[Xmca-l] Re: Oliver Sacks/Romantic Science

Andy Blunden ablunden@mira.net
Mon Aug 31 20:56:17 PDT 2015


"Romantic Science" by Luria, attached in HTML.
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
On 1/09/2015 1:32 PM, mike cole wrote:
> ​It might be helpful to this discussion if someone would 
> post the chapter on Romantic Science from Luria's 
> autobiography which MUST be somewhere public in pdf. It 
> appears that I do not have one.
>
> After reading what the person said, then discussion of the 
> ideas seems appropriate. Ditto Sacks, who has written a 
> couple of extended essay's on
> his view of Romantic Science.
>
> It is true that the Russian psychologists, erudite as they 
> were, were not sociologists. Nor were they 
> anthropologists. The nature of their enterprise 
> encompassed those fields and more.
>
> Doing Romantic Science and immersing oneself in the 
> individual case in no way excludes inclusion of sociology, 
> anthropology, in their work. Nor does Luria argue so.
>
> mike
>>
> On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 7:29 PM, David Kellogg 
> <dkellogg60@gmail.com <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     I think the problem with this view of romantic science
>     is that it
>     completely precludes building a psychology on a
>     sociology. In that sense
>     (and in others), Vygotsky wasn't a romantic scientist
>     at all. Vygotsky
>     certainly did not believe in "total immersion in the
>     individual case"; such
>     an immersion is a refusal to rise to the level of
>     theory. I'm not sure
>     Luria was romantic that way either: "the Man with a
>     Shattered Mind" and
>     "The Memory of Mnemonist" are really exceptions.
>     Remember the main
>     criticism of Luria's book "The Nature of Human
>     Conflicts" was always that
>     it was too quantitative.
>
>     There are, of course, some areas of psychology that
>     are well studied as
>     case histories. Recently, I've been looking into
>     suicidology, and in
>     particular the work of Edwin Shneidman, who pioneered
>     the linguistic
>     analysis of suicide notes (and who appears to have
>     been influenced, as
>     early as the 1970s, by Kasanin and by Vygotsky's work
>     on schizophrinia).
>     Now you would think that if ever there was a field
>     that would benefit from
>     total immersion in the individual case, this is one.
>     But Shneidman says
>     that suicide notes are mostly full of trite, banal
>     phrases, and as a
>     consequence very easy to code--and treat quantiatively
>     (one of his first
>     studies was simply to sort a pile of real and
>     imitation suicide notes and
>     carefully note the criteria he had when he made
>     correct judgements). And of
>     course the whole point of Durkheim's work on suicide
>     is that the individual
>     case can be utterly disregarded, since the great
>     variations are
>     sociological and the psychological variables all seem
>     trivial, transient,
>     or mutually cancelling when we look at suicide at a
>     large scale (as we must
>     these days). Shneidman says he has never read a
>     suicide note he would want
>     to have written.
>
>     David Kellogg
>
>
>
>     On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 9:21 AM, Andy Blunden
>     <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
>     > As little as I understand it, Larry, Oliver Sacks'
>     style of Romantic
>     > Science was his complete immersion in the individual
>     case before him, and
>     > development of a science of complete persons. The
>     paradigm of this type of
>     > science was Luria. A limit case of "Qualitative
>     Science" I suppose. The
>     > opposite is the study of just one aspect of each
>     case, e.g. facial
>     > recognition, and the attempt to formulate a
>     "covering law" for just this
>     > aspect.
>     > Andy
>     >
>     ------------------------------------------------------------
>     > *Andy Blunden*
>     > http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>     <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>     > On 1/09/2015 8:40 AM, HENRY SHONERD wrote:
>     >
>     >> Mike,
>     >> I recall in an obituary in the NYTimes that
>     naysayers were cited in
>     >> reviewing Oliver Sacks’ life work. I am wondering
>     if some of that push back
>     >> was related to his practice of romantic science,
>     which, if I understand
>     >> from things Andy has written, involves immersion in
>     the phenomena of
>     >> interest in search of a unit of analysis. Goethe,
>     for example, immersed
>     >> himself in the phenomena of living things. His
>     writing prefigures the cell
>     >> as a unit of analysis, but the technology of
>     microscopes could not confirm
>     >> such a unit until later on. Your contrasting Bruner
>     and Sacks makes me
>     >> wonder if the subject, not just the object, is at
>     issue. Different styles
>     >> of research bring different construals. This may be
>     the bane of
>     >> objectivist, empiricist science but does it really
>     make Sacks less of a
>     >> researcher and just a lowly clinician?
>     >> Henry
>     >>
>     >>
>     >>
>     >>> On Aug 30, 2015, at 7:02 PM, mike cole
>     <mcole@ucsd.edu <mailto:mcole@ucsd.edu>> wrote:
>     >>>
>     >>> Hi Laura-- I knew Oliver primarily through our
>     connections with Luria and
>     >>> the fact that we
>     >>> independently came to embrace the idea of a
>     romantic science. He was a
>     >>> shy
>     >>> and diffident person. You can get that feeling,
>     and the difference
>     >>> between
>     >>> him and Jerry Bruner in this regard in the
>     interview with them that
>     >>> someone
>     >>> pirated on
>     >>> to youtube.
>     >>>
>     >>> Jerry is very old but last heard from by me,
>     engaging intellectually all
>     >>> the while.
>     >>>
>     >>> mike
>     >>>
>     >>> On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 5:18 PM, Laura Martin
>     <martinl@azscience.org <mailto:martinl@azscience.org>>
>     >>> wrote:
>     >>>
>     >>> Thanks, Mike. A number of years ago I had the
>     privilege of spending an
>     >>>> evening with Sacks when Lena Luria was visiting
>     Jerry Bruner and Carol
>     >>>> Feldman in NY.  I stood in for Sylvia who
>     couldn't make the dinner - it
>     >>>> was
>     >>>> an extraordinary evening in many ways. Do you
>     ever hear from Bruner? I
>     >>>> wonder if he's still active.
>     >>>>
>     >>>> Laura
>     >>>>
>     >>>>
>     >>>> Sent from my iPad
>     >>>>
>     >>>> On Aug 30, 2015, at 3:29 PM, mike cole
>     <mcole@ucsd.edu <mailto:mcole@ucsd.edu>> wrote:
>     >>>>
>     >>>> Dear Colleagues ---
>     >>>>
>     >>>> I am forwarding, with personal sadness, the news
>     that Oliver Sacks has
>     >>>> succumbed to cancer.
>     >>>> Its not a surprise, but a sad passing indeed.
>     >>>> mike
>     >>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>     >>>>
>     >>>> Date: Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 3:07 PM
>     >>>> Subject: NYTimes.com: Oliver Sacks Dies at 82;
>     Neurologist and Author
>     >>>> Explored the Brain’s Quirks
>     >>>> To: lchcmike@gmail.com <mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com>
>     >>>>
>     >>>>
>     >>>>   Sent by sashacole510@gmail.com
>     <mailto:sashacole510@gmail.com>: Oliver Sacks Dies at
>     82; Neurologist
>     >>>> and Author Explored the Brain’s Quirks
>     >>>> <
>     >>>>
>     http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=InCMR7g4BCKC2wiZPkcVUieQKbejxL4a&user_id=bd31502e6eb851a9261827fdfbbcdf6d&email_type=eta&task_id=1440972441657668&regi_id=0>
>     >>>> By
>     >>>> GREGORY COWLES
>     >>>>
>     >>>> Dr. Sacks explored some of the brain’s strangest
>     pathways in
>     >>>> best-selling
>     >>>> case histories like “The Man Who Mistook His Wife
>     for a Hat,” achieving
>     >>>> a
>     >>>> level of renown rare among scientists.
>     >>>> Or, copy and paste this URL into your browser:
>     http://nyti.ms/1LL040D
>     >>>> <
>     >>>>
>     http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=InCMR7g4BCKC2wiZPkcVUieQKbejxL4a&user_id=bd31502e6eb851a9261827fdfbbcdf6d&email_type=eta&task_id=1440972441657668&regi_id=0>
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>     >>>>
>     >>>>
>     >>>>
>     >>>>
>     >>>> --
>     >>>>
>     >>>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a
>     natural science with an
>     >>>> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch
>     >>>>
>     >>>>
>     >>>>
>     >>>>
>     >>> --
>     >>>
>     >>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a
>     natural science with an
>     >>> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch
>     >>>
>     >>
>     >>
>     >>
>     >
>
>
>
>
> -- 
>
> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural 
> science with an
> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch
>
>
>

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