[Xmca-l] Re: Oliver Sacks/Romantic Science
Andy Blunden
ablunden@mira.net
Mon Aug 31 21:14:42 PDT 2015
There's a problem with this attachment. Let me try again.
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
On 1/09/2015 1:56 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:
> "Romantic Science" by Luria, attached in HTML.
> Andy
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> On 1/09/2015 1:32 PM, mike cole wrote:
>> It might be helpful to this discussion if someone would
>> post the chapter on Romantic Science from Luria's
>> autobiography which MUST be somewhere public in pdf. It
>> appears that I do not have one.
>>
>> After reading what the person said, then discussion of
>> the ideas seems appropriate. Ditto Sacks, who has written
>> a couple of extended essay's on
>> his view of Romantic Science.
>>
>> It is true that the Russian psychologists, erudite as
>> they were, were not sociologists. Nor were they
>> anthropologists. The nature of their enterprise
>> encompassed those fields and more.
>>
>> Doing Romantic Science and immersing oneself in the
>> individual case in no way excludes inclusion of
>> sociology, anthropology, in their work. Nor does Luria
>> argue so.
>>
>> mike
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 7:29 PM, David Kellogg
>> <dkellogg60@gmail.com <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> 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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>> >>>> get unlimited access to all New York Times
>> articles, subscribe today.
>> >>>> See
>> >>>> Subscription Options.
>> >>>> <
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>> >>>> Copyright 2015
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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
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural
>> science with an
>> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch
>>
>>
>>
>
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