Expanding the Scope of School Subjects

We should not retreat to a curriculum advisory committee and ask, “Now where should we fit this topic into the already overloaded curriculum?” Although we cannot discard all the fragmented subjects in our present school system and start from scratch, we can and should ask all teachers to stretch their subjects to meet the needs and interests of the whole child. Working within the present subject-centered curriculum, we can ask math and science teachers as well as English and social studie...

 The Problem of Philosophy

At least mathematicians try not to contradict one another. Not so philosophers! They are all "great"... and all in total disagreement! "Studying philosophy" really means gorging yourself on a stew of every idea imaginable. A Platonist thinks appearance is but a bad copy of reality... While an Aristotelian puts all his faith in its observation! Are mental concepts innate or acquired? "Innate" says the great Kant! "Aquired" says the great Hume! Is there an opposition between mind and matter? Ye...

 Man Becomes Acquainted With the Laws of the Universe

Rational mechanics soon became a vast and profound science. The true laws of the collision of bodies, respecting which Descartes was deceived, were at length known. Huyghens discovered the laws of circular motions; and at the same time he gives a method of determining the radius of curvature for every point of a given curve. By uniting both theories, Newton invented the theory of curve-lined motions, and applied it to those laws according to which Kepler had discovered that the planets descr...

 There is No Scientific Basis for Prejudice

Break the chains of your prejudices and take up the torch of experience, and you will honour nature in the way she deserves, instead of drawing derogatory conclusions from the ignorance in which she has left you. Simply open your eyes and ignore what you cannot understand, and you will see that a labourer whose mind and knowledge extend no further than the edges of his furrow is no different essentially from the greatest genius, as would have been proved by dissecting the brains of Descartes ...

 Empirical Reality is All Probability in Mathematics

The stone that Dr. Johnson once kicked to demonstrate the reality of matter has become dissipated in a diffuse distribution of mathematical probabilities. The ladder that Descartes, Galileo, Newton, and Leibniz erected in order to scale the heavens rests upon a continually shifting, unstable foundation.

 The Geniuses for Whom the Greeks would Build Statues

These are the principal geniuses that the human mind must regard as its masters and for whom the Greeks would have erected statues, even if they were obliged to make more space by demolishing the monuments of some conquerors.