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Whole learning

(see also other useful terms)

“The heart has its reasons of which reason cannot know” (Blaise Pascal, 1669)

Zones of learning

	ENDOCRINE SYSTEM	metabolizing emotions, curiosities, liking/disliking,
	THE BRAIN	critical thinking, reasoning, choosing, planning
	THE BODY	experiencing, sensing, tacit knowing, motor regulation
	SOCIAL INTERFACE	teasing, social taboo, ambiguity

Likely purposes

	FEELING & CARING	making things feel right
	REASONING	making things add up
	KNOWING & DOING	making things work better
	MAKING FUN	opportunity finding

The Heart

Humour The Hand

The Head

Literacy is not enough

• At present, many mainstream universities remain strongly book-centred in their approach to learning.
• We will refer to this bias as head-based learning.
• If education is to catalyse paradigm change it needs to engage at more levels of learning.
• For example we will need to engage hearts and minds by combining scientific reasoning with playful experimentation and practical skills.

2 Brain hemispheres

LEFT HEMISPHERE	RIGHT HEMISPHERE
more precise and specific	tentative and inarticulate
more abstract, instrumental & articulate	more contextual, humane, systemic & holistic

Accountability v responsibility
Apologizing v saying sorry

Why should ‘Gestaltung’ (what Bohm calls ‘wholeness’ and what Heraclitus calls ‘logos’) be limited by only a stereo logic? (Pribram). If Fuller’s ‘mind’ is tetrahedral then we might be capable of grasping (at least) a four-fold reality.

• Cognitive Empathy: The ability to identify and understand another person's emotions or perspective ("perspective-taking").
• Affective (Emotional) Empathy:Feeling the same emotions as another person (e.g., feeling sadness when someone else is crying).
• Compassionate Empathy: Going beyond understanding and sharing emotions to being moved to assist the person in need. 

HEAD - forms of knowledge that can be spoken or written down

HAND - tacit knowledge including practical and performative skills

HEART - emotional, experiential & sensory aspects

HUMOUR - discourse that may be playful, creative or convivial

• These four (loosely defined) modes of learning (see diagram above) map out a Holistic learning strategy.
• They act as a simple mnemonic map that invites a comprehensive, holistic and transdisciplinary approach.
• This correspond (loosely) with The Wise Path essays which identify the following:
  • Cognition / Emotion / Action / Coherence
• Unity of the 4 parts depicts the distributed, situated, embodied and implicit nature of knowledge.
• Here we depict them within a tetrahedral format.
• This figure is useful as it displays the 6 relationships (see numbers 1 to 6 below) between the 4 'H's:

Further reading

• Kahneman, D., 2011. Fast and slow thinking. Allen Lane and Penguin Books, New York.
• Iain McGilchrist, (2024) A Revolution in Thought
• McGilchrist, I., (2009). “The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World”. USA: Yale University Press. ISBN 030014878X
• Goleman, D., 2020. Emotional intelligence. Bloomsbury Publishing
• Von Humboldt's memorandum of 1810 argued that State interference in academic research would impair the wholeness and integrity of cross-disciplinary learning and what he called ‘self-cultivation’ (German: Bildung). c.f. Elton, 2008).