Sources of Knowledge (excerpt) by Roger Bacon

Transcription

1 Sources of Knowledge (excerpt) by Roger Bacon HS / Science Experience, Epistemology, Reasoning, Scientific Method, Truth FOUR CORNERS: Ask participants to choose a corner that best describes how they come to know something: o By Reasoning o By Resources o By Experience o By Emotional/Spiritual Response Invite participants to define these four categories with an elbow-partner. Next, they should explain to their elbow partner why they believe what they believe in regards to knowing. Lastly, have participants jot down a response to the following: How do you sufficiently come to know something? Responses may be eclectic in nature. 1

2 Distribute the text and ask participants to anticipate what they expect this reading to be like. How is it organized? How is it similar and different to other texts they know? Participants are to label each sentence Read the text aloud together. Roger Bacon, ( ?) was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empirical methods. He is sometimes credited as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method, clearly inspired by Aristotle. There is relatively new thought that much of his "experimental" knowledge was actually obtained from books, in the scholastic tradition. Opus Majus ("Greater Work") is the most important work of Bacon and is divided into seven parts. This excerpt is part of the sixth and includes a review of alchemy, the manufacture of gunpowder, the positions and sizes of the celestial bodies, and other topics. Additionally, this section anticipates later inventions for experimental science, including microscopes, telescopes, and spectacles. Provide (or mine participants for) definitions for of unfamiliar words. With this translation, most of the vocabulary will be manageable. In the context of discussion, the following words and ideas should be deconstructed: empiricism, epistemology, and a review of the scientific method. (Post directions.) Have participants read the text again to themselves and mark 3 important words (with!) and at least one puzzling sentence (with?). Participants should also independently paraphrase the text, noting their interpretation of what Bacon is saying. 2

3 What part of the text do you strongly Agree with and Disagree with? (respond round robin beginning with a volunteer; cite sentence number) What are test(s) of reason? (line 5) According to Bacon, how is the mind satisfied? Do you agree? Only experience can make us accept a conclusion with certainty. (sentence 6) Is this true? What connections can be made between the scientific method and Bacon s claims? What are some examples (from your life) of the opposite of where experience was not truth? 3

4 Participants are encouraged to revisit notes they jotted on their text, as well as notes from the Launch. Ask students to link the Launch ideas to the text and discussion in one way. What have they refined in regards to their thinking about how you come to know something? Have their minds been changed in any way? After reading and discussing from Sources of Knowledge, write a letter to the science department is which you address the question of how one truly comes to know something. Argue your point of view, and reference your position with evidence from the text. (Argumentation/Analysis) (LDC Task#: 2 ) Participants should reference all of their thinking, including changes of their perspectives and the perspectives of others, before embarking on their letter. What do they truly believe and why might it differ from what others believe? Allow time for all to revisit the text, draft an outline for their writing, and refine their thinking. Have students use an organizational template as needed. 4

5 Challenge all to draft their essays by writing the letter defined by their outlines. The draft will need to make a claim of sorts, stating the writer s belief as to how you come to know something, as well as clarifying how that belief is connected to the text. Have participants work in pairs to read their first drafts aloud to each other with emphasis on reader as creator and editor. The reader should make a special note to signify to the listener the paraphrased understanding of how you come to know something and how that belief is connected to (not necessarily supported by) Bacon s text. The listener says back one point heard clearly, how it is connected to the text, and asks one question for clarification. Roles are then switched. Give time for full revisions resulting in a second draft. Once the second draft is complete, have participants work in groups of three or four and this time take turns reading each other s second drafts slowly and silently, marking spelling or grammar errors they find, with a limit of 5-per page. (Have dictionaries and grammar handbooks available for reference.) Take this opportunity to clarify/reteach any specific grammar strategies you have identified your students may need. Give time for full revisions and editing, resulting in a third and final draft. Publish and share the resulting letters. One idea is to have the science department craft a response letter to the class, sharing their opinion as to how one truly knows something and the connections to experimental science. Kelly Foster National Paideia Center 5

6 Sources of Knowledge by Roger Bacon ( ) from Opus Majus (Translation by Robert Burke, language simplified) I now wish to explain the principles of experimental science. Without experience nothing can be sufficiently known. There are two ways of acquiring knowledge by reasoning and through experience. By reasoning we can draw a conclusion and grant that the conclusion fulfills the test of reason. But reasoning does not alone make the conclusion certain. Only experience can make us accept a conclusion with certainty. A man who has never seen dire is able to prove by adequate use of reason that fire burns and injures things and destroys them. Still, his mind would not be satisfied, and he would not avoid fire. He would place his hand or some substance in the fire so that he could prove by experience the conclusion he had reached through reason. When a man has had the actual experience of fire, his mind is certain of its effects and rests knowing the truth. Reasoning does not suffice, but experience does. Retrieved May 2015 from: 6