Reifications (Re: past/future in present)

Eva Ekeblad (eva.ekeblad who-is-at ped.gu.se)
Thu, 4 Sep 1997 21:47:46 +0200

At 13.51 -0700 97-09-02, David Dirlam wrote:
>Our sciences have (1) social pressure to create answers and (2)
>encouragement to create models.

and then at 09.37 -0700 97-09-04, he explained his concern:
>One can use the models as metaphors (to aid the imagination)
>or one can create parameters with them and even give these parameters
>meaning. But unless one also defines ways of testing these parameter
>values outside of the situation that generated them, the values are just
>reifications with the same potential for destructiveness as IQ scores.
>Providing the way of testing parameter values is not just a shift of
>frame, it makes a clearer separation between reality and imagination.

Indeed, there is a strong social pressure built into the educational
systems of today towards cost-effective ways of testing//sorting
individuals (pupils, students, teachers, schools. So working against handy
but destructive assignments of properties to individuals on the basis of
tests abducted from their domain of validity is certainly a respectable
occupation for a developmental modeller.

Eva