Re: remarkable coincidences

From: Bruce Robinson (bruce.rob@btinternet.com)
Date: Thu Apr 18 2002 - 16:44:59 PDT


> I have always heard that Vygotsky knew the work of Dewey and that in some
> way Dewey's ides have had an influence on him.
> But did you know that Dewey had some links to Moscow himself??
> I read in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy that:
> "Dewey's retirement from active teaching in 1930 did not curtail his
> activity either as a public figure or productive philosopher. Of special
> note in his public life was his participation in the Commission of Inquiry
> into the Charges Against Leon Trotsky at the Moscow Trial, which exposed
> Stalin's political machinations behind the Moscow trials of the mid-1930s"
> The time (mid thirties) is right, the location is right. Did Dewey ever go
> to Moscow??

The location is wrong: the Dewey Commission took place in Mexico where
Trotsky was exiled in 1937. Trotsky had been forced to leave the USSR in
1929.

Connections - intellectual or personal - between Vygotsky and Trotsky:
there's a theme I think worth investigating. How about Trotsky as the
activity theorist of revolutionary politics? Or Vygotsky's original
introduction to 'Educational Psychology'?

Bruce Robinson

Who did Dewey know among the Moscow circle Psychologists and
> intellectuals in general? Did Dewey ever know about Vygotsky's ideas and
> theories?
> Maybe someone knows??
>
> It is very hard to say when some idea will "suddenly" emerge and how long
> did it take to "cook" it, what paths did it traverse, what contexts did it
> touch, how did it change along the way and how did it gain all the
> significance.
>
> It is eery, I agree, but maybe it is possible to study it?? Arne Reithel
> once made a map with arrows showing the genealogy of western philosophical
> and social scientific ideas and how they travelled from philosopher to
> another... I know I have it somewhere- but it will take me some time to
> find it.
>
> Ana
>
>
> At 12:14 AM 4/14/2002 +0000, you wrote:
> >I don't think it is so eery (as i may have in the past)
> >but only at a gut level, e.g. another coincidence are
> >some authors close to home who have come to the same
> >kind of conclusions on the papers they are working on
> >more or less "independently". maybe the convergences
> >are something "in the air" so to speak with "air" being
> >something between an institutional and a global scale --
> >it may be, in perversion of Durkheim's words, the
> >current which sweeps us off our feet, and places us on
> >the same sandbar. And metaphor is only as far as i can
> >understand it. A really good puzzle, eh?
> >--
> >
> > >
> > > BB-- monday we have a discussion of co-genetic logic at lchc. And my
> > > daughter is studying the changing nature of prostitution in the
globalized
> > > fourth world.
> > >
> > > Put that together with discussion of emergence, charcter development
> > (thanks
> > > Peter), the level of coincidence gets kind of eery!
> > > mike
> > >
>



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