Elenchus?
Apr 2nd, 2012 | By Dr. Michael Sosteric | Category: Lead, Pedagogy, Sociologists at Work, TheoryHere at sociology.org / Athabasca University, we’ve always been pioneers. Decades ahead of the curve, we smashed the brick and mortar boundaries of traditional post-secondary ed, and pioneered distance education. We ( and when I say we I mean me), also started the very first online journal of Sociology way back when the Internet was nothing more than an online dust bowl and now we, and by we I mean a handful of interested scholars, are pioneering online pedagogy, in the interests of the student and not profit (as some of the initiatives in the U.S. seem to be doing). Our goal here isn’t to use technology as an excuse to corrupt education for personal enrichment, or to gut post-secondary education in the interests of conservative economic policy, but to use technology to enhance the educational experience, and bring it to a wider audience. If you like what we’re doing, jump on board.
WTF? What the heck is “elenchus.” Sounds suspiciously like something consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms, but it’s not. Elenchus is the fancy-shmancy word for the Socratic method, which is just a slightly less fancy way of saying, educated discussion. On April 2, 2012 Wikipedia defined the Socratic method thusly:
The Socratic method (also known as method of elenchus, elenctic method, Socratic irony, or Socratic debate), named after the classical Greek philosopher Socrates, is a form of inquiry and debate between individuals with opposing viewpoints based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas. It is a dialectical method, often involving an oppositional discussion in which the defense of one point of view is pitted against the defense of another; one participant may lead another to contradict him in some way, strengthening the inquirer’s own point.
It you ask me, elenchus is the core of academics. Elenchus is the ostensible point of scholarly publication in journals, where scholars put their ideas “to the test,” run them through “the mill,” or otherwise try and engage other scholars in debate. The result is that science “moves forward” towards ever greater understanding of the world. It doesn’t always work that way, of course, since scholarly publication is corrupted, biased, and favours the status quo, rather than original thought, but the idea is there anyway. Put your ideas out there and get people to try and refute them.
Besides being an important aspect of professional scholarly communication, elenchus is also the goal of The Soc journ. The idea is to get scholars from various disciplines to put their ideas “out there” so that they can engage with students, scholars, and teachers, in public Socratic debate. The benefits would be mutual. The public gets an education, the professor or initiate (PhD student, M.A. student), gets to hone their academic skills, and ideas become stronger in the scholarly forge. This is an idea that, I have to say, isn’t often met within the boundaries of universities; but in the age of modern communication technology an opportunity presents itself to return to forms of scholarship and communication that emphasized public discussion, dialogue, and education. This isn’t the same as things like “Psychology Today” where scholars talk at the public. This is scholars engaging with the public, in Socratic debate, as public (nay global) educators,
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It’s an idea that I hope works … especially if non-academics are allowed to comment.
In recent discussions with a sociology/philosphy professor from Exeter, he was complaining that the forces of competition are exerting themselves in such a way that academics in the UK are tending to becoming closed about their own research. He said that while things are still more open in North America, it too is showing signs of segregating.
If your effort works, it will be a counter-example to my theory. I am actively looking for counter examples.
Good luck with it.
I hope it works, and ya the point is to allow everybody to comment. But I also think that there is a need to listen to the academics. The point here is educational. I don’t want another forum free for all where, but a place where people who have something to say can say it to as wide an audience as possible. I think of this very much like a global lecture theatre, although I have to say that often it requires a lot more thought and consideration on my part, than a traditional lecture, would.
Sociology is also a difficult place to do this because unlike a lot of other disciplines, just about everybody and their dog thinks they can comment on “society,” even without training in the discipline. It is frustrating sometimes to try and talk to people who think they have a depth of understanding, or a clue about the topic area of society, but don’t really, or are worse, just propagating propaganda or ideology. My question to anybody who wants to “have an opinion” on something that Sociologists talk about is, where’s the beef? Society, human behaviour, social structure, these are the most complicated things that scientists study and for this reason this area of study should be given a lot of respect, a lot of consideration, and a lot of attention, . Opinions and ideas, even by non-academics, should be carefully formulated. And discussions should be of dialectical nature with a lot of weight being given to what the sociologist is saying because, after all, we are the experts on society.
I mean, I’d be real careful in a discussion with a physicists about quantum mechanical sorts of things. I’d have ears wide open and be listening carefully to what they were saying. What other reasonable approach is there? I’m not trained in physics so anything else would be pure hubris, and foolish, and recognized as such. Sociology is funny that way because people don’t think it is hubris, or foolishness, to cross the boundaries into sociology with minimal thought, without any training, or much consideration at all.
This is not to say that Sociologists always have good things to say. Sometimes we do get it wrong, but then society is complex and that’s almost to be expected. This is also not to say that you necessarily have to have studied society for twenty years or more like me to have something to say, it just means, be careful. The non-sociologist should be listening first, then asking questions, and then formulating opinins.
Anyway, I am not referring to you here, but am just commenting on some general pedagogical issues that an effort like this faces. It is a challenge and isn’t as easy as just opening up the doors.
Anybody that wants a quick introduction to some of the methodological issues we face in sociology can read this introductory unit on research methods.
https://sociology.org/courses/sociology-100-introduction-sociology/unit-2-research-methods
Anybody interested in the political economy of scholarly communication, and some of the thinking that goes into the creation of The Socjourn can read my dissertation http://files.sociology.org:777/dissertation-eJournals.pdf
Hi this is Robert again. Let me say that I am a manic-depressive with a good education, but I have never been given the opportunity to put my experiences first and integrate it with my training in sociology second. In my traditional education I have been discriminated against, because maniacal depressive insanity is not consistent with professors who teach plastic reality in the guise of real life. I wrote a long paper taking my experiences as a manic-depressive first, and tried to explain the foibles of traditional psychiatry, and explain it through various sociological research. It was a relief to be able to do this in light of professors who say they are experienced at life, but have never seen the inside of a psychiatric ward like I have. The socjournal provides a place to do this. Robert