22 October,
2007
It's good to return, to see a few familiar faces and many
more unfamiliar faces. For those who don't know me, I taught here for three
years about 4 years ago. Since I left, I've been studying some philosophy, and
I wanted to share with you a way of thinking that I've been playing around with
lately. I'll be curious to hear what you think about it.
The philosopher William James says that one of the features of experience is
that it comes "double-barreled" like an old-time shotgun. It comes at
us two ways at once. This insight is a useful one, and to help explain what he
means, I'm going to say that one of the "barrels" of experience is
"molar" and the other "molecular." You chemistry
folks out there should be the first to understand the distinction,
and if you don't you can go ask Mr. Rice.
Though the difference between the molar and the molecular is defined
quantitatively in chemistry (6.02x10^23 molecules, or the number of molecules
in 12g of carbon-12), it is useful because it marks a qualitative difference in
experience, precisely the difference between the two levels of experience that
I want to talk about. I'll use the lectern in
front of me as an example of what I mean.
This lectern is a solid object
with strictly defined characteristics.
It endures and stays much the same through time. This is a molar view of the lectern--we
understand its qualities as essentially rigid and stable. On the molar level,
it is a structure whose features don't, for
all intents and purposes, change. But if we were to get into a different way of
understanding the lectern, step into the other
barrel of experience, we could imagine the molecules that make up the the lectern.
Understanding the lectern
in this molecular way, we see
the lectern as a flowing and probabilistic swarm
of atoms, electrons, and molecules. On the
molecular level, the lectern is more like a
flowing stream than it is a solid object.
Now, obviously, the lectern is both a solid,
enduring object and a swarming stream of
molecules. It comes at us two ways, but we can only experience it one way or
the other in any single moment. Which aspect
we choose to emphasize depends on our purposes. If we want to lean on the lectern,
place books on it, or give a speech from it then it is best to understand it on
the molar level. If we want to understand what happens if we set it on fire,
then our understanding of how it might lose its structure
and transform into another sort of object
might be more relevant.
Do you see the difference between the molar and the molecular? The molar is the
average, the summation of all the motion at the molecular level. The molar is
an object. It is the molecular when it is no
longer experienced as molecular. I hope you can play with this idea a little
bit throughout your day today here at Webb.
For example, in front of me are several rows of students organized by grade.
You all are filling spaces that have been filled by many before you. On this
view, each of you functions in the service of
the continuation of the enduring object we
call Webb. The molar order of this chapel is like the rigid structure
of this lectern. It doesn't change much
through time. And you flow according to its molar architecture--just
like many students have before. In this respect,
the students sitting right in front of me are the same as the students who were
sitting here last year: they are seniors, girls and boys, 18 or so years old,
soon to be Webb graduates. This is the molar level of experience.
Now, if we look at the same row of students from the molecular point of view,
we get an entirely different picture. If we
imagine, for example, what is going on in the flow of their minds, then
underneath the everyday occurrence of x students
sitting in the nth row, we find a
vague and shifting disorder, a flow not unlike the probabilistic swarm of
molecules that composes--however miraculously--our friend the lectern.
If we were to ask what is going on in the minds of these students, I'm sure we
would expose all sorts of wanderings, flights, songs, and free creations zipping
and spontaneously generating themselves like the electrons
and atoms in the lectern. Suddenly, we see
that these students--the very same ones who sat here yesterday--are a swarming
eruption of change. The mind is not the only site of molecular experience; the
body is, too. On the larger, molar level the body is a machine that functions
mostly to preserve its identity, even though on the molecular level the body is
constantly regenerating itself (I read one study that said that 98% of the
body's cells are replaced every year.) But it is not just the cells of these
student's bodies that tingle with chance and regeneration. Their hearts in
their chests beat at different rates; air swirls in their lungs, fingers twitch
and drum, their tangled nerves fire and blood
runs intermittently through their twisted veins; thousands of pores ooze cool
sweat; their butts fidget. Imagine their brains, coiled like long worms, firing
electricity across neurons in complicated and
strange webs. This the molecular level of experience.
Which of these realities, the molecular or the molar, is the right one for
looking at what is actually happening at Webb?
And what exactly is the relation between these
two barrels of experience? I'm not sure of the answer to these questions or
even whether there is an answer. I don't think that the two barrels of
experience will be reconciled or even should
be, necessarily. What is important is that both levels be recognized and given
their due.
Indeed, both the molar and the molecular are essential to the life of Webb
School. Whatever stability that
Webb exhibits as an institution is produced by the currents and flows that
happen at the molecular level. As wide as the variety of impulses is that run
through the bodies and minds of the students in the rows in front of me, they
can never, or must only rarely, sum up to an impulse that picks the student up
and marches him or her out of the room. A kind of molar atmosphere of courtesy
is produced through this regularity. All of the molecular variety tends in its
probabilities, in its summation, to adds up to the
molar production of the regular and recurrent
event of chapel. This moment continues that production.
All the zig-zag thoughts and movements in all of the bodies out there, second
after second, day after day, year after year, add up to the production
and reproduction of The Webb School.
On the other hand, the more stable aspects
of Webb must be receptive to the molecular level of experience. If many
students, urged by new molecular flights of thought and feeling, were to begin
to stand up and walk out of chapel on a regular basis, then a new molarity
might form, one which throws the old molarity, the old order into a new order.
Webb would change. Webb, in fact, experiences
change all the time. But how can we understand this change? If we tried to
trace the ways in which Webb changes back to another molar event--the hiring of
a new head, for example, or the encroachment of suburbia on rural life, or the
appearance of a new migrant population of Latinos,
or the emergence of new technologies, or the building of classrooms in
different shapes, or a reconfiguration of the board of trustees--we would be
telling only part of the story. Molar change has a molecular origin. Or to put
it another way, the origin of change is dispersed and strange. Where do the new
cells in your new bodies come from? Carrots? Pork
chops? Skittles? Your complicated and regenerating
bodies come from the lettuce grind with your teeth as much as they come from
your mother.
What are the implications of all this? I suppose what I'm trying to say is that
the stability of Webb, like the stability of this lectern,
conceals a great degree of uncertainty. This lectern
will eventually rot; its molecules will
fall apart and recombine. As will Webb's. Your
own molar individuality will reorganize itself
according to the flow of molecules. Not all of our cells are reborn. One day
you will be grey-haired and pot-bellied, as will
I. Another day, you will wake up happy,
without a clue as to why. Another, you will
wake up dead. I don't mention these facts in
order to depress, but in order to draw attention to the way in which all of the
stable things that we experience rest upon an inherent and undeniable
instability, an instability that often goes unrecognized and pushed to the
side. To live life intelligently means giving both barrels of experience, both the molar and the molecular, their due. We experience
life as the molecular drift of a future that will
bring totally strange and unknown experience. We also experience life as the
homey and familiar molar structures that have
endured through history. To take part in education--to live life--is to
participate in an art of mixing the two levels. The flows, fringes, and
molecular streams of experience lead us to novelty, which is then recast in
terms of the rigid forms that we know, our molar islands of security.
I'll leave you to do what you will with this
thought about the two "barrels" of experience. My time here is up;
another chapel has been completed. Your molar selves already know what to do.
They will flow on to your classes in an
ordinary way. But your molecular selves will
bring you surprises. Watch out for the swirling thoughts and zig-zag movements
that will happen, that are always happening,
along the way. They are a part of experience, too, the very part that makes a
difference.
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Here are some questions that
might help the process of inquiry into that strange beast called the Webb
School:
- Criticism
must be immanent, which means that the good parts of Webb must be used to
criticize the bad parts of Webb. It is often counter-productive
to use other schools as a model because Webb doesn't share their history
or circumstances. No dreaming about impossibilities. The first challenge
is to understand the reality of Webb that lies underneath the fantasies
about what Webb might be or becomes.
- It would
be cool to write alternative histories of Webb. Whose interests did the
creation of Webb serve? Is Webb still in the service of those interests or
in the service of vastly different interests? If different, how did those
interests co-opt Webb?
- What are
the communities of interest that Webb currently serves? Rural America?
Wealthy Koreans? Parents who want their kids to get in a good school? Middle
TN youth? Idealistic teachers? The
College Board Corporation? Christian conservatives? The Almighty Dollar?
Alumni reputations? Shelbyville? Bell
Buckle? Jobs for cafeteria workers/groundskeepers? Rich white folks? It
would be interesting to get the faculty/students to generate a list of
this kind.
- Are the
interests of all these communities compatible? If not, what communities
are we going to exclude? How are compromises going to work?
- We talked
about how the challenge of Webb was creating a community that has good
values, a place where students learn to live these values naturally--it is
natural for them to work hard, to love one another, to solve problems, to
recycle, etc. So that when they come out of this community they have
critical purchase on the other, larger communities that they will
enter. Good values are produced through institutional ways of life, not
through talk or warnings (though talking and warning may play some part in
these ways of life). "Be the change you want to see in the
world." There is no distinction
between theory and practice.
- John Dewey
writes in The School and Society: "If the end in view is the
development of a spirit of social cooperation and community life,
discipline must grow out of and be relative to such an aim...In critical
moments we all realize that the only discipline that stands by us, the
only training that becomes intuition is that got through life itself. That
we learn from experience, and from books or the sayings of others only as
they are related to experience, are not mere phrases. But the school has
been so set apart, so isolated from the ordinary conditions and motives of
life, that the place where children are sent for discipline is the one
place in the world where it is most difficult to get experience--the
mother of all discipline worthy of the name." So, the question that
should be asked of Webb is how a spirit of social cooperation and
community life can be built. Who will be
in the community? What forms of cooperation already exist? How could we
invent new forms? And will these forms
include the "ordinary conditions and motivations of life"--will
they allow the need to move the body, the need to engage in meaningful
work, the need to work together with friends...all of these things to be
taken up into a process of growth?
- Who do the
students identify as their main educational influences? Their peers? Their
teachers? The architecture of the school?
The curricula? To what extent are they aware of the educational forces
that influence them and to what extent is their gaze distracted
from the education that is at work?
- To what
extent do students feel they have a hand in their own learning?
- To what
extent do teachers feel like they have a hand in their own teaching?
- What
problems might Webb take on as an institution? Could Webb come together as
a community in order to solve a problem in the larger society? How would
relations change at Webb if the institution was perceived as an agent of
social progress, and that each member of the school had a role to play in
defining the meaning of progress and actualizing
that progress?
- What
boundaries does Webb draw between itself and what is not Webb? How do
these boundaries function educationally?
- How do the
decisions that Webb makes in terms of its survival change the educational
landscape? If Webb is globalizing, how can that globalization be turned
into a learning opportunity? How does Webb maintain its local identity
while still opening itself up to a connected
globe?
- What are
the special educational advantages and disadvantages of being located in
Bell Buckle? How can Webb capitalize on those advantages? Can it use new
technologies to mitigate the disadvantages?
- Is a Webb
education an organic whole? Do students see the relationship between the
subjects they learn? Can they feel their
benefit in terms of life?
- Is it
possible to be a whole person and be a member of the Webb community? Are
teachers learning from each other? Is there a sense of shared purpose?
Jeffrey S. Edmonds
Department of Philosophy
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN 37235
Email: j.edmonds@vanderbilt.edu
Caminante, no hay camino.
Se hace camino al andar.
--Antonio Machado