This is very close to the final version of the published chapter. For citations:

Ergas, O. (2016). Knowing the unknown: Transcending the educational narrative of the Kantian paradigm through contemplative inquiry. In J. Lin, R. Oxford & Culham, T. (eds.) Establishing a spiritual research paradigm. Toronto: Information Age Publishing. 1-23.

Knowing the Unknown:

Transcending the Educational Narrative of the “Kantian Paradigm” through Contemplative Inquiry

Oren Ergas, Hebrew University, School of Education

Abstract

This chapter presents the contours of a “spiritual research paradigm” as a project that dissolves boundaries between knowing and being, education and science, science/academia and life. In light of Thomas Kuhn and Neil Postman I analyze how scientific paradigms are socially constructed “god’s” into which we are educated. They live in our minds and shape our actions in the world.

High and above these paradigms hovers the “Kantian Paradigm” that has confined us socially and individually to an understanding of “knowledge” as bound by reason and senses, and limited to phenomena. A “spiritual research paradigm” challenges such fundamentals and poses that spirit is. The chapter discusses what this implies in terms of “knowledge” and research methodology. Contemplative inquiry is discussed as a primary method in a spiritual research paradigm. It is located as pushing the envelope of qualitative research methods by moving beyond a mind that is confined to reason and senses to witness consciousness such as cultivated by contemplative practices. Examples of the current contemplative turn in science are provided -to show that Academia is moving in these directions. Still, it is proposed that a spiritual research paradigm ought to remain a non-paradigm that resists becoming “normal science”.

Bio:

Oren Ergas lectures at the Hebrew University’s school of education and in teaching education colleges in Israel. His research focuses on curricular and pedagogical aspects of contemplative education. His work is published in diverse educational peer-reviewed journals and books including, The Journal of Philosophy of Education, Critical Studies in Education, Paideusis, The journal of Transformative Education, and The Routledge Handbook for Education, Religion and Values. His co-edited book with Sharon Todd Philosophy East/West: Exploring Intersections between Educational and Contemplative Practice is in print at Wiley-Blackwell.

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There is more than we know, can know, will ever know. It is a “moreness” that takes us by surprise when we are at the edge and end of our knowing. There is a comfort in that “moreness” that takes over in our weakness, our ignorance, at our limits or end…One knows of that presence, that “moreness,”when known resources fail and somehow we go beyond what we were and are and become something different, somehow new. There is also judgment in that “moreness,” particularly when we smugly assume that we know what “it” is all about and end up in the dark or on our behinds. It is this very “moreness,” that can be identified with the “spirit” and the “spiritual”.

Dwayne Huebner (1999), p. 403.

This chapter interprets what a spiritual research paradigm is, based on broadening

Thomas Kuhn’s (1996) conception of scientific paradigms and considering them as educational

narratives in light of Neil Postman’s (1995) ideas. Paradigms are interpreted here, not merely as

intrinsic scientific injunctions that guide scientific inquiry, they are rather worldviews (Tauber,

1997). They reflect how our epistemology exercises its educative power by transforming into our

ethics (Palmer, 1983). In other words, they reflect how the epistemology underlying science that

determines the status of valid knowledge, is by no means a mere prescription for detached

scientific research, but rather a way of being that permeates our ways of living as ethical beings.

Based on this analysis I suggest that we can view Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as a historical

point in which a broad “Kantian paradigm” has become both the meta-paradigm undergirding

scientific inquiry, and concomitantly the makings of our educational narrative. “Kant’s

paradigm”, and its interpretation, have been confining our ways of being, to our ways of

knowing, based on the conception of knowing as grounded in reason and senses alone. This

deemed spirit as unknowable, and therefore outside the map charted by derivatives of Kant’s

paradigm such as positivism and post-positivism. This chapter challenges this progression and

suggests that any human endeavor can be seen as nested within a quest for meaning (Frankl,

1959). Scientific inquiry is no different, and therefore its knowledge claims and its governing

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paradigms are ways of meaning-making. Yet, the Kantian paradigm resulted in confining

meaning to a locus that is aloof to life. It thus conceals its grip on our life and its understanding.

A spiritual research paradigm rests on the axiom that spirit is, and views the inner-knowing of

this fact of life, as the place from which this paradigm emerges, and the place to which it gazes

to search for meaning. It is a boundary crosser that sees no point in separating science/academia

from life, knowing from belief. However, this chapter proposes that we make paradigms into

transcendent “gods” (Postman, 1995) thus the project of establishing a spiritual research

paradigm requires a social and individual de-education of ourselves from old paradigms to

substantially extend our understanding of knowledge. Such de-education is already underway in

some forms of inquiry in contemporary academy, and is emerging from the recent contemplative

turn (Ergas, 2014; Gunnlaugson, Sarath, Scott & Bai, 2014; Lin, Oxford &, Brantmeier; Roth

2008).

The chapter includes four parts. The first part will describe Kuhn’s conception of a

paradigm. The second part will extend Kuhn’s ideas and describe the “Kantian paradigm” and

the challenge to it by a spiritual paradigm. The third part explores the relations between

paradigms and educational narratives, and in the fourth part I reflect on the ways in which

contemporary academic research has begun to manifest the makings of a spiritual research

paradigm. Here I will also briefly consider the foundations of practices representative of a

spiritual research paradigm, such that allow us to establish a scientific community that engages

in the research of spirit as a socially shared endeavor.

Kuhn’s Conception of a Paradigm

Thomas Kuhn (1996) conceptualized the term “paradigm” as a “commitment to the same

rules and standards for scientific practice” (p. 11). Paradigms “define the legitimate problems

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and methods of a research field for succeeding generations of practitioners” (p. 10). They can

thus be viewed as a set of broad principles, premises and practices that underlie the way in which

we approach the methodical study of a phenomenon. Concomitantly Kuhn’s work demonstrated

that paradigms are, by all means, a socially-constructed phenomenon that reflect ways of human

engagement with inquiry, and define a consensus around the concept of “knowledge” and the

legitimate ways of its pursuit.

The dramatic contribution of Kuhn’s work (among others) has been to show that these

ways of human engagement are no more and no less than human, implying that they reflect

human interests, culture, politics, history – they change. One needs to grasp such an idea as a

response to far more naïve views of how science was conceived as it emerged from Western

Enlightenment. In this latter view science was seen as a new beginning; a start from “a clean

slate” (Toulmin, 1990) in which “knowledge” can be established objectively and independently

from the knower within a decontextualized act of perception. 17th and 18th century rationalists

(e.g., Descartes, Spinoza) and empiricists (e.g., Bacon, Locke) thus expressed the idea, that the

scientific method will provide the tools for what Dewey (1929) called the human “quest for

certainty.” Kuhn, as well as other 20th (and 19th) century critics, not only refuted this naiveté in

regards to the possibility of knowing final truths, but also demonstrated that science is not at all

the neat cumulative and linear process of discovery that modern thinkers envisioned.

A paradigm can be viewed as a "framework” (Philips & Burbules, 2000) that defines

what we come to accept as “knowledge.” This “framework” becomes no less than an injunction –

a protocol that researchers are required to follow if they want to participate “in the game” and

have their work accepted as worthy of the term “knowledge” (Kuhn, 1996, p. 11). This leads to

Kuhn’s suggestion of two levels of scientific progress: a) normal science – reflected by

scientists’ compliance with the injunctions of the paradigm - the “framework,” and b) scientific

revolutions, in which the “framework” itself is challenged for findings cannot be explained, or

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research cannot be conducted appropriately by adherence to the “framework.” As Kuhn proposed

scientific revolutions are “those non-cumulative developmental episodes in which an older

paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one” (1996, p. 92). Such

paradigm shifts are far less common, yet they are the makings of what we tend to conceive of as

dramatic leaps in our understanding.

I interpret the implications of Kuhn's theory as entailing a great paradox inherent in

science, and as I show later – a paradox that reflects our very individual psychology: The most

dramatic progress occurs through challenges to the “framework” itself, but these challenges are

the hardest to accept. Kuhn’s book is replete with examples of this claim. The fate of Galileo

Galilei is one example, as he was coerced to refute his empirical findings in the face of the

hegemony of the Church’s paradigm. While these days scientific knowledge claims are not

usually validated by the authority of the Church, we must not think that we have outgrown

dogmatism. Examples of a scientific community’s resistance to findings that substantially

challenge a field’s conception are still quite common. Dan Shechtman, the 2011 Nobel Laureate

in Chemistry, was asked to leave his research team after being accused of bringing disgrace to it,

in his claim of the existence of quasi-crystals that are now widely applied.

Paradigms certainly have a positive side to them. They are “frameworks” for defining

progress, and they establish criteria that allow us to conduct inquiry and build our knowledge by

standing on the shoulders of our predecessors. At the same time, however, they also bear the risk

of reducing the full span of human inquiry as a quest for meaning and transcendence. As soon to

be claimed, that risk is only realized if we allow ourselves to be educated by the paradigms that

we ourselves create, as we forget that paradigms and the knowledge-claims they undergird are

made of the same fabric. They ought not to become the transcendent “gods” that we make of

them for they are only constructed by humans. In order to make these claims, I will apply Kuhn’s

division of “normal science” vs. scientific revolutions to suggest that, a meta-paradigm has been

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hovering above academia leading to our succumbing to a delimiting conception of “knowledge”

and meaning. Pointing to this meta-paradigm will allow me to conceive of moving beyond it as I

interpret the task of a spiritual research paradigm.

The “Kantian Paradigm” and Its Challenge

Extending Kuhn’s conception of a “paradigm,” I propose that high and above the

paradigms of positivism, postpositivism, and constructivism reflecting much of academic

practice broadly conceived, hovers what I refer to as the “Kantian paradigm.” This paradigm

originates in Immanuel Kant’s (1788) Critique of Pure Reason, clearly emerging as a response to

his predecessors Plato, Descartes, Hume and other philosophers. The brilliance of this work is

not questioned here; however, it is also paradoxically the place from which science and academia

have taken a decided turn that I later construe as leading toward a delimiting educational

narrative. I will begin by briefly elaborating this “Kantian paradigm” and then propose the power

of its grip that constitutes a stumbling block for a “spiritual research paradigm.”

Human knowledge, as Kant proposed, is bound by perception through reason and senses,

for “there are two sources of human knowledge…senses and understanding” (Kant, 1787, p. 49).

Perception is limited, thus knowledge is limited. Given that reason and senses can only perceive

a phenomenal world, knowledge is confined to phenomena. That which lies beyond phenomena,

that Kant referred to as the "thing in itself", the Noumenon, God, remains beyond the grasp of

reason, and therefore beyond empirical science. It remains for metaphysics that Kant viewed as

“…a science which is at the very outset dogmatical…” for it, “confidently takes upon itself” to

explore such questions, “without any previous investigation of the ability or inability of reason

for such undertaking” (Kant, 1978, p. 35). The broad paradigm that emerged from Kant thus

followed this injunction: Leave the realm of God for belief, for reason and senses are insufficient

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cognitive apparatuses that cannot accommodate for its knowing. Instead, focus our scientific

knowing over that which can be known, which leaves us solely with reason and senses.

According to Ken Wilber (1999), however, Kant’s paradigm suggested that “science was

not allowed to do two things: 1. it could not say that Spirit existed; but 2. it most certainly could

not say that Spirit did not exist!” (p. 86). Kant simply suggested differentiating between the

objects of scientific inquiry, and those “non-objects” that cannot be perceived that concern

human belief (e.g., God, spirit). Following this injunction, which is the meta-paradigm that

undergirds Auguste Comte’s positivism and Karl Popper’s post-positivism, has proven

incredibly effective as manifested in the advancement of a host of academic disciplines. At the

same time, a “spiritual research paradigm” as I conceive of it, works exactly against the grain of

such Kantian injunction given some interpretations of what “spirit” is. According to Huebner

(1999), "Spirit is that which transcends the known, the expected, even the ego and the self…” (p.

403). Such transcendent “things” cannot become an object of research for science, if science is

conceptualized as an inquiry of a world that is known solely based on the faculties of reason and

senses. Huebner’s conception of “spirit” similarly suggests that it is beyond knowing. The

question is then, what are a group of “respectable academics” (if we are allowed to be called

that) doing, attempting to establish a research paradigm that implies the knowing of an

unknowable (non)entity? What are we doing in this attempt to insert “spirit” in to academia as a

place that followed Kant’s conception of knowledge and deemed it as something that should be

left for metaphysics? Are we proposing that “spirit” can be known? – Clearly, I can only speak

for myself. I suggest that “spirit” can be known and in fact is known constantly, and not merely

“believed” to exist. I soon elaborate, but first I want to briefly explain the understanding of the

absence of “spirit” from academic discourse. This will enable more clarity in the understanding

of what is at stake here when depicting a spiritual research paradigm.

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When claiming that spirit has been absent from academic discourse I do not mean that

religion scholars, sociologists, psychologists, philosophers and others have completely ignored

the subject. However, as Harold Roth (2008) described, the ways through which it has been

studied have been decidedly shaped by a European, positivist, and in his words, “imperialist”,

conception of knowing. “Spirit” has been studied based on a predisposition that it is necessarily a

culturally and historically grounded phenomenon. This non-material “non-thing” has been reified

to allow for its rendering based on the ethos of objectivity heralded by the Comtean positivist

paradigm. The research of “spirit” or “spirituality” could thus be conducted based on a survey

that explores how many Americans believe in a higher order of things, or how many Europeans

claim to have undergone what they define as a spiritual experience, or how people identify

themselves as “spiritual”, “spiritual but not religious” etc. (Huss, 2014). These findings may

have their merit, yet they hardly amount to a “spiritual research paradigm.” They follow the

pattern of “normal science” within positivist or postpositivist assumptions and probe “spirit” as

an object, from without.

A new paradigm concerned with “spirituality” must have something to do with pushing

the envelope so that science covers domains that are beyond existing research paradigms. The

novelty of a “spiritual research paradigm” is in my eyes the explicit insertion of “spirit” as source

by which we can know and be known, into our epistemological arsenal. A spiritual research

paradigm is not about knowing spirit from without, as an object – that, as stated, or the potential

to further advance such knowing which is already present within current research paradigms. A

spiritual research paradigm is rather about looking at the world from the vantage point of spirit

itself. It implies accepting a knower who is not confined to reason and senses, but is rather an

impregnated being who is also (or fundamentally) spiritual. This proposes a clear challenge to

the Kantian paradigm’s delimiting conception of knowledge. Rather than following Kant’s

injunction that tells us that knowledge is only that which is grounded in senses and reason, a

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spiritual research paradigm follows Parker Palmer (1983) in claiming that, “any path walked

with integrity will take us to a place of knowledge” (p. xi) and, as his book title indicates, we

know as we are known. This implies that such novel paradigm is a direct “assault” on the subject-

object dualism that governs much scientific research.

This in itself does not disclose the full novelty here, for such ideas are also present in

qualitative research, some of which strongly emphasizes constructivism (i.e., the co-dependence

of knowledge and knower). A spiritual research paradigm reverses our idea of inquiry. Knowing

here is not considered as an act of observing natural or social phenomena for their own sake. It is

an experience of being that can bring forth a transformative effect on the be-er, and in fact this

transformation is the end of such research. The transformation of the researcher (be-er) by which

the object researched is seen in other eyes is the theme of the research. Objectivity here is

explicitly eschewed as such research is about the researcher that seeks to unfold her “self” based

on her engagement with her object of research as reflected in the idea of “contemplative inquiry”

(Zajonc, 2009) which will elaborated more in the final section. This violation of subject-object

dualism further dissolves boundaries between inquiry and life, belief and knowledge, spirit and

science and nests them all within a human quest for meaning. I follow Viktor Frankl’s (1959)

conception of meaning in this sense. “Life ultimately means taking responsibility to find the right

answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual” (p.

98). I interpret these tasks with which each of us struggles as a calling to seek meaning. A

spiritual research paradigm will thus constitute the ways of inquiry that engage with spirit and

through spirit as the locus from which to answer such calling. By means of tuning in to spirit this

knower can know more than reason and senses can tell, and such knowing is decidedly

transformative and ethical in nature.

A spiritual research paradigm turns to inquire about its own origin – to infer, evoke,

invoke, intuit, practice, and finally – to realize our own spirit, not as an object, but in its own

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terms – as “spirit” from within ourselves. To explain this cyclical paradox and what this means, I

ask again: Why would the writers of the chapters in this book engage in such endeavor of

constituting a paradigm that so boldly flies in the face of the Kantian dictum that to a great extent

runs the institutions in which we work? – My own answer is stated boldly and uncritically: that a

deep knowing, perhaps far deeper than any scientific fact, resides within me - that Spirit is – I

know it is but not what it is. I know that I happen to be clad in this body and mind that I am,

which means that there’s an “I” that’s clad, and my business in life is to get to the bottom of this

“I” asking “who am I”? and as a Zen master would add, “who’s asking”?

How do I know that spirit is? – My only answer to this is unscientific – I just do. Yet, if

you will find yourself trying to prove to an alien that 1+1=2, and he will ask you: “how do you

know that”? You may time and again demonstrate to him how you place one item by another and

refer to them as ‘two.’ Yet the alien might not get it and keep asking: “yet, but how do you know

that?”. You may end up eventually making the same statement I just made in regards to knowing

that spirit is – I just do – that’s how it is. Similarly, how can we prove the existence of ‘reason’?

- Reason cannot be touched, seen or even empirically said to be experienced, and yet we have

come to rely on it as if it is a physical entity that the brain scientist can actually see in an fMRI

scan.

What I am suggesting is more about defining a starting point - an axiom - than about

making a scientific claim that lends itself to refutation. This is very much in tune with what

David Chalmers (1995) proposed in his attempt to advance the study of consciousness. Chalmers

contended that cognitive scientists have been busy attempting to find an explanation to how

conscious experience arises from matter (the brain), a theme he established as the “hard

problem.” Reviewing how such attempts fail to pass muster he proposed consciousness as a

fundamental. It ought to be added as the bedrock of our theories similar to the way in which

research in physics has been introducing such fundamentals throughout its development when

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existing fundamentals resulted as insufficient for explaining reality. To me, the deep knowing

(not simply belief) that spirit is, which is certainly clouded within the day-to-day frenzy of life,

nevertheless lurks behind everything I do. It lurks as a constant quest that fuels my life towards

its knowing. I go about this quest, fumbling and falling, seeing and not seeing. This quest is also

reflected in awakening others to join in, in this impossible quest of knowing/realizing this thing

that cannot be touched or known, according to Kant. This quest is to awaken toward realizing, as

Huebner’s (1999) opening quote of this chapter suggests, that there is a “moreness” constantly

there lurking, and tuning into that “moreness” is what I know this to be about - that “the human

being dwells in the transcendent, or more appropriately the transcendent dwells in the human

being” (1999, p. 404). It is the very core of life-meaning as I understand the term. Harboring

such knowing, paradoxical as it might be, why would I ever want to confine my conception of

knowledge to “Kant’s paradigm,” that is, to reason and senses? Why separate my understanding

of knowing from life, and from the very spring from which meaning flows in to my life – why

separate from spirit?

I agree with Kant that there is no point in attempting to prove that spirit is, based on

reason and senses. Just as we go about our quantitative researches hardly doubting our reason

and senses, it appears that a spiritual research paradigm will have to rely on a similar axiomatic

attitude toward spirit. Concomitantly we need to change our understanding of what is to be

gained by the knowledge brought forth by such research paradigm. The function of a spiritual

research paradigm is to evoke and invoke meaning in a most direct way – it is a decidedly

transformative engagement in which the scientist willingly submits herself to the act of knowing

and to the personal change that might follow. It is a rigorous search for “self-knowledge” in

which the ultimate question is “who am I?”, and who are you and thus it asks whether you, the

reader, are moved by the claims it makes – and mostly “who or what is it that’s moving or being

moved ‘in there’”? or equally, “who is it that is not”.

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It is also worthwhile to understand what a spiritual research paradigm is not – it is not a

search for findings in the medium of factual knowledge but rather in the medium of the

experience of knowing, and the nature of the knower as it unfolds through knowing. That

experience can then be communicated and must be assumed to be such in order to comply as the

makings of a research paradigm as elaborated more in the final part of this chapter.

It might well be the case that some would not accept spirit as fundamental as they

wittingly or unwittingly assume the assumptions of the “Kantian paradigm”. They might not

accept my assertion that aligns spirit and its seeking with meaning. Some might nevertheless

agree with the conception of life as a quest for meaning without necessitating “spiritual”

terminology. I shortly propose three points to address these concerns. These, however, are

proposed as “food for thought” and not as fully developed arguments, for they are not the focus

of the chapter. Thus to answer those who reject spirit as fundamental I suggest:

1. I do not see a point in arguing over the acceptance of spirit as a fundamental. Those

who do not accept such fundamental might not be the candidates for engagement in a spiritual

research paradigm as I conceive of it. That, by no means, deprives their lives of meaning. I

would, however, seek to engage with them in an exploration of the concept and experience of

meaning, not as some “missionary” act of converting them, but rather as a way of further

deepening both sides’ understandings. It is quite legitimate that “representatives” of different

paradigms would have disagreements and seek reconciliation or further understandings.

Alexander (2006), Philips and Burbules (2000) and others, explain how quantitative and

qualitative research paradigms can co-exist. Perhaps this current book attempts to do the same as

it locates a spiritual research paradigm alongside others.

2. I want to stress that knowing that spirit is, should not be viewed as a binary in which

either you know or you don’t. It is a “spectrum of conviction” the probing of which is part and

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parcel of an engagement with a spiritual research paradigm. Doubt is itself a foundation of

scientific research, and a spiritual research paradigm in this sense is no different in allowing for

its own foundations to be constantly questioned. Such probing, however, is not concerned with

presenting factual proofs that spirit is; it is rather a reflection of what I described as an incessant

inner-quest to reaffirm life-meaning and at the same time of our very humanness, and the

instability of our own worldviews. This instability is manifested in the shakiness of encountering

ourselves one day knowing “just the right thing to do”, and in the next feeling lost in this big

thing called life. It is this instability itself that becomes fertile grounds for further probing the

unknown and perhaps working our way into experiences that will strengthen the bedrock of spirit

as a fundamental.

3. Following an idea proposed by Wilber (1999), the meaning of accepting spirit as a

fundamental might be clear to me but not to a physics professor. At the same time, I certainly do

not understand the introduction of electromagnetic forces introduced as a fundamental by

Maxwell to physics. Would my own standpoint count as worthy of much attention in this

respect? There are different audiences to different types of research, with different degrees of

understanding and interest. I do not expect that research under a spiritual paradigm would draw

everyone either. It might be saved for a smaller community that accepts that spirit is and builds

from there.

The above begins to articulate a crucial point that I propose here and develop in the next

part. A “spiritual research paradigm” is an ultimate boundary crosser, for it emanates from a

place that academia traditionally resists - spirit. It clearly blends one’s deepest personal

motivations with academic life, and requires a very different conception of the purpose of

academia, asking: What is science? Why engage in inquiry? These questions seem extrinsic to

scientific paradigms themselves and to the business of the scientists engaged in research and

attempting to present replicable claims. I am proposing that a spiritual research paradigm must

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dissolve such a boundary if we are serious about it, for otherwise it will always collapse back to

existing paradigms. It ought to be seen as explicitly infusing academic life with meaning, and

making that its essence. It thus nests all other paradigms in a broader, universal, and

concomitantly, utterly personal context. Human action cannot but be grounded in meaning-

making. Even the most hard-core positivist objectivist stance that supposedly applies strictly to

scientific matters is by all means a conception of meaning, a narrative – an educational agenda as

I now show. As Palmer (1983) wrote, "The way we interact with the world in knowing it

becomes the way we interact with the world as we live in it….our epistemology is quietly

transformed into our ethic” (p. 21). A spiritual research paradigm embraces the relation between

epistemology and ethics in the fullest sense and thus realizes that if something resonates within

us, it is true at least for now, even if it is not supported by sophisticated equations and numbers.

How Paradigms Become Educational Narratives

While we have been accustomed to conceive of science as a descriptive and neutral

endeavor that does not provide prescriptions of how to live, I suggest that such a view is a

misconception. We may have initially intended to edify science as such a sterile endeavor, yet it

has become an educational narrative that to a great extent permeates our ways of knowing and

being and defines our conception of meaning. I want to exemplify this by turning to Neil

Postman (1995) to show how science can become an educational narrative. Postman claimed that

education is always grounded in a narrative that “tells of origins and envisions a future…

constructs ideals, prescribes rules of conduct, provides a source of authority, and above all, gives

a sense of continuity and purpose…” (p. 5). A great narrative is “one that has sufficient

credibility, complexity, and symbolic power to enable one to organize one's life around it” (p. 6).

Postman used the term “god” (miniscule ‘g’) as synonymous to these narratives, for the latter are

no other than structures of meaning that guide our behaviors, allow us to plan our lives ahead,

and make sense of what we do now (or do not) in order to get there. I interpret Postman’s

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concept of an educational narrative as lending itself to an extended view of Kuhn's conception of

a paradigm. In fact Kuhn opens his book by suggesting that his inquiry into the history of science

is “persuasive and pedagogic” (1996, p. 1). I thus think that I will not be straying too far in

interpreting paradigms as educational narratives that come to shape our meaning-making.

In order to view how this occurs, we need to distinguish between an “intrinsic view,”

which is confined to the practices in which a scientist engages when following a strict protocol

that seeks to comply with the ideal of “objectivity,” for example, and an “extrinsic view,” which

looks at how these supposedly intrinsic prescriptions of how to conduct research become an

ethical education in how to live life. When viewed intrinsically, scientists’ work within the

“framework” allows the rendering of their claims as socially or inter-subjectively meaningful.

Not knowing their field well enough, or the legitimate methodological procedures involved in its

inquiry, will lead them to ask “wrong” questions and make non-sensical or implausible claims. I

do not suggest that work that strays from the “framework” (or perhaps introduces a revolution

not acknowledged….) is non-meaningful by definition, nor that the questions asked are indeed

wrong, rather, if they are meaningful for someone other than the scientist herself, their rendering

as meaningful will require a different “framework” than the existing one. Scientists working

within the paradigm that constitutes “normal science” can be thus viewed as working within a

certain narrative, a certain structure that allows for their endeavor to be conceived as socially

meaningful. Concomitantly it should be claimed that within one and the same disciplinary field

(e.g., education, physics) different research paradigms co-exist. Thus in physics one finds

Newtonian physics applied towards explanations of day-to-day sense-perception phenomena

while quantum physics applies to sub-atomic phenomena. Similarly, in educational research we

find applications of both quantitative and qualitative inquiry that propose different frameworks

and yield different kinds of knowledge. My claim is that a researcher must locate herself within

the specific paradigm to which his research applies within the discipline itself. Failing to do so

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bears the risk of proposing “wrong” questions and/or inappropriate and poor methodological

procedures. Thus for example answering quantitative questions (e.g., how many children in the

district are underachieving in math?) by qualitative data (e.g., presenting children’s conceptions

of underachieving in math), would be considered a wrong methodology for the previous question

and a procedure that is meaningless in scientific terms.

The above might seem as a strictly intrinsic matter that remains within the researcher’s

academic vocation. Yet, we need to broaden our vantage point and assume an “extrinsic

perspective”. In such way, if we think of education very broadly, as a social practice in which

young and old are initiated into the norms, ways of life, knowledge, beliefs, history, and culture

of a certain society, then the educative power of a paradigm is unraveled. We can see the effect

of the paradigm on the ethical conduct in academia as an institution. For example, the Geist of

“publish or perish” works to reinforce the dominant paradigm. Rather than risk academic

exclusion, a scientist might prefer to publish what works within the paradigm than to challenge

the paradigm itself. Legitimate considerations such as tenure may have researchers sacrifice an

ethos of “pure” inquiry, in favor of survival, status, and other. For example, Harold Roth

disclosed in a 2012 ACMHE (Association of Contemplative Mind in Higher Education)

conference that it was only when he became full professor at Brown University that he proposed

the Brown Contemplative Initiative as a way of studying contemplative practices not merely

through an objectivist stance but rather through actual practice. Similarly, Richard Davidson

(2012), perhaps the most influential neuroscientist studying the effects of contemplative practice

on the brain, described how his PhD advisors in the 1970s expressed clear reservations about

these interests, then considered esoteric to say the least. The framework certainly took its toll on

him, considering that it took two decades until he became full professor, and could revisit his

heart-interest and substantially influence the field of neuroscience.

17

Yet, even far more dramatic than these inner-scientific community examples, we need to

look at the way in which quantitative research and the ethos of objectivity, for example, literally

become the meta-curriculum of public education. Educational systems in Western industrialized

countries are substantially shaped by economic thinking that is based on scientific measurements

of profit and productivity, as Tal Gilead (2012) shows. A No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2001)1

policy, which may be well-intentioned but ultimately misinformed, is an example of a very deep-

seated practice of making educational and curricular decisions that are deduced from a belief in

quantitative methods of assessment. Even when principals consider the incorporation of

curricular programs that seek to foster well-being and social-emotional learning that emerge

from beyond these quantitative methods, they seek quantitative evidence that these programs

work, before implementing them in their schools (Zins et al., 2007). Consider as well that some

of these extra-curricular programs are referred to as “interventions,” and that scientists studying

the possibility of incorporating contemplative-based curriculum “interventions” for example,

speak of finding the right “dosage” when implementing them (Davidson et al., 2012).

Setting aside the possibility that there is clear logic to all this and that incorporating such

practice in education is surely worthy, I mostly want to point to the fact that the terms

“intervention” and “dosage” reveal how the language of the scientific paradigm (in this case

medical language) undergirds educational decision making and practice. Thus, when seen from

the intrinsic point of view, the act of scientific inquiry itself might seem ethically neutral, as if it

is strictly science that is at stake. However, from the extrinsic point of view a paradigm that

proves effective becomes a monolithic construct that cyclically reflects and determines human

actions. If these human actions are carried on throughout extensive periods of time, they can

certainly be viewed as an educational narrative in Postman’s sense. We create them, we reassert

them through practice, and they begin to take charge as they gain a life of their own.

1 http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/107-110.pdf

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We can argue with the scientific paradigm as an educational narrative and suggest that it

is too narrow, yet eventually our children are sent to schools that follow the paradigm on a daily

basis. These schools are budgeted based on economic thinking underpinned by quantitative

methods. Children cannot but conclude that the knowledge, skills, and their practices of

assessment and measurement reflect an ethos of social meaning. If that ethos has to do with

practices that are concerned mostly with raising standards, increasing achievement, and

improving accountability, performativity, and instrumentality – all grounded in the language of

quantitative research nested within positivist (and somewhat more mildly postpositivist)

premises – then these are not simply premises – they are educational ideals by which children

organize and understand their lives. It should be stated that rigorous work has been dedicated to

showing the merits of qualitative methods in educational research (Alexander, 2006; Philips &

Burbules, 2000); yet, despite these important strides, policy making as it is grounded in

economics tends to opt for the decisiveness of numbers. Perhaps the fact that such valuable work

does exist becomes testimony to the hegemony of the objectivist approach.

A paradigm can thus permeate human interests and ways of living to a point in which we

can view it as earning a transcendent status, becoming the “god” to which Postman referred. This

“god” is worshiped as long as we work constantly within its “framework” and ethical decorum.

In this process, however, the fact that a paradigm is a human-made “god” is eclipsed. Rather than

viewed as a pragmatic “framework” that lends itself to further human knowledge, it becomes a

taken-for-granted way of living. One of the reasons for this is that some of these human-made

constructs seem to work so well, especially when considering the positivistic (and

postpositivistic) paradigms that were based substantially on the ethos of objectivity. Based on

these paradigms science has constantly been furnishing our lives with new technologies,

medicine, and other. As Huston Smith (1992) claims, “Through technology science effects

miracles” (p. 7). Skyscrapers, airplanes, medicine, or iphones are enabled (perhaps “created”) by

19

scientific discoveries that serve to enchant the methodology that brings them about, to the point

of meriting science its transcendent Geist, and making it into an educational narrative. As Tauber

wrote,

We live in a world dominated by scientific consciousness, not only in the practicalities of our everyday lives, but with respect to our most basic notions of reality and objectivity…Science has no less than created a world view…(Tauber, 1997, p.1)

Yet, consider that the power of “paradigms” as they become worldviews and

transcendent entities that govern academia and education, and their tendency to create a

resistance to change is no other than the mirror image of our very personal nature. As many

psychologists have observed, we ourselves resist change at the very personal level as we

encounter the walls of our monolithic habits of being who we are. Allowing a new scientific

paradigm to emerge is allowing for a new social identity, a new way of making meaning.

Similarly, personally we find it extremely difficult to allow something novel to unfold, to let

deep-seated premises and opinions dissolve to inform new ways of being, knowing, and acting.

We ourselves, as complexes of bodies-minds-hearts-souls-spirits, can be considered personal

paradigms or living “frameworks”, through which we perceive our lives and wittingly or

unwittingly try to make sense of them. Much of our life is lived within our personal “normal

science” mode. It is to a great extent, a replication of a “framework” created by our past, and

constantly reaffirmed through our present actions. In William James’s words,

Most of us feel as if we lived habitually with a sort of cloud weighing on us, below our highest notch of clearness in discernment, sureness in reasoning, or firmness in deciding. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. (James, 1907, p. 322)

Paradigms can thus be seen as emanating from a scientific discourse and influencing our

personal lives, yet they can also be seen as emerging from our very personal clinging to

meaning-making frameworks. The commitment we express to our personal “frameworks” of

20

meaning-making within a social existence is at least as strong as the commitment that a

researcher expresses when following the rules of the game played in a community of his peers.

Following the above, society is constituted of individual human beings who by nature

find personal change difficult to bring about. The introduction of new paradigms into social

consciousness runs through changes introduced in individuals. It is no other than a project of de-

educating ourselves from the old, and initiating ourselves into the new. The difficulty

encountered in changing ourselves as individuals will reflect directly in the resistance that this

big body constituted of many individuals, called “society,” has against change. This is the place

where “a spiritual research paradigm” comes into play, for it itself reflects an ethos of constant

freshness, and a spirit of willingness to change, unfold, and constantly cut the branches over

which we sit. Its ethos is one of constant reawakening as “we smugly assume that we know what

‘it’ is all about and end up in the dark or on our behinds” (Huebner, 1999, p. 403). Such

paradigm turns to the heart of matter as it seeks our liberation from that which confines our

change. We are confined both by society and by our personal makings through the replication of

the paradigms themselves through “normal science.” A spiritual research paradigm turns to our

very motivations and nests all our endeavors in a deeper quest for meaning; one that is different

for each and every one of us (Frankl, 1959, p. 98). Indeed, this is what this is about – a search for

our core that begins with a bold reclaiming of subjectivity within academic inquiry. In the final

section of this chapter I want to suggest that academia has begun to probe these realms and a

spiritual research paradigm is already underway. Nevertheless, it must remain a non-paradigm if

it is to remain loyal to its paradoxical creed.

Where We Stand, Where We May be Going, and How We Might be Going There

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For long decades Comtean positivism established the objective stance separating knower

from known. Yet in recent decades we are witnessing a clear trajectory that reflects researchers’

bold violation of this paradigm. As Roth (2008) claimed,

…human subjectivity is the source for all the conceptual models we develop to explain the underlying structures of the world in the physical sciences and the underlying structures of consciousness in the cognitive sciences…Thus, despite all the principles of experimental science that attempt to establish objective standards for research, they all, in the last analysis, are derived by human beings, and therefore they are grounded in human subjectivity” (p. 11).

Thus Roth suggested that it is time for academia to move beyond the objectivist stance

and explore this source by gazing right in to it. It has indeed been doing so. In the following I

suggest that a spiritual research paradigm has been emerging both from the passing decades’

fuller embrace of more radical forms of qualitative research, as well as from the recent

“contemplative turn” in education. The former is responsible for reconfiguring our notions of

academic/valid/replicable knowledge and its communication towards the creation of a scientific

community. The latter presents us with novel procedures for conducting research. I briefly chart

these two domains that answer to more practical aspects concerned with the makings of a

spiritual research paradigm.

According to Guba and Lincoln (2005), qualitative research has been, "increasingly

concerned with the single experience, the individual crisis, the epiphany or moment of discovery,

with that most powerful of all threats to conventional objectivity, feeling and emotion” (p. 205).

Thus methodologically, “Social scientists concerned with the expansion of what counts as social

data rely increasingly on the experiential, the embodied, the emotive qualities of human

experience that contribute the narrative quality to a life” (p. 205). The auto-ethnographical strand

of anthropology found in Elis and Bouchner (2000), Denzin (2006) and others is one more

radical example of this trend. In this genre, we find intimate life stories described in first person

grounding one’s autobiography in a cultural context. The distance between what is

conventionally referred to as literature and academic research in this case becomes substantially

22

blurred. Here the emphasis shifts to a clear expression of one’s particular individual and

idiosyncratic story that speaks to the heart and views this evocation as a worthy domain of

academic inquiry. This strand suggests an alternative to the postpositivist agenda of proposing

scientific theories that lend themselves for refutation based on an objective stance. One’s

personal story is not judged by replicability but rather by verisimilitude and what I soon call

resonance. Michael Dyson (2007) expresses this idea eloquently:

Rather than be a seeker of “the truth” the auto ethnographer reveals “the voice of the insider” who has sought new knowledge and understandings of the world and found what was unknown to them when they began the journey. The credibility of such research is established through the verisimilitude revealed and the “ringing true” of the qualitative story related. (p. 46)

Academia in such conception is not a place in which “knowledge” is manufactured and facts are

acquired as objects. It is rather a place to which people come in order to join in, in the act of

awakening to ourselves, to finding ourselves, embedding ourselves in “moreness”, becoming

inspired, and inspirited. The standards by which the quality and rigorousness of this strand of

research are assessed, are not the replication of an experiment, as is customary within

objectivity-based natural sciences, but rather resonance and emotional evocation. Anthropologist

Ruth Behar (1997) expresses this in proposing a science based on a “vulnerable observer.” She

calls this an anthropology that “breaks your heart.” The relevance of this to the establishment of

a spiritual research paradigm has to do both with the status of truth and knowledge and with the

issue of communicability of findings that stem from “spirit” to which I turn as I describe the

contemplative turn.

Science under the above described qualitative research strand and within the proposed

spiritual research paradigm provides subjective knowledge by definition. It has no pretense of

suggesting otherwise. Nevertheless, the value of these descriptions is not viewed by any means

as inferior to “objective” replicable facts produced by quantitative methods. Its value lies not in

its providing factual knowledge that pretends to correspond with the world, but rather in evoking

23

meaning within the researcher and within the reader of the research. This qualitative knowledge

is an expression of the complexity of life that is always open for interpretation. Good science

representative of such qualitative research, and as I suggest of a spiritual research paradigm as

well, will be “measured” by the extent to which it inspirits the reader/listener; that is, by the

extent to which it touches the individual’s own spirit and compels him or her to commit to the

further unfolding of spirit and life-meaning. Research thus becomes an aesthetic experience that

touches a chord, as the spirit of the scientist resonates with the spirit of the reader, with both

sharing a moment of meaning that will hopefully linger to the next. Truth in this case remains

inter-subjective as it is in quantitative research under the postpositivist paradigm. However, its

assessment is not based on reason but rather on an attunement with heart and spirit while reading

such research. If the research evokes sobs or laughter, touches life, or reflects meaning, then it

can be assessed as valuable or good research.

This begins to chart the kind of social community and communicability involved in such

science. The question is whether autoethnography and other qualitative research modes bring us

fully to a spiritual research paradigm. My answer is no. I suggest that there’s one more leap that

is to be taken concerning methodology. I do not mind much the names by which we shall call

this, but a spiritual research paradigm must rely on a knowing apparatus that is beyond reason

and senses and must declare this explicitly, for otherwise this does not amount to the

establishment of a novel paradigm. It would make sense to call this apparatus spirit, however,

one can certainly propose terms such as “witness consciousness” or “no-person perception”.2

These terms are indicative of contemplative inquiry (Zajonc, 2009) as the kind of research that I

view representing a spiritual research paradigm. (See Zajonc and Roth in Oxford’s chapter,

which involves contemplative inquiry.) Again we are speaking of an emerging academic interest

that I referred to elsewhere as the “contemplative turn” (Ergas, 2014). In the following I briefly

2 This is an idea I heard from Harold Roth in the above mentioned ACMHE 2012 conference. I do not know whether it has already been developed in a paper.

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elaborate on this turn that is expressed in the embracing of methods of inquiry that emerge

perhaps paradoxically from the very locus from which modern science has attempted to depart –

religion, spirituality, wisdom-traditions. With this the dissolving of boundaries of which I wrote

earlier is further proposed. It is here in which we can see a spiritual research paradigm in the

makings.

Contemplative practices include, "the many ways human beings have found, across

cultures and across time, to concentrate, broaden and deepen conscious awareness” (Roth, 2008,

p., 19). East-Asian wisdom traditions and Western monotheistic religions have been among the

richest sources for these practices that include diverse forms of meditation and yoga,

philosophical practices rendered in Hadot’s (1995) terms as “spiritual exercises” and many

others. These practices are now being applied within academia as methods of inquiry. There are

many aspects that should be discussed in order to present any meaningful account of what they

can offer science as proposed in increasingly growing academic research (Ergas, 2013; Ergas &

Todd, in print; Gunnlaugson, Sarath, Scott, & Bai, 2014; Lin, Oxford, & Brantmeier, 2013).

Here I only elaborate on some aspects, and I treat this elaboration itself as a form of

contemplative inquiry. I then apply this description to reflect on the issue of communicability

within a spiritual research paradigm, and how research might advance based on the above-

mentioned conception of the status of its knowledge and discourse.

Firstly, the site of inquiry of a spiritual research paradigm and its end is inwardness. That

is, I engage in contemplation primarily to know something about my “self” and I do so by

turning my attention in to my first-person experience. I acknowledge that this knowing might

later transform how I see the “world,” yet my target is “self” (or perhaps, no-“self”). This is a

reversal of a conventional approach to academic research, which has its end in interpreting

“world” in qualitative research or suggesting theories about “world” as postpostivist qualitative

25

research would propose. Scientists working under the latter conception may acknowledge that

their self-conception might change, but that is not usually the reason why they engage in inquiry.

Secondly, contemplative inquiry is initiated by creating the disposition I associate with

spirit – openness, receptivity, kindness, and “moreness” in light of Huebner (1999), Palmer

(1983), and Zajonc (2009). It is primarily about experience. That experience might later render

itself as discursive knowledge, yet I do not approach this research with an instrumental state of

mind that is in constant search for “relevant” data. This has to do with a clear non-instrumental

disposition of detachment over which such inquiry is established. While I did state that I seek an

experience within, I am bound to find one no matter what I do. That is, I maintain that if we

attend, we experience. If we attend inward (e.g., sensations, thoughts), we experience inwardness

as an experience. This does not yet mean that our experience should necessarily interest others; it

simply establishes attending as the premise for experience.

When engaged in contemplative inquiry I acknowledge a lack of control of the kind of

experience that will unfold. The only factor I can seek to control is a “disposition of the spirit.” I

work to create a disposition that is not reason-based, by setting aside a day-to-day habitual

assumptions about how things ought to be, that tend to confine my perspective to seeing them as

I believe they should be. I set aside even the idea that phenomena need to be referred to by their

lingual labels. I do not assume that spirit is necessarily opposed to reason; I rather suggest that

only if I cleanse my act of inquiry from a habitual reason-based engagement, can spirit unfold in

the act of knowing. Setting aside my preconceptions and habitual ways of seeing, I create the

conditions that allow me to see “from a different vantage point.” I suspect that when I am

successful in reaching such clear state of mind, I am conducting a research of experience from

the vantage point of spirit or witness consciousness. Eventually the experience that arises by this

disposition might not amount to a very elaborate understanding. The disposition of not-expecting

revolutionary findings is crucial here. I engage in contemplative inquiry because the act of

26

research itself bears an intrinsic meaning whether the experience results as novel, insightful, or

dull, and habitual. That intrinsic meaning lies in the fact that I am engaging in an act in which I

seek attunement with what I find to be a formidable source of life-meaning that undergirds life -

spirit.

The above may certainly sound somewhat “out there” to those unfamiliar with meditative

practice. I view this description itself as a scientific rendition of knowledge of my own

engagement with a spiritual research paradigm as I conceive of it. What I am suggesting is that I

view such science as communicable and thus allowing such paradigm to comply with Kuhn’s

understanding of science as a socially-shared endeavor. In other words, the above tries to

communicate the sense of “spirit” I find in contemplative inquiry. In addition, judged by the

standards I proposed earlier, if something in the above short description “rings true” or “touches

a chord” in the reader, then it may be considered as having verisimilitude, creating resonance,

and inspiriting. It might then be considered “good” science. If it does not have these

characteristics, it might be poor science. In that case, the community of my peers should alert me

to this, so that my inquiry will deepen, and my ways of communicating this research will

improve. That is how research within a spiritual research paradigm will advance just as research

under other paradigms has been advancing throughout the history of science – through the inter-

subjective sharing of knowledge. Such sharing and mutual support are crucial.

The buds of a spiritual research paradigm are found in quite a number of educational

initiatives in leading universities. At Brown University students are electing the contemplative

initiative study courses that combine meditation labs and studies of the origins of these practices

within East-Asian as well as other traditions. Concomitantly they study how neuroscience is

investigating meditation by seeking correlations between fMRI scans and meditators

phenomenological experiences (Berkovich-Ohana & Glicksohn, 2014). At the University of

Michigan, Ed Sarath (2006) has initiated the bachelor of fine arts in jazz and contemplative

27

studies (BFAJCS) in which students combine musical instrument practice with contemplative

practice and explore their interaction throughout their studies. Many other initiatives are

reviewed in Lin, Oxford and Brantmeier (2013), revealing that in recent years universities have

been following in the footsteps of the above pioneering examples. This does not seem to me to

be some transient fashion. It seems more like a broader phenomenon that is nested within what

Charles Taylor (2006) referred to as “a post-secular age” (p. 534) that is characterized by a

reclaiming of ancient wisdom through a social movement toward the mystical and the spiritual

(Wexler, 2000). The academic manifestations of this phenomenon reflect a changing

epistemology that as Palmer (1983) proposed cannot but reflect a changing ethic – a changing

educational narrative. Such an ethic in which “we know as we are known” cannot but bring us

closer to an education towards “interbeing” (Bai, Scott, & Donald, 2009) that heals the splits of

body/mind, self/other, and self/environment. If we commit to knowing as we are known, as our

ethics, we cannot but begin to fuse knowing and being, science and ethics. We cannot but turn to

the “other” in front of us, and see his or her reflection within, whether with agreeableness or with

discontent. Our commitment to a spiritual research paradigm is to treat any of these inner

manifestations as valid knowledge unfolding to the spirit that is known through it, informing our

actions and grounding our inquiry in life-meaning.

All the above examples point to a trajectory that I view as the contours of a spiritual

research paradigm in the makings. However, we are not quite there fully, and that is not just

because contemplative inquiry can hardly be referred to as “normal science” at this point. We

ought to question whether a spiritual research paradigm ought to ever become “normal science.”

As Huebner (1999) states this, “To speak of the ‘spirit’ and the ‘spiritual’ is not to speak of

something ‘other’ than humankind, merely ‘more’ than humankind as it is lived and known” (p.

343). There is a constant “moreness” that is sought in this paradoxical endeavor that is never

consumed. Nesting this claim back in Kuhnian language the assumption of “moreness” can apply

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in two ways. One kind revolves within “normal science” in that there is always more to know

even based on positivistic assumptions and working within conventional qualitative methods.

The other kind is the “moreness” involved in revolutions. That to me seems the unstable locus in

which a spiritual research paradigm might reside. While I believe we should embrace

contemplative inquiry as a mode of inquiry, thinking that we can smugly rest there might be

presumptuous. A spiritual research paradigm must forever remind us that paradigms are made of

the same fabric as the scientific claims they undergird. They are simply higher-order human-

made refutable hypotheses, claims, words organized into sentences, and highly effective ones as

such. They are however, not the transcendent “gods” that we crown over ourselves and our

societies. The Kantian paradigm is no exception, and my own words likewise. I interpret the

fabric of a “spiritual research paradigm” as made of attempts such as the current one that pull the

rug from underneath such human-made absolutisms that become the dogmas that dictate the

paths in which we make, and search for, meaning. Perhaps this kind of approach proposes to us

that this new paradigm is more of a non-paradigm; a Zen Koan that resists our efforts to grasp at

our own nature through grasping at stable ways of doing research. We can begin this endeavor

by asking, why should we agree with Kant’s ruling reason and senses in, and spirit out, so as to

deprive ourselves of the possibility of a serious academic engagement with what seems to many

of us as the core and the source of meaning and life?

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