Introduction to TM 601 and

EDU 301

Professor:
Bernabe M. Mijares Jr., PhD
AB Philosophy (Holy Name University)
MA Philosophy (University of San Carlos)
PhD Social Science (Silliman University)
Etymology of Key Terms
Philosophy

 Greek concept from Philo (love/pursuit)

and Sophia (wisdom/truth)
 First Philosopher is Thales of Miletus
 First to coin the term Philosophy is
Pythagoras
Etymology of Key Terms
Philosophy, also, has parallel concepts:

 Chinese Zhe [che (wisdom)] and Xue

[shueh (study)]
 Indians have the concept of Darsana
which is a mode of seeing reality.
Meaning of Philosophy as a subject, as a
discipline:
Philosophy is the science of beings in their ultimate
causes, reasons and principles aided by human reason
alone.

 Science that entertains mystery; that sense of mystery;

 Being is defined as that which exists and can have
existence;
 Logic is the tool to philosophizing;
 Philosophy is more with the WHY’s and less with the
HOWs of things (beings).
Divisions of Philosophy:

1. Speculative of Descriptive – interested in

the nature, essence or substance of reality
(Metaphysics);
2. Normative – interested in the goodness or
badness of a human act (Ethics);
3. Practical – interested in truth as related to
acts (Logic); and
4. Critical – interested in truth itself
(Epistemology)
Philosophy of Education
First published Mon Jun 2, 2008; substantive revision Sun Oct 7, 2018

Philosophy of education is the branch of applied or practical

philosophy concerned with the nature and aims of education and the
philosophical problems arising from educational theory and practice.

 Because that practice is ubiquitous in and across human societies,

the subject is wide-ranging, involving issues in ethics and
social/political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy
of mind and language, and other areas of philosophy.  
Philosophy of Education
First published Mon Jun 2, 2008; substantive revision Sun Oct 7, 2018

 Because it looks into the theory/practice divide, its subject

matter includes both
◦ basic philosophical issues (e.g., the nature of the knowledge worth
teaching, the character of educational equality and justice, etc.) and
◦ problems concerning specific educational policies and practices (e.g.,
the desirability of standardized curricula and testing, the social,
economic, legal and moral dimensions of specific funding
arrangements, the justification of curriculum decisions, etc.).

In all these the philosopher of education prizes conceptual clarity,

argumentative rigor, the fair-minded consideration of the interests
of all involved in or affected by educational efforts and
arrangements, and informed and well-reasoned valuation of
educational aims and interventions.
Approaches to the Learning of
Philosophy of Education
1. Historical Approach
2. Great Minds Approach
3. Schools of Thought Approach
4. Topic or Problem Approach
Meaning of Science and Technology:

Science may be defined as the system of knowledge

of the natural world gained through the scientific
method. It was originally called “Philosophy of the
natural world” since it stemmed from the Ancient
Greek’s desire to know about nature.

The first scientists were called “philosophers of nature;”

Naming and classifying objects found in nature was
seen as the first step towards knowledge
Meaning of Science and Technology:

Technology is from the Greek word tekhne

which means “art or craft” and logia – “a
subject or interest.”

It is the practical application of what we know

about nature using scientific principles for the
betterment of the human situation.
Philosophy of Technology
First published Fri Feb 20, 2009; substantive revision Thu Sep 6, 2018

During the last two centuries, Philosophy of

Technology gradually emerged as a discipline that has
mostly been concerned with the meaning of technology
for, and its impact on, society and culture, rather than
with technology itself.

Mitcham (1994) calls this type of philosophy of

technology “humanities philosophy of technology”
because it accepts “the primacy of the humanities over
technologies” and is continuous with the overall
perspective of the humanities (and some of the social
sciences).
Philosophy of Technology
First published Fri Feb 20, 2009; substantive revision Thu Sep 6, 2018

Only recently a branch of the philosophy of technology

has developed that is concerned with technology itself and
that aims to understand both the practice of designing and
creating artifacts (in a wide sense, including artificial
processes and systems) and the nature of the things so
created.

This latter branch of the philosophy of technology seeks

continuity with the philosophy of science and with several
other fields in the analytic tradition in modern philosophy,
such as the philosophy of action and decision-making,
rather than with the humanities and social science.
To ponder on:
What would it imply if you have obtained a
PhD in your field of specialization?

How is a PhD different from, say, an EdD?

What is that which is expected of you as a

holder of PhD in your field of
specialization?
Philosophy is typified by:
Geographical location
Western Philosophy or Philosophy of the
West; and
Oriental Philosophy or Philosophy of the East

From earliest writings, it has been known that

various regions in the globe had their own
speculative traditions:
East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle
East and Africa.
Trace of Western philosophy:

 The story of Western philosophy begins in

a series of Greek islands and colonies
during the 6th century BCE
The beginning of philosophy (Greek):
 Wonder;
 The desire to know and explain the world;
What are things really like?
How can the process of change in things be
explained?
 The desire to discover whether there was
a uniform standard of moral behavior or
social order that applied to the various
tribes in the world.
The beginning of philosophy (Greek):
 The birthplace of Greek philosophy was the
seaport of Miletus, located across the Aegean
Sea from Athens on the western shores of
Ionia in Asia minor.
 The first Greek philosophers are called either
Milesians or Ionians;
 During 585 BCE, the Milesian philosophers
began their systematic work. Miletus by this
time had been a crossroads for both seaborne
commerce and cosmopolitan ideas.
The beginning of philosophy (Greek):
 Homer (Greek poet) conceived nature as
capricious will at work instead of the
reign of physical natural laws;
 Hesiod conceives the universe as a moral
order (deviating from the gods); that there
is an impersonal force controlling the
structure of the universe and regulating its
process of changes.
The beginning of philosophy (Greek):

 While both poets (Homer and Hesiod) still thought in terms

of traditional mythology with humanlike gods, philosophy
among the Milesians began as an act of independent
thought.
 The questions “What are things really like?” and “How can
we explain the process of change in things?” substantially
departs from the mythological towards a more scientific
way of thinking.
 In point of fact, at this stage of history, science and
philosophy were the same thing.

Milesians could rightly be called primitive scientists and the first

Greek philosophers.
Ancient map showing Miletus
Thales (624-546 BCE)
 Solved a difficult logistical problem for the Lydian
King;
 Found a way to measure the heights of the pyramid
of Egypt;
 Predicted the eclipse of the sun on May 28, 585
BCE;
 Constructed an instrument that measured the
distance of ships sighted at sea;
 Urges sailors to use the constellation Little Bear as
the surest guide for determining the direction of the
north
Thales (624-546 BCE)
 Considered as the “First Philosopher” of
Western civilization;
 Asked the question “What is everything made
of?” or “What kind of stuff goes into the
composition of things?”
 Postulated that in spite of the differences
between various things, there is nevertheless a
basic similarity between them all.
 The many are related to each other by the One.
And this One, or this stuff is called water.
Anaximander (pupil of Thales)
 Agreed with Thales that everything comes
from a single basic stuff;
 However, it is not water nor any other specific
element.
 For him, the primary substance out of which
all these specific things come is an indefinite
or boundless realm; it is the indeterminate
boundless;
 Whereas actual things are specific and finite,
their source is indeterinate
Anaximander (pupil of Thales)
 The indeterminate boundless is the unoriginated
and indestructible primary substance of things,
yet it also has eternal motion. As a consequence
of this motion, the various specific elements
came into being as they “separated off” from
the original substance. Thus,
 “there was an eternal motion in which the
heavens came to be.” First warm and cold were
separated off and from this two came moist;
then from these came earth and fire.
Anaximander (pupil of Thales)
 Alllife come from the sea and that, in the course of
time, living things came out of the sea to dry land;
 People evolved from creatures of a different kind.
Man in the state of nature and in the primacy of life is not
autonomous and self-sufficient
 There were many worlds and many systems of
universes existing all at the same time. All of them
die out and there is a constant alternation between
their creation and destruction.
Opposite forces in nature conflict and cause and
“injustice.”
Anaximenes (ca. 585-528)
 He was a young associate of Anaximander.
 Air is the primary substance from which all things
come.
Just as our soul, being air, holds us together, so do breath and
air encompasses the whole world.
 His process (for air) was not just about “separating off.”
 Air, as the origin of all things, expands and contracts
(expansion (rarefaction) and contraction (condensation).
This a qualitative change that leads to quantitative
changes.
 Expansion of air causes warming and in extreme cases,
fire, whereas contraction or condensation causes cooling
and the transformation of air into solids by way of a
gradual transition.
Critique/Analysis
 The Milesian scientific concerns were not
in forms of hypotheses and they did not
devise experiments to test their theories.

 Their real significance lies in the fact that

they, for the first time raised the question
about the ultimate nature of things and
made the first halting but direct inquiry
into what nature really consist of.