Precisely so, Paul,
the words were written so many years ago but sound so fresh.
I agree that indulging into intedisciplinarity may really lead to nowhere.
But seeing the horizons and reaching it are two different things. I can't
judge about everything and make generalizations. What I'm talking about
concerns mostly psycholinguistics, which at the present stage of
development uses evidence from many different branches of science. But I
think that it is the natural course of development of science when evidence
from everyday practice and experiments is accumulated to give a push to
theory development and then the advanced theory leads to more profound
interpretation of the very same evidence and data. In this way
interdisciplinarity leads to specialization, when some cooperative efforts
are necessary and scientists give their most cherished ideas to specialists
(that is what i meant speaking about A.A. Leont'ev's youngest son, who is a
forth-year student yet).
Tatiana
----------
> От: Paul H.Dillon <illonph@pacbell.net>
> Кому: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Тема: Re: faux paws
> Дата: 21 августа 2000 г. 10:08
>
> Tatiana,
>
> I'm not sure I see your point. Many children of successful academics
seem
> to become academics. I've seen the son's book on second language
acquistion
> but haven't read it.
>
> I think the dad's point isn't that one shouldn't draw on the insights and
> contributions of many disciplines when pursuing research into new
directions
> but that you can't simply cut and paste -- sort of the blind eclecticism,
a
> little of this, a little of that, whatever's sexy and currently
fashionable.
> Usually these fields have shown themselves to be valuable in some other
> area, cybernetics/systems analysis most notably, and the faux theorists
> metaphorically extend the analysis from the domains of one into the
domains
> of another discipline usually ending up with something of a house of
> mirrors. Fun to play in and hard to get out of but ultimately leading
> nowhere except to the inevitable exit. How many abandoned eclecticisms
> litter the academic landscape. But then, there's always more
attractions
> at the carnival, no? Like the every ready bunny they just keep going and
> going and going . . . The key points in the Leont'ev citation have to do
> with losing the subject of the inquiry and the inevitable danger of
> reductionism which doesn't go away just because one pulls together a
> pastiche of glittery things held together with sealing wax or duct tape.
>
> Your English is just fine.
>
> Paul H. Dillon
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