By: James Jankiewicz, MS, CSCS
As we say so long to the 2024 summer Olympic season in Paris and reflect on the spectacular accomplishments of the amazing athletes, we are also reminded that the Olympics have a long heritage. The first Olympic Games date back to 776 BC in order to honor Zeus, the king of the Greek gods. In the beginning the events were not limited only to athletics but also included singing, poetry, music and theater. It was truly an ode to both mind and body.
Greece back in the ancient world was a nation whose people fought amongst themselves in addition to outside invaders. The magic of the Olympics is that all the military conflict would cease in the presence of the games. Imagine that! Wars stopping so athletes could play games.
In 393 AD the games would cease under the Roman Emperor Theodosius for being too pagan. The Bible would come to acknowledge athletics as a metaphor in 1 Corinthians 9:25-27, when Paul writes,
“All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified”.
The Olympics would emerge 1500 years later in modernity in the year 1896 resurrected by Frenchman Baron Pierre de Coubertin in Greece. Since then it has been an unbroken tradition that continues to add new sports and categories to this day.
This article will explore some of the philosophical thoughts the ancient world struggled with when it came to understanding, truth, knowledge, and how to appropriately train the body both for sport and for combat. Let us not forget many of the great philosophers from this era were also athletes. The name Plato literally means broad shoulders. Many of them were wrestlers who in addition to studying philosophy, math and rhetoric would also train every day. Sounds like the ideal life to me.
The Mind / Body Problem
Ever since philosophers began philosophizing in the ancient world over 3000 years ago, we have have struggled with issues that still haunt us today. Chief amongst them is what we call the mind body problem. This was something I addressed recently at a talk I gave for The American College of Sports Medicine at NYU Langone in NYC when discussing the history of physical culture. The mind body connection may seem to some as just another philosophical thought experiment with no real teeth. You would be wrong to think that however as in the ancient world and even today, how we see the mind body connection is going to directly impact how we eventually come to teach physical education.
The mind body problem simply comes down to this: We possess both a corporeal existence as well as an existence in the realm of ideas. So in other words in addition to the physical body which is limited to taste, touch, feel, smell & sight, we also have the realm of dreams, imagination thoughts, & ideas that have no physical elements. The question was/is do these two realms harmonize with one another or are they separate with their own agency?
The Naturalistic vs The Anti-Naturalistic Views
This spawned two ideas in the ancient world: The naturalistic view and the anti-naturalistic view. The naturalistic view suggested a harmony between these two worlds. The anti-naturalistic view separated the two domains.
In the ancient philosophical world there was a passion for trying to understand and define truth. The anti-naturalistic view felt the body cannot be a harbinger for truth since it is subject to time, sickness, injury decay and death. Therefore they concluded only the realm of ideas is where truth lived eternally as that realm exists long after the body decays. The anti-naturalistic school of thought would come to place primacy over the ethereal realm of thoughts and ideas. Plato would illustrate this idea in his book Phaedo “Have sight and hearing any truth in them? Are they not, as the poets are always telling us, inaccurate witnesses?”
It’s passages like this that highlight the distrust some in the ancient world had towards the body’s ability to assist us in comprehending truth and knowledge. By giving the body the lower status they were simply implying the body is just a mere and temporary vehicle, incapable of helping us understand truth and knowledge. This led to two fundamental questions concerning the mind body problem in the ancient world.
What questions does the Mind Body Problem Present?
Can accurate knowledge be achieved while in the body?
If the answer is no, than how is it possible to be educated?
This inquiry led us towards two different ways to view Physical Education
Do we look at physical education as "Of the Body"
Do we look at education as "Through the Body"
Why is this Important?
By embracing an anti-naturalistic approach one would come to teach “of the body.” This means we look at the body at a reductionistic level reducing it to a series of chemical reactions, neurological impulses and a mechanical series of lever arms. This means you teach the function of the body only independent of any abstract ideas the mind is capable of harboring.
By embracing the naturalistic approach one would more broadly integrate the mind body experience, making connections to how the body functioned while realizing what and how you thought might impact the outcome of your bodily performance.
Sparta, being a very militant city state would embrace a more anti-naturalistic approach to training and educating the body creating almost robot like soldiers capable of amazing warfare.
Athens, being a more cultured province at the time integrating arts, mathematics, music and other components of the mind would integrate a more naturalistic, or mind/body approach, to sport and military training.
These two fundamental ideas, "of the body" or "through the body", would impact physical education from the ancient world all the way to the 1800’s. How the industrial age embraced this will be the topic of another blog.
Today we still struggle with the mind body problem although much of today's scientific literature, points to an intimate relationship between the two. Modernity, however, forces us to see the mind body problem in a new light that our ancient progenitors could not have possibly imagined, With the advent of AI (Artificial Intelligence) it seems we are returning to the roots of the ancient arguments once more as we continue to try to understand knowledge and truth. Will AI help us join the ideas of mind body? Or will technologies like Oculus Rift further separate us from our mind body connection? I for one am rather distrustful of the promises being made to us concerning AI’s impact on humanity. Like the H bomb I feel AI is a technology that we as humans still lack the spiritual and emotional maturity to know how to handle responsibly. I'm therefore concerned AI, if weaponized, may be doing more harm than good in the final analysis. My biggest concern in the advent of AI is that we move from the trinitarian idea of mind, body, spirit, to the unholy trinity of mind, body, AI. That is a world I would not concede to.
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