Intuition and Curriculum: Beyond the Empirical

Abstract

Over the last few centuries, empirical science has become the sole benchmark for judging the truth content of experience. And empirical science as organized, institutionalized activity is increasingly embarrassed by ontological questions. The result is that we are increasingly confined to the symbolic and its manipulation in curriculum that tell us nothing about the world-in-itself or how to develop an intuition about it. At the same time, digging deeper, we find that great scientists have intuitively harbored ontological beliefs that are beyond science and that no doubt contributed to the creative conditions of their work. In the words of Albert Einstein: “The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger … is as good as dead.” A second major figure considered here is that of Robert Oppenheimer, the architect of the first atom bomb. The manner in which this genius of empirical knowledge simultaneously generates a different understanding of the world is highly instructive.