Re: originators and references (institutionalizing etc...)

Angel M.Y. Lin (mylin who-is-at oise.on.ca)
Thu, 19 Oct 1995 02:13:03 -0400 (EDT)

Eva,
You have woven many threads together into an interesting picture...
I certainly don't wish anybody's head to be like my messy room :-)
but your analogy is a vivid one... now that I think about it... I
think the human mind works much better than the physical file cabinets or
my unsorted piles and piles of "information" and "ideas"... I don't know
if you buy the theory of "connectionism" or not... but sometimes I do
feel my mind is like that... things emerging and free associating... and
one thought speads to a chain of related thoughts like a fire...

I'm not sure whether this is a sweeping generalization or not, but I
think the difference between men and women is that most men tend to do their
thinking and theory building in a very systematic step-by-step logical
way (well, I'm certain this will prove to be a mistaken generalization...)
and I think women do the same too, but many women tend to add somthing
more to it... that something more is not what I can tell in so many
words...

But to try to illustrate, e.g., in my case, my friendship with teachers
and fellow students in many different and sometimes antagonistic disciplines
helpprevent me from going towards any extreme... I always think...
what would my friend A think when I say this... do I undermine the value
of her/his work... have I been one-sided? d?

Just as when people criticize ethnomehtodology (EM) and conversation
analysis (CA)as "seeing the trees and not the forest"...
I think is that really true?
And so when I critique others, I would be very careful, have I missed
some insider's knowledge, just as what I feel about others' comments on
EM/CA?

I just feel our relations with others can be very important in our
intellectual work, whether as theory building or as a practioner, as a
follower, creative adaptor or as an originator... and I think women tend
to be more relational (again another dangerous generalization :-)

Angel

On Wed, 18 Oct 1995, Eva Ekeblad wrote:

> Vera, Angel, Marie...
>
> Angel's messy room this morning, overflowing with all her unsorted
> reference literature made me think: well, my office and my study at home
> are both a bit (just a little) neater than that -- but my _head_ is
> beginning to feel like Angel's room: wherever one of my thoughts tries to
> squeeze through, it gets entangled in something that I have read, or ought
> to have read. One reference that I didn't find again is the place where I
> read the anecdote about Piaget, who, when asked how he could be so
> productive, answered that: well, for one thing he didn't have to read
> Piaget's collected works before starting his own research...
> It is, of course, an anecdote. But it does highlight the advantage
> of being an originator, an obligatory point of passage for those who come
> later. I guess, taking Piaget as today's example, that it isn't really that
> the Originator does not relate to what went before, but that he makes it
> superfluous for anybody else to go back to before him... (where did I read
> that?)
> Marie points at the tenure pressure as working against systematic
> theory construction: journal format hi-productivity... Angel made me think
> of all the stuff that demands being related to... (do I have a thought that
> I can call my own?)...
> But, to end on the positive note I pick up and re-mind Vera's image
> of theory-building as co-construction and also co-authoring. More like a
> coral reef... yes, I'd like to be part of that.
>
> Still I sign:
> Eva Ekeblad
>
>
>