AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL STUDY ON "KANSATSU" BELIEVED TO BE A PRECISE EQUIVALENT FOR "OBSERVATION"

Abstract

Rika-kyoiku is the typical mode of science education conducted in Japan. Its significance or reason for being, which should have been derived from the Japanese value system, however, is not defined. Japanese people have explained this significance not in terms of requirements to be satisfied as following the Japanese value system, but in terms of those commonly grasped in European societies. Rika-kyoiku has made an essential assumption that "kansatsu" is a precise equivalent for "observe" or "observation." From an epistemological point of view, however, one who conducts "kansatsu" possesses so profound sympathy with his object that he cannot but fail to identify it with himself; Buddhism, the Pure Land school in particular, cultivated this concept. When one makes an observation, the object is already naturally isolated. Although the two words commonly mean to see with careful attention, a radical difference exists in the attitude even to the same object. According to Saussure's linguistic proposition that "an idea is fixed in a sound and a sound becomes the sign of an idea," so "kansatsu" reminds students of the traditional concept only. Even teachers are reminded; consequently, the earnest Japanese teachers inevitably tend to reject the concept of "observation." The universality both demanded by science itself and accepted by Japanese society prevents Japanese people from finding the discrepancy between "kansatsu" and "observation." By introducing epistemology into Rika-kyoiku, the present paper tries to dissolve this hidden conflict common to science education in non-Western societies.