ABSTRACT
At the threshold of the nineteenth century the religious-classical tradition in the West was confronted by the growing scientific challenge. The strength of the classical position was that it offered a secure basis for the continuity of social life; by contrast, science lacked any necessary grounding in faith and appeared to provide nothing more than mechanistic explanations and the continuing fragmentation of knowledge: it is not surprising that the churches resisted demands for a scientific foundation to the curriculum. In the course of the century, however, as science became associated with material productivity in the consolidating capitalist economy, so it became more acceptable. Enthusiasts for educational reform, accepting the millennial promises of science, saw it as the means of effecting progress in education in two ways: by basing the curriculum on the sciences, and by a reconceptualization of teaching as a form of scientific activity. Throughout the nineteenth century the phrase ‘science of education’ occurred with increasing frequency, and educators became preoccupied with the quest to make education scientific and hence predictable. 329Just as science acquired its applied arts of technology, education was to have its applied art of pedagogy.
