Re: garbled history

From: Keith Sawyer (ksawyer@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sun Apr 21 2002 - 13:38:08 PDT


As Eric points out, an underlying assumption of my "Emergence in psychology" paper is that it is possible to develop an objective science of human behavior in social and cultural context.  Readers may have noted that there is nothing in that paper about "interpretivism" or "subjectivism."  The journal Human Development publishes a "Commentary" on each of their articles; my commentary was written by Edward Sampson and was critical of my article because he is a radical social constructivist about science (and I am only a partial social constructivist, along the lines of Ian Hacking's book The social construction of what?).  In response to my concluding statements (that only empirical study can tell us which approach is most appropriate), Sampson writes: "I do not believe that the data will speak to us about which explanatory paradigm works best.  Those choices are made elsewhere" as matters of "politics and ideology."

Just trying to give equal time to opposing views!  Why not invite Sampson to join XMCA for a bit?

At 04:22 PM 4/20/02 -0400, you wrote:

To all;

Having been outspoken in the aspect of contextualisation and the inseparability of knowledge and social context I would just like to take this opportunity to salute R. [hmmmm what does the R stand for?] Keith Sawyer's attempt at providing the concept of emergentism as a distinct psychological phenomenon.  I must add that even though I have in the past been a bit of a purist regarding the social/individual connection; having read Valsiner I believe his scientific study of individual psychological as purposfully relevant to explaining how people learn and share their knowledge.  Possibly this concept of emergence is an opportunity to move the field of psychology into scientific query rather then anthropological ethnology.

Enjoying the discussion,
eric


R. Keith Sawyer

http://www.keithsawyer.com/
Assistant Professor
Department of Education
Washington University
Campus Box 1183
St. Louis, MO  63130
314-935-8724



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