The purpose of this section is to revisit the conceptual paradigm existing within the present scope of sociological and educational theory, relating this with the requirements of a theory on human reality, a meta-theory for human sciences. The epistemic contrast between scientific belief and dogmatic belief is acknowledged, before touching upon compatibilities and incompatibilities within the concepts of human reality as received from existing sociological and educational theories.

It was proposed in Section 2.4.4., as our meta-postulate, that: The general epistemological paradigm of science and its method of exploring universals, currently used by natural sciences, are relevant and applicable also to the paradigm of the science of education -- they can provide substantial advances in the exploration of the phenomenon of education. In order to examine this prospect, the universals that need to be addressed are not merely educational ones but also, more generally, human universals -- human reality, as such, needs to be addressed. This is the dilemma of human sciences, in general.

There is also a more practical justification to this need of addressing human reality. In the Prologue, an analogy was drawn between the science of education and the science of medicine in that both "seek to produce effective practice for real-life improvements" and that they "need to be backed up by proper and credible theoretical thought". It was further noted that, they both need a coherent theoretical backdrop to support them. While, for the medical science, such a theoretical foundation (on the physical aspect of human reality) exists, pedagogical science has no such provision at its core and is deprived of a universalist basis regarding the social, intellectual, and spiritual aspects of human reality.

What we are investigating here is the possibility of a meta-theory for the science of education -- i.e. a theory that would provide that theoretical foundation presently lacking at the core of the science of education. Since in the pedagogical science there are very few ontological premises concerning human reality that the majority of scholars would generally agree on (i.e. premises that would constitute the axiomatic postulation of their scholarly work), an essential ingredient of such a meta-theory would be a coherent and justifiable ontological view on human reality. The concept of human reality is, perhaps, the central universal to be addressed in the human sciences, and particularly in the science of education.

Moreover, since this omission is also present in most of the behavioural and other human sciences, one could argue that a theory on human reality would be at the core of a meta-theory for all human sciences (and not only the science of education). However, in order to avoid the pitfalls of the past, a discussion of scientific vs. dogmatic systems of belief is in order here.

It was in the context of sociological thought that behavioural and educational philosophy found a fertile ground to grow. Many of these sprout from a Hegelian background. Georg Wilhelm Hegel (e.g.: 1953 [circa 1820]; 1967 [1821]; 1977a [1802]; 1977b [1807]), with his teleological view of history, certainly believed in the universality of ethical principles and the power of education to produce a just society and morally upright citizens. The influential figures, referred to in Section 1.4., who effected serious changes in the annals of their nations and peoples, drew inspiration from a Hegelian philosophy. For instance, many philosophers and educational reformers in nineteenth century Finland, such as Johan V. Snellman (1806-1881), belong to this tradition (see: Päivänsalo 1971). Thus, there is tradition of educational philosophy that both emphasizes universals of education and points out its role as an agent of change. In many countries, the present paradigm of education (both as a field of science and as socio-political practice) is largely based on the results of the influence exercised by this tradition.

Despite the universalist and proactive nature of the nineteenth century educational reforms, it needs to be pointed out that they all had a strongly nationalistic undertone and can therefore be viewed as a response to the newly arisen patriotic sentiments of that era. It was the consolidation of national identity and the harnessing of educational means to its service that, in many countries, was conducive to the emergence of literacy and general learning among the masses of the populace. Within a relatively brief period of time (virtually overnight, in the historical scale of things), these new educational systems grew into firmly established institutions of society and their dynamic and goal-oriented character began to mellow down into the routines of socio-political practice. Due to rapid changes in the world paradigm, by mid twentieth century, these educational systems could no longer be reasonably ascribed as progressive: in the face of the accelerating global interdependence and growing international and intercultural influence from outside, these nationalized systems of education began to show signs of aging and and inability to cope with these increasing challenges. They became entangled with an ongoing process of being amended and reformed, rapidly and incoherently, on the basis of reactionary considerations and ad hoc solutions. This process still goes on.

As a result of this process of reactive reform, the original justification and rationale of the universalist and proactive tradition harnessed back in the nineteenth century seem, now, to have expired. The rhetoric of that tradition are no longer kept aloft, nor is its idealism, after so much doctoring and patching, any longer really recognizable in the present practice of education. As pointed out in Section 2.3.5., this is not due to the impracticability of those ideals -- indeed, they were achieved and the society did change in their direction; it is rather due to the fact that these ideals have simply grown insufficient as humanity's experience has expanded and embraces now an additional global dimension.

In any case, few attempts to such universalism and proactiveness have been made after the lapse of the nineteenth century collective idealism. Those attempts that have been made have failed to produce a collective resonance and a general response on the part of the majority of the scholars. It must, moreover, be remembered that it is not only the development of the field of education that can be described in the aforementioned manner. Indeed, social fabric as a whole has undergone such a transformation. This is reflected in the entire breadth of social and behavioural philosophy and is seen in their present atomistic assortment.

Today, schools of philosophical thought represent a spectrum of very different, often conflicting, world-views and perspectives on human reality. These schools of thought are rooted in the various traditions of the twentieth century. The behaviourism of Skinner (e.g.: 1953) and Pavlov (e.g.: 1927), the needs hierarchy of Maslow (e.g.: 1954; 1968), the pragmatism and learner-centred approach of Dewey (e.g.: 1916; 1920; 1963 [1938]), and the social constructivism of Vygotsky (e.g.: 1962; 1978) as well as cognitive constructivism of Piaget (e.g.: 1970a; 1970b; 1975) come readily to mind. While many of these may seem far apart, they have some logical connection that can be traced along their chronological time-line -- a process of philosophical evolution, if you like. How do these varied approaches represent "a process of philosophical evolution"? Here is my interpretation of the story.

We start by positivism -- the scientific approach demanding that any view that is adopted must be based on 'positive knowledge', on empirically verifiable facts. Thus, positivism regards metaphysical questions as unanswerable and, therefore, irrelevant. Whilst Francis Bacon, George Berkeley, and David Hume implicitly advanced the tenets of positivism, it was Auguste Comte who developed the coherent doctrine. Logical positivism, which began in the early twentieth century, is often considered a direct outgrowth of nineteenth century positivism, attempting to apply the precision of mathematics and the natural sciences into the field of philosophy and human sciences. The movement derived from the so-called "Vienna Circle" with Ludvig Wittgenstein's (1988 [1922]) Tractatus Logico Philosophicus as one of its doctrinal core elements. Wittgenstein argued that the object of philosophy was the logical clarification of thought -- philosophy was activity, not theory. More generally, logical positivists held that metaphysical propositions are devoid of significance, and moral or value statements are irrelevant, for psychology. They took to its logical conclusion the correspondence principle: a theoretical statement has meaning only if it can be expressed through (or reduced to) some observation statements; these, in turn, can be verified only by direct observations. While the influence of the movement (as a movement) ended around 1940, its conceptual effects are still felt in the field of present-day philosophy and human sciences. (See: Ayer 1959; Bryant 1985; Kolakowski 1968; 1972.)

We then arrive at behaviourism. While a distinct philosophical construct, behaviourism can be considered the 'offspring of positivism' in that it seeks to gain knowledge about behaviour based squarely on measurable phenomena. Where positivism was satisfied with demanding empirical measurability as a basis of knowledge, behaviourism went one step further and claimed that such empiricism is intrinsic to human reality, i.e. measurable facts are all there is to human reality, or at least human behaviour (cf. nominalism). Behaviourism, thus, explains human (and animal) behaviour entirely in terms of observable and measurable responses to environmental stimuli. Introduced in 1913 by John B. Watson, the behaviourist school of psychology rejected the exploration of mental processes as unscientific and maintained that all but a few emotions were conditioned by habit. Its most extreme interpretations now having receded and a vast number of critical counter-movements having appeared and been established since its conception, the behaviourist view on human reality still holds a strong influence on behavioural and educational sciences today -- if not directly, at least indirectly. (See: Skinner 1953; Watson 1930.)

With the materialist-naturalist approach established by the behaviourist school, the stage was set for Dewey's (e.g.: 1916; 1920; 1963 [1938]) instrumentalism and pragmatism -- an approach drawing on a utilitarian and pragmatic philosophy. Instrumentalism holds the various forms of human activity to be instruments devised by humans to solve complex individual and social problems. Truth, instrumentalists insist, has no transcendental or eternal reality and emerges almost exclusively from experience.

Latest by the mid twentieth century the prevailing line of reducationistic, analytical psychological thought had managed to provoke the counter effect of cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychology sought to go back to the essentials of examining internal mental processes such as problem solving, memory and language. It insisted that psychological phenomena could not be properly understood simply by merely identifying and analysing their elementary parts, and maintained that, in psychology, the whole is different from and more than the sum of the parts. The interest of cognitive psychologists is in how problems are understood, diagnosed, and solved -- the focus is on the mental processes that mediate between stimulus and response. Cognitive theory involves algorithms and heuristics as well as insight in these mental processes. Thus, cognitive psychology has been instrumental in examining artificial intelligence in computers and its capability of problem solving. (See: Pick et al. 1992; Sanford 1985; see also: Köhler 1969; Wertheimer 1959.)

The step from behaviourism to instrumentalism was logically a short and natural one. The counter reaction of cognitive psychology broke that one-track development and, while not dispensing with its useful methods, broadened the basis of behavioural science. This paved the way for the emergence of constructivism, which, while not a new idea (during the 1930s and 1940s it was a leading perspective in American educational circles), has been building up and growing out of cognitive and development psychology, particularly since the 1980s. The key notion in the constructivist theory is that learning is at its best when the learner is actively constructing his or her understanding. This learning paradigm involves the belief that (a) knowledge is constructed through a process of reflective abstraction, (b) cognitive structures within the learner facilitate the process of learning, (c) the cognitive structures in the learner are in a process of constant development, and (d) if the notion of constructivist learning is accepted, then the methods of learning and pedagogy must agree. The constructivist theory, moreover, falls within two schools: cognitive constructivism and social constructivism. The former draws on the development psychology of Jean Piaget (e.g.: 1970a; 1975) dating back to the 1920s. The latter has its roots in Lev Vygotsky's (e.g.: 1962; 1978) groundbreaking work that began in the 1930s. Cognitive constructivism focusses on the developmental phases of a child as it grows and matures until the ability for logical reasoning is achieved. Social constructivism (which is more often associated with the constructivist theory) emphasizes the influence and instrumentality of cultural and social contexts in the learning process.

How does the emergence of these schools of thought represent an "evolution of philosophical conceptions of human reality", as stated earlier? The main delineating factor would be that this emergence is the outcome of a consistent tendency to take distance from the dogmatic religious views of the past -- an attempt to find rational and coherent explanations for human behaviour and learning. Brent Wilson (1997) describes this within the broader context of the evolution of world-views. He notes that while in former times people believed that only the Divine can give us knowledge of the 'real world', the Renaissance brought the scientific method to the centre of investigation for knowledge and made it the means for uncovering 'the truth'; he maintains that the modern view trusts science to expose 'the world', but the ideal view of truth, as an objective reality, is now practically rejected by the postmodernist and is replaced with a concept of truth which is bound to context and perspective and is therefore relative and dynamic. He sees the history of epistemology as a process from static and passive conception of knowledge to an adaptive and active one. This trend is clearly visible in the evolution of the schools of thought in the philosophy of social and behavioural science. Another feature that denotes the emergence of social and behavioural schools of thought as a "philosophical evolution" is that it shows a process where the scientific method gradually becomes accepted as a basis for ontology and epistemology. This is a central notion in our discussion and we shall return to it in Section 3.1.3.

In addition to the actual schools of thought within social and behavioural science that have highly influenced educational philosophy there are, of course, general modernist and postmodernist schools of philosophy that work in the background.

Influential among postmodernist philosophies is phenomenology, initiated by Edmund Husserl (e.g.: 1981 [1913]; see also: Farber 1982 [1943]). He sought to construct a universal philosophical approach that had no presuppositions, focussing purely on phenomena and describing them. This reductionist approach insists that anything that is not immediately received by the consciousness has to be discarded. The method is neither the deductive method of logic nor the empirical method of science -- it seeks to realise only the immediate object, the phenomenon, and to grasp its ideal meaning through an instant act of intuition or vision. Phenomenology can be characterized as a method of inquiry that describes phenomena through human experience. It emphasizes the problem of accessing the external world beyond our perceptions. While not necessarily denying the existence of that world, phenomenology postpones its discussion in favour of an almost exclusive focus on human experiences. Here "life world" (or "lebenwelt", in German), becomes the central concept: a person's inner world, that final frontier, the unexplored land that needs to be conquered, mapped and farmed (cf.: Sawicki 2001).

The emergence of phenomenology interacted also with twentieth century developments of hermeneutics. While a rather old school of thought concerned with the theory and practice of interpretation and biblical criticism, hermeneutics found new dimensions beginning from the opening year of the twentieth century. Originally, it was theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) who focussed the hermeneutic thought on the necessary conditions for coming to an understanding of a text; already Schleiermacher started viewing many social activities -- notably education -- as hermeneutic processes (e.g.: Schleiermacher 1958 [1799]; 1973 [circa 1790-1830]; 1998 [circa 1790-1830]). It was, however Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) who formulated the unique methods of hermeneutics, as apart from the methods of natural sciences, based on the conception that all human sciences should be viewed as hermeneutic undertakings (e.g.: Dilthey 1989 [1833]). Later the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), who was first impressed by the phenomenology of Husserl and was also strongly influenced by the work of S ren Kierkegaard, developed the field towards a more existentialist outlook, to the extent that he is considered by some as the founder of that school of thought (although he, himself, rejected this association as well as Husserl's phenomenology). He focussed on the problem of being and its temporality; he had a deep concern for various aspects of human existence, particularly as related to the anguish of modern society and the individual's dilemma of his own temporality (e.g.: Heidegger 1962 [1927]; see also: Heidegger1997 [1929]; 2000 [1959]). During the twentieth century, the field of hermeneutics has been developed further within the 'German tradition', with Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) in the forefront (e.g.: Gaddamer 1976; 1998 [1960]).

The influence of phenomenology and hermeneutics extended throughout Europe and had a particularly central role in the emergence of existentialism. The history of existentialism certainly dates back to the time before phenomenology. It was S ren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), arguably the father of existentialism, who elevated the virtue of what he called the "radical trust of faith" to such heights that he considered a subjective truth, attained with sincerity and intensity of the commitment, as the highest attainment of human understanding (e.g.: Kierkegaard 1939 [1851]; 1962 [1847]; 1966 [1841]). This paved the way for the idea of reality being ontologically subjective -- that subjectivity is the relevant reality for human existence. Later Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) developed further the existentialist philosophical thinking (e.g.: Jaspers 1951 [1931]; 1955; 1967).

However, the culmination of existentialism took place after the establishment of phenomenological thought. It was Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), strongly inspired by the work of Heidegger and, himself, the chief exponent of existentialism in modern times, who insisted that all values are within humankind, that nature exhibits no evidence of good and evil, and therefore, science cannot give us any notion of what we should do, only what we can do. As Sartre (1957, pp. 21-22) himself puts it: "Nowhere is it written that the Good exists, that we must be honest, that we must not lie; because the fact is that we are on a plane where there are only men. Dostoyevsky said that if God did not exist, everything would be possible. That is the very starting point of existentialism. Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to." Thus, Sartre maintained that there is nothing to guide us in our decisions; human beings must acknowledge this as a fact and, instead of accepting the values of the surrounding culture and escaping from the responsibility of choosing, should create their own values out of nothing, ex nihilo. Sartre (1943, p. 90) summarizes the effects of this view as follows: "The being of human reality is suffering because it rises in the being as perpetually haunted by a totality which it is, without being able to be it ... Human reality therefore is by nature an unhappy consciousness with no possibility of surpassing its unhappy state." The logical conclusion, as Cumming (1965, p. 363) puts it, is: "All human activities are equivalent and all are on the principle doomed to failure. Thus it amounts to the same thing whether one gets drunk alone or is a leader of nations."

The foregoing passages have been a visitation upon the philosophy of social and behavioural sciences. This account, while sketchy, has demonstrated the patchy nature of prevailing Western world-views that are now becoming increasingly dominant also globally. Their pervasive, and often subconscious, influence on common views and understanding has a tremendous effect on people's general outlook on society, life and the future. Academic scholars, their world-view and paradigms, their presumptions and ideas, are not exempt from this influence -- hence, the incoherent foundation of human sciences.

In the previous section, we mentioned that the evolution of social and behavioural thought exhibited a process where scientific method transmuted into a basis for ontology and epistemology. Positivism, which was originally and primarily a method for assessing knowledge, gave vent to behaviourism and cognitive psychology, which took the demand for empirically verifiable knowledge to be identical with the claim that all knowledge is empirically verifiable and that there could be no other kind of knowledge -- at least, not meaningful or relevant knowledge. From here, it was only a small step to asserting that reality is purely material, pure empiricism. This view then lent itself to the ontological view on human reality. Thus, the method had transmuted into a perspective on human reality, i.e. it had become a postulation at the core of human sciences. In other words, "methodological naturalism" was confused with "metaphysical naturalism" and requirements of method were taken as requirements of ontology. In the words of Norman Lillegard (2001):

"Important parts of biology might be Augustinian, as for example when it is claimed that a common genetic code must strongly confirm the theory of common ancestry. Most of physics on the other hand appears to be Duhemian. The French physicist Duhem was a methodological naturalist, but not a metaphysical one. So, it might be argued, parts of science may need to be methodologically naturalistic, but none need be metaphysically naturalistic. And when various kinds of Augustinian science arise, they can be challenged from outside science on philosophical or other grounds. It is arguable that the social sciences are more often than not, Augustinian."

In positivism, the view that metaphysical questions are unanswerable and, thus, irrelevant -- while not logically necessitating a purely materialistic view -- poses an immediate reductionist limitation on viewing human reality. Coupled with the demand of Wittgensteinian logical positivism, that abstract speculation is nonsensical and that moral values are purely emotive, this would add up to considering human reality -- including mind and thought, value and morals -- as essentially material. This argument was taken further by the logical offspring of positivism, behaviourism, which further insisted that only measurable facts are true elements of human reality and explained behaviour in terms of measurable response stimuli. The instrumentalist and pragmatist school of thought put less emphasis on reductionist ontologies per se; yet, its utilitarian philosophy did underline an almost purely experiential nature to human reality.

The counteraction produced by cognitive psychology painted a view of humanity as something essentially more than the sum of its immediately observable elements. It focussed on psychological phenomena such as problem solving or memory or language, ascribing something essentially more complex inherent within the human 'organism' and making the relationship between stimulus and response less straightforward. While principally materialistic in its approach, cognitive psychology thus leaves the door open for a variety of views on human reality by understanding its complexity. Constructivism, on the other hand, made use of this understanding of complexity by introducing the idea of constructing knowledge through reflective abstraction.

From the foregoing two paragraphs, it can be gathered that positivism and behaviourism are articulately and insistently reductionistic or materialistic in their view of human reality. Cognitive psychology and constructivism, on the other hand, exhibit increasing vagueness and indifference and, finally, silence about their conception of human ontology. Instrumentalism and pragmatism seem to fall somewhere in the 'grey area' between these two standpoints. This would indicate that as we advance towards more recent times the focus on human universals becomes gradually more ambiguous and marginalised in behavioural and educational sciences. The reluctance to address such universals, as outlined in Section 2.1., becomes a characteristic feature in human sciences, until these universals become a mere curiosity for abstract minds, a philosophical sidetrack with little relevance to 'real' research. However, since all work in human sciences postulates some view of human reality, whether explicitly or implicitly, the perspectives on human reality entertained by human scientists become increasingly tacit and even subconscious.

Apart from particular schools of thought in human sciences, the influence of general modernist and postmodernist philosophies on world-view must also be considered, as suggested in the previous section. Here, the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre stands in its own right. In examining Sartre's views one faces a dilemma. On the one hand, much of what he asserts makes a lot of sense: indeed, nature does appear to exhibit no evidence of good and evil; science is apparently incapable of giving any notion of values and moral, of what we should do; we have an inescapable freedom of choice concerning our beliefs, values, and actions; one should take personal responsibility of the values and moral one adopts. On the other hand, he seems to jump to conclusions that are in no way necessarily derivable from those basic observations: Why insist that we have no essential reality at all? Why must we create our world-view out of complete personal emptiness? Why to claim that there is nothing to guide us in our decisions? Why to argue that learning from those around us would automatically be an escape from responsibility?

It is these latter conclusions that logically lead to Sartre's cynical view of human life as an "unhappy consciousness" in which the only thing one can be certain of is the anxiety brought by the ultimate uncertainty of all things. However, it is also these very conclusions that are not logically coherent (of course, coherence is precisely what Sartre believed to be lacking from reality, but then, all discussion would be futile anyway). If "everything is permissible", as Sartre (1957, p-21) puts it, and "man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to", then why talk about responsibility? What is the point in being "responsible" in one's decisions, if our choices make no difference in relation to reality? Is not the demand of "responsibility" a value judgement in itself? Is the experience of countless societies during millennia to be dismissed as pointless struggle against the vanity of human life? Is the purposeful life-attitude expressed and exercised by the overwhelming majority of humankind to be discarded merely on the justification of the historical traumas and pathological frustrations of a small but overwhelming section of humankind, the Western minority (cf.: P. Izadi 1996)?

Of course, one could argue that Sartre represents only the extreme of existentialism and that other schools within that philosophy would imply less drastic and more optimistic approaches. Be that as it may, Sartre has managed to take the argument to its logical conclusion, and therefore, if one is faithful to the basic tenets of existentialism, one should concur with Sartre's conclusions. The prolific effect of his philosophy is, perhaps, subtle but it is no less influential: while many would not agree with the totality of his ideas, an existentialist outlook is among the most ingrained influences at work within present-day Western mentality. (See: Stevenson 1974.)

The foregoing incompatibilities, discrepancies, vagueness, and uncertainty have brought the evolution of human sciences to a point where universal ontological premises, very understandably, are avoided to the last. If not openly dismissed as irrelevant and nonsensical, they are unconsciously avoided and intuitively regarded as useless philosophy or metaphysical abstractions. Whether representing behaviourism, cognitive psychology, constructivism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, existentialism -- or simply 'humanism' -- there are very few scholars within pedagogical science, and indeed within most human sciences, that would agree on one or the other ontological premise regarding human nature. Consequently, most research in education is essentially descriptive, and of the smaller number of non-descriptive studies, only very few deal with universal concepts. This is to say that pedagogical research is mainly concerned with surveying educational situations, cases, models, or specific phenomena -- not developing the theory of education as a whole.

So, what are fundamental social relationships? What is the view on human reality received through the totality of social and behavioural philosophy? Are we a tabula rasa, a lá Locke; do we have an inherent moral potential, a lá Plato; are we a mere extension of biological evolution, a materialistic response system, a lá Skinner; or just a patchy and incoherent conglomeration containing all and none of these descriptions, an "unhappy consciousness", a lá Sartre? The concept of human reality is the fundamental universal at the core of any human science. Therefore, these questions return us to the discussion of the three ontological stances on universals discussed in Section 1.2., namely realism (that universals are objectively real and that their ontology is independent of our epistemological knowledge of them), nominalism (that universals are real only as 'names' or 'titles' assigned to our linguistic objects), and conceptualism (that universals belong to a mental or psychological domain and are "mental devices" that produce descriptions or definitions of a given domain of reality).

Human reality is either purely material, or it has some immaterial or abstract aspect. The fact that we have a consciousness of self and that we think -- cogito, ergo sum -- suggests the latter. A naturalist interpretation would be inclined towards the nominalist view -- explaining consciousness as an epiphenomenon of chemical activities in the brain, as an illusion of some sort. Modern constructivism would probably find a conceptualist notion more convenient -- ascribing human consciousness to a psychological domain. The former, while highly limited in its concept, is at least internally coherent. The latter, however, leaves the actual question unanswered: ascribing human consciousness to a psychological domain does not solve the nature of its ontology, because that "psychological domain" is just another name for our consciousness. Both of these interpretations would certainly justify Sartre's cynical view of human consciousness. The realist view, on the other hand, appears to evoke very little response from among human scientists. The realist view -- that human consciousness would, indeed, have an independent reality beyond the purely physical and biological domain -- seems to resonate too closely with the concepts of 'soul' or 'spirit' and, therefore, recall the rather justified apprehensions that human scientists entertain against metaphysical and theological hair-splitting.

It must be noted, moreover, that the scholars of the field seldom consciously identify their thinking or their schools of thought with one or the other of the three ontological stances. The above description seeks to show that their views on human reality, nonetheless, do fall within the general scope of these ontologies. This means that the received conception of human sciences concerning human reality is inclined towards nominalism and conceptualism, and avoids realism. The very fact that this usually takes place unconsciously stands at the core of our discussion -- that scholars in the field of social and behavioural science, and particularly educational science, are often unaware of the assumptions they make about human reality. It is this feature that resulted from taking methodological requirements for ontological premises, confusing "methodological naturalism" with "metaphysical naturalism", as mentioned in the previous section.

Most concepts in social theory arise from situational or historical (i.e. non-universal, changing) observations and, consequently, they seek no law-of-nature type generalist principles -- i.e. they do not describe reality in general but in particular. In the overwhelming majority of humanistic research and philosophy today, the overall assumptions concerning the human or social reality arise on an ad hoc or case-by-case basis per each study. Even then, these assumptions are seldom articulated but are often implied only indirectly. Thus, the ontological foundation of human sciences is still far from being established.

As a result of this situation, the systematic study of human and educational universals is at the level of "reductionistic discourse", as indicated in the title of this work. The effect is that human sciences are incapable of taking a stand on the goals and contents of education, of society, and of human life; that is left to politics. This would be justified if, factually, there were no scientifically explorable criteria for goals and contents -- i.e. if the nominalist or conceptualist views are true and the realist view incorrect. That, however, is a claim that is not based on systematic study but on historical coincidence. The realist view has never been given a proper chance to be thoroughly and dispassionately studied. Is human consciousness, indeed, just an epiphenomenon of chemical activity in the brain; is human society, really, a mere extension of animal herd behaviour? The civilizational outcomes of human consciousness, the overwhelming abundance of the immaterial culture of human civilization throughout ages and in all regions of the world provide rather massive empirical evidence not to be dismissed as mere side-effects of biological activity. In fact, to rationalize about human reality and write treatises about human consciousness, and simultaneously limit its definition as mere electrochemical processes, is a logical paradox. Peter Russell (1983, p. 55) nicely describes this paradox in his physicist's mind:

"The reductionist approach argues that consciousness can be explained in terms of neural events in the brain, and life, in terms of organic chemistry. Taken to its logical conclusion, this argument ends up in a trap of its own making. Consciousness, it is said, is 'nothing but' the cumulative effect of a complex interwoven web of 10 billion nerve cells. A nerve cell is nothing but a huge conglomeration of macromolecules; a macromolecule is nothing but a few million atoms strung together; and an atom is nothing but a nucleus surrounded by a cloud of spinning electrons, which in turn are nothing but eigenvalues in a probability function called the wave equation. What is 'an eigenvalue in a probability function called the wave equation'? Nothing but a model created by the conscious processes of the human mind to give meaning to certain experimental results in physics. The argument has come a full circle, for is not the human mind and its many faculties, including creativity and a sense of meaning, nothing but the workings of a few billion brain cells?"

The issue on human reality cannot be indefinitely avoided by social and behavioural sciences -- it is too fundamental. If the standpoint on human reality is not properly addressed and if some unified understanding on its fundamental quality is not reached, human sciences will find it hard to demonstrate their credibility and become recognized as 'true sciences'. Lillegard (2001) asserts: "the principles of folk psychology seem to be irreducibly teleological and mentalistic. So, it is understandable that those who want to pursue a 'science of human beings' would suggest giving up those principles completely, and looking for new, genuinely causal principles. ... It looks then as though social scientists may be facing the following dilemma: either give up the claim that the social sciences are sciences, or give up folk psychology. ... The inability to think of nature as simply matter, as 'physical' in a modern sense, and the tendency to import into nature irrelevant 'purposes and goals' such as only minds of some sort can have, was precisely what precluded the development of genuine science in the ancient world (or so the story goes). The ancients saw mind, or something mind-like, operating everywhere. Moderns would like to see it operating nowhere. So you can see that intentionality (i.e. believing, thinking etc.) needs to be excluded from science as we understand it in the modern era." It is this pursuance of non-universality that has lead to the dichotomy between reductionism vs. holism and made them almost synonyms for 'scientific' vs. 'religious' (or systematic and critical vs. vague and uncritical).

This section begins our venture to actually address human universals as a credible basis for the science of education. We shall first touch upon the fact that holistic discussions of universals do exist in the field of educational philosophy. Then, we will entertain some epistemic reflections on the nature of scientific belief and discuss the conceptualization of universals. General Systems Theory is then harnessed, and applied to the study of educational universals, facilitating our conceptualization and definition of certain key-concepts.

In Section 1.3., it was admitted that, along the history of the philosophy of education, there have been numbers of scholars that have explored, and are exploring, the fundamental questions of human reality and its education. Such works can be found both in the domain of theory and application.

Foremost among such scholars are the foundational philosophers of education, including such prominent philosophers as Jean-Jaques Rousseau (1712-1778), Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), Georg Wilhelm Hegel (1770-1831), and Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841). Their work represents a plethora of in-depth thinking that relates to a variety of philosophical and social issues -- not only education. Their heritage does not sum up and converge into any generally accepted view of education, much less human reality. They are not seen as protagonists of an holistic theory of education or society or human reality (although some of them did pursue such aspirations). To the extent these authors are studied and referred to, they are treated as historical cases of educational theory -- i.e. their work is not considered to formulate the accepted postulation of educational theory, as a whole, to which the science of education should axiomatically relate itself.

Yet, the influence of these prolific thinkers is undeniable. While it does not boil down to generalistic universals -- approximations of human education -- their work represents certain universal underpinnings. In fact, it would not be incorrect to maintain that their thinking addresses education as a fundamental, perhaps the fundamental, humanizing process that is reflected in the entire spectrum of human activity -- a process that works both within the individual and in the society, a basic human function. Most of the significant works of these thinkers touch upon this issue of the influence of education, or education as a social force -- at times tacitly but, mostly, quite directly (e.g.: Rousseau 1911 [1753]; 1950 [1762]; Kant 1975 [1800]; 1985 [1786]; Fichte 1982 [1794]; 1987 [1800]; Schleiermacher; 1958 [1799]; 1973 [circa 1790-1830]; 1998 [circa 1790-1830]; Hegel 1953 [circa 1820]; 1967 [1821]; 1977a [1802]; 1977b [1807]; Herbart 1897 [circa 1800-1840]).

What is important in all these instances is that these foundational theorists did not view education merely as a reproductive mechanism that transfers to the future the achievements of the past; they also considered education to be a proactive force that could be used as a means for reaching for future transformations. As pointed out in Section 1.4., protagonists of education unleashed the idea, beginning from the Enlightenment and culminating in the nineteenth century, that a radical transformation in the society was possible and that certain idealistic goals can be systematically pursued and attained through harnessing the power of education. Finally, they did usher in tangible changes in the fabric of society -- changes the effect of which are still felt.

Such education-driven transformations have all been targeted to the flourishing of national identity and the prosperity of a national civilisation; this process of transformation has been an element of the evolution of almost every country where national integrity has been consolidated and the citizens' national identity thrives. Such educational processes started in the nineteenth century, mostly in Western countries, and spread to other parts of the world latest by mid twentieth century. I consider such processes as "efforts of educational philosophy on holism and universals", because the ideals propagated by the foundational philosophers of education, while seemingly patchy on the level of articulation, have had some universal appeal to human reality and have struck a universal chord in human aspirations in that they found implementation and sustained practicability in the educational work of the protagonists of national awakening.

This process took place also in Finland, beginning from the mid nineteenth century up to the latter half of the twentieth century. Thinkers and philosophers of that period found it finally possible to address a Finnish identity and mentality for the whole nation -- something that had not been earlier within the reach of the generality of the populace. Although arriving at no consensus, these educators of the nation addressed directly human universals (e.g.: Snellman 1863; 1898; Hollo 1952 [1927]; 1959 [1927]; Kaila 1938; Salomaa 1943; Ahlman 1953; Harva 1958; 1963). Given the influence of educational thinkers, on the one hand, and the variety of their work and the spectrum of schools of thought present there, on the other, a brief summary of the representatives of educational philosophy and theory during the past one-and-a-half century in this country may be appropriate here.

Perhaps, most prominent and best known among these philosophers was Johan V. Snellman (1806-1881) who, along with many of his contemporaries, had strong roots in the thinking of Hegel. Another influential Hegelian thinker in Finland was Axel A. Laurell (1801-1852), who still had some theological rooting in the former traditions of education. It was during the professorship of Zacharias J. Cleven (1820-1900) and Johan J. F. Perander (1838-1885) that the theological tradition had retreated in favour of the Hegelian thought. However, in Germany, a Herbartian school of thought had been gaining momentum; Waldemar Ruin (1857-1938) was, perhaps, the thinker who initiated the Finnish academia into this tradition. His apprentice and colleague, Mikael Soininen (1860-1924), actually established the Herbartian influence. In the decades preceding the Second World War, Zachris Castrén (1868-1938) was the main theorist and promoter of civic education; he viewed education, however, as mainly a pragmatic subject which only aimed at teaching to students the practical skills needed in working life, although he did emphasize also the importance of scientific thinking. Later, Juho A. Hollo (1885-1967) started a new strand; he refused to succumb to the widespread Herbartian notion of education and sought, instead, to understand the phenomenon of education by combining and harmonizing the various elements of both the speculative and empirical schools of thought. In the same vein, and perhaps more comprehensively, Eino Kaila's (1890-1958) work was characterized by an attempt to search for unifying and dynamic principles behind psychology, philosophy, and quantum mechanics. Jalmari E. Salomaa (1891-1960) was well versed in philosophy and psychology and was also an educationalist; he wrote on the general theory of education, but he is perhaps best known as a pioneer of IQ testing in Finland. Erik Ahlman (1892-1952), on the other hand, addressed the field of education through both practical and philosophical, even metaphysical, questions; he was convinced that a sound theoretical foundation was necessary for education, and he called for proper focus on values, ethics, and cultural philosophy in education. Among the educational philosophers who viewed education from a broad philosophical perspective was also Urpo Harva (1910-1994) who emphasized the role of civilizational advancement and philosophical thought in education and, thus, considered that the civilizing process was an integral part of the theory of education.

Also today, from time to time, there are efforts to address the issue of educational universals. For instance, contemporary researchers like Tapio Puolimatka (e.g.: 1989) and Pauli Siljander (e.g.: 2000; 2002) have been among the protagonist of in-depth discussions on educational universals. Moreover, recent works such as Göran Björk's (2001) and Jan Sjöberg's (2002) dissertations show that the discussion of philosophical problems of education is kept alive by individual researchers and looms in the background of the educational field. Moreover, from time to time, there have been attempts to put together some universalist explanation of human behaviour. For instance, Fishbein & Ajzen (1975) advance their idea of the causal relationship between beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behaviour. It is an interesting theory in that, while it introduces causality into the workings of human reality, it manages to avoid linearity within that causality -- i.e. its causality is ontological, not chronological, in nature. Yet, such attempts remain tributaries in the mainstream of behavioural research and have little influence on the overall development of educational theory.

While often falling within the boundaries of traditions of educational thought, the quest for universals has, in recent decades, broadened the perspective of educational research and paved the way for a richer and more holistic investigation into the phenomenon of education. Surprisingly, the outcomes are most visibly present in the domain of educational application. There, certain thinkers -- such as Martin Buber (e.g.: 1967), Paulo Freire (e.g.: 1985), J¨rgen Habermas (e.g.: 1976), Jack Mezirow (e.g.: 1991) and Peter Senge (e.g.: 1990) -- have done pioneering work in addressing real educational needs while standing on a philosophical foundation. It seems that, where true developmental human needs have been addressed on the level of practice and application, their theoretical understanding, too, has been refurbished.

One of such instances is action research. According to Argyris et al. (1985, p. 36), an action researcher is an interventionist who seeks both to promote learning in the client system and to contribute to general knowledge. Although action research has many varieties and forms (see: Haft & Kordes, 1984), some guiding principles of action research can be identified (Argyris et al. 1985, pp. 8-9): (a) action research involves experiments on real issues in social systems; (b) action research involves iterative cycles of identifying a problem, planning, acting, and evaluating; (c) the intended change, typically, involves re-education; (d) action research challenges the status quo from a perspective of cooperative and consultative social values; and (e) action research is intended to contribute simultaneously to basic knowledge in social science and to social action in every-day-life. High standards of theory building are not to be sacrificed, nor is the relation to practice to be lost. Development is a factor of validity in action research (see: Grönfors 1982, p. 122): essential changes must be shown to have taken place and significant goals to have been achieved in order for any action research project to be declared valid. (See also: Elliot 1985, pp. 235-262; Baker 1984, pp. 89-90.)

Also other very similar and closely related trends in the field of education -- such as learning organization, a term coined by Peter Snege (e.g.: 1990; Senge et al. 1994) -- have appeared during the past few decades. Common to these trends seems to be an aspiration to reorient, by means of renewal of everyday practice, the community's social life (see: Foster 1976). They seek, through cooperative consultation, not aggressive opposition, to forcefully break down obsolete routines of various present-day communities (work, political, civic, etc.) and to utilize human diversity as an invaluable social resource, and to reveal personal and collective capacities dormant in those communities. They accept "interdependence as a cardinal value" and seek to "replace competitive with cooperative relations" (Trist 1976, pp. 235-236).

Thus, while these new modes of educational implementation seem pragmatic in appearance, they are, in fact, philosophical in foundation. They may, or may not, identify their philosophical basis with one or another school of thought, but they share a subtle, and as yet inarticulate, foundational undertone that somehow seems to address human reality directly and appeal to certain universal qualities in the essence of humanity. This observation is supported by the fact that there is abundant empirical evidence for the functionality of many of these new trends in the vast diversity of human culture and experience. For instance, both action research and learning organization, if implemented in a culturally sensitive manner, appear to be capable of highly successful operations in a variety of organizational, social and cultural setups worldwide -- setups as far removed from each other as, for example, a small village in India vs. a large supranational corporation, or an international non-governmental organization for civic change vs. the political organization of municipal administration in a Scandinavian town. The fact that these approaches can successfully function in all these diverse contexts is indicative of their universal human relevance (see also Section 5.2.).

The abovementioned undertones are still subtle and tacit -- they need to be studied and articulated. In fact, some scholars have begun to contemplate on the more philosophical aspect of these undertones while retaining the useful applicability of these approaches. For example, a recent study (see: Tuomi 2001) in Jyväskylä, Finland, is simultaneously a report of a development project through the action research method, on the one hand, and a discussion of the universal characteristics of human reality and its moral developmental needs in our present paradigm, on the other. Similar trends can be detected in other works as well (e.g.: Launonen 2000). What is important in these instances is, as Power (1982, 5-7) puts it, that "[f]ew educational philosophers are content merely to state their case and put trust in its inner logic and natural appeal for adoption", and that educational philosophers would rather "want to be influential and to have their plans paid heed". They, one and all, seem to agree that "left uneducated, men are 'the most savage of earthly creatures'" (Power 1982, p. 6).

Generally, it can be said that the majority (although not all) of the philosophical work that has been done in the direction of educational universals, during the past few decades, is based on the broad German tradition (which is well represented in Finland). This tradition addresses universals from a conceptualist point of departure and can be seen within the broader context of postmodernism. For instance, in phenomenology and hermeneutics there are a number of thinkers that have focussed on human and educational universals (e.g.: Uljens 1998; 2002). In the same vein, the popular and widespread pragmatism of Dewey (e.g.: 1963 [1938]) and constructivism of Vygotsky (e.g.: 1978) address human universals form a relativistic point of view. More broadly, the work of postmodernist philosophers, in fields not directly connected with education, relates back to the interests of the science of education. For instance, conceptualizations within the philosophy of mind (e.g.: Chalmers 1996) or the philosophical thoughts of Richard Rorty (e.g.: 1991) and John R. Sarle (e.g.: 1995) intercept educational thought with the universals of a postmodernist world-view. Very few scholars remain who address universals from a realist perspective (see e.g.: Puolimatka 1989; Niiniluoto 1999).

It seems that the twentieth century represents a paradox in the development of educational theory and philosophy in that, on the one hand, it witnessed the flourishing of a broad spectrum of schools of thought and, on the other, this abundance of views never conspired in favour of a general theory of education based on an holistic view of human reality. The only universal that seems to be endorsed by the majority of educationalists is the postmodernist and pragmatist notion that universalist approximations of human reality and education, while perhaps interesting, are neither attainable nor relevant (cf.: Uljens 2002). This may be attributed either to the possibility that this is indeed how things actually are, or to the fact that we are only at the beginning of the evolution of human sciences and , therefore, we have been unable to attain to properly relevant universals that would provide meaningful points of departure for our science. Thus, many earlier efforts on a realist view on human and educational universals appear (and are) naïve in that they are primitive; they are the first fumbling attempts to scientifically understand ourselves -- an effort which must necessarily include, in the beginning, numerous incorrect or limited or twisted outcomes. However, given the relatively brief period (a couple of centuries, at best) that this process has been going on, and given the complexity and problematic nature of the task (after all, we are trying to understand ourselves, not just an external world), it would be unreasonable to give up the possibility of an holistic realist understanding of human reality, in general, and education, in particular. For the same reason, it would be indicative of justified humility to opt for the possibility that we have not, yet, exhausted the potential of studying the human universals from a realist point of view -- and not to insist that such attempts are bound to be futile. As humankind is forced to increasing intermingling and applies the accumulating intercultural experience to its understanding of itself, our thoughts may mature so that more apt and universally plausible educational universals can emerge -- if they are given a chance and are not dismissed out of hand.

Let us now return to the term "scientific method" discussed in Section 1.4. This method of acquisition of knowledge is often referred to as only the natural scientific method and, as pointed out earlier, is easily mistaken for the positivistic approach. It must remembered, however, that the main point was a call for vision as "a compass for scientific progress", and vision with a "universal appeal to the human mind". It claimed that in today's paradigm of global transformation, the role of education as an "agent of change" and of the pedagogical science as a "holistic frame of reference" should not be underestimated; these, in turn, need to give due attention to the study of educational universals. On the other hand, the point of departure in our argumentation has been that such universals do not lend themselves to meaningful processes unless there are means to systematically and methodically study them.

This call for vision and holism, on the one hand, and systematic and methodical means, on the other, brings us to a problematic dichotomy. Today, the terms 'reductionism' and 'holism' are, unfortunately, often taken almost as synonyms for 'scientific' vs. 'religious', respectively -- the former implying a systematic and critical acquisition of knowledge with the application of clear logical rules; the latter implying a vague and uncritical formation of doctrines with an authoritarian approach to knowledge. In our context, however, such an interpretation is far from the one intended. Indeed, almost the opposite is meant.

The dichotomy of scientific belief vs. dogmatic belief is, of course, a very old philosophical dilemma. It needs to be pointed out that it is not religious faith as such that is equated here with dogmatic belief -- only the dogmatic expressions of religious faith can be thus characterized. In fact, all the great religions of the world have, at the time of their appearance, imparted new creative vision to the world, helping to emancipate people from the highly dogmatized and stagnant belief systems of their respective era and culture, opening the horizons of narrow-minded contemporary world-views, and reviving the intellectual lives of people. In fact, scientific belief (as defined below) can be found within the religious domain as much as dogmatic belief (as defined below) can be found in the academic domain.

To put it simply, by "dogmatic belief" (or, more provocatively, "dogmatic superstition") we mean: (a) conviction in particular views without solid rational grounds and adequate factual justification, on the one hand, and (b) doctrinal belief in an incoherent and atomistic collection of tenets, on the other -- in short: unfounded and unconnected of beliefs. Such beliefs, in fact, qualify as forms of blind faith or superstition in that they preclude the necessity of reason and justification as an essential element in the human belief system. Dogmatic belief is, therefore, prone to becoming an arbitrary set of atomistic doctrines.

Scientific knowledge is also a belief system. Its main difference with dogmatic belief, however, is that it is very careful in choosing its particular 'tenets' -- using critical criteria, well-thought-out justifications and even attempting to falsify its own assumptions -- i.e. the scientific belief system tests its claims before adopting them. Moreover, the scientific approach does not suffice itself with putting forward merely particular claims; rather, it seeks to link and connect the various 'truths' it has found, relate them to one another (itself a part of the testing process), and formulate them into a coherent whole. Therefore, scientific belief -- i.e. adopted postulations, the patterns of scientific 'doctrines' -- is not (or, at least, is not supposed to be) an arbitrary and atomistic list of statements.

The problem of the justifiability of beliefs has been abundantly addressed by the exponents of philosophy of science. From the times of Socrates and Plato, to medieval Franciscans, to Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment, all the way to present-day rationalism, such epistemic contemplations have been at the core of intellectual investigation and scientific knowledge. Perhaps one of the most zealous lines of such thought is, today, critical rationalism. The arguments of Karl Popper, for instance, come readily to mind with his exposition of falsifiability as the central criterion for any adopted theorem (illustrated by the following example: if there is a single white crow, then the statement "all crows are black" is false; or more precisely: while no amount of observation of black crows verifies the statement "all crows are black", one authenticated observation of a white crow falsifies it). And for Popper, falsifiability is the hallmark of science (see: Popper 1992; see also: Palonen 1974).

The issue of falsifiability is highly applicable when we deal with stating generalizations on empirically observable phenomenon and is, therefore, central in the positivistic tradition of science. The whole conception of science presented above is conventionally considered as positivistic. Caution, however, is needed not to merge this concept of knowledge with the static and deterministic world-views and mechanistic approaches that often go along with the term "positivism". Here, positivism simply means the pursuit of "positive knowledge" -- i.e. knowledge that is verifiable (cf. Section 1.2.).

However, returning to our main concern, the issue of universals, we will notice that the justification of statements on universals is hardly straightforward, if the main criterion remains falsification, since the falsifiability of universals can be done only indirectly through the observable phenomenon derived from those universals, not the universals themselves. This will bring us back to our original topic of dogmatic vs. scientific belief: falsifiability gives a powerful tool to avoid dogmatic tenets and hold to scientific knowledge when applied to empirically observable phenomena, but it is of little immediate help in postulating universals -- particularly if the realist view of universals is endorsed (see Section 1.2.). If, for the sake of argument, we pose that the realist position on universals is correct -- that abstract objects (such as 'largeness' or 'beauty' or 'justice' or 'consciousness' or 'meaning') are real and exist in a realm independent of human thought -- then their empirical study can take place only indirectly (if at all). It is, perhaps, this very fact that has prompted the dominance of the conceptualist view on universals.

Then, how to avoid dogmatic belief in assumed universals, and how to keep such postulation grounded on scientific foundations? To claim that this would be impossible and that such postulation is somehow intrinsically dogmatic or superstitious, is to maintain that only empirically verifiable objects are real, i.e. reality is purely materialistic. Avoiding dogmatism and superstition by confining knowledge to such nominalism would be tantamount to giving up an open mind -- the very symptom produced by dogmatism and superstition that we seek to avoid.

This, however, need not be the case. Keeping an open and unbiased mind requires, in addition to methods of verification, an holistic vision. At the outset of this section "dogmatic belief" was defined as a "conviction in particular views without solid rational grounds and adequate factual justification" as well as a "doctrinal belief in an incoherent and atomistic collection of tenets". This means that, if postulation on universals avoids these pitfalls and is not characterized by such features, it does not qualify as dogmatic belief. We sustained that "scientific knowledge", on the other hand, "tests its claims before adopting them" and "seeks to link and connect the various 'truths' it has found ... and formulate them into a coherent whole". This is precisely the definition of "holistic vision". Is it not, we may ask, possible to study and postulate universals without falling prey to dogmatic belief and with keeping to scientific criteria!

During the past fifty years or so, this dichotomy of holistic vision vs. dogmatic belief has become a target of discussion in systemic approaches. It can be said that systemists argue that science without holistic vision is dogmatic; in other words, scientific belief demands holistic vision (e.g.: Bertalanffy et al. 1951). This point is clearly presented by Fritjoff Capra, who challenges the Cartesian view of the universe as a reductionistic and mechanical clockwork, and calls for an holistic approach to reality that sees systemic interconnectedness as the prime quality in creation (see: Capra 1983; 1985; Capra & Steenbergen 1985; Descartes 1970 [1629-1649]). This dilemma stems from an ongoing paradigm shift in our entire scientific world-view -- a dilemma which Capra calls the "crisis of perception".

This crisis of perception is what General Systems Theory seeks to address (see Sections 3.2.4. and 3.2.5.) and it is closely linked with the way universals are treated. It is the latest phase of the seemingly eternal dilemma of the justifiability of belief and the objectivity of knowledge, and a polemical challenge across all fields of sciences -- not the least, the science of education. If there, indeed, are any educational universals, the science of education cannot rightfully ignore them and may have to consider their philosophical feasibility as bases for the paradigmatic postulation of the field.

It is the absence of this differentiation that leads some scientists to avoid metaphysical and teleological assumptions altogether. Ascribing reality to abstract things such as universals is indeed ascribing reality to a metaphysical domain, but it certainly does not constitute dogmatism or superstition if the theorems stand the test of critical and logical thinking and are not in conflict with observable facts. Thus, it is not metaphysical and teleological assumptions, in themselves, that constitute an 'unscientific' domain but rather their dogmatic and superstitious pursuit. This is perhaps one of the main reasons for the historical conflict between science and religion (see Sections 2.1.4. and 3.2.2.).

Therefore, in order to avoid dogmatism (the very object of this thesis), the classical problem of justifiability and falsifiability becomes even more central when applied to the issue of universals. In Section 1.2., we differentiated between the realist, nominalist, and conceptualist views of universals. Our argument above indicates that at least there is no obvious scientific reason that would falsify the realist view. Realism maintains that consciousness, for instance, is an objectively existing reality, while the nominalist view is purely materialistic in that it insists on consciousness being either reducible to, or identical with, the neurophysiology of the brain (i.e. a by-product of biological evolution), and conceptualism deals with consciousness as a more-or-less independent mental domain with its own rules and structure. None of these can automatically be dismissed out of hand as scientifically unjustified.

A brief review of how universals have been historically treated is appropriate here. Plato (circa 427-347 b.c.) was, perhaps, the first and most consistent realist. He argued that universals are real objects, immaterial forms that exist in their own ideal realm. He maintained that universals could only be known by the intellect, and not the senses. For him, the particulars are mere manifestations of the universals. Aristotle (384-322 b.c.), while maintaining a realist position, criticized Plato's strict separation of universals from particulars. He believed that universals are to be found as "shared attributes" in the particulars, in individual objects. Augustine (354-430), on the other hand, disagreed with Aristotle in that universals could be grasped only through experience; for Augustine, humans are unique in their ability to grasp universals as a priori truths. Aquinas (1225-74), on the other hand, sided with Aristotle and regarded universals as essences which, while they must exist in the contingent world, may be arrived at without a supposed existence. Aristotle and Aquinas have been criticized for the inadequacy of their explanation of how universals connect with particulars, with observable objects. (Fieser & Dowden, 2001.)

English Franciscan scholastic philosopher, William of Occam (circa 1285-1349), is the one who first proposed the alternative approach called nominalism. He maintained that universals have no real or independent existence accept in a "nominal" sense, i.e. in our mind and language; they are words that we apply to a collection of things. Occam was influential in the area of logic and his principle of parsimony, known as Occam's Razor, is perhaps his best known legacy: if something can be achieved with fewer assumptions, any additions are vain; in other words: plurality is never to be posited without need. This rule requires that any complication be justified, e.g. by providing increased explanatory power. This is, in fact, Occam's strongest argument against realism and in favour of nominalism: do not postulate two realms of existence when one will do. (Fieser & Dowden, 2001; see also: Langendoen & Postal 1984, pp. 26, 44-47.)

In the period of Enlightenment, Locke (1632-1704) proposed that universals are neither ideal realities nor nominalistic concepts; instead, he argued, they are images in the human mind. Hume (1711-1776) and Berkeley (1685-1753), objecting to Locke's idea of mental images, concurred that universals are only particulars which represented other particulars with familiar aspects and that, when we link certain objects with particular words enough times, classes of things seem to develop. Thus, Locke started a strain of thought that lead to the conceptualist view of universals. From Hume's and Berkeley's responses, one can gather that there are different, even conflicting, variants of the conceptualist view some of which may resemble the nominalist approach. Wittgenstein (1889-1951), for instance, believed that search for an exhaustive list of conditions defining a universal is futile because such conditions do not exist; he proposed universals would be conceptualized through a flexible set of conditions that can be arrived at by studying the use of language and how words come to have a common meaning. (Fieser & Dowden, 2001.)

The foregoing review shows that, chronologically, universals have first been treated from a realist point of view, followed by the introduction of nominalist approaches which, in turn, gave way to the rather incoherent bulk of conceptualist views. This historical development has a striking similarity with the evolution of concepts of human reality in social and behavioural sciences, as described in Sections 3.1.2. and 3.1.3.: the outcome in both cases is a rather incoherent conglomeration of ideas, a "philosophical pluralism", if you like.

Is not the pursuit of coherence, however, one of the main criteria in the realm of science? Unless, of course, we succumb to the Sartrean notion that the world, as a whole, makes no sense at all. In that case, science should definitely be divided into isolated disciplines, each with their own set of very limited rules and regularities; this, not due to practical reasons of manageability, but due to the ontological reason that reality would be structured in such an incoherent manner. This gets very close to our notion of atomistic dogma. Another alternative would be to maintain that the physical reality is coherent and can be studied from a universalist standpoint, making possible aspirations for a Grand Unified Theory (cf.: Hawking 1989), but that the human reality follows no coherent set of conditions and, therefore, cannot be studied from a unified point of view. This latter position does actually pose an interesting world-view: Is reality actually into two domains, a coherent and an incoherent one? That would certainly introduce a new kind of dualism.

Neither the nominalist nor the conceptualist views of universals give a solution to this dilemma. Universals, if limited to simple realities, such as colour or taste or shape or size, seem somewhat satisfactorily described from a conceptualist or even nominalist standpoint. When taking into account more profound universals, however, such as natural laws or consciousness or meaning or purpose, these standpoints become utterly inadequate. Are, for instance, laws of nature to be dismissed as mere conceptualist constructs of the human mind? Certainly, our theories (i.e. approximations) on these laws can be thus ascribed. But can their ever-increasing correlation with the observed phenomena be also characterized in this manner? The same applies to similar universals related to human reality: What is volition? What is thought or consciousness?

It is here that both the conceptualist and definitely the nominalist views of universals turn out to be inadequate; and it is here that Popper's demand of falsifiability steps in. If there is even a single instance that contradicts a theorem, that theorem must be abandoned or reformulated. The explanatory power of conceptualism and nominalism fails to give an adequate account of both the essence and manifestation of such profound universals. The advocates of these schools of thought, therefore, have taken the road of reformulating and re-reformulating their stances, thus, devising complex mental structures to make up for the shortcomings of the original theory. However, another way to get rid of these logically unnecessary complexities is to abandon the conceptualist and nominalist view and to reconsider the possibilities of the realist one. Paradoxically, it is Occam's Razor -- the parsimony of the nominalist, William of Occam -- that would indeed demand this abandonment, because the adoption of the realist view of universals would solve these discrepancies and complexities. Moreover, the original objection of Occam against the dualism demanded by Platonistic realism is also solvable (our claim on holism would require such a solution). Our conceptualization (Sections 3.2.5. and 3.2.6.) and postulation (Section 3.3.) will show that, within a systemic conceptual framework, no such dualism is needed and that, in fact, a hierarchical view of the ontological qualities of reality will maintain holism while asserting a realist view.

I, therefore, argue that conceptualization of universals via realism is, indeed, in accordance with the scientific method. This approach will, in fact, make possible "scientific belief" as described in Section 3.2.2. Immaterial elements of human reality, including thought and consciousness, are considered thus objectively existing realities, not delusions caused by physical activities nor a mere by-product of biological evolution (cf.: P. Russell 1983, p. 55). As a reminder, let it be noted that, while this conception of science is conventionally considered as positivistic, in this discussion, the static and deterministic world-view as well as the accompanying mechanistic approaches, often implied by the positivist or naturalist tradition, are categorically not endorsed. What we seek here is a system of coherent and universal ontological premises regarding human reality, human society and human education -- a system that can, nevertheless, maintain a vast latitude for the variety and diversity of methodology and approach, already existing in the field of social and behavioural science.

In Section 1.4., it was argued that the scientific method, which is often seen only as the natural scientific method, is applicable also to the science of education. While the types of universals addressed, the ontological approximations produced, the empirical approaches implemented may vary greatly, yet, there can exist an epistemological monism among all sciences in respect to the process that leads to further understanding about reality -- there can exist a broad methodological monism of scientific exploration.

Moreover, this possibility is today enhanced by a more general shift in perception. New theories within natural sciences -- in theoretical physics, in cosmology and astronomy, in molecular biology and genetics, etc. -- have reshaped our understanding of the physical reality and, along with it, our expectations of how reality works. The ensuing changes in human perception reach beyond the particular fields of science and shake the foundations of traditional world-views. No longer is the view of a deterministic universe running like a clockwork, the presumed separation between the observer and the observed, or between mind and matter, taken for granted. The surge of philosophical and ideological innovations in the wake of mind-stirring scientific advances is highly diversified and, at times, contains dubious and unfounded elements. Many feel that the incoherence of the conglomeration of emerging ideas can jeopardize scientific thinking and popularize philosophical thought in manners counter effective to the sound investigation of reality. Yet, this surge of ideas represents a global crisis of perception that serves to reshape ingrained patterns of thinking, thus paving the way for new, more coherent and more comprehensive, world-views.

Along these lines, a set of philosophical standpoints have emerged that help reshape our philosophical perspective into an holistic world-view. Prominent among these are the ontological implications of General Systems Theory and, its ally, Chaos Theory (e.g.: Prigogine & Stengers 1984; Gleick 1987). Systems theory was originally founded in mathematical theory and computational science with the notion of "system" indicating sets and their elements, relations between the set's elements, subsystems with input-output and feedback relations etc. The application of these conceptual tools to natural and other real-world phenomena, by certain scholars, introduced further evolutionary concepts -- such as system-environment boundary, process, differentiation, state or mode, hierarchy, goal-directedness, information and energy flow. This yielded in philosophical implications about how reality, as a whole, could be understood through sound theory. These theoretic constructs are today used increasingly in the conceptualization and understanding of both natural and human reality. Such notions we generally identify here as systems theoretic. Our purpose here is not to prove that General Systems Theory is a coherent and scientifically plausible construct -- that is the task of general systems theorists as well as logicians and mathematicians; in other words, systems theory is not an hypothesis we seek to prove. Rather, it is a postulate we find relevant to the philosophy of science (including the science of education) -- a credible point of departure that addresses the epistemological nature of reality per se, providing thus elements of basic world-view.

General Systems Theory was first advanced in the 1940s by biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972). His extensive works in this field (e.g.: Bertalanffy 1950; 1960; 1967; 1969; 1988 [1968]), while readily inviting a technology-oriented response (e.g.: Ashby 1956), quickly caught the attention of progressive minds amongst futures-oriented social and human theorists (e.g.: Laszlo 1972; 1987; 1996a; 1996b; Capra 1983; 1985; 1996), and became a notable trend within the futurist community, remaining so until today. Bertalanffy's initiative can be seen as a reaction against reductionism, in pursuance of some level of unity in science, of holism.

Systems theory, rather than reducing a given entity to the qualities of its constituent elements, shifts the focus to the relationships of the elements and, more importantly, to their connection with the whole of which they are parts. That whole, on the other hand, is considered greater than the sum of those elements. In systems theory, therefore, the whole (the system) is regarded to have unique qualities of its own, beyond the qualities of the ingredient parts. The essential unifying effect of General Systems Theory is that the same conceptual ideas and principles underline very different domains of reality and, hence, different fields of study and disciplines (physics, biology, technology, sociology, education etc.). In the words of Bertalanffy (1988 [1968], p. 32): "... there exist models, principles, and laws that apply to generalized systems or their subclasses, irrespective of their particular kind, the nature of their component elements, and the relations or 'forces' between them. It seems legitimate to ask for a theory ... of universal principle applying to systems in general. ... we postulate a new discipline called General Systems Theory. Its subject matter is the formulation and derivation of those principles which are valid for 'systems' in general." Also, systems theory considers all systems to be open, which means that, in the last analysis, all systems are but subsystems of one vast System we call reality or creation -- or, as Prigogine & Stengers (1984, p. 59) put it, "the only true dynamic system is the universe as a whole".

The representation and articulation of systems theory in various fields is diverse and, on the level of application, seems to form no overall platform. In a certain sense, it is in the opposite state than the human sciences: it has a firm philosophical foundation, with accepted and articulate ontological universals, but its implementation and uses vary greatly, from field to field and from context to context. Its areas of application are as diverse as can be, including mathematical modelling, information theory, communications technology, futures forecasting, strategic planning, ecology, management, family psychotherapy, organizational development, theory of history, global problems, world order, developmental strategies, chaotic systems management, computer modelling, artificial intelligence, neural networks etc. (See: Klir 1992.)

Here, "transition to a new order" does not necessarily mean transition to a higher order but simply a qualitative and thorough structural change. That it can mean transition to a higher order is a matter that will be discussed shortly (see systemic principles S3a, S4a, S5 and S5a).

As stated earlier, General Systems Theory is articulately concerned with holism and the pursuit of an holistic view of reality. Moreover, it tends to see the unifying aspects systems -- qualities that make a system vaster than mere sums of its parts and non-reducible to its constituent elements. This is also seen in the manner the theory views the relation of the system (as a whole) with its diversified parts, particularly when undergoing bifurcation and experiencing a turning point. According to Ervin Laszlo (1987, p. 31) a system that goes through bifurcation and achieves a constructive breakthrough can emerge "with significant unity, autonomy, and ordered structure" but, in order for the system to attain proper stability and "be capable of persisting in more than one steady state" (i.e. redundance), there must be "sufficient diversity in the components and sufficient complexity in their structure". More generally, it can be stated:

S2.  The principle of systemic unity: Systems emerge towards greater unity among constituent elements; these elements can exhibit holistic qualities of the system -- qualities that are not reducible to the attributes of individual elements.

Now the differentiation proposed by Georg Henrik von Wright's (1988) regarding change, development and progress becomes relevant. Development is a special kind of change -- it is a change that involves diversification, complexification, and specialization. For now, we shall focus on the topic of change vs. development (we shall return to development vs. progress in a short while; see principles S5 and S5a). Up untill this point, we have examined bifurcation and transformation only in terms of change, not development. In other words, the implied transition has not necessitated a transformation to a higher or more sophisticated order, only to a new or different order. In living systems, however, this transformation, more often than not, involves a qualitative development to a more sophisticated level where "new structures of higher order and complexity may emerge" (Capra 1996, p. 187). This is an element of certain developmental macrodeterminism. This is what we call evolution. Laszlo (1987, p. 35) describes evolutionary processes to create "systems on multiple hierarchical levels" and concludes that "evolution moves from the simpler to the more complex type of system, and from the lower to the higher level of organization". According to Laszlo (1987, p. 4), evolution "is the maker of the future: at each step along the way it writes the scenario of its own continued unfolding". The evolutionary motor is the aforementioned tendency of systems to seek equilibrium and minimal potential energy.

In general, then, there is an articulate macrodeterministic tone to systemic principles in that, while rejecting the mechanistic and one-to-one determinism of classical science, they acknowledge the existence of trend and direction in the history and evolution of systems, particularly of living systems. Thus, we can say:

The connection between evolution and life is a critical feature of systems theory: systems that exhibit the qualities of life also exhibit the quality of evolution. It means that they do not only change randomly but that their change follows some orientation or development. Again, von Wright's (1988) definition of change, development, and progress is of credence. As stated earlier, this definition regards development as a special kind of change that involves diversification, complexification, and specialization -- in other words: the macro deterministic sophistication referred to earlier. Progress, on the other hand, is a particular type of development that is related to human advancement and, while its objectivity or non-objectivity can be argued upon (see hypotheses H8 in Section 3.4.2.), it is closely related to the social reality and, thus, to societal systems. Indeed, there is a small step from living systems to social or societal systems, for they too are living systems. In this sense, the term "living systems" can refer to certain abstract systems that are closely related to the (human) society, such as the values system or the belief system. This, in turn, would suggest that, in addition to social systems, certain mental systems could also be considered as living systems, or at least closely resembling them. Thus, not all "living systems" need necessarily to be "natural systems", in the physical sense of the word.

The macrodeterminism of systems theory has never been more articulate than in the case of human systems and their evolution or history. According to Laszlo (1987, p. 92): "The pattern indicated in the evolutionary hypothesis is progressive but not linear. It resembles a fluctuating graph with many local peaks and valleys but with an ascending tendency. The state from which, and that toward which, it ascends can be best elucidated by comparing the earliest known stage of historical development with the latest stage. The progression from Palaeolithic to modern times is highly uneven, with countless forward leaps and sudden regressions, yet it exhibits an overall direction. The structure of Stone Age tribes is considerably less complex than the structure of modern nation-states." And further on (ibid. p. 98): "The evolutionary vision perceives history's arrow of time flying along the axis: hunting-gathering -- agrarian-pastoral -- agricultural -- preindustrial -- industrial -- postindustrial society. The flight of the arrow may be interrupted at any point; it may be temporarily halted at any point. But it may not ... be fully and steadily reversed." Hence "[t]here is a sense to the terms progress and development in history."

As already confirmed by the principle of autopoiesis and bifurcation (S1a), human society is "a self evolving system in its own right, capable of settling into alternative steady states following critical perturbations" and, therefore, "[t]hrough autopoiesis and bifurcations, society maintains itself in its particular milieu and, if viable, evolves alternative structures and organizational forms in the course of time" (Laszlo 1987, pp. 89). Thus, the autopoietic development of social systems includes periods of stable development where the process is somewhat predictable, and of turning points (or chaotic periods) the occurring of which can be, to some degree, predictable, but which themselves and their consequences are unpredictable, creating the possibility of breakthrough to new alternatives of stable development or of breakdown of the social system (Mannermaa 1991, pp. 243). We can summarize these principles as follows:

I must admit that the principle of teleological evolution is still quite vague. It would require further elucidation and explication. Just how is this "purposefulness inherent" in the evolutionary process? The term "inherent" does point out to the "potentiality" referred to earlier. Perhaps the concept of potential is central to this discussion. We shall not take it further here, however, but will return to it later in connection with the formulation of postulates (see postulates P3a-P3c in Section 3.3.2.).

Be that as it may, the idea of telos and universal functions or purposes is one of the critical stumbling blocks of postmodernism. Commenting on postmodernism, David Harvey (1989, p. 44) draws attention to "its total acceptance of the ephemerality, fragmentation, discontinuity, and the chaotic" and complains of its lack of effort to "try to transcend it, counteract it, or even define the 'eternal and immutable' elements that might lie within it". Instead, Harvey asserts that postmodernism "swims, even wallows, in the fragmentary and the chaotic currents of change as if that is all there is". Then Harvey (ibid. p. 52) poses the question that, indeed, has divided contemporary thinkers -- that of whether humans can even hope to act coherently in the world: "But if ... we cannot aspire to any unified representation of the world, or picture it as a totality full of connections and differentiations rather than as perpetually shifting fragments, then how can we possibly aspire to act coherently with respect to the world? The simple postmodernist answer is that since coherent representation and action are either repressive or illusionary (and therefore doomed to be self-dissolving and self-defeating), we should not even try to engage in some global project."

Now we shall expand on some of the concepts that have been used here. We have referred to various kinds of systems. These include physical systems, living systems, social systems, mental systems, evolutionary systems etc. As the principles of systemic hierarchy (S0) and hierarchical domains (S0a) indicate, reality has a structural hierarchy and systems on a higher level include both unique qualities of their own and the qualities of lower levels. Thus, our reference to physical and living systems corresponds to the material and living domains, respectively. Social and mental systems, on the other hand, correspond to the intelligent and, perhaps, also to the transcendental domain. Evolutionary systems refer to all living, social and mental systems that exhibit both life and additional other advanced qualities.

Since the concept of evolution is central to our discussion, a word concerning the latitudes and limitations of its meaning is appropriate. This concept is popularly connected with the person of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), but it would be reasonable to maintain that he was not the one who theorized on evolution as a universal principle of progress manifested in a vast range of phenomena. In fact, it is in the writings of Herbert Spencer (1820 1903) that the endorsement of the universality of the evolutionary principle is seen: The Principles of Psychology (1855), First Principles (1862), Principles of Biology (1864), The Principles of Sociology (1882), The Principles of Ethics (1892) -- these show that he addressed a vast variety of domains of knowledge from an evolutionary point of view (see: Peel 1971). Spencer's application of this principle was, however, a utilitarian one, especially in the arena of morality and ethics (for a further discussion of the evolution of values and objectivity in ethics, see: P. Izadi 1994; see also: Puolimatka 1989). Overall, Spencer's thinking served to bring the concept of evolution within the grasp of the general reading public.

The view of evolution presented here is one that takes the principle of teleological evolution into account. Causality is usually referred to as a chronological relationship between cause and effect. In the systemic context, however, another type of causality can be identified: essential causality which, instead of defining input-output interdependencies, tells us about primary and secondary existence -- i.e. what is the relative dependence and independence of realities (e.g. natural laws being independent of natural phenomena, but not vice versa). Thus, our view of evolution seeks to see this essential causality at work (in addition to chronological causality).

Then there is the problem of autopoiesis vs. macrodeterminism: it may appear to some that macrodeterminism rules out autopoiesis in that the predefined course of evolution, marked by macrodeterminism, leaves no room for autopoietic choices of the system. This problem is solvable: macrodeterminism determines only the scope or range of alternatives into which a system can potentially evolve, but it does not limit deterministically these alternatives into a one-track path to future; even the path along the macrodeterministic development is not, itself, macrodeterministic and will have unpredictable ups and downs, breakthroughs and breakdowns. Thus, the notion of macrodeterminism is not contradictory to autopoiesis; it only maintains that systems are not indefinitely autopoietic, but within a certain scope defined by their potential. Not all universalism indicates strict determinism; the world is not either fully deterministic (predetermined) or fully autopoietic (based on self-regulation or free will). We can safely assume, I argue, that both qualities can quite well coexist, without logically conflicting with each other (see also postulates P3a-P3c in Section 3.3.2., and hypothesis H7 in Section 3.4.2.).

Another issue, which is not directly connected to systemic principles but is relevant in this context, is that the history of epistemology seems to move from a static and passive view of knowledge towards a more adaptive and active one. One could object that, by taking a realist position on universals, we are neglecting the constructivist nature of human cognition and acquisition of knowledge. After all, an objectivist view (which also General Systems Theory represents) considers reality to be independent of the knower (Jonassen 1991, p. 28), while the constructivist view argues that the knower interprets and constructs a viable reality based on his experiences and interactions with his environment (Glasersfeld 1995, p. 7). On an epistemological continuum, objectivisim and constructivism appear to represent opposite extremes (see also: Töttö 1992).

Again, ontology and epistemology seem to be getting confused. It needs to be acknowledge here that the view presented in our conceptualization insists that, on the one hand, reality is essentially one (holism) and that different domains of reality do not actually contradict each other but that, on the other hand, contradictions arise from the limited capacity of the human mind and its inherent failure to grasp any absolute truth -- i.e. reality is always logical and coherent but that coherence may not be apparent to us. Thus, striving to realize the logic of things is an inseparable aspect of any observation, but that observation can, at best, only be relatively objective. Reality is presumably objective, our knowledge of it is subjective -- i.e. the Platonistic assertion that ontology is independent of epistemology. This is why the paradigm of natural scientific epistemology (see Section 1.2.) involves making approximations of what can be assumed to be universally true; this is also why such approximations are never claimed to be objectively true; rather, they are considered to be proposed plausible estimations of a reality the objective nature of which is ultimately unknowable, in the absolute sense.

This epistemological paradigm holds also for the principles of General Systems Theory. Evaluating the credibility of these systemic approximations by sampling the observable reality is, however, a much vaster task in systems theory than in other fields, because systems theory relates to so many different domains of reality and encompasses such a comprehensive spectrum of phenomena. The application of systems theory to particular fields of science (e.g. the science of education) narrows down, of course, this vastness and makes the study of systems theory a manageable task. In any case, the concept of ontological approximation is highly relevant and apt for systems theoretic thinking and does not represent a positivistic notion.

Thus, "viable" knowledge is not something dogmatically given by an authority, nor a purely personal perspective of truth, nor merely a contextually relevant view. More broadly perceived, one could say that human knowledge (both scientific and colloquial) is the point of contact or interface between our consciousness and reality. Such knowledge is attained, for instance, through a process of social interaction and consultation, resulting in a synthesis of the complex aspects and relationships of each context (see: Lacher & Rathmayr 1984, p. 256; Pirttilä-Backman 1990, pp. 20-21; Voutilainen et al. 1990, pp. 22-24).

Hence, our systems theoretic mode of conceptualization retains that science without holistic vision is dogmatic, but it also acknowledges the instrumental value of reductionistic thinking. In fact, the systemic approach is a particular form of holism that incorporates the instrumental strengths of reductionistic science. It reiterates Capra's (1983) criticism of the Cartesian world-view, mindful of the ongoing paradigm shift, the "crisis of perception", which is not taking place only in the field of science but, indeed, in the consciousness of humankind as a whole (e.g.: King & Schneider 1991; Laszlo 1989; Mesarovic & Pestel 1974; Toffler 1974; P. Russell 1983). General Systems Theory contributes to this paradigm shift by making a non-dogmatic, credible effort to understand reality as governed by one set of 'meta-laws' -- laws of reality that provide the ontological foundation for all sciences. Thus, our main focus of interest remains on the applicability of General Systems Theory to the science of education.

In pursuit of "coherent and universal ontological premises regarding human reality" (see Section 3.2.3.), we must investigate the world-view against which the question can be studied. World-view is at the core of philosophical discussion. How the world is and how human beings exist in it? What are basic causalities, how do things affect each other? Our foregoing discussions of holistic vs. reductionistic world-views might induce an unsuspecting reader to think that we suggest a complete division between all aspects of these world-views. While aware of the polarity of their basic premises, systems theory provides a conceptual framework that can accommodate mental and practical processes typical to either of them without surrendering its basically holistic and realist stance.

The holistic approach is adopted here as the overall postulate, but on the other hand, it is maintained that any application of this postulate must recognize that a reductionistic analysis of a phenomenon or system reveals the structure and diversity of its facets and elements. By showing that the properties of the whole become greatly diversified when manifested in its parts, reductionistic analysis serves to clarify the structures and relations of the elements within an holistic model. Therefore, the usage of both approaches can be considered as complementary methods of thinking -- both are serviceable to a realist theoretical framework. The reductionistic approach is like moving on the ground in a forest and examining the richness of its flora and fauna, but having no vision of the dimensions and reality of the whole forest; the holistic approach is like flying over that forest and observing it as a whole and studying its qualities as one organic entity, but missing the characteristics of its details. In scientific investigation, the former inquires into specific questions answerable through available data, the latter requires a more intuitive insight into the basic principles behind the issues. The one is concerned with the qualities of details, while the other draws the attention to the attributes of the whole. Both are necessary and complementary; both focus on observing the logic inherent in reality, but they are concerned with different aspects of it. As Kant (1929 [1787]), has put it: "Concepts without observation are empty; observation without concepts is blind". Just to clarify the differences and complementarities of holistic and reductionistic approaches, let us have a look at some ontological and epistemological concepts from the point of view of these two approaches:

Although the two approaches are complementary in method, the following must be noted: (a) since the basic ontological assumptions of holism correspond to a realist view and those of reductionism relate better to a nominalist or conceptualist stance, the foundational world-views behind the two approaches are irreconcilable and mutually exclusive; (b) even those aspects of the two approaches that appear complementary do so due to the fact that a systems theoretic holistic perspective is capable of incorporating reductionist procedures as modes of investigation, while the reductionist world-view cannot logically accommodate holistic approaches. For instance, a purely holistic view logically includes reductionistic relationships between a system's constituent elements, while a purely reductionistic view logically excludes holistic qualities of the system.

Such efforts have shown the asset of General Systems Theory in that it provides a set of scientific principles that can be used as rather accurate conceptual tools over a broad spectrum of phenomena. While, as shown in Sections 1.2. and 2.1.1., we have rejected positivistic or 'exact' sciences in almost all fields of science, this does not mean that their theoretical construction or conceptualization should be vague or inexact. Accuracy in theoretical concepts and constructs is a prerequisite for avoiding dogmatic belief, as opposed to scientific belief (see Section 3.2.2.). General Systems Theory addresses reality as a whole, and thus, extends the possibility of such accuracy to reach human sciences as well. Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1988 [1968], p. 38) maintains that systemic principles promote a "general tendency towards integration in the various sciences, natural and social" and that, by "[d]eveloping unifying principles running 'vertically' through the universe of the individual sciences", systems theory can become "an important means for aiming at exact theory in the nonphysical fields of science". Thus, systems theory points to scientific principles that can provide the context for a "meta-theory of the science of education" (see Section 2.4.3. and 3.1.1.). Therefore, a systems theoretic approach is at the core of our concern for greater attention to the "universals" of education over its "particulars"; it also corresponds to the need of formulating ontological approximations of these universals, using the approach of natural scientific epistemology.

As pointed out in Section 3.2.4., the purpose here is not to prove the scientific credibility of General Systems Theory (which is the task of general systems theorists as well as logicians and mathematicians). Systems theory is not an hypothesis we seek to prove, but a postulate we consider relevant for the science of education. Hence, systemic principles are taken as postulates (see Section 3.3.), but the claim of their relevance to the science of education is the hypothesis. In Section 2.4.4., we defined our first step in pursuing a scientific method for studying educational universals as follows: to examine the applicability of General Systems Theory to the study of educational universals. Thus, the relevance of General Systems Theory to the science of education is our assumption and focus of study, our main hypothesis. Let us, then, articulate the main hypothesis of this thesis:

If the science of education is to focus on educational universals, systemic principles are applicable to, and General Systems Theory is fundamentally relevant for, the further development of the science of education.

There are a number of human scientists who have made use of systems theory. Among the most noted and renowned of these scientists is Niklas Luhmann who has done extensive work in applying systems theory to social science (see e.g.: Luhmann 1984; 1989; 1992). Also, several educationalists, particularly in recent years, who have made use of systemic principles in understanding educational processes and, more importantly, the role of education in human evolution (e.g. Hart 2001). Moreover, for instance, within the Swedish tradition of pedagogical science in Finland, recent works of educationalists have increasingly applied systems thinking to particular educational interests and studies (e.g.: Lenzen 1997; Lindfors 1992; Malmberg 1995).

Individual and sporadic attempts having, thus, been made on using systems theory in particular interests, the way seems to be paved for a more comprehensive examination of the relevance of General Systems to the science of education, as a whole -- using systemic reasoning to achieve holism within the entire field of educational science.

It is now finally time to embark on the actual postulation of this thesis. As mentioned in Section 2.4.4., this postulation seeks to recapitulate systemic principles for depicting the ontological character of reality. Thus, it is not a set of statements on human reality or education but on reality as a whole. Later, in Section 3.4., hypotheses on education will be based on these postulates.

It has been the presupposition of the foregoing discussions that the scientific approach, often attributed only to natural sciences, has indeed a broader appeal than just the domain of natural sciences; that this paradigm can also be at the core of the science of education and relevant to the study of educational universals. It was noted that, while the types of universals or the ontological approximations or the empirical approaches that are involved in various sciences are inevitably vastly diversified, yet, there can exist an epistemological monism among all sciences in respect to the manner in which they seek knowledge about reality. Thus, our foremost presumption, our meta-postulate (as formulated in Section 2.4.4.), is:

P0.  The general epistemological paradigm of science and its method of exploring universals, currently used by natural sciences, are relevant and applicable also to the paradigm of the science of education -- they can provide substantial advances in the exploration of the phenomenon of education.

To try out this point of departure, and based on the main hypothesis that General Systems Theory is relevant to this task (see Section 3.4.1.), fundamental postulates on the ontological nature of reality, as a whole, can be advanced. As stated earlier, however, systems theory is a newcomer to the philosophy of science and its tenets and implications are still somewhat fluid -- it is not yet an established branch of philosophy and, thus, its concepts and terminology are not fixed. It is, therefore, useful to be reminded of the broad lines that characterize systems theoretic thinking: that all systems are synergic, they are more than the sum of their constituent elements and that there are principles and conditions that apply to a vast range of very different systems.

As pointed out in Section 3.2.5., emergent systemic principles and concepts have, as yet, no academically constituted terminology, no canonized formulation; still, these principles and concepts denote accurate meanings and involve a logical construct. Our postulation will seek to recapitulate the aforementioned systemic principles so that this logical construct is retained, and possible 'gaps' filled in, within a coherent conceptual framework.

Systems theory implies a hierarchically organized ontology. The principle of systemic hierarchy (S0) says that reality has a hierarchical structure where each higher level includes the qualities of lower levels as well as additional qualities of its own. The principle of hierarchical natures (S0a), on the other hand, suggests the hierarchical existence of various domains (such as material, living, sensing, intelligent, and transcendental). Where do the additional qualities on higher hierarchical levels originate? Perhaps, systems vary in their degree of practical ability to express their possible qualities. Thus, the indicated hierarchy and additional qualities on higher levels can be better understood, if we assume that systems have two ontological capacities: an ideal capacity and a contingent capacity. These two ontological capacities offer complementary viewpoints for observing and understanding a given system -- the one, from the viewpoint of the system's contingent limitations, the other, from the viewpoint of the system's ideal possibilities. This 'systemic dualism' can be depicted in the form of the following postulates:

The approach can also render irrelevant the original objection by Occam (see Section 3.2.3.) against the dualism of the ideal world vs. the contingent world, demanded by Platonistic realism. Whilst the two proposed "capacities" seem to correspond to the "dualism" criticized by Occam, in reality they do not refer to two separate worlds, but rather, to two qualitative ontological aspects of one holistic reality. This definition is quite different from classical Platonism which views reality as divided into two separate domains: an ideal and a contingent. Here, the two domains are not separated ontologically but are seen as aspects of one reality.

Further on, while the principle of system's three states (S1) emphasizes the openness of systems, the principle of systemic unity (S2) points out that systems emerge towards greater unity among constituent elements and exhibit holistic and non-reducible qualities. Based on these systemic principles, the following postulates can be proposed:

As a short sidetrack, let it be noted that these postulates yield an interesting systems theoretic notion about the concept of benefit: in the last analysis, the benefit of all systems converge and correlate, and in the long run, the benefit of the part depends upon the advantage of the whole. We shall briefly touch upon this topic later in our hypotheses (see hypothesis H3 in Section 3.4.2.).

Now, let us reiterate some of the evolutionary systemic principles. The principle of macrodeterminism in evolution (S3a) suggests that living systems evolve with a general historical orientation -- a trend towards higher complexity and more sophisticated order. The difficult part of this principle is not the idea of complexity; this is confirmed also by the principle of unity in diversity (S2a) with its demand for a high level of diversity of elements and structures in order for the holistic qualities of the system to emerge. The difficult part is the idea of historical orientation, which according to the principle of teleological evolution (S6), can be attributed to a purposefulness inherent in the ontological nature of evolution. However, as observed in Section 3.2.5., the principle of teleological evolution is quite vague: it does not explicate the manner in which "purposefulness" is "inherent" in evolution. It is the concept of potential that is central to this discussion. "Potential" is, in fact, another word for a system's ideal capacity (see Postulate P1a) -- the pool of possibilities inherent in the system: all its possible 'destinies', if you like. The macrodeterministic evolutionary process, the historical orientation it manifests, can be viewed as the system's progressive ability to reveal its ideal capacity in contingent attributes (see Postulate P1c). As to the evolutionary conditions that denote these progressive abilities, the principles of system's three states (S1), of autopoiesis and bifurcation (S1a) and of 'crisis and victory' (S5a) are relevant, explaining that higher complexity and a more sophisticated order is, most dramatically, achieved when the system goes through occasional periods of bifurcation, historical situations of crisis and turning point, that facilitate possible evolutionary breakthrough but, also, include the threat of breakdown. Our evolutionary postulates can, then, be defined as follows:

Now, as mentioned in Section 3.2.6., the idea of macrodeterministic potential may seem to rule out autopoiesis. A strictly Platonistic definition of a system's potential would signalize, rather deterministically, a single 'ideal' state that the system's potential to express. Here, however, the intention is quite different: a macrodeterministic potential allows countless possibilities of evolving further and, yet, is not arbitrarily free in that it denotes the range of alternative possibilities out of which any particular one can actually come true and be realized, depending on existing circumstances and choices that are made. For instance, an apple seed has only the potential to grow into an apple tree, not e.g. a pine tree, but there are countless alternatives into which kind of an apple tree it can grow, depending on the nourishment it receives or the soil it is planted in or the conditions it is exposed to (more complex systems -- say, the system of the human race -- can, of course, have a much vaster potential latitude than the apple seed of our example). Thus, a system's macrodeterministic potential determines the scope or range of alternatives into which that system can evolve, but it does not limit deterministically those possibilities into a one-track path; even that path is non-deterministic and has unpredictable ups and downs, breakthroughs and breakdowns. Therefore, the notion of systemic potential is not contradictory to the autopoiesis.

Let us return from this sidetrack to our postulation. In identifying the relationships between systems or between the sub-systems of a system, first, the principle of evolution in life (S4a) must be remembered -- that evolution is a unique quality of living systems; and second, the principle of conditions of life (S4) must be kept in mind -- that living systems exhibit metabolic feedback, self-organization, reproduction, and interaction with their environment. Then there is the principle of unity in diversity (S2a), which connects the diversity of elements and structures to the emergence of the holistic qualities of the system and the achievement of stability within the system. On the one hand, these principles emphasize that a diversified and complex network of relationships exists within the system, as well as between the system and other systems; on the other hand, they show that this diversity is an inseparable aspect of organic unity. Moreover, the principle of 'crisis and victory' (S5a) would suggest that critical turning points of possible evolutionary breakthrough and threatening breakdown are, in fact, manifested in a process of success and failure that originates from the strengthening or weakening effect of the feedback received from the environment and other systems. The following postulates recapitulate this unity in diversity expressed in the dialectics of success and failure, the process of co-evolution:

The foregoing postulates can be put together into four clusters that help to summarize the main ideas contained in them. This clustering was evident in the discussion and numbering of the postulates. The numbering here refers to the one above.

P1.  The two aspects of one reality: Reality incorporates two ontological capacities: the ideal capacity (changeless attributes and principles, i.e. universals), and the contingent capacity (changing attributes and circumstantialities, i.e. particulars) -- a system's contingent attributes reflect its ideal capacity.

Now we can advance the hypotheses of this research. As pointed out in Section 2.4.4.), the aim is to propose universal hypotheses on education, based on the systems theoretic postulates. The hypotheses will elucidate the general phenomenon of education and they will also allow latitude for accommodating the existing variety of particular methodology and approaches present in social and behavioural science.

While our meta-postulate (see Section 2.4.4.) has been that the general epistemological paradigm of science in exploring universals is relevant also to the science of education, our assumption, throughout Chapter 3, has been that a systems theoretical framework can provide the conceptual tool for this purpose. The idea is that General Systems Theory can work as a meta-theoretical, comprehensive, interdisciplinary context for the science of education. A "meta-theory of the science of education" (see Sections 2.4.3. and 3.1.1.) must address the ontology of education and of human reality in order to refurbish the context of educational theory. Our primary and most generic assumption, our main hypothesis (as articulated in Section 3.2.7.), then, is:

First, there is an ontological choice to be made. What is education? The principle of evolution in life (S4a) suggests that qualitative evolution is a unique quality of living systems. This indicates the quality of development, as apart from other forms of transformation. On the other hand, von Wright's (1988) differentiation of change (or transformation), development and progress (see Section 2.2.1.) -- defining development as a special kind of change that involves diversification, complexification and specialization -- seems to resonate with the historical experience we have of the results of education. One could say: education is the input that provokes and stimulates development (if not necessarily progress) in evolutionary systems. This does not necessarily indicate deliberate input, but can include all types of natural and other mechanisms of feedback etc. that provide such input. Moreover, postulate P1c, that a system's contingent attributes reflect its ideal capacity, implies that the ability to be educated is a universal capacity of evolutionary systems. In broadest terms, then, we can hypothesize the definition of education as follows:

Thus, education is characteristic to evolutionary systems. Now, if evolutionary systems, indeed, have a macrodeterministic potential (postulate P3a), and if this potential unfolds only progressively (postulate P3b), we can propose an hypothesis about the evolutionary nature of education:

The process that "transforms the system" does not come about all by itself and is dependent on the input of parent and sister systems. Since systems exhibit collective potential expressed in endless individual variations (postulate P4a), and since systems manifest their potential progressively in interaction with their parent system and sister systems (postulate P4b), we can appreciate the effect of feedback and positive-negative interaction as well as the synergic aspect of the educational process. This bears also on the principle, pointed out in Section 3.3.2., that the benefit of the part depends upon the advantage of the whole. We can now hypothesize the following:

But these hypotheses say nothing about the role of education as a uniquely human function -- education "as a specific function expressed in human existence (a human universal)". How can we distinguish education as a form of evolving peculiar to humans? In line with postulate P3c, stating that increased complexity can facilitate a fuller expression of potential, in more developed systems the potential of becoming educated manifests additional features and qualities that were not present on less evolved levels. Thus, systems with basic consciousness, with senses and memory (such as animals), and those capable of self-consciousness and purposeful thinking (such as humans), exhibit the phenomenon of education with additional qualities that are not discernible in systems that lack this consciousness (such as plants). This issue is particularly enhanced by the systemic principle of emerging consciousness (S6a) -- that the telos of evolution is most strikingly present in the emergence of consciousness, a consistent trait in the course of evolution and history. Just what are some of these additional qualities that the evolution of consciousness brings in to the process of education?

In general, the educational feedback, described in hypothesis H4, has only an immediate effect: it gives an instant input, on a case-by-case basis, contributing to the success or failure of a particular feature in the system. In sensing and memorizing systems, like animals and humans, there are also 'delayed' effects of the positive-negative feedback: the system remembers the feedback and can behave, at a later point, in accordance with the feedback it received during earlier experiences, without need to renew a similar feedback input. In other words: the system can be conditioned. The hypothesis is then:

Within our systemic frame of reference, the behaviouristic theorems of "conditioning" (hypotheses H5) and "reward and punishment" (hypotheses H6) can find a broader and more futuristic interpretation: an hypothesis on education as a mode of conscious and purposeful evolution can be derived:

Here the emphasis is on manageability. There is nothing very special about the observation that education influences the future, but it is crucially significant that, through relevant educational decision-making, the future course can be consciously manipulated and managed -- at least to some degree (and within the limits of the potential of the system). This hypothesis is, perhaps, the best and most extreme indication that autopoiesis and macrodeterminism are, indeed, reconcilable and mutually supportive (see Sections 3.2.6. and 3.3.2.): without a macrodeterministic potential the autopoietic choices of the system would profit nothing because they would not yield the further unfoldment of its evolution.

Interesting as these hypotheses may be, they still do not address the highly problematic issue of educational goals and, ergo, human values -- perhaps, the most fundamental issue when speaking of education as a uniquely human activity. Our argumentation would become mere curiosity, and also dangerously prone to misuse for the justification of selfish ends, if there was no hypothesis bearing on the nature of educational goals and values that should be adopted. This is the issue that is easily felt to be out of the scope of scientific theorizing -- a matter for normative choices and policy. Therefore, most theories avoid the issue. Are educational goals and values mere matters of preferences? Are they normative issues that can be put into no objective context? Is there no unbiased point of reference for human values and moral development? Ethically, these are the most important questions; but they are also theoretically the most interesting questions (in my subjective opinion).

Let us see whether our systems theoretic frame of reference can provide us with leeway to theorize on this issue. If education is, indeed, an ideal capacity of evolutionary systems which is similar to natural laws (hypothesis H1), and if evolutionary systems have a unique macrodeterministic potential manifested gradually in an educational process (hypothesis H2), then it would follow that there must be some universal, law-of-nature type, principles that are relevant to the realization of that potential. Then, these principles would delineate the type of education goals and values that are conducive to the unfoldment of the system's potential. This implies an hypothesis that would justify a certain kind of 'moral objectivism':

This means that educational goals and human values have, in fact, a relatively objective point of reference or criterion -- i.e. those requirements that are necessary to the realization of the potential inherent within human reality. While a full knowledge of these requirements, in the pure Platonic sense, is humanly unreachable, relatively objective knowledge of them can be attained (in congruity with our notion of human knowledge outlined in Section 3.2.6.). There are universal principles that are at the core of meeting these requirements, and such principles point to what we may call 'universal values' with some objective foundation (cf.: Ganguli et al. 1981, pp. 198-203; Kohlberg 1981, pp. 412).

Moreover, the notion of the realization of human potential as the standard for universal values is not, as it may first appear, an individualistic and egotistic one: hypothesis H3 precludes this by asserting that individuals can best realize their potential "within the potential of their parent system", and by emphasizing "the mutuality of the part and the whole". Indeed, this would suggest that the most primary value of all, intrinsic in the structure of reality, is unity itself. In this era of all-encompassing pluralism, the vacuum left by unawareness of unifying values is making thoughtful spectators increasingly alarmed and aware of this need (e.g.: UNESCO 1965, p. 60, Canadian Commission for UNESCO 1990, pp. 33-34; Harman 1988; Puolimatka 1989; Launonen 2000). The principle of potential being revealed through education -- of the essential nobility and collective reality of that potential, of conscious educational efforts of human beings to bring it into fruition -- is not unknown to the spiritual legacy of humankind. In the words of Bahá'u'lláh (1817-1892), written over a century ago: "Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom." (Bahá'u'lláh 1952 [circa 1880], p. 260.)

1. An holistic vision and focus on universals does not constitute 'dogmatic belief' but, on the contrary, is a prerequisite for comprehensive and justifiable 'scientific belief'; science without holistic vision is dogmatic, i.e. scientific belief demands a coherent perspective of the whole.

2. The theoretical attempt seeks to demonstrate the philosophical feasibility of educational universals and to focus the science of education on these universals through a meta-theoretic study of the applicability of General Systems Theory to the science of education; a meta-theory of the science of education would also include a coherent and justifiable ontological view on human reality, as the central universal in the educational context.

3. While there are numerous individual scholars who seek to address human universals and pursuing some holistic understanding of human reality, the existing tradition of the philosophy of social and behavioural sciences does not constitute a coherent entity; the ontological foundation of human sciences is not yet established, and therefore, universal ontological premises on human reality are unable to emerge.

4. Occam's Razor calls for the abandonment of a nominalist and conceptualist view of universals and justifies the conceptualization of universals via systemic approximations of reality; General Systems Theory, essentially, pursues holism while avoiding reductionism and atomism -- its principles underline very different domains of reality (in fact, reality as a whole), and it provides a context where human universals can be addressed in an holistic and cross-scientific manner.

5. As modes of thinking, the reductionistic and the holistic approaches are complementary but, as foundations for world-view, they are mutually exclusive and the holistic approach is endorsed here; the approach also includes the notion that, while reality is presumed to be objectively real and free of contradiction, human knowledge of reality is always somewhat subjective and can reach only for relative objectivity (ontology is independent of epistemology).

6. Systemic postulates on reality: (P0) the general epistemological paradigm of science and its method of exploring universals, currently used by natural sciences, are relevant and applicable also to the paradigm of the science of education; (P1) reality incorporates two ontological capacities: the ideal capacity (changeless attributes and principles, i.e. universals), and the contingent capacity (changing attributes and circumstantialities, i.e. particulars) -- a system's contingent attributes reflect its ideal capacity; (P2) all systems are open and can be seen as subsystems of the entire reality, and each system is non-reducible to its constituent elements; (P3) systems can have an ideal macrodeterministic potential which unfolds progressively (from a negligible outset towards full fruition) and is fed by increasing complexity which, in turn, is issued in by occasional bifurcations that facilitate evolutionary breakthrough while, also, including the threat of breakdown; (P4) systems co-evolve within the context of shared potential expressed in individual and situational variety; this facilitates a feedback relationship with their parent and sister systems causing a dialectic of success and failure.

7. Systemic hypotheses on education: (H0) if the science of education is to focus on educational universals, systemic principles are applicable to, and General Systems Theory is fundamentally relevant for, the further development of the science of education; (H 1-2) education is a universal function manifest in evolutionary systems, the holistic process of interaction and transformation that guides a system's evolution towards the realization of its potential; (H 5-6) self-conscious and purposeful systems can produce intentional and goal-oriented feedback (including self-education); (H7) conscious choice of educational goals and models affects the future and is a manageable tool for purposeful evolution; (H8) there are universal principles and ideals that are critically relevant to the realization of the potential of a given human system and its educational paradigm and, thus, bear directly on appropriate educational goals to be adopted.