What do you see above? A duck? A rabbit? In his book Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein presents us with this "ambiguous figure" of a duck-rabbit to show us how how perception is not reducible to the mechanism of the eye and optic nerve. (Most people see either a head of a duck...
I spent the past weekend in Philadelphia at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. One of the events I participated in was a half-day professional development course. My task was to share aspects of my version of cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) in relation to the issues...
"Before science had the means to explore [the unseen], we had to make do with stories that became enshrined in myth and folklore. Those stories aren’t banished as science advances; they are simply reinvented. Scientists working at the forefront of the invisible will always be confronted with gaps in knowledge,...
Congratulations to Thomas Teo on the release of the Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, for which he served as editor. The massive (2400 pages) anthology published by Springer Reference is “the first reference work in English that comprehensively looks at psychological topics from critical as well as international points of view.” Teo,...
Earlier this evening I completed a six-day residency period of The International Class of the East Side Institute. It was an intense period of conversation on all manner of psychological, phiosophical, political, cultural and completely mundane matters. The 9 current members of this year's hail from 5 countries—Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, the Netherlands,...
I just saw "Love and Information", the new play by the great playwright Carly Churchill. Unique in form (15 actors played 100 parts in 57 scenes that are seconds to a few minutes long), it's equally unusual in content—how our obsession with knowing and information permeates our everyday conversations and...
Here’s something I’ve been mulling over for a long time (decades!): the “blessing and the curse” that is human language. What an invention! Making sounds together creating meanings, meanings creating and shaping and reshaping perceptions, concepts, beliefs, feelings, relationships, images, imagination… What we have done and continue to do with, and...
December 20, 2013 Ever since I heard long ago that “Eskimos have 100 words for snow” I’ve been fascinated by how we see, and the ways that our culture and language inter-relate with our perceptions. Never mind that the “words for snow” claim has been questioned and debated for more than...
December 10, 2013 My article, "Critical psychology, philosophy and social therapy," appears in the current issue of the journal, Human Studies, A Journal of Philosophy and the Social Sciences (Volume 6, Number 24, 2013). According to the rules of academic publishers, I can share the accepted draft of the article but...
September 20, 2013 Although Vygotsky’s ideas are applied to dozens of disciplines/practices, psychotherapy is not among them. With few exceptions, contemporary Vygotskians have stayed clear of the sub- ject; and most psychotherapy researchers and clinical practitioners have little familiarity with Vygotsky—despite Vygotsky’s challenge to psychology’s isolation of the intellectual from the...