The Debates on Education are an initiative of the Jaume Bofill Foundation and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, geared to the promotion of social debate on the future of education. [+]

Educating on the border between intuition and comprehension

Jorge Wagensberg

Director of CosmoCaixa Barcelona

Abstract

Intuition involves relating one fragment of reality with another perceived in the past. Comprehension involves relating a fragment of reality with one of its intelligible representations. Science can be comprehended without the need for intuition. Art can be intuited without the need for comprehension. These statements suggest a new way of facing up to the uncertainty that surrounds us. Educating consists, above all, of providing stimuli, and the border between science and art is a great source of stimuli.

An educator is a factory of stimuli, creating an atmosphere for the development of concepts for conversation, in the widest sense of the word: talking, understanding, observing...

Education consists of using four such seemingly diverse concepts as comprehension, intuition, intelligibility and beauty so as to create an atmosphere in which students gain an idea of what they can go on to find out, in which at any moment they can find out something new.

Keywords
Education, sciences, knowledge, intuition, comprehension

Organisers: