Mike, I am finding myself dissatisfied with my post responding to your
question about heterochrony and uneven and combined development. It
assumed and asserted two themes that I would prefer on second thought to
investigate and raise as questions. One theme is the idea that reality can
be usefully seen in terms of levels (domains, realms) of complexity, and
another is that the explanatory principles of these different domains are
not automatically transferable. How these levels of complexity (such as,
say, the geological, the organic and the social) exist, relate and
interpenetrate, and how our explanations of their driving processes can be
related and intermingled, are key questions to explore. The stab I took at
an answer to the question you pointed to - how the explanatory principles
of heterochrony in species development and uneven and combined development
in human history can be compared - assumed certain answers to these
questions about levels of complexity and explanations. But there are other
answers to these the questions - and significant refinements to these
inquiries - that need to be explored before such questions should be
hastily answered.
I now understand better - I think - what is meant by "synchronous
heterogeneity" - I take it to mean simultaneous unevenness over space (as
opposed to diachronic variation, which would refer to unevenness over
time). Taken in this sense, the concept of uneven and combined development
in sociology focuses precisely on the "synchronous heterogeneity" - the
simultaneous unevenness - of social systems, and views this heterogeneity
as a key to explaining historical development.
After reading your post yesterday, I spent a little time revisiting
chapters 6 and 7 in Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline -
"Phylogeny and Cultural History" and "A Cultural Approach to Ontogeny." In
these chapters you explore how the phylogenetic, cultural-historical,
ontogenetic, and microgenetic systems of human life are interwoven. I
believe this is a most excellent place to begin an inquiry from a
cultural-historical point of view of how thinking in terms of
genetic-historical levels of complexity and domains of explanatory
principles can help us understand this so very complex world we live
in. Your question relating heterochrony to uneven and combined development
fits right into this pursuit. It is a fluid question that should generate
more questions and thoughts, not just a brittle answer.
Best,
- Steve
At 08:23 AM 10/23/03 -0700, you wrote:
>I hope events allow me to catch up with the readings you, ben, and victor
>have drawn on Steve; my ignorance of the texts makes useful commentary
>difficult.
>
>I do not think of human development as a "just" a biological process and
>your invocation of Lewontin seems to essential. Heterochrony is a part of
>(or property of) the combined phylogenetic, cultural-historical, ontogentetic,
>microgenetic system of human life. I guess what would be interesting
>is to see where making a strong analogy across levels leads to clear errors.
>
>My comment on synchronic variability is also a borrowing from my
>thinking about human development, the uneveness in apparent "level"
>of development across domains for a single organism or group of organisms
>of the same chronological age.
>
>But if drawing a parallel with heterochrony is an error, so is the
>parallel with synchronic heterogeneity.
>
>I best read learn for a while.
>mike
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