In the last chapter of Cultural Psychology, Mike follows Luria in
distinguishing between "classical science" and "romantic science." The
first is "experimental/generalizing," the second
"descriptive/particularizing." The former examines events in terms of
constituent parts, to formulate abstract, general laws and models.
Romantic science, Mike proposes, involves both analytic science and the
study of individual cases, bridging the dichotomy of idiographic and
nomothetic. It asks that the researcher be both participant and analyst,
and "return to... practices as a grounding for ... theoretical claims."
When I read this I was reminded of a letter I received after the American
Psychologist published an article in which I had tried to sketch a
"hermeneutic" approach to psychology. The letter writer said I was
proposing something similar to what Robert Persig had explored in Zen and
the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. (A long-forgotten, classical, romance,
I fear!)
My faded, battered copy had been tucked away at the back of the bookcase.
Persig's narrator tells of a character, Phaedrus, who ventured to the
limits of analytic science and was transformed. Like Luria and Cole,
Persig (or Phaedrus) distinguishes classical from romantic reason.
Classical reason is "Reason which at the University is sometimes
considered to be the whole of understanding." But "The Ancient Greeks, who
were the inventors of classical reason, knew better than to use it
exclusively to foretell the future."
Imagine "a huge, long railroad train, one of those 120-boxcar jobs that
cross the prairies all the time with lumber and vegetables going east and
with automobiles and other manufactured goods going west. I want to call
this railroad train 'knowledge' and subdivide it into two parts: Classical
Knowledge and Romantic Knowledge.
"In terms of the analogy, Classical Knowledge, the knowledge taught
by the Church of Reason, is the engine and all the boxcars. All of them
and everything that's in them. If you subdivide the train into parts you
will find no Romantic Knowledge anywhere. And unless you're careful it's
easy to make the presumption that's all the train there is. This isn't
because Romantic Knowledge is nonexistent or even unimportant. It's just
that so far the definition of the train is static and purposeless....
"Romantic Quality, in terms of this analogy, isn't any 'part' of
the train. It's the leading edge of the engine, a two-dimensional surface
of no real significance unless you understand that the train isn't a static
entity at all. The train isn't really a train if it can't go anywhere. In
the process of examining the train and subdividing it into parts we've
inadvertently stopped it, so that it really isn't a train we are examining.
That's why we get stuck.
"Romantic Quality is the cutting edge of experience. It's the
leading edge of the train of knowledge that keeps the whole train on the
track. Traditional knowledge is only the collective memory of where that
leading edge has been. At the leading edge there are no subjects, no
objects... The leading edge is where absolutely all the action is. The
leading edge contains all the infinite possibilities of the future. It
contains all the history of the past. Where else could they be contained?"
(Jay, when you wrote:
>Making another brave attempt to catch the moving train ...
I know this is what you had in mind! :)
Martin
===========
Martin Packer
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
Duquesne University
Pittsburgh, PA 15282
office: (412) 396-4852
department: (412) 396-6520
packer who-is-at duq3.cc.duq.edu
http://www.duq.edu/liberalarts/gradpsych/packer.html