it becomes a mere questioning after the ‘thingliness’ of things” (p. 44). Hence the tendency to argue in terms of how much, how little, how long, etc. and have the idea that what’s being argued is the reality of the universe. Seidel echoes Heidegger in his conclusion: “Plato drove a wedge between things and being, between things and their being. He put them in different places as well” (p. 47).
Beginning with Plato, it has been customary to separate nature into things and processes. This set in motion all of the problems with contemporary science and schooling that will be outlined in this book. Plato’s historic blunder gets systematized when Aristotle subsequently engineers an entire system of categorization of things and processes called logic. One cannot categorize a process without it first being abstracted. With logic one can construct proofs and identity statements without ever going to a concrete experience. Sentences like “if a, then b” are logically sound, even though a and b are propositions that do not stand for anything in particular. What is important to understand about Aristotelian logic is that, since its inception, it has become perfectly normal, even beneficial, to deal exclusively with abstractions. As Whitehead (1958) observes, “The disease of philosophy is its itch to express itself in the forms, ‘Some S is P’, or ‘All S is P’” (p. 194). Moreover, it has become increasingly unfathomable to think of propositions a and ~a together. This is why my friend above thought that either families in the 1960s were actually miserable, or our relationships today are somehow deficient; it’s impossible to believe that my love might be different from your love, or even that the love I have for one person could be different from the love I have for another.
In the above discussion, we have two different ways of understanding the stuff of the world. It can be a process where the experience of investigation is just as important as that which is investigated. In Chapter 3, I will be arguing that the process of discovery is the important part of scientific investigation (and not the new way of organizing or categorizing understanding into facts).
Unfortunately, today, at least in the majority of institutions, there is no process; nature is no longer understood as emerging but as completely emerged. It’s that stuff that you see when you look out your window. Eventually we’ll understand all of it—discoveries that are the mere burden of observation and time. “What can we point the experimental method at next?” Consequently, the “thingliness” of nature has been privileged to the neglect of the process of nature. Below, I will describe how continental philosopher Martin Heidegger (1962) and process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1938/1958) alike think that the present-day conception of nature—all thing and no process—is a terrible shame. Heidegger calls this an “ontic” nature while Whitehead calls it “lifeless” nature.
The words “ontology” and “ontological” will appear frequently throughout this section. These are important words when it comes to understanding how we learn. We don’t typically think about ontological questions because we have been led to believe that the final ontological questions were answered between the 17th and 19th centuries (so why bother asking them any longer?). Heidegger argues that this is precisely why it’s so important that we begin asking them once again! We pretend that we already know what being is and that it has already been established. Yet, we are all exceedingly inept at describing what this means, exactly! Can you describe what it means to “be” in a way that doesn’t simply use synonyms like “exist” or “live?”
It’s interesting to try and do this exercise. We all know what it means for something to be. “It just … is.” This is usually a sufficient explanation. But once you start asking others, you will begin to realize that nobody has any clue what it means to be. We take this for granted like the motion in Newton’s famous laws. If being is the most basic part of existing, shouldn’t we know this most intimately? Why the hell is it the process with which we are least familiar! Why can’t we describe what this means? Let’s unpack being. This is going to take us down the path of ontology.
When Heidegger uses the word “ontological,” he has in mind the kind of understanding modeled by the pre-Socratics (Heraclitus and Parmenides). For a quick breakdown, “ontic” means “beingthe thing”—that something exists or takes up physical and temporal space. If something is ontic, it is a thing—a noun. When you refer to yourself or someone else, do you refer to them as a thing—that is, as a noun? “Meet Jim. Jim is a heterosexual, cisgender man. Jim is 6’2.” He is a high school music teacher. He makes $35,000/year.” Check, check, check—the attributes of a thing. “Jim” is ontic.
“Onto-logical,” then, if you remember the earlier discussion, recognizes the becoming of that which exists. It refers to a process—that is, being as a gerund, like walk-ing and skiing. It would be you as an undetermined set of possibilities unfolding in the present. “Meet Jim. Let’s see what Jim does next.”
With “ontic” being, we find that the process of dis-covering and becoming has been removed, leaving one with simply ontos. Once more, following Plato’s ontological wedge, ontos is nothing more than an existing thing—that is, the lump of nature outside the window that one may point at or go outside and stand in. Macquarrie and Robinson (1962) summarize the difference in the translator footnotes: “Ontological inquiry is concerned primarily with Being; ontical inquiry is concerned primarily with entities and the facts about them” (p. 31, emphasis original). What kind of thinking are we taught to do in school?
While it is possible to imagine a type of thinking that might include both, Heidegger (1962) sees that modern science has been more concerned with things than their being. He writes,
And although research may always lean towards this positive approach, its real progress comes not so much from collecting results and storing them away in ‘manuals’ as from inquiring into the ways in which each particular area is basically constituted … —an inquiry to which we have been driven mostly by reacting against such an increase in information. (p. 29)
In this passage, Heidegger contrasts the practices of ontic- and ontological-scientific investigation. Ontic-scientific investigation is after a rough and naïve outline of subject matter, and this necessarily happens prior to any actual investigation. The practice of science conceived this way begins and ends with information. It would be possible to perform a study without even venturing into or consulting nature! If nature is never consulted, then this practice is tautological. One begins with the answer before one starts! This is the antithesis of scientific inquiry! The task of ontic-scientific investigation seems directed towards the collection of information about nature, which might subsequently be stored away in manuals. The information found in manuals is an abstraction of nature—useful, perhaps, for understanding nature. However, Heidegger here identifies a curious reversal that has increasingly taken place; the focus of such investigation seems to be in service to the proliferation of these manuals and not to the nature from which the manuals have been derived. For example, one’s understanding of the complexity of inter-personal relationships is not real—cannot be attributed to nature—until it has been published in manual-form.
This procedure could be called an ontological abstractification understood as follows: the initial abstraction—publishing a new bit of anthropological learning in a journal as a fact so others can be informed about it. This is useful, but it does not make the reader an anthropologist any more than does a college degree in anthropology. But now the bit of knowledge—the anthropological fact—is increasingly understood to be in service to its own factuality while the process is increasingly ignored; finally, the process is completely replaced by information concerning the thingliness of things.
From Heidegger’s perspective, the practice of ontic-scientific investigation seems to be chiefly interested in the increase of these manuals. Today, there are new academic journals—online and in print—that are popping up every week. I get two e-mails a week explaining how I can turn my research into academic currency though a short publication process. These journals—Heidegger’s manuals—are in service
