Noel, i was trying to also answer your questions in my previous posting - but perhaps someone with better expertise could give us a quick briefing of Davydov's distinctions.
phillip
________________________________
From: Noel Enyedy [mailto:enyedy@gseis.ucla.edu]
Sent: Wed 5/4/2005 2:25 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: The abstract (contd.)
Peter, Carol, Phil, and all:
Can you say more about the difference between empirical and theoretical
generalization?
I am not very familiar with Davydov's distinctions, but am very intrigued.
From what little I do know (from second hand sources), I understood one
difference to be a focus on generalization from an analysis of the
connections between an element and the essence of the whole (rather than
similarity between elements)
And the critique was a critique of pedagogical approaches that over
emphasized empirical generalization.
If we take the generalization Jurow reports:
Gento: "Itıs gonna<itıs gonna increase uh, slowly and go down and go up
raises one hand above the other"
Followed by Max: ³Itıs like a personıs body weight. When you get to a
certain weight, (Patrick throws his head back with laughter) your weight
fluctuates, but it stays around the same area, going down, and up down and
up.²
The generalization itself seems to be dealing with connecting the particular
(what happens at a population of 6666) to a description of the essence of
the system/concept, some sort of dynamic steady state.
But if it is the genesis of the generalization that matters for Davydov,
then it is less clear to me. I think you are right that Jurow's "linking"
and "comparing" discussion points to the fact that the genesis did involve
some comparison of particulars, but I took that discussion to be in the
context of "what is sensible" which seems to have at least one eye on the
object.
What do other's think?
Noel
on 5/4/05 10:26 AM, Peter Moxhay at moxhap@portlandschools.org wrote:
> Carol, Phil, and all:
>
> Seems like one point to be addressed, in reading Jurow's article, is
> whether the generalizations described there in are, in Davydov's
> terminology:
>
> (1) formal, empirical generalizations, or
>
> (2) contentful, theoretical generalizations.
>
> On first reading the article, I thought that it was clear that the
> focus was on empirical generalizations: note the strong emphasis on
> classification (see the discussion of "linking"). From Davydov,
> classification is a sure sign of formal logic at work.
>
> But on reading people's interpretations of the article in terms of the
> ascent from the abstract to the concrete, I am not so sure.
>
> What do you think? Are the students described in the article making
> empirical or theoretical generalizations? Or doesn't this question make
> sense?
>
> Peter
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