Re: [xmca] primitive language, primitive thought

[Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>]

On 10 August 2012 21:40, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:

> My God, Larry!! Are you saying I have lived so long I have now internalized
> post-modern discourse through the substitution of timely
> fragments that allow new, potentially productive understandings, to
> develop?
>
> I brought in the Marx in an attempt to illuminate a knot of issues around
> the concept/practice of romantic science.(Besides, I am trained as a
> rat/sophomore learning theorist so fragments are all I can muster!). And
> that passed along by Tony Wilden who once worked at UCSD of all places.
>
> In my own after-school work, I find repeatedly that the
> antimonies/ tension/contradictions related to class, race, gender, age
> ..... are palpably "there" , running through my body, in often surprising
> and revealing moments. Ditto the formal/informal antimony, which is much on
> our minds these days at LCHC.
>
> The conceptual dualities in the medical field are different, at least at
> the level of restoration of brain injury. In that field, Oliver Sachs seems
> an appropriate example of the kind of romantic science that Luria
> promoted-- again, by my interpretation. More than one way to get it right,
> which is a good thing given the infinite number of ways there are to get it
> wrong!
>
> mike
>

The hill climbing analogy springs to mind.  With this sort of thing, I
believe that the most significant guidance is that things fall into place
better.  The problem is that a better view is not accessible without
descending from one's current best understanding.  Of course, there are
always confusions and small tugs that suggest that a better view is
available.

I suspect that trying to convey a true sense of romantic science is rather
like trying to convey materialism.  Materialism is too easily conflated
with empirical positivism.  The intuitive mind rejects empirical positivism
and flies to idealism.  But without trying to throw the kitchen sink at a
conceptual understanding (rather than merely metaphorical impressionism),
it will have thrown out materialism along with positivism.

Romantic science, for me, is to know that there are limits to science, but
yet to hold the science as central to one's life, and ones life as central
to the science.  Both inform each other which as has been said are an and.

Whenever I found myself worrying about money and similar issues, it always
impresses me that reading the really good psychologies brings to mind these
truths and re-evaluations.

Huw



>
>
> On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 7:23 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Mike,
> > I have been reflecting on your comment,
> >
> > Its as if the authors writing in the 1920's were encaptulating the late
> > 19th century armchair anthropologists. That this kind of thinking
> persists
> > to the present day as the everyday ideology of European Americans strikes
> > me as significant.
> >
> > I have also been reflecting on how we approach trying to clarify the
> > shared ideals informing  multiple CHAT perspectives. You  mentioned that
> > how we understand the "both/and" of the various romantic and
> enlightenment
> >  ideals within our day to day practices  is one way of reflecting on this
> > theme.
> >
> > You earlier offered this FRAGMENT of text from the young Marx to focus
> our
> > discussion on  the "both/and" as an overcoming of the antimonies that
> > currently play out between spiritualism and materialism:
> >
> > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and
> > objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease
> to
> > be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution
> > of the THEORETICAL contradictions is possible ONLY through practical
> means,
> > only through the PRACTICAL energy of man.
> >
> > Mike, this approach of offering FRAGMENTS of text that you show us or
> > present to us [as presents or gifts] to OPEN and to ponder and to
> > GENERATE further QUESTIONS  seems to present presents as a particular
> > method that may hold significance.
> > If this approach to writing can be seen as a particular KIND of writing
> > engendering a particular KIND of "reader" [who is IN mind -spiritual??]
> we
> > may have a particular practice developing before our eyes which
> engenders a
> > less assertive KIND of knowing [as certainty, predictability, and
> > repeatability] and brings forth a more dialogical, conversational method
> > that privleges acknowledgement within particularity, uniqueness,
> > idiosyncratic FRAGMENTS as an ideal practice.
> >
> > I'm circling around this hermeneutical notion of "seeing through"
> > enlightenment OR romanticism as SYSTEMS and shifting focus to the
> FRAGMENTS
> > "read" in a "timely" or historical AWARENESS.
> > I will end with David's metaphor of rusty LINKS in the chain AS FRAGMENTS
> > and Ivan's suggestion that we not see these multiple links as  proceeding
> > FROM the past as LINEAR, but use a metaphor of MESH as FIGURE and the
> > FRAGMENTS weaving together through multiple rusty links.
> >
> > I will end with how I opened, exploring the term *encapsulated* as a
> > container with flexible boundaries which expresses an ideology that seems
> > to be a subjective choice but actually expresses a WAY of life [and a
> > particular configuration of "both/and"
> >
> > Larry
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Aug 9, 2012 at 9:01 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> It appears that the God of Serendipity has intervened in recent
> >> discussions
> >> of cultural difference,
> >> primitivism, etc.
> >>
> >> For reasons extraneous to this discussion, I have been reading *Mutiny
> on
> >> the Bounty*. The crew has made it to Tahiti and the young narrator who
> is
> >>
> >> there officially to write a dictionary for purposes of facilitating
> future
> >> trade, is put under the guardianship of one of the Tahitian nobility,
> >> Hitihiti. The narrator, eager learner that he is, makes the following
> >> observation concerning his host.
> >>
> >> "Hitihiti spoke the Tahitian language as only a chief could, for the
> lower
> >> order, as in other lands, possessed
> >> vocabularies of no more than a few hundred words. He was interested in
> my
> >> work and of infinite use to me, thought, as with all his countryman,
> >> mental
> >> effort fatigued him if sustained for more than an hour or two."
> >>
> >> Its as if the authors writing in the 1920's were encaptulating the late
> >> 19th century armchair anthropologists.
> >>
> >> That this kind of thinking persists to the present day as the everyday
> >> ideology of European Americans strikes me as significant.
> >>
> >> mike
> >>
> >> mike
> >> __________________________________________
> >> _____
> >> xmca mailing list
> >> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >>
> >
> >
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