Education in the light of present-day knowledge and need calls for some spirited and creative innovations both in the substance and the purpose of current pedagogy.
No matter how mistaken Communist ideas may be, the experience and knowledge gained by trying them out have given a tremendous impetus to thought and imagination.
The presentations and conceptions of the average man of the world are formed and dominated, not by the full and pure desire for knowledge as an end in itself, but by the struggle to adapt himself favourably to the conditions of life.
Agricultural practice served Darwin as the material basis for the elaboration of his theory of Evolution, which explained the natural causation of the adaptation we see in the structure of the organic world. That was a great advance in the knowledge of living nature.
Close contact between science and the practice of collective farms and State farms creates inexhaustible opportunities for the development of theoretical knowledge, enabling us to learn ever more and more about the nature of living bodies and the soil.
If we wish to discuss knowledge in the most highly developed contemporary society, we must answer the preliminary question of what methodological representation to apply to that society.
One can decide that the principal role of knowledge is as an indispensable element in the functioning of society, and act in accordance with that decision, only if one has already decided that society is a giant machine.
Our working hypothesis is that the status of knowledge is altered as societies enter what is known as the postindustrial age and cultures enter what is known as the postmodern age.
