To begin with, let me apologize for replying sans reply. A senior moment. Now then. Walter asks:
Would anybody here be able to recall in one's own biography a case of revolutionary learning?
Affirmative. Several instances, but I'll only recount two here -- as in the here and now of this point in time, that is. Instance #1: Enter moi, a senior in high school. Doleful expression. Casting about histrionically, searching for something meaningful to pursue in life. Hey! What about God? If there really is a God, what could be more important? More meaningful? Nothing!!! Bingo. The priesthood, I saw then as a way of opening the door of one's self to those intimations of divinity that keep knocking. Open up and let 'em in. So I did.
What's so revolutionary about that? Nothing. Except that I did it against all my yearnings and instincts. Without warning, I suddenly decided that some transcendental meaning glimpsed only in aesthetic moments of what seemed transcendent love, sympathy, compassion, caring, beauty, and just plain old niceness had more meaning than the wondrously ever inviting pleasures of the flesh. To be one with God, that was my revolutionary ambition. I set out to learn how. But what I learned was, as is the case in almost every instance, that the Institution comes first and foremost. God was just another commodity.
Instance #2: Enter moi, a senior in college. Doleful expression. Casting about histrionically, searching for something meaningful to pursue in life. Having decided I believed in women more than the Church, I left the seminary to look for a woman with whom I could build an authentic, meaningful life while pursuing noble goals. So what means this 'authentic', this 'meaningful', this 'noble'? I thought I knew. I thought I knew I knew. Ay, yai, yai-yai, yai. Where was my head? Didn't I realize that in due course the earth is going to be evaporated? The whole solar system will just die like a fly come the galactic seasonal change? Suddenly I realized that there's nothing to be done, nothing to be won, nothing to grieved since it was all foretold so long ago. Human existence is as meaningless as meaninglessness can get. Goddamnit! Once earth is turned into plasma, the fact that human beings ever existed, that all the astonishing beauty and wonder and supremely amazing thoughts brought forth by this then still half-ape species -- the knowledge of all that will be lost forever. Could life possibly be any more meaningless? Candle flame. Wind coming. Kill yourself or get over it. Ach!
Instance #3 (I lied about there being only 2): I got over it. Enter moi, thirty-something. Resigned expression. Contentedly doing my menial job gardening the machines. Searching for nothing but butterfly awarenesses. Then suddenly I realized at age 45 that I was God. I was the only perspective in the universe, from my perspective anyway --and other perspective was there? from my perspective, I mean. What I decided was true was true, what I decided mattered, mattered. As long as I exist there is meaning, multifarious meanings if I choose, come all you anguished souls, fling roses riotously to the throngs, meaning has returned, I am the decider!! Me! I am the universe, I am God, just like you, and just like you I let all of you exist for my pleasure, my curiosity, my entertainment. Through me. ye be. So carry on, I say. Entertain me.
Mike Geary Revolutionary Historian of the Universe of Me----- Original Message ----- From: <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2007 12:53 PM Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Normal and Revolutionary Learning
Well done, John. That is truly a very fine account of the distinction. (And notsimply because I completely support its cogency and correctness :-) My pedagogical point would be perfectly made if, in your penultimate sentence below, we change "practice" to "mind" (or "dispositions," if you're anti-Cartesian) and "field" to "student." Walter O MUN Quoting John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>:On 8/15/07, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> In so far as this involves an allusion to T.S.Kuhn, particularly his > 'The > Structure of Scientific Revolutions', could someone venture to > elucidate> the > difference between 'normal' and 'revolutionary' thinking (without using > question-begging explanations like 'well, one is paradigmmatic and the > other > non-paradigmmatic thinking' or "well, one is 'in the box' and the other > 'out > of the box" thinking). The trick here, as Kuhn himself recognized, is not to focus on thinking itself but on the sociological context within which thinking occurs. Paradigmatic thinking occurs when thoughts are embedded in an established/conventional/usual way of doing things. Pre-paradigmatic thinking occurs when there is no consensus and numerous opinions contendwith no established procedures for adjudicating between them. Revolutionary thinking occurs when someone challenges an established paradigm and actuallysucceeds in transforming it.Consider, for example, the case of medicine. Prior to the establishment ofmedical schools and licensing boards, the practice of medicine wasempirical and informed only by whatever opinions a doctor happened to pick up during his apprenticeship or however else he learned his trade. What we think of as modern medicine emerged with the establishment of schools withthe same required prerequisites and curriculum, including internships and residencies leading to specialization defined in biomedical, a.k.a.,scientific terms. We have seen a lot of grumbling about the deficiencies ofwhat has become the conventional biomedical paradigm and the thinking andresearch that go on within it, but have yet to see the kind of breakthrough that, for example, the 17th century brought to physics with the introductionof analytic geometry, the calculus, and the experimental method. The critical thing about revolutionary thinking is not that it's merely different from what has gone on before. That happens all the time at the pre-paradigmatic stage. It is, instead, that the new thinking is so compelling that it radically transforms the practice of the field. Revolution is a social fact, not a purely intellectual one. John -- John McCreery The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN Tel. +81-45-314-9324 http://www.wordworks.jp/------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
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