teach our students that early modern philosophy was an activity for wealthy white men.  If we want to encourage diversity (and surely we do!), we need to provide examples of women and other minorities engaging in philosophical discussions.  Thirdly, by focussing on grand narratives, we encourage our students to focus on names, dates and complete philosophical systems.  But this causes us to neglect other historical and philosophical skills, such as those required to read and evaluate primary texts and manuscripts.  The focus on grand narratives and complete philosophical systems does not lend itself to the development of such skills.  Luckily, there is another approach that can avoid these pitfalls: the problem-based approach.

3     Towards a problem-based approach

In this section, I introduce a problem-based approach to teaching early modern philosophy.[5]  This approach stems from the recognition that philosophers do not develop their positions ex nihilo, but in response to problems and challenges arising in their historical context: observations, events and other philosophical positions.  In addition to this, while a lot of philosophical work was focussed on developing philosophical systems (i.e. complete systems with epistemological and metaphysical components), in many cases, the most interesting and important developments occurred at a more local level: hammering out details and addressing particular problems.

The problem-based approach has three key features.  Firstly, it is localised, in that arguments and theories are presented, not in terms of a grand narrative, but as a cluster of responses to a particular problem—where that problem is understood as it was at the time.  And arguments and theories are treated as responses and solutions to the problem.  And so, to the extent that there is a focus on historical figures, the focus is not on learning about the figure for the figure’s sake, but on learning about the figure as someone trying to solve a particular problem.  Secondly, the problem-based approach is contextual.  That is, arguments and theories are understood and assessed, not in isolation nor in terms of their role in a completed philosophical system, but with respect to the problems they are intended to solve.  Thirdly, the problem-based approach is text-focused.  Arguments and theories are drawn, in the first place, from particular primary texts and passages.  This focus on particular texts and passages is a consequence of the fact that we are treating arguments and theories as localised and contextual.  Instead of dealing with the great books and completed systems of philosophers expressed in secondary texts, we emphasise correspondence, manuscripts, and lesser-known texts.  To the extent that secondary material, and discussion of frameworks, philosophical systems and grand narratives, are introduced (and indeed they often need to be), they play a subordinate role—they become positions to examine and challenge.

There are roughly three kinds of payoff to this way of teaching.  Firstly, the approach allows us to sidestep the canon.  That is, women and other non-canonical philosophers can be addressed without shoehorning or side-lining them.  This offers payoff in terms of diversity and inclusivity in the classroom.  We don’t just have to focus on non-canonical figures in terms of their contact with the canonical seven; we can look at them on their own terms.  This might have the benefit of providing female role models to students.

Secondly, the approach offers payoff in terms of development of historical skills.  This is because the approach lends itself to studying lesser-known texts, correspondence and unpublished materials.  This allows students to develop their skills in reading and interpreting historical texts.  Once we move beyond the canonical seven, we are on less trodden ground—we just don’t know as much about these scholars.  This means that we cannot rely so much on secondary literature and critical editions.  Often we will read manuscripts, correspondence, and texts that only went through one edition, and have been out of print since the 17^th or 18^th century.[6]  Focusing on such texts helps to develop very different skills to those developed when one focuses on secondary literature.

Thirdly, the approach offers payoff in terms of development of philosophical skills.  Whereas a traditional early modern course tends to focus on a fairly specific narrative, establishing influence, dates and development of the ideas of a specific figure, a problem-based course tends to focus on a puzzle and various solutions and assumptions around it.  This leads to a focus on articulation of problems and their assumptions, and assessment of various solutions.  And so there is scope for the development of transferrable philosophical skills, such as reconstructing and assessing arguments.

 

You might think that one reason to continue teaching the traditional narrative is because it provides us with a shared knowledge base.  The thought being that, in order to understand anything about the history of philosophy, then you need to understand Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza and Kant.  Any other figures are relevant only insofar as they influenced or were influenced by one of these figures.  And this shared narrative provides us with some common ground.  In short, you might think that we should teach the traditional narrative, because it provides a strong foundation for further early modern scholarship.

Moreover, students often want to orient themselves when discussing historical figures, and grand narratives tell us what is important, what to focus on, and make great ‘pushing off’ places for original research.

Here’s my response.  Researchers of the history of philosophy, if they have ever focused on such things, are moving away from the ‘grand narrative’ approach—and with good reason.  Human history is messy and, typically, simplistic, one-size-fits-all explanations are inapplicable.  In other words, academic history of philosophy doesn’t focus on the canon, so neither should our students.  If we want our students to become good philosophers and historians of philosophy, then we should teach them skills; not a (basically false) narrative.

Finally, different approaches serve different purposes, and there may be a legitimate place for a traditional ‘survey’ course on history of philosophy (although, I do think that these courses are not useful at an introductory level—anecdotally, there is very little uptake in such courses, so the benefits are slim).  Moreover, it’s clear that some ways of simplifying early modern philosophy are better than others.

4     Some Examples

In this section, I offer an example of a problem-based course: a course on the science of space.  I do not take credit for what is an exciting new course.  It was conceived of by Dana Jalobeanu at the University of Bucharest.  Dana, Michael Deckard and I taught it together, and developed aspects of it as we went.  I then offer some additional ideas for topics that could be incorporated into existing courses.

4.1    A course on the science of space

Course introduction:

One of the most persistent received views in the history of philosophy/history of science attributes the emergence of modern science to a change in the representation of space.  This narrative originates with Alexandre Koyré, who argues that the scientific revolution is the product of two related actions: the dissolution of the Aristotelian cosmos (the ‘closed world’ of the ancients and medievals) and the ‘geometrisation of space’.  On this story, modern science began when Galileo and Newton started to do physics in the tri-dimensional, Euclidean space.  This account has been repeatedly criticised and qualified, but there is something appealing in his connection between the fundamental breakthroughs of the early modern classical mechanics and the ‘geometrisation of space’.  It is intuitively compelling to think of ‘modern physics’ as something taking place ‘in space’ and of the universe of the moderns as consisting of infinite, homogenous, tri-dimensional space, in which bodies are placed according to the laws of mechanics and geometry.

The course has two main objectives:

• To investigate the diversity of competing conceptions of space in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the extent to which these conceptions of space were also paired with different conceptions concerning the relations between physics (natural philosophy), mathematics and theology.
• To see if we can offer an alternative story to Koyre’s ‘geometrisation of space. This involves investigating how a science of space seemed to have emerged from discussions and debates over a cluster of natural philosophical concepts we would assimilate today to the notion of force.

Course outline:

Problem: a conflict between Copernicus’ descriptions of planetary phenomena and accepted explanatory principles.

1. On methodology and the metaphysical costs of the dissolution of the celestial orbs, Thomas Digges, A Perfect Description of the Celestial Orbs and Galileo, Dialogue, Day I (fragments)
2. On the theological costs, Bruno, The Ash’ Wednesday Supper

 

Problem: improving the descriptions of planetary phenomena

1. Galileo, Starry messenger
2. Johannes and Elizabeth Hevelius, Prodromus astronomiae

 

Problem: finding a mechanism

1. Gilbert’s magnetical philosophy, De magnete, Book V (ch XI-XII), Book VI (ch. I-III)
2. Kepler’s celestial physics, Astronomia nova, Introduction
3. The anti-vitalist programme, Descartes, Principles of philosophy, parts II and III (fragments)

 

Problem: Dealing with forces in the mechanical philosophy.

1. Kenelm Digby, Two treatises, (on the magnet)
2. Galileo’s physics, Dialogue, Days II and III (fragments)
3. Newton, Optical queries (on the bending of light rays), Principia (action/reaction, mutual gravitation)

 

Problem: action at a distance

1. Newton’s letters to Bentley
2. Leibniz Clarke correspondence

4.2    Some additional topics

On the received world view

• Reisch, Margarita philosophica—this is a 16^th-century textbook/encyclopaedia, that appears to have surprisingly influential (it went through an incredible number of editions) and yet has been largely ignored by historians of philosophy and science.
• The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum—this document was crafted in the late 16^th century and standardised Jesuit education.

 

On new methods and instruments of observation

• Galileo, Starry messenger
• Robert Hooke, Micrographia
• Robert Boyle, Observations and experiments
• Margaret Cavendish, Observations upon Experimental Philosophy

These texts provide observational reports and experiments, as well as discussions of experimental techniques and methodology.

 

On the reformation of knowledge, the advancement of learning and various utopian ‘scientific’ projects:

• Francis Bacon, New Atlantis
• Margaret Cavendish, Blazing World
• Henry Oldenburg, correspondence
• Abraham Cowley, A Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy
• Robert Hooke, A general scheme

 

On medicine and family health

• Jane Sharp, Nicholas Culpeper and Daniel Sennert.
• Elizabeth Walker, Mary Rich, countess of Warwick and Katherine Jones Viscountess Ranelagh.

It would be nice to include more women in courses on early modern science.  The trouble is, there weren’t very many of them (one could of course emphasise minority authors in the secondary literature).  One place where we can find women is in areas of medicine and family health.  Jane Sharp was a late 17^th-century midwife.  Her book contains a discussion of the fact that women should be trained as physicians so they can be better midwives.  Her work contrasts nicely with the work of Culpeper and Sennert.  Elizabeth Walker, Mary Rich and Katherine Jones were pharmacists and wrote recipe books.

5     Conclusion

To briefly wrap up, I’ve argued that if we want to emphasise philosophical and historical skills, as well as broaden the scope of our early modern courses, we should turn from the kind of course based on grand narratives and philosophical systems developed by a few figures, and instead try a problem-based approach.  On this approach, a course’s narrative is built around attempts by philosophers (and others) to solve specific problems in their historical context.  Breaking free of the traditional philosophical canon, such as that encouraged by the RED can make our teaching more rewarding—not just for our students, but us as well.

 

6     Bibliography

Carruthers, P. (1992), Human Knowledge and Human Nature, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Cushman, H.E. (1911), A Beginner’s History of Philosophy, Volume 2, Boston, Houghton Miflin.

Lennon, T.M. and Dea, S. (2014), ‘Continental Rationalism’.  In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition),  http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/continental-rationalism/.

Vanzo, A. (2013), ‘Kant on Empiricism and Rationalism’, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 30, 53-74.

Walsh, K. and Currie, A.M. (2015a), ‘Caricatures, Myths, and White-Lies’, Metaphilosophy, 46, 414-435.

Walsh, K. and Currie, A.M. (2015b), ‘What drives philosophical progress?’.  In Early Modern Experimental Philosophy: https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/emxphi/2015/02/what-drives-philosophical-progress/.  Accessed: 23 December 2015.

[1] Adrian Currie and I have explored many of these ideas in (Walsh & Currie, 2015a).

[2] Various aspects of this position have been developed on the Early Modern Experimental Philosophy Blog: https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/emxphi/

[3] Adrian Currie and I have developed this idea in (Walsh & Currie, 2015b).

[4] Adrian Currie and I have argued that there are good distortions and bad ones, and one of the main challenges in teaching early modern philosophy is to distinguish between them (Walsh & Currie, 2015a).

[5] I focus on teaching early modern philosophy, but I take it that this approach is applicable to other areas of history of philosophy.

[6] Thanks to digital collections such as EEBO and ECCO, there is now excellent online access to such rare books!