Revisiting our Evolutionary Path: The Search for Holistic Education in a Fragmented World

• Main Author: Gerald Gutenschwager
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Risk Institute, Trieste- Geneva 2017-10-01
• Series: Cadmus
• Online Access: http://cadmusjournal.org/article/volume-3/issue-3/revisiting-our-evolutionary-path-search-holistic-education-fragmented-world

When the World Academy of Art & Science (WAAS) was founded, it sought to address the gap between science and society, or rather the apparent unwillingness or inability of scientists to address their responsibilities as important members of society. This problem is related to the growing disparity between tool making and symbol making, those ancient skills that brought humans to the highest stage in the evolutionary process (at least until now?). Symbols—language, mathematics, graphics and other pictorial and linguistic representations, as well as clothing, hairstyles, etc.—when used to establish social rank, may serve to give legitimacy to the current social order or may serve to criticize and change it. Reincorporating science into society would require that scientists, as well as every member of society, recognize this. This would require an educational system that would give equal emphasis to tool making and symbol making, and this would help students to understand how society is a product of both of these processes.