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Re: MARCH TPT, The Socratic Method (in law schools)



As generally practiced at the U. of Chicago (1972-5), I regarded
it as a form of swindle.
Professor asks question of class of about 150 students. Professor
takes answers until he gets the one he wants. Then on to the next
question. There are refinements.
Regards,
Jack

Adam was by constitution and proclivity a scientist; I was the same, and
we loved to call ourselves by that great name...Our first memorable
scientific discovery was the law that water and like fluids run downhill,
not up.
Mark Twain, <Extract from Eve's Autobiography>

On Mon, 1 May 2000, Richard Hake wrote:


In response to my Phys-L post of 4/17/00 "MARCH TPT, The Socratic
Method,"Jack Uretsky wrote in his Phys-L post of 4/29/00 :

"OK, so I got ref. 8 .......(same as ref. 1 below)..... I find that
Vlastos' principal source for 'the real Socrates' is Plato. The only
other near contemporary is Xenophon, whom Vlastos dismisses as
thoroughly dishonest ...... please help me out, somebody. Where is
the part that says that the account in Meno is fiction? I have been
unable to find it."

In Chapter 2 "Socrates contra Socrates in Plato" of ref. 1, Vlastos
contrasts Socrates-E of the Early dialogues of Plato with Socrates-M
of the Middle dialogues (which include "Meno"). According to
Vlastos, Plato's depiction shows that the philosophy of Socrates-E
(SE) is in opposition to that of Socrates-M (SM). Vlastos lists some
of the differences as follows:

1A. SE is exclusively a moral philosopher.
1B. SM is ....one for whom...... The whole encyclopedia of
philosophical science is his domain."


IIB. SM had a grandiose metaphysical theory of "separately existing"
Forms and of a separable soul which learns by "recollecting" pieces
of its pre-natal fund of knowledge.
IIA. SE has no such theory.


IIIA. SE, seeking knowledge elenctically keeps avowing that he has
none. [According to Vlastos(2), "Socratic elenchus is a search for
moral truth by question-and-answer adversary argument in which a
thesis is debated only if asserted as the answerer's own belief and
is regarded as refuted only if its negative is deduced from his own
beliefs."
IIIB. SM seeks demonstrative knowledge and is confident that he finds it.


VB. SM has mastered the mathematical science of his time.
VA. SE professes no interest in these sciences and gives no evidence
of expertise in any of them throughout the elenctic ....(early)....
dialogues.


VIA. SE's conception of philosophy is populist.
VIB. SM's conception of philosophy is elitist.


Vlastos argues that SE is the true historical Socrates while SM is
the creation of Plato, and expresses Plato's ideas rather than those
of the real Socrates. Vlastos (2, p. 79) writes: "... I need
remark about this new doctrine.....(the theory of Forms, IIB)....is
about as far as it could be from anything we could associate with
...(SE).... When Plato puts this new doctrine into the mouth of
Socrates we know that the protagonist of the elenctic ....(early)...
dialogues has achieved euthanasia in a genius greater than his own -
Plato's."

As evidence for the identification of SE with the historical Socrates
Vlastos cites in Chapter 3 "The Evidence of Aristotle and Xenophon,"
of ref. 1: (a) Aristotle, (b) Xenophon (even though Vlastos is often
critical of Xenophon's interpretations), (c) Aeschines ("a member of
Socrates' inner circle"), Aristides ("a rhetorician of the second
century A.D., well versed in the Socratic literature of the forth
century B.C."), Cicero, and Colotes ("the pupil of Epicurus").

For an interesting discussion of the Socratic method, more or less in
harmony with that of Vlastos, see ref. 4. In his discussion of "The
Socratic Method Today," Reich comments:

"If the large number of invocations of Socrates across disciplinary
and political lines is remarkable, it is perhaps more astonishing
that, given the praise and attention the Socratic method has
received, it is still so little used, and where used, so perversely
misunderstood ...... In the few places where the Socratic method is
self-avowedly practiced - some law schools, for example - it has been
morphed beyond recognition. The law professor, seated at a lectern
with a seating chart, 'cold-calls' on students, eliciting factual
information and analytical comments on demand. The infamous Professor
Kingston of The Paperchase fame has become the stereotypical image of
the Socratic law school professor. ..... But, of course, this is a
woefully impoverished understanding of the Socratic method, for
cold-calling bears no resemblance to Socrates' pedagogical activities
in the dialogues."

Jack, as an attorney, HEP, and dialogist(4), would you care to comment?

For further references on the Socratic Method see refs. 5 and 6.

For those who might wish to experience the REAL Socratic Method first
hand, Rudy Sirochman and I will be presenting a workshop (7) at the
AAPT Guelph meeting in July. The deadline for early registration for
the meeting is 5/26/00.


Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
<rrhake@earthlink.net>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>



REFERENCES
1. G. Vlastos, "Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher," (Cornell
Univ. Press, 1991.

2. G. Vlastos, "Socratic Studies" (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994), p. 4.

3. R. Reich, "Confusion about the Socratic Method: Socratic
Paradoxes and Contemporary Invocations of Socrates," in "Philosophy
of Education Yearbook 1998", on the web at
<http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-Yearbook/1998/reich.html>.

4. J. Uretsky, "Using 'Dialogue Labs' in a Community-College Physics
Course," Phys. Teach. 31, 478-481 (1993).

5. R.R. Hake, "Interactive-engagement methods in introductory
mechanics courses," submitted on 6/19/98 to the "Physics Education
Research Supplement to AJP"(PERS), footnote #39. On the web at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi>

6. R.R. Hake, "Towards Paradigm Peace in Physics-Education Research,"
presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research
Association, New Orleans, April 24-28, 2000." [pdf file, 4/23/00,
168K). On the web at <http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi>.

7. R.R. Hake and R. Sirochman, "W20: Socratic Dialogue Inducing
Laboratories," (8:30am - 12:30pm, Sunday July 30) AAPT Announcer
30(1), 68 (2000): "...participants will work through SDI Lab #2,
"Newton's Second Law,"..... on the web at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi/> ..... just as if they were
students .... experiments will include motions of pendulum bobs,
falling bodies, and kids in accelerating trucks." The latter
(thought) experiment is discussed in ref. 6.