Paul,
you mention again Ed Hutchins. I have fetched the book and
remembered. Of course it was an exciting book with wonderful
examples. Arne Raeithel had told me in 1991 or 92 about EH's
research. Team work and distributed cognitions was his principal
field and he knew much about that. So when the book came out in 1995
it's principal demonstration was not to new to me, but the details of
the observations and interpreations were highly enriching. Less
exciting was the theoretical yield. EH had very good points to
understand cognition going beyond the skin of the individual and much
more. but he was operating mainly by metaphor: propagation, spread,
media, entrainment, resonance etc. Arne and I had discussed that
before and I remember that firstly Arne had been a bit disappointed
when I was only half-excited, given the structural similarity of EH's
approach and my semiotic ecology in view of the person-environment
relation or ecosystem and the flow of information through the whole
system. SemEco had been scaffolded then in most of its principal
components. At one point, after more reading and discussion, he wrote
me of his AHA: suddenly he had understood, he said, how deep I wanted
to go and put in doubt and leave behind so many basic assumptions
psychology was built upon and would not evade its circles through
ever the same "problems". And from then on our discussions gained
much in mutual understanding and fertility. Alas, only a few years of
exchange were left.
Alfred
-- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Alfred Lang, Psychology, Univ. Bern, Switzerland --- alfred.lang@psy.unibe.ch Website: http://www.psy.unibe.ch/ukp/langpapers/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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