Making Sense of the World proposes that human knowledge arises from an integrated physical and metaphysical experience involving the continuing social acts of personal and community cultures and languages. Written in narrative form, it seeks to provide a means of thinking about and acting with the philosophical nature of human existence, so that the daily activities and achievements of all are respected and taken into account. However and given the current ideological dominance of neoliberal politics and economics in many countries, it is unusual to find the work of educators and practitioners generally being framed by an explicit philosophy of knowledge, such that understandings of each field of endeavour are comprehensive and authentic, rather than limited and superficial. That is, understandings are of the real, rather than the illusional. Aristotle for example, identified three forms of knowledge that he termed techne, taken to be doing or craft knowledge, episteme as understanding of doing in the sense of scientific knowledge today and phronesis, considered ethical knowledge where distinct values and virtues underpin the process of living well. While all three forms of knowledge are actions, they must also germinate within the context of the totality of experience that exists in the brain including the emotional, the intuitive and the aesthetical. Making Sense of the World brings these types of ideas together and illustrates how expert, experienced and novice practitioners chart a similar course when confronting the familiar and the unknown; they interact with the world in a human way.

Discussion in Making Sense of the World is framed primarily with some of the central ideas of philosophers John Dewey, Immanuel Kant, Maxine Greene and Hannah Arendt. A number of other philosophers and scholars of equal eminence have been referenced to provide a comprehensive network of understandings of practice-based philosophy of education. The discussion has also been informed by the exquisite scholarship of Cumhaill and Wiseman (2022a) regarding the intellectual and personal journeys of four female British philosophers who came together at Oxford University around the time of World War II. Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley and Phillipa Foot saw philosophy being concerned with ‘life’ and had significant and personal connections with Wittgenstein. Elizabeth Anscombe for example edited Wittgenstein’s second book, Philosophical Investigations, before and after he died. In noting the influence of Oxford University tutor, Donald MacKinnon, on the philosophical development of Murdoch, Midgley and Foot and to a lesser extent, Anscombe, Cumhaill and Wiseman (2022b, p. 845) describe his understanding of metaphysics:

We know, then, that by the 1940s, MacKinnon conceived of metaphysics as concerned with the question of how to live – in other words, the question of what, through our action, we should bring into being. The problem of metaphysics arises, as Kant saw, because we must answer these questions from within our empirical – sensory and epistemic – and mortal limitations.

This view of philosophy as life that incorporates thinking and doing, suggests to educators that they and their students consider their engagement with the world from a broadly similar intellectual and ideational framework. For example, when a student reports to parents or a counsellor that she is upset or frustrated with a teacher’s approach and complicated explanations of difficult and often abstract concepts, it should be recognised that there is an unnecessary mismatch between world views and social practices within the classroom. The problem involves not so much disagreement on curriculum content, but lack of philosophical or epistemological understanding of how different people go about interacting and understanding curriculum content. Bernstein’s ‘life of the mind’ that encourages personal and flourishing engagement with content, may therefore be sadly lacking in many education systems around the world. There are many philosophical questions at stake here, not only differences in content between facts and values, science and religion, reason and passion, but how we think about such issues, how different ideas are formed and interrelate in the brain, how to ‘make a difference in how you and others live their lives.’

In identifying a philosophical gap in educational theory regarding the relationship between metaphysical and physical practices, awareness and knowledges, the discussion that follows has attempted to challenge approaches to conservative curriculum design, pedagogies and assessment that dominate neoliberal education around the world. Initial chapters begin a discussion of key concepts such as physics and metaphysics and how collaborative social experience lays the basis for the development of the human constructs of reality, truth and ethical conduct. It is argued that pragmatist philosophy frames the notion of a materialist universe where diverse combinations and transformations of matter and energy have resulted in the evolution of the human species and human ethos. Difficult philosophical problems like consciousness, memory and the specifics of thought, still puzzle as they have for millennia. Middle chapters relate this discussion to particular areas of human learning and knowledge, involving language and mathematics and music and the arts. Specific attention is given to Indigenous ways of knowing and the commonalities and differences that exist between what might be called traditional and progressive learning. Like other apparent dualities, the intention here is to explore what lies underneath each approach, to draw on each for new perspectives. Final chapters of Making Sense of the World propose and theorise a revolutionary restructuring of formal education that not only demands new curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, but a guiding epistemology or radical philosophy of knowledge that immerses all participants in the active construction of mind and society. They envisage ‘human as discursive subject,’ where the construction of authentic knowledge, together, over time, forms the character of creative, satisfying and ethical human life.

Written for educators and practitioners in general, Making Sense of the World, takes a broadly practice-based and philosophical pragmatist view that human meaning arises from experience such that actions establish consequences for future practical activity and for reflection on those consequences. Experience cannot but include all parts of human life brought to bear on the particular, involving cultural, rational and empirical understandings, necessarily with physical and metaphysical comprehensions. Looked at in this way, all people and children are talented and knowledgeable, regardless of socio-economic background, interacting with the world in a human way, capable of imaginative and innovative thought. This approach indicates the humanistic character of learning through social practice that ultimately produces movement towards human truth, freedom and ethical conduct over periods of time. With this conception, the book makes a notable contribution to a more detailed and complete understanding of pragmatist philosophy, the development of human thought and the inherent qualities of being human.

Outcomes of the investigation described in Making Sense of the World involve the theorising and application of Praxis Inquiry and Praxis Inquiry Protocol, the drafting of a set of Educational Virtue Ethics and a proposal for Discursive Curriculum. It is significant that these outcomes of practice have arisen from a philosophical study of metaphysical and physical thinking and acting and have moved beyond the usual philosophical approach of analysis, clarification and informing. This indicates the main orientation of the philosophers referenced with their emphasis on social practice and human being with the world. It is to be hoped that the discussion and outcomes will contribute to strengthening the connections between metaphysical and physical thought generally and to filling a major philosophical gap that exists in many education systems around the world.