Modern dynamical systems approaches to development do not see the
late stages as themselves attractors of the dynamics, as points
or state toward which development tends. Development is at every
moment still contingent, it could always go otherwise. In
biological development, going otherwise often means going awry,
since the strictures of adaptation to the ecosystem are narrow
(i.e. individuals of many species must develop compatibly, among
other constraints), but there can always be favorable mutations
and individuations. What keeps development 'on track', meaning
recapitulating the trajectory typical of the species, is
constancy and predictability of external conditions (DNA is one
'external condition' that has been internalized). In like micro-
environments, the results of each last stage of development are
just right to produce next stages similar to those produced in
other organisms and other generations.
Some conceptual problems with telic models of development
include: missing the fact that _all stages_ are adapted to their
environments, not just the mature or later stages (i.e. kids ways
of thinking work for them, even if they're different from ours);
assuming that later is always better (there are many dead-ends in
development and evolution); and assuming that some particular
later or mature form is the 'normal' one and all others defective
deviations (rather than seeing that there are always many 'end-
points' and which are better is a function of current
environmental conditions).
Piaget, for example, wrestles admirably with the first two
problems, but seems completely overcome by the third. Of course,
if all he's doing is describing how kids grow into their
culture's epistemology of space, time, cause, etc. it's not a
problem. But most people read him as positing formal operational
thinking as at least an ideal, if not a telos, of normal
development. On the other hand I would praise him for his careful
description of the functionality of the earlier forms of
reasoning, and his recognition that they do not disappear later
in life, but are further differentiated into, overlaid with, etc.
the later ones.
Vygotsky pays, of course, much more attention to the 'external
conditions', ie. to system-environment interaction, as the motor
and guide for development, but his normative approach, while more
helpful and hopeful than P's, may even more closely identify the
later and particular with the universally better.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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