homo discens: Home

1. Embodied Knowers

How does embodiment both enable and limit what we can learn and understand?

4. Peculiar Latin name

Evolution of the Homo discens project

2. Ways of Knowing

Sense Perception, Recognition, Emotion, Language, Reason and Intuition.

KNOWLEDGE ISSUES QUOTATIONS COLLECTION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FULL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Welcome to Homo discens.

Homo discens is a Theory of Knowledge resource for teachers and students. The site provides a conceptual framework, and a variety of original sources, for exploring some of the more perplexing questions about how we learn and how we develop understanding.

Homo discens refers to “Man the Learner.” The name announces that we are here to learn. It is not just that we have a biological predisposition for learning, or that learning is edifying, or that—in some existential sense—we are condemned to learn. Learning is a deeply-rooted, cross-cultural, life-sustaining necessity. Learning is inextricable from who we are as capable and fallible individuals; as active participants embedded in community; and as an embodied biological species.

The project is very much a work of synthesis and makes little claim to original thinking. The task has been to select, distil and present the work of others in a coherent, perusable form. The intention is that visitors—once intrigued—will delve further into the original sources. Homo discens also aims to please the eye.

Homo discens is the companion site to TOKresource.org, which documents what actually occurs in the author’s own Theory of Knowledge classes.

3. Areas of Knowledge

Mathematics, Natural Science, Human Sciences, History, The Arts and Ethics.