ABSTRACT
This chapter constitutes an attempt to delineate the rise of the modern (or modernist) notion of science and the way it was geared to learning and education from the very outset. Hence, although the names usually linked to pioneering work in philosophy or science-names such as Bacon, Galileo, or Descartes-the objective here is to show the direct or mediated relevance of their respective contributions to the formative field of education and curriculum. Education has its own rich history, recorded and interpreted by each generation in turn, where an auxiliary or foundational role has been reserved for those great eminences behind the scientific revolution from the 16th century onwards. In fact, however, it may be argued with good reasons that they have a status among other pioneers of modern education. If the project of the Enlightenment were conceived as a huge pedagogic project, then the seeds of the Enlightenment could be argued to have been sown during the era when mathematics and the empirical method won the battle for the souls of philosophers and scholars. To elucidate the explicit educational bearing of the modern scientific outlook reflected by many of those early pioneers, notably Descartes, is one of the main tasks of this and the following chapter. These influences should by no means be conceived as if pedagogic and educational thought and practice had resulted from philosophical or scientific innovations in any straightforward manner. On the contrary, a more plausible model of development might be such as has taken place rather on a reciprocal
basis. For instance, the Cartesian epistemological and scientific revolution grew out of a critique of the school practices of his time; and his invention of Method might arguably be attributed to educational and curricular discourses in earlier centuries, for example Peter Ramus’ “map of knowledge,” John Comenius’ methodizations of traditional teaching (Doll, 1998, p. 303), and the exhaustive method of teaching set out in the Catholic Jesuit scheme of studies, Ratio Studiorum (Bowen, 1981, p. 24).
