I think we understand that the full life of a researcher is
interpenetrating with that person's research. And yet it is still the
researchers' habitus to remove the traces of their life from their writing
-- washing out the biases that might show an unscientific stain and
inevitably also removing the traces of what provided insight. So it is
refreshing to see lists like this one (and this is not the only one) in
which people write in the first person and share how their life experiences
shape their work.
At 41 years old, I am still forming models of time, history and meaning
that may be different than others here, especially of those who have
considerably more and different life experience. Having been raised into
a working class family, mother in a Sylvania manufacturing plant, father
self-employed in construction, and spending 7th through 12th grades digging
dirt, pouring concrete, carrying bricks, I have different experiences to
bring in my perspectives on activity and knowing. It is the event of my
father having passed away last spring, that I am able to write more
personally about those earlier experiences that are shaping my views. It
is an other story of how he, as one who abused his wife and children,
knocked our lifes' trajectories in different directions, and how, through
discussions about silence on this list, together with a recognition of the
interrelatedness of life and research, that I have decided not to be silent
anymore, or ashamed, or pained, or so blinded.
But this message is not about those occurances in particular, it is about
time experience, and knowing. The analogy of the Quechua-speaking Indians
is useful, and perhaps more compelling for one with more life experience
than it is for one at my age or younger. There are several decades of my
life in which I did not look back at the past. Instead I envisioned a
future that was remote, shaped vicariously by escape into reading. For
me, destiny was not going to be determined by my upbringing and family
past, it was going to be determined by my planning, deciding, and working
towards a future that I could see and would claim as my own. It was a
future written about in 'Popular Science', 'The Book of Knowledge", and
biographies of scientists, and works of science fiction.
I'd slightly edit Eva's words: " it pleases me more to picture an
orientation towards the future that is in line with the proleptic,
anticipatory confidence of [children,] parents and teachers that is such a
crucial ingredient in children's actual learning."
It is a path that is full of contraditions. Denial of my paternal heritage
implicates it in my striving to be different. Refusing to accept the
reality or the limitations of my birthright fostered a reading ethic that
put me into an academically talented classroom, into which I felt I didn't
belong. It is both fallacious and powerful for an adolescent to believe
in shaping the uncertainties of the future. Consider the alternatives.
Fear of the future disappears when one is determined to make it different
from the past. Perhaps this is the same strategy applied by many immigrants
to this country who wanted to escape to a better life and who did not pass
on knowledge of their past to their children. In ignoring a past, in
selective remembering, people can constrain or alter its influence on the
future. It is as if the angel closed his eyes and focussed on tilting his
wings.
Baruch Fischoff writes:
Inevitably, we are all captives of our present personal perspective. We
know things that those living in the past did not. We use analytical
categories (e.g., feudalism, Hundred Years War) that are meaningful only in
retrospect (E. A. R. Brown, 1974). We have our own points to prove when
interpreting a past that is never sufficiently unambiguous to avoid the
imposition of our ideological perspective (Degler, 1976). Historians do
"play new tricks on the dead in every generation" (Becker, 1935). There is
no proven antidote to presentism. Some partial remedies can be generalized
from the discussion of how to avoid hindsight bias when second-guessing the
past. Others appear in almost any text devoted to the training of
historians. Perhaps the most general messages seem to be (a) knowing
ourselves and the present as well as possible; "the historian who is most
conscious of his own situation is also most capable of transcending it"
(Benedetto Croce, quoted in Carr, 1961, p. 44); and (b) being as
charitable as possible to our predecessors; "the historian is not a judge,
still less a hanging judge" (Knowles, quoted in Marwick, 1970, p. 101).
"For those condemned to study the past: Heuristics and biases in
hindsight" in the book "Judgement under uncertainty" by Kahneman et al
Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
Technology in Education
Lesley College, 31 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790
Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169
http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/Barowy.html
_______________________
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]