Man and Learning

by Benedict Armitage, CSA

In Bob’s summation of Kevin Carey’s The End of College, he makes some important and insightful observations about man and about the relationship between his intellectual acuity and his moral choices, and I would like to take a moment to flesh out this relationship a bit. Quoting Carey, he observes that “to be human is to be constantly searching for patterns that ease the ache of awareness and incomprehension.” This is a thoughtful sentence, and one worth pausing over. Man, confronted with a riot of sensory experience, is obsessed with tying that multiform experience together. He feels a need to make ‘sense’ of things, and as such has a keen interest in what the neurobiologists call pattern recognition or awareness. I would argue that much of education is precisely this – learning to perceive patterns and develop an awareness of the interconnectedness of things. In a similar way, much of the advancement of knowledge is finding new patterns and new ways to articulate them.

I am going to alter the usual direction of this kind of discussion a bit here by redefining, or broadening, what I mean by pattern. I distinguish three kinds of patterns, or traces of an ordered arrangement: Physical, Notional, and Purposive. I will not attempt an exhaustive definition of these here, but I will point out briefly how they differ.

Physical patterns are those perceived by the senses as interpreted by the brain. This is what most discussions of pattern awareness are concerned with solely. Physical patterns are the province of that part of the mind we call imagination, as this is the bridge between the five senses interacting with the material world on the one hand and the rest of the mind on the other. All sentient beings, including much of the animal world, exist on this level. Most are likewise limited to it. Man, however, can perceive other patterns as well. With the mind, by which I mean his faculty of thought, abstraction, and reflection, he can also perceive notional patterns, that is, the world of ideas, as well as purposive patterns, that is, those that pertain to intention, purpose, design, and meaning. One might further distinguish them by saying that physical patterns give us information, but the recognition of notional patterns imparts knowledge, and that of purposive patterns wisdom. All are expressions, in different ways and on different levels, of the same overarching logos.

The unique ability of man to perceive these other patterns says something about what he is. It reflects an anthropology. Man alone of the animal world is possessed of the faculties of thought and of moral choice, what we might call mind and will. These set him apart from all other animals. (Here of course mind means more than just the brain and will more than just simple choice.) Ιn fact, in the words of the fourteenth century Byzantine writer Nicholas Cabasilas, these things are “ἄ ποιεῖ ἄνθρωπον” (“those things which make man what he is”). This anthropology must be reflected in how we understand education. Education should, for us, be concerned first and foremost with man’s faculties of thought and of moral choice, and so with the objects of those two faculties, namely Truth and Virtue. And as Bob pointed out, the intellectual capacities of man, his power of thought, exist ultimately for the sake of moral decision. In short, we think to choose.

This brings us to a point where we can proffer an answer to the question, Why study? A partial answer is simply because we have this organ of thought, and nothing is given to no purpose. As Carey observed, learning is inevitable because it is natural and ultimately rewarding. Man seeks to know, and study helps to satisfy this desire.

But beyond this, we study in order to know both how and what to think. Ultimately, human beings are ‘searchers of meaning.’ So far as we can tell, no other being in the cosmos is interested in the meaning of things. Man, however, is obsessed with it. And even when he ignores it or seeks to deny the possibility of meaning, he nonetheless remains haunted by it. We all seek to answer the questions that lie at the heart of our existence.

Bob has reminded me that we must not allow ourselves to be wedded too closely to terms and labels, as these mean different things to different people. So I think in closing I should define how I use some labels. What, then, I understand by the term ‘classical education’ is the fundamental approach to learning that consists of reading the classics together to see how others have answered these great questions that concern man’s existence. And what I understand by the term ‘liberal arts’ is simply those subjects of study that deal with these very questions. The former is concerned with the source of the content, and the latter with how that content is structured and organized. They are really only different aspects of the same thing, and of the same pursuit.

Whatever the term we use, our purpose is to see what others have done with their faculty of thought and of choice, in the hope that this will, in turn, inform our own choices, and so help determine who we become.