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WHAT IS A PERSON?
The controversy which bedevils our civilization is our inability to come to a true understanding of the nature of the person. The controversy has many strands.On this page we summarize the dispute around the issue of ASSESSMENT. A detailed consideration of the issue is presented in... Do people share common traits or is each person unique? The science of measurement, psychometrics, was adopted and developed by psychology based on the truth of the universality of traits or attributes which made up the human being. Given that assumption, it was thought by those investigating human activities that they would find laws or principles governing the nature and behavior of individuals. By necessity, such research was based on a nomothetic paradigm which sought to measure abstractions, arrive at generalities or universal truths and correlate those measurements to some observable reality in the human condition. By this research strategy, psychometrics so practised was unable to reach the individual, much less convey an understanding of the nature and behavior of any person.There have been no universal or common traits discovered which are important or relevant to the functioning of the individual. It follows that no governing laws or principles have been uncovered. Recognition of these facts has come slowly because there was mainly one alternative, that of an ideographic paradigm, where individuals were studied as such. Generally rejected as not feasible because results were not believed generalizable into scientific principles, our work with SIMA over the last five decades has provided a scientific alternative. By research exclusively directed at individuals, we have uncovered laws and principles which govern the nature of human beings yet accommodate the unique make-up and motivation of each individual. A second strand of the controversy around the nature of the person, centers in The Becoming Culture maintained by educators, employers and clergy. In that Culture, the prevailing belief is that students, employees and people of faith are adaptable, even 'infinitely malleable' putty, or raw material always in process needing to be shaped by those in authority over them to become what is wanted or needed by that authority. There is little or no interest in the innate uniqueness of the individual when people can be remade or fashioned. The Becoming Culture is directly responsible for the inability of educational systems to educate and equip students for productive lives; for the level of job mismatch well in excess of 50% at all levels; and for the increasing numbers of the faithful who leave the church seeking a way to integrate their faith and their work in the world. The harm engendered by this ethos is incalculable. As with the assessment controversy, so here the problem is ignoring the unique makeup of each person. What we have learned over the last five decades is that we must transform how we teach, how we work, and how we worship so that the focus is on engaging the hearts and minds uniquely designed in each student, employee and person of faith. For a detailed examination of this issue and how richly it contributes to our inability to educate, or to effectively employ what people have and want to give in their work, or to show parishoners that God deeply cares about their work life, see... A third strand of this controversy about the nature of the person involves the issue of Intelligent Design and Darwinism. Is a person the result of a designing intelligence or of Darwinian evolution? Is God involved somehow in the process of endowing these intricately designed Patterns of Giftedness or are they brought into being as a result of the operation of natural selection, adaptation and related mechanisms? In all the heated controversy around this subject by scientists and scholars, this issue of human nature and behavior has not been considered. Apparently no one could define or describe it and besides most believed that the person was a 'blank slate' without an innate definable nature. With our five decades of research studying the individual person, all that changes, and with those changes, Darwinian evolution loses any of its claims to be responsible for the emergence of the imago Dei. More detail is available at…………….1) about why natural selection cannot account for motivational patterns, or 2) why adaptation as a means for environment to change human behavior loses its power when more modern research reveals that people construct or change their environment to suit their intentions. These and other aspects of the controversy being laid-to-rest are the testimonies of preeminent Darwinians who have spoken out in the past and now seal the doom of Darwinian evolution as causative to the nature and behavior of the person. To review these three strands of controversy around the nature of the person.
Not that the results are so predetermined, but the steps are so well integrated and purposeful that the only idea that makes sense is that we each are designed to follow a preconceived plan for our life. Consider the various decisions we make in the course of experiencing an achievement.
Copyright 2007 Arthur F. Miller
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