Exploring the Complementary Nature of Education and Learning. Response to Joakim Larsson and Bo Dahlin

Abstract

The paper by Joakim Larsson and Bo Dahlin “Educating far from Equilibrium: Chaos Philosophy and the Quest for Complexity in Education” can be called a manifesto of anti-dualism. Inspired by Dewey’s century old creed, the authors present a well-researched argument for a complementary approach towards balancing historically conflicting modes of thinking, knowing and educating. In my response to their article I will focus on both philosophical and scientific sources that exemplify the principle of complementarity – first called as such by Niels Bohr who problematized the mutually exclusive descriptions of nature at its most subtle, quantum, level in terms of either particles or waves. In the move from either/or to both/and Bohr a connection between his idea of complementarity and Eastern philosophy. His epistemic position considered that what we may perceive as binary opposites at the ordinary experience are in fact not contradictory but complementary. For Bohr, the interplay of yin and yang tendencies forming one integrated whole in Chinese philosophy of Taoism relevant to, informative for, his principle complementarity in physics. adoption of the both/and , integrative, principle as it has been in the physical science, appears to have been long in social sciences, including education.