Sawyer's emergence

From: Ricardo Ottoni Vaz Japiassu (rjapias@uol.com.br)
Date: Sat Apr 13 2002 - 14:54:10 PDT


Professor Sawyer,

Any one who had read your text will recognize, with no doubt, the relevance of your studies in the field.
The introduction, for example, reveals your great erudition and knowledge on the hystory of Psychology (specially American Psychology). Congratulations.

But I'd like to put a question that emerged when/after reading your article although I'm not a pshychologist:

(1) What specially called my attention is related to your discussion of (only) two levels of analyses:
                                                              subject X (socio-cultural-historical) enviromental injuctions
(2) You expose your thinking on this two irreconciliable "entites" (I'm not sure on the right expression or term you use to designate them because I could not save the article in my rd nor I could print it once my printer is out of service by now) since one moves toward behaviourial inquiry according to e-paradigm of analysis in sociocultural studies: the person and the social word.

(3) I understand you drive the reader to conclude that if according to a "holistian" view these two concepts are adesive one another, how can be possible to "separate" them in a sociocultural analyse of human activity?

(4) My question is: Why to consider only this two levels of analyse when appoaching, since a sociocultual perspective, human activity? According to MC, in Cultural Psychology: a once and future discipline a historical-cultural approach to human pshychesism must take into account four levels of analyse (Same ones postulated by LV and his team): macrogenetic, filogenetic, ontogenetic and microgenetic. Wouldn't those four levels be the way to solve the conflit you pointed to in your articles?

Ricardo



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