[Xmca-l] Re: Oliver Sacks/Romantic Science
Andy Blunden
ablunden@mira.net
Mon Aug 31 19:56:44 PDT 2015
Sure David, and my comments on this topic carry all possible
caveats. I referred to a "style of Romantic Science"
particularly because Larry had correctly mentioned the idea
of units of analysis (whole-in-the-part) as a "definition"
of Romantic Science. I think it is clear that that style of
Romantic Science was not what was meant in relation to
Sacks. Mike can tell us what he meant. But so far as I know,
the key attributes of Romantic Science are "delicate
empiricism" and keeping the whole person/organism before you
and eschewing analysis. There seem to be quite different
ways of giving shape to these ideas.
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
On 1/09/2015 12:29 PM, David Kellogg 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®i_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®i_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
>
>
>
>
>
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