>
> Because I do have a tendency to think about these issues very, um,
> simplemindedly, maybe somebody (Yrjo?) can help me by giving an
> instance where an abstraction _is_ actually "made concrete"?
>
How about Latour and Woolgar's now-old chestnut, taken from Bachelard
about a scientific principle being built into a tool or an instrument.
Ohms are built not only in Ohmeters but into all electronic devices
constructed on the basis of calculation of ohms. In Edison's notebooks
one can even spot the moment at which he hired a physicist and such
calculations started appearing more regularly, changing the project from
tinkering with objects and diagrams to one with tinkering with objects,
diagrams, and calculations.
Closer to our own interests, how about the abstraction of genres and
typifications (that is, acts of recognizing kinds) being reified into
specific kinds, held constant, and then reconcretized into models and
forms which are then treated as specific things for students to learn and
reproduce. Many of the debates about genre and genre pedagogy seem to
have to do about where to locate our characterizations and pedagogy on
the concrete/abstract/reconcretization spectrum.
Chuck Bazerman