The Scholastic Heritage From Socrates to Aristotle
Socrates and the Socratic Method of Inquiry
Socrates |
Although Socrates
left no written accounts of his philosophies, he came to be immortalized by
Plato. Socrates believed that knowledge was vital and could only survive in
a dynamic environment of human inquiry. His own method of philosophical inquiry
involved questioning others in regard to their own positions about a variety of issues.
He would then lead them into a discursive track which would then reveal the contradictions of their own arguments.
In this way, he would lead them to the point where they would be forced to see the errors of their own positions.
Both Socrates and later Plato would refer to this question-based method of inquiry as
elenchuswhich, roughly translated, means "cross-examination"
Socrates dealt continually with the question of knowledge but he claimed in
the Apologiato know nothing except the fact that he knew nothing!
His method of raising questions as a way of teaching was known as elenchus or cross-examination.
This strategy evolved into the dialectical approach, or the back and forth engagement
between the questions that were raised and the responses to these questions. The
underlying premise of the dialectic is that if truth or knowledge are to be pursued, this
pursuit has to be undertaken using an on-going process of counterpointing positions.
In this regard, truth is not perceived as a given or with any finality but rather
as something tentative and subject to the checks and balances of rational inquiry.
It is this position of holding conclusive assertions at abeyance until the thread of
reason has proved the veracity or sense of an issue that essentially shaped
the scientific rationalism that would come to characterize western thinking.
The Academy
The legacy of Socrates would be continued by Platowho
set up the Academy in 387 B.C. in order to continue the Socratic method of
inquiry as a teaching and learning strategy. The Academy was perhaps the first
institution of higher education in the Western world and the principle purpose for its
existence was to provide a place where students and their masters could discussing
issues in the area of mathematics, ethics, philosophy, poetry and drama.
