Ray E. Harrell wrote:
>
> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. wrote:
>
> > Ray E. Harrell wrote:
[snip]
> I'm reminded of a friend doing research on fish behaviorat the New York
> Museum of Natural History. He is a
> psychologist and quit the team because he said that he
> had no way of knowing what the intent of the behavior
> was that he had been given to document. How the team
> believed they knew but had no way of truly knowing.
Psychologists in general miss the *one subject they could validly
study*: Each of them doing a case study on whatever he or she
happened to be doing at the moment. That could simply be
breathing (or belching), or it could be being-in-the-
middle-of-a-multi-million-dollar-grant-funded-project-to-study-some-
aspect-of-[whoever's: e.g., welfare recipients, school children,
clerical workers, etc.]-behavior. *Not*: Studying the
welfare recipients, school children, clerical workers, *per se*,
but studying the activities in which the psychologist is
here-and-now engaged in, in the lived experience of "studying....".
In my opinion, this may be the greatest *intellectual* (as
opposed to *material*!) tragedy of
the 20th Century. Edmund Husserl clearly set forth the
problem and the path to its solution, ca. 1935, in his
_The Crisis of European Sciences..._ (Northwestern Univ. Press,
1970), and there are numerous others who have made more
or less the same point, more or less well (Susanne
Langer, Gregory Bateson, C. Wright Mills, the
best "industrial sociologists" such as Philip
Kraft..., Robert Lynd...).
I was given an opportunity by a beneficent dissertation
sponsor to put my "two cents" in:
http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/dissert.html
>
> >
> >
> > [snip]
> > > The only thing we read about the Italian government in our press
> > > is that they change alot and allowed an elected female
> > > prostitute to urinate in Parliment.
> >
> > I have not heard about this. Do you have details?
>
> I can't remember her name but she was very popular andserved the role of
> the jester in a parliament that needed
> ridiculous comic relief.
I was looking for details....
> Can you imagine our Calvinists
> having the good humour to be amused by such a thing?
> The Italians have strippers we have Jesse Ventura, the
> fake wrestler but the form is the same. Except the media
> totally misrepresented the Italians but now elevate Ventura.
> Frankly I relate more to the woman.
>
> > I do recall that once when I was in Tokyo, there was
> > a news item about the Prime Minister urinating against
> > the wall of the Parliament ("Diet") building. It wasn't
> > really a "big deal" (certainly nothing to censure him for),
> > and I think Japanese professional men relieve themselves thus
> > in semi-public fairly often.
> >
> > [snip]
> > > Instead I would suggest that Frederick Jackson Turner was
> > > on to something with his Frontier theory as motivation, but
> > > that his imagination was too limited. Space, for instance,
> > > can be a tremendous frontier to challenge the human spirit.
> > [snip]
> >
> > I believe I have previously reported my observation
> > about the imaginative horizon of many PhD computer
> > scientists being bounded by the latest eposode
> > of Star Trek. No "peregrinatio in stabilitate" for
In case anyone missed the meaning of my little Latin
dictum, it means: (To cite the early Jesuit missionary to
China, Matteo Ricci's version of it:) In order to undertake
a great journey, one does not need to leave home. (I
would invite journeys into reading Husserl's "Crisis",
or Enzo Paci's synthesis of Husserl and Marx: _The
Function of the Sciences and the Meaning of Man_ (Northwestern
Univ Press, 1972))....
> > these couch potatos! Although I also remember one of
> > the people I worked with at IBM Research posting the
> > following on his office door (as best I cah
> > remember):
> >
> > Three things are not possible:
> > The desire of the rich for always more,
>
> There is very little sacrifice or creativity to come from theoffspring
> of this group.
Alas likely also little what *both* makes them feel good *and* does good
for others ("win-win" behavior)! I am not a "fan" of
*sacrifice*! I recently left a job where Bertolt Brecht's dictum
about a man who had little sense of personal sacrifice, but who was
one of the creators of "modernity": the physicist Galileo, amply
applied:
Student: "Happy the land that breeds a hero."
Galileo: "No. Unhappy the land that needs a hero."
[snip]
Socially constructive personal happiness to all!
"Yours [still...] in discourse"
\brad mccormick
--
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
-------------------------------------------------------
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