Tradition! Tradition!

A tradition of inquiry, for Maclntyre, is thus a morally grained, historically situated rationality, a way of asking and answering questions that is inescapably tied to the inculcation of habits in the life of the knower and to the community that originates and stewards the craft of inquiry through time. Tradition in this sense is the word that best describes the forms of life that were ancient Christianity and Stoicism.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 184

<idle musing>
I could hear the Fiddler on the Roof song, "Tradition! Tradition!," running through my mind as I read this. Of course, he is correct—which has ramifications for what we consider to be scholarship and education, doesn't it? I'm still thinking about what that means, and probably will be for the rest of my life.

But it definitely aligns with Jesus's command to make disciples, doesn't it? Knowledge transfer doesn't transform lives; models do. Not that knowledge transfer isn't important! It definitely is. But in order for that knowledge transfer to stick, it needs to be modeled, which is what this whole chapter is getting at.
</idle musing>