the way they are. By itself, however, techne is no guarantee that the building, the table, or
the tax regime, will be fit for the purpose for which it was created.
Aristotle’s third principal intellectual virtue,phronesis (φρoνησις)—“prudence” or
“practical wisdom”—in some senses transcends both episteme and techne since it concerns
the problem of acting raitionally (literally, “along with reason”) in situations that are
contingent and variable. According to Aristotle, phronesis is the ability “to deliberate
rightly about what is good and advantageous” (Aristotle, 1976, 1140). Aristotle points out
that this is quite different from episteme since there is no point in deliberating about things
that are universally true—phronesis requires knowledge of particular (variable and
contingent) circumstances. Phronesis is also different from techne since it is designed to
move people to action rather than production. Aristotle’s point here is that techne is product
oriented because the aim of the production is not the production itself but the product,
whereas action is process-oriented—the end is doing well.
Since episteme deals with universal truths, it is independent of individual experience. Those
with different experiences should be able to agree on the extent to which a particular claim
is universally true (the “view from nowhere” supposedly secured with scientific
detachment). With phronesis, however, individual experience is crucial:
Whereas young people become accomplished in geometry and mathematics, and wise within these limits,
prudent young people do not seem to be found. The reason is that prudence is concerned with particulars
as well as universals, and particulars become known from experience, but a young person lacks
experience, since some length of time is needed to produce it (Nichomachean Ethics 1142a).
Although phronesis is relevant only when there is no universal truth, that does not mean
there are no general principles involved. Phronesis is the practical wisdom to act well by
the successful integration of general principles with detailed consideration of the
specificities of the particular case in question. From this perspective, the notion of clinical
research practice involves, for the practitioner, a move from techne to phronesis. While the
primary intellectual virtue required of the traditional educational researcher is closest to
episteme, and the expert practitioner demonstrates techne, the teacher/researcher envisaged
by Bulterman-Bos transcends these by the acquisition of phronesis. It requires the
knowledge of the general findings from the educational research literature, but requires the
ability to interpret these general principles in the light of a specific context of practice.
The physical sciences have succeeded because they have focused on episteme. And there
are some aspects of the social sciences that are fruitfully explored with episteme. But in the
main, within the social sciences and specifically in education there are few universal truths,
because successful action will always require the integration of general principles and
specific contextual details. In this context, it is important to note that while some authors
have likened the distinction between episteme and phronesis to the distinction between
quantitative and qualitative approaches to inquiry (e.g., Laitin, 2003), this is emphatically
not the case, as Flyvbjerg notes:
Phronetic social science is opposed to an either/or and stands for a both/and on the question of qualitative
versus quantitative methods. Phronetic social science is problem-driven and not methodology-driven, in
the sense that it employs those methods which for a given problematic best help answer the four value-
rational questions [Where are we going? Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power?
Is this development desirable? What, if anything, should we do about it?]. More often than not, a
combination of qualitative and quantitative methods will do the task and do it best. (Flyvbjerg, 2001, p.