Freedom and the College of Light

Freedom in Science and Education, Part I

By John Taylor; 2009 Aug 30, Asma 11, 166 BE

This series is an attempt to come to grips theoretically with John Amos Comenius's suggestion that a future world government be based upon three possible dimensions of human freedom, political, scientific and religious. For each of the three dimensions a world citizen would have a vote in a global election. Recently, I found enough source material on political freedom to devote three chronological essays to that dimension. A smaller collection of sources on the scientific dimension of liberty means that today's overview of science and education should be briefer.

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We start out bereft of knowledge or power. As babies, we know nothing of cause and effect and remain for years all but helpless. As our knowledge grows we gradually learn to manipulate causes until we attain maturity and become self-sustaining in a trade or profession. Free will, then, is relative to experience. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus captured the close link between will, learning and freedom when he said,

"We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free." (Discourses)

Our potential ability to choose aright shows how knowledge by nature gives power over the very laws of the universe. To know something means that physical laws must be, to some extent, placed under our sway. As Immanuel Kant put it,

"Since the concept of causality entails that of laws according to which something, i.e., the effect, must be established through something else which we call cause, it follows that freedom is by no means lawless even though it is not a property of the will according to laws of nature. Rather, it must be a causality according to immutable laws, but of a peculiar kind. Otherwise a free will would be an absurdity." (Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, p. 65)

What Kant calls a "peculiar" kind of law seems to be a nod to the fact that in order to know we also must love. A learner chooses freely his or her own approach; only then can knowledge imbue the mind with truth.

"Study depends on the good will of the student, a quality that cannot be secured by compulsion." (Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, iii, 8)

What is true for individuals is also true -- perhaps more so -- for groups. Knowledge and wisdom make the difference between slavery and freedom, from the most insignificant individual to the fate of empires. The history of the rise and fall of peoples is a measure of their ability to learn and respond to change in their environment, both natural and cultural.

"Therefore my people are gone into captivity for lack of knowledge; and their honorable men are famished, and their multitude are parched with thirst." (Isa 5:13, WEB)

Any potential course of action is always better decided by those who know rather than by those who do not. The Qur'an pointedly asks: "Are those who know equal to those who do not know?" Knowledge or the lack of it, then, is the only just reason to tolerate inequality. Hence the saying, "youth is wasted on the young." If we had our life to live over, who would not prefer to make every choice in the light of subsequent experience? What decision maker would not benefit from full knowledge of the consequences of every action? In his Laws, Plato held this to be the greatest principle of human governance, that,

"the wise should lead and command, and the ignorant follow and obey; and yet, ... this surely is not contrary to nature, but according to nature, being the rule of law over willing subjects, and not a rule of compulsion." (Laws, Book III, Jowett, tr.)

If the only worthy leader is one who knows best, then why is it that science and education are not their own bosses? Why have they been puppets first of religion, then of the state and now of corporations? Why does science and education not have an independent revenue stream and why are their leaders not elected directly, as political and religious leaders often are?

Such questions only John Amos Comenius has raised and attempted to address with his three chambered world government, one each for politics, science and religion.

Sixty years ago, the lion's share of research money supported physics. This funding decision was based upon the spectacular but horrific discovery in wartime of the atomic bomb and the prospect of unlimited nuclear energy. This was decided by national governments for purely geopolitical reasons. Now, well over half of all research dollars go into the life sciences, a purely economic decision made by no elected official. Rather most biological and genetic research is either directly financed or heavily influenced by drug companies and other corporate interests.

In neither case were the supposed beneficiaries of science consulted, the people. Meantime, for over a century naturalists and environmentalists have been vainly calling for different policy priorities. Even now that the imperative need to convert to a de-carbonized, fully electric economy is glaringly obvious, the opinions of scientists and educators are still ignored by those with the means to effect change.

In a Comenian world order, such crucial policy decisions about the direction of science would be made by a world body of experts -- the College of Light -- selected in a planet-wide election of scientists and educators. In such an order everybody would have the right and obligation to qualify and work in a trade or profession; in this capacity they would vote among their colleagues for their own representative on the College of Light.

Since the College of Light is charged not only with science but education as well, the College could gradually bolster its own democratic foundations by overseeing the trades and professions coming out of schools and assuring that each graduate is well-grounded in scientific principles. Then their voters would be more knowledgeable and, as we have seen, effectual. As a greater percentage of the world population qualifies in a trade and gains experience by participating in the world collegiate elections, the power and influence of science and education would spread rapidly.

However, this begs two questions: what kind of relation would the college of light have with the other wings of the world government, the political and religious? And internally, what kind of expertise should take precedence over others? This we will look at next time.

John Taylor

email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/

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