USING NOVELS IN TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

SOURCES

1. Larry S. Bowlden (1990) "Using novels in teaching philosophy" Teaching Philosophy 13:4, (December): 359-364.

How to study ethics out of context? Issues alone do not compel; novels provide real contexts , motivations, circumstances and real life situations.

They study ethical issues;

describe life as it is lived;

novels have appeal and power as assigned reading for a course.

They contextualise moral issues

In literature we can confront naive ethical relativism in such authors as

Richard Wright Black Boy

Nadine Gordimer The Burgher's Daughter

Ursula Le Guin The Dispossessed

2. Jonathan Jacobs (1987) "A novel approach to ethics" Teaching Philosophy 10, 4 (December) 295-304.

These three look at less than perfect models of ethical action:

Conrad Lord Jim

Gide The Immortalist

Camus The Stranger

Taken as a three in this order, they study

moral value, moral motivation and locus of action

Novels reveal the darker side of ethics: treachery, cruelty, etc.

studies contexts and tools

They facilitate traffic between philosophical arguments and students' interests.

Notes: G. Smith 1994

A TEXT FOR PHILOSOPHY WITH SENIOR STUDENTS

A study of James D. Watson The Double Helix Penguin 1978, 180 pp.

"It demolishes the popular myth that scientific discovery is a process of motivated by ideals and directed at truth through the exercise of logic.. . . [It celebrates] fallible people with fragile egos, luck, labour, ambition and intuition." D. Reanny The Age Monthly Review 1982.

ISSUES

* creativity, intuition and excellence

* the place of mistakes in inquiry

* taking risks and scientific speculation

* inspiration and perspiration

* deduction via the process of elimination

* play as legitimate proc ess: "All we had to do was to construct a set of molecular models and begin to play - with luck, the structure would be a helix." (p. 48)

RELATED LEARNING ACTIVITIES/OUTCOMES

Discuss the issues raised in reading.

Dramatise the inquiry: the frustrations, the steps, the deceptions, the successes.

Assess the discovery; compare with other scientific discoveries.

Plot the scientific method used.

Make a model of the double helix.

Debate the topic: "Man will be destroyed by his own inventiveness."

RESOURCES in support:

Creed, B.A. & O'Loughlin, I.L. (1982) Insight 83 Cheltenham: L & S Publishing, pp. 293-8.

Flynn, M (Ed.) HSC English Resource Book 1983 Melbourne: Dove pp.153f.