Martha Glowacki’s Natural History, Observations and Reflections Martha Glowacki’s Natural History | Page 19

Anschauung Illustrated
Martha Glowacki’s Natural History,
Observations and Reflections
nschauung is one of those German words that is
hard to translate with a single English term.
To nineteenth-century pedagogues and
philosophers its meaning approximated an intuition de-
veloped through direct experience or physical encounter,
or more broadly a sense-based knowledge of the material
world. Anschauung is not only difficult to translate, it is
difficult to transmit as it reflects an understanding that
is not based in text and verse, but on feelings, sensations,
sounds, and impressions. It is ephemeral, intimate, im-
mediate, and hard to scale. 1 So much so that educators
developed series of Anschauungunterricht, sense percep-
tion exercises to give children predictable opportunities
to hone their abilities to more fully experience and
make sense of the world around them. The hope was
that these exercises, these object lessons on the material
world, would allow children to organize their percep-
tions and to develop conceptions, abstract ideas, and no-
tions out of these physical experiences and eventually to
move from the concrete to the abstract. Educators rep-
resented this form of learning as a tree with sensation at
the roots stretching into the various branches of abstract
thought, including “Perception of Order,” “Cause and
Effect,” and “Power of Judgment.” This visual metaphor
suggested that ideas grew out of direct sensory engage-
ment, and were not possible without it (Figure 1) . 2
This historic understanding of how one engaged with
the material world suggested the importance and chal-
lenge of conveying the empirical evidence that supported
scientific discovery and discourse. If direct observation
Figure 1. E. A. Sheldon, A Manual of Elementary Instruction: For the Use
of Public and Private Schools and Normal Classes; Containing a Graduated
Course of Object Lessons for Training the Senses and Developing the Faculties
of Children (New York: Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co., 1862),
Frontispiece.
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