The Philosophy of Duality: an Education Proposal on the Odyssey of Thinking and Writing (Inquiry, Culture, Systems).

This dissertation sketches a philosophy of education acknowledging principles of thinking and writing which govern every act of knowing. It defines the complementary acts of thinking and writing as one cross-disciplinary act by redefining argumentation as a critical act of personal inquiry--not an academic act of self-justification. Accordingly, this dissertation goes beyond argumentation techniques or heuristics. Examining the philosophies of Plato and Descartes, this dissertation deals with argumentation to examine the personal act of inquiry implicit within the public, written philosophy of these two intellectual fathers. Plato and Descartes' metaphysical and pedagogical claims of content and method are demonstrated to be justified by analogical thinking, defined as human circularity. Furthermore, it is shown that Plato's dialogical discourse and Descartes' discourse of the intellectual narrative authorize this private circularity by shaping it into the linear rationality characteristic of public presentation. Recommending these two philosophies as representative of human thought, this dissertation addresses the following question: What does this pattern of human circularity have to do with sketching a philosophy answerable to the challenge of educating today's students in the acts of thinking and writing? Drawing upon quantum field theory and Rudolf Arnheim's art history theory, the fundamental tenets of the philosophy of duality are introduced--emphasizing the intellectual necessity of the alternative. This constitutes an intellectual frame of reference within which the interpretive acts of thinking and communication are considered, along with the challenge and necessity of confronting the paradox of one's own thinking. It is asserted that only by confronting and reconciling the paradox of their own thinking can students write from the intellectual motive of real discovery and responsible justification. Using Einstein's intellectual journey as context, this dissertation then redefines the experience of insight, the act of questioning, and the dilemma of paradox as fundamental principles of personal inquiry. This dissertation, then, attempts to unite the central realities of multiple intellectual systems into a coherent philosophy of reality that, by acknowledging the interdependence between language, discourse, culture, and reality, may serve as the basis for redefining education as the thinking-writing enterprise of personal inquiry.PhDEducational technologyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/161184/1/8621400.pd