Fowler's Paradigms of Meaning

James Fowler sees human beings as essentially meaning makers, and he says that what defines us as human beings is the fact that we engage in the construction of visions of ultimate meaning. He also maintains that the order we develop to make sense of the world is developmental and changes through the life cycle in the direction of greater complexity. He postulates that there are six faiths stages identifying the different paradigms of meaning we derive from our experience and impose on our perceptions. We should be able to ascertain what stage we have reached at a given age and see why we have not progressed beyond that stage.

Fowler describes the way human beings react to their environment in terms of a science project from his experience in the eighth grade using magnets:

We live our lives in dynamic fields of forces. In contrast to the bipolar orderliness shaped by the pull of the magnets, we are impinged upon, pulled at and moved from many directions. Part of what we mean when we say that humankind--Homo poeta--lives by meaning is that from the beginning of our lives we are faced with the challenge of finding or composing some kind of order, unity and coherence in the force fields of our lives (24).

Fowler identifies our structure of values and the patterns of love and action by which we view the world as faith. He cites these issues as questions of faith and says that they are intended to help us "get in touch with the dynamic, patterned process by which we fin

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velopment. The different stages postulated by Piaget help to explain different rats of learning at different ages as well as the types of learning possible at different ages for the majority of the population. Learning itself is seen by Piaget as a process of discovery on the part of the individual, and learning as a formal activity becomes a system of organization by which instruction is enhanced by the way the teacher arranges experience. Learning is thus experiential, and Piaget suggests that experiences have meaning to the extent that they can be assimilated. Such assimilation does not take place without accommodation, an aspect of considerable importance from the point of view of adaptation and possible development. The learning situation thus becomes a means of discovery as the child encounters something that is unknown, new, or problematical for the child. The achievement of understanding of this experiences produces an adaptation, and each adaptation made by the child is a discovery for him or her, an insight made through experience. Such a discovery process is ongoing and is not to be seen as a series of leaps from one insight to another. The process of discovery continues and builds on experiences already assimil

Category: Philosophy - F