Ep. 12 - Chapter Five of Norms and Nobility: Saving the Appearances

The Everlasting Education

This is Episode 12 of The Everlasting Education Podcast, a Kepler Education Production.

In Chapter Five, Hicks treats the modern shift in mathematics and the sciences from its program of seeking to "save the appearances" to mere material analysis; that is, from man seeking his highest level-of-being (the normative) to serving his lowest level-of-being (the analytical).

In this episode, Scott Postma and Joffre Swait unpack the chapter by explaining what the phrase "save the appearances" means—(hint: from the Greek: σῴζειν τὰ φαινόμενα [sozein ta phainomena], which means "to propose explanations that enable us to account for what appears before us")—why it was important for humanity, and how the shift in focus from the theoretical to the concrete "fixes a gulf between the arts and the sciences" in modern education.

David V. Hicks's, Norms and Nobility was first published in 1981 when it won the American Library Association's Outstanding Book Award. Since that time, it has gone on to become one of the most influential books in the Classical Education movement. Hicks's "purpose in writing the book is to offer a personal interpretation of classical education—its ends, as well as some of its means—and to respond to the objections of those who might approve of the goals of such an education, but who believe that it cannot meet the needs of an industrial democracy ro that it is not feasible as a model for mass education."