-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Barowy [mailto:wbarowy@mail.lesley.edu]
Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2000 2:19 PM
To: Nate Schmolze
Subject: about dialectics contradictions
Nate,
Could you forward this on to xmca?
I read Mike's note about being triadic, the difficulties of opposites, and
dialectics. But now Yrjö points to contradictions in activity systems
'being renewed as the clash between individual actions and the total
activity system' (p82, 1987) , and this is such a keen and useful insight --
the problem is that I don't know how that is reconciled with the dialectics
of ilenkov. Yrjö's reference of marx indicates 'opposite starting points'
but this does not seem the same sense of 'opposite' as yes/no binary
states, for example.
There are descriptions of 'inner unrest' and other things that I would
interpret as 'competing elements' using a systems dynamics overlay. and
then there are 'conflicts and resistences'. the categories of
contradiction that yrjo raises, primary, seconday, etc are very pragmatic
distinctions -- that have been useful in my thinking about the crazy work of
trying to partner school systems together, oops... one conclusion may have
just slipped out...
I am wondering if someone can clear up this multifaceted sense of
'contradiction' that I am perceiving.
Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
Lesley College, 29 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790
Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169
http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/Barowy.html
_______________________
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
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