Importance Of Realism In Education

In the Age of Reason, also known as the Enlightenment period, times were changing. Originally, people’s perception of life was based on religion. Religion had answers to things such as why you were sick, or why you were poor. This time occurred in the 17th century when certain scientist, philosophers, and writers decided that there were other reasons besides religion on why things happened. Many believed that all life could be explained by scientific views rather than religion. This period was revolutionary, and it has a lot to do with how we operate in our day to day lives.

In Steven Shapin’s book, The Scientific Revolution, he described the massive scientific changes that occurred from the late 16th to the early 18th centuries. Shapin utilizes the scientists and their findings to demonstrate the changes that affected Western civilization. He describes his theory of the Scientific Revolution as he proves that the world has always had scientific advances. Steven Shapin states his thesis which influenced the modern world, that the Scientific Revolution did not happen during a single time period through the use of the three essential questions: What was known, How was it known, and What was the Knowledge for.

The Scientific Revolution as its name says was a revolution in science developed by different figures that shared their ideas and discoveries that would change forever the way humans perceive the world. All of these would influence the Age of the Enlightenment, an age where people started to think individually and differently.

(1) “The movement known as the Enlightenment included writers living at different times in carious countries. Its early exponents, the philosophes, popularized the rationalism and scientific ideas of the 17th century. They exposed contemporary social and political abuses and argued that reform was necessary and possible.” (The Heritage of World Civilizations). This led to tremendous rethinking of religious and moral matters as well as scientific theory.

“God, who has given the world to men in common, has also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life and convenience” (Locke, 35). The Scientific Revolution concentrated on understanding the physical world through astronomical and mathematical calculations, or testable knowledge. The Enlightenment focused more on “Spreading of faith in reason and in universal rights and laws” (Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, 535). While the Scientific Revolution preceded the Enlightenment, both time periods sought to limit and challenge the power of the Church, through the spread of science, reason and intellect, and political philosophies.

During the 16th and 17th century areas that were forbidden before began to change. These were areas were humans were only entitled to know what God wanted to reveal, otherwise they were inaccessible or forbidden. The limits on the knowledge humans were able to possess became more accessible during the 16th and 17th centuries. The Reformation shows the decline of the Catholic Church and the rise of questioning authority leading to the Scientific Revolution. The Scientific Revolution showed that observations and conclusions became an acceptable source of knowledge and truth, where it had been less so in earlier times.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth century, many scientists had developed a new perspective on the world around them. Scientists such as Galileo and Copernicus envisioned a world where natural phenomenons could be proved through experimentation. Furthermore, the work of scientists during this time period were affected by the approval of political figures, the support from influential members of the church, and social factors that influenced the development and acceptance of new theories.

Naturalism is a genre of literature that started in the late nineteenth century, around the time “The Yellow Wallpaper” was published, and is originated from realism. According to literarydevices.net, naturalism focuses on “natural forces predetermining a character’s decisions” while realism is about free will and the decisions a character makes in response to a situation. The major forces that control our unnamed narrator’s actions in “The Yellow Wallpaper” are her figurative and physical environment and her relationship with John.

The Age of Enlightenment has transformed the world into the interactive, academic, global community it is today. Over a few centuries, many thinkers, scientists, and other Enlightenment figures shared their thoughts on important matters and refused to be silenced. These people transformed the political, social, and moral norms that many people had consented to. The Age of Enlightenment emphasized fairer government, exchange of ideas, and doing things out of curiosity.

Realism is a way of thinking that allows people to express themselves using a real life approach this became very popular among African Americans. After embracing the new Negro approach. Being able to express one’s self without restraint of consequences and to give the truth of their circumstances with unrated reality. Some authors who demonstrated realism in their works would be Dorothy West. In her excerpt “The Living is Easy” creates a story of a woman who can’t escape the circumstance of which she was raised while struggling with her self-identity. The main Character Cleo represents the middle class of African American society but she wants more for herself and her family. She wants the Boston American dream. She is not one to indulge in the ways of her southern brothers. Instead one either “black or white, should consider himself a special species of fish.”(West 116) Using the word

The primary tenets of education Colonial America, were first and foremost, to know God through reading His Word, followed by writing and arithmetic. The importance of the Christian Biblical Worldview were publicized through the establishment of the Massachusetts Law of 1642, which required that parents or guardians educate their children in principles of religion and the capital laws of the commonwealth.

Positivism can be understood as the idea that the methods of the natural sciences should be used to study human and social matters. In this essay I will be explaining how positivism gave substance to the idea whilst paying particular attention to the role of induction and deduction. Positivism has had some influence in Education and the essay will attempt to outline and critically discuss some of these influences.

Through all these times, humans are always looking for the right way of knowing the world. Different societies tried different ways. Some of them are objective while others are subjective. For instance, Enlightenment and Romanticism have each made their society extremely objective and subjective, which neither made a good influence. In the circumstances of the destructiveness of both Enlightenment and Romanticism Worldview as they reach to the extremes, a balanced worldview between them, which seeks the truth with reason and strives to live life with moderate humanity, should become the right way for human beings to know the world.

Underneath the anti-Cartesian attitude of the pragmatist is the influence of Immanuel Kant. Kant’s critical philosophy was a synthesizing approach to philosophical issues. He sought to mediate the differences between rationalism and empiricism with reference to human knowledge and between idealism and realism. The result is his acclaimed revolution in philosophy which, in an attempt to synchronise both extreme philosophies of human knowledge, took an anthropocentric, subjective turn (Bxvi) . The central position of this revolution is the argument that the major determinant of the possibility of human knowledge is the human mind with its a priori conditions. These conditions necessarily determine every human act of cognition such that the knowledge

Empirical knowledge is constituted as a “fabric of interlocking sentences which hooks on to the neutral input at the observation sentences.” (Sommers:1994 qtd French, 22). However Quine’s naturalism differs from the definition of naturalism. Quine creates a new philosophical perspective known as “ Quine’s naturalism” which cannot meaningful or be understood without him. He basically took the naturalism which defined in the historically epistemic doctrines and re-arrange of modified version of naturalism which belongs to him. He uses this modified naturalism to defend his philosophical perspective against to idealism and realism. The term ‘naturalized epistemology’ was introduced Quine in his famous article known as “Epistemology Naturalized” (1969). In this article he defends a naturalistic approach to epistemology, arguing that epistemology should be regarded as continuous with or even part of, natural science. Although Quine criticizes the version of empiricism adopted by the logical positivists and their immediate successors, he explicitly affirms a version of Hume’s