Essentialism

The Origins of Essentialism

The belief that certain properties of things (where “things” include objects, concepts, experiences, etc.) are essential to our understanding and definition of them can be traced back at least as far as Plato, for whom every object or quality in the physical world was derived from a divine, invisible, changeless transcendental “form.” Platonic forms are “ideal types” or essences that exist outside of time and space and of which objects and concepts in the world are merely pale imitations. Let us take as an example the form of the “good.” Some aspects of this transcendental “goodness” can be said to lie at the heart of all good people, and it is this goodness that we perceive when we describe someone as good, although no good person could ever display the good in its essential form because the forms transcend the temperophysical world.

The relevance of this transcendental type of essentialism to research becomes apparent when we consider that, for Plato, all people have had a prior acquaintance with the eternal and divine forms before their births. We can all recognize worldly goodness when we see it because we have all previously had experience of the form of the good. Thus, knowledge of the essence or true nature of things in the world comes not from our senses, which merely show to us the many imperfect manifestations of the form as they exist in the world, but rather from our memories of the forms themselves. Knowledge of the essential nature of everything in the physical world is a priori (prior to experience), and thus research is a process of reacquainting ourselves with what we already know but have forgotten. This gives rise to the so-called Socratic dialogue method of discovery (or perhaps of “recovery” or “research,” the search for something [Page 270]that has been lost) in which the teacher does not attempt to impart knowledge but rather asks a series of questions to draw out the knowledge that the pupil already possesses. As Socrates said to Meno, “The soul has learned all things. … Enquiry and learning are entirely recollection.” If we accept this radical form of essentialism, then research is merely uncovering what is already known and does not rely to any extent on empirical observation of the physical world; indeed, such observation is more likely to confuse and confound than to enlighten.

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