In LO12921 David Hanson said...
>
>Dear Group: Alfred Adler, MD, called this the "apperceptive schema" in
>his theory called "Individual Psychology" (individuum = "that which cannot
>be divided") and wrote about it in his book: Understanding Human Nature
>published in 1926. I love many of Maturana's ideas but it is only fair to
>say that I have understood many of them before as having been created by
>Adler. Just for the record.
Along similar lines to David's observation, in How the Leopard Changed Its
Spots: The Evolution of Complexity by Brian Goodwin (great reading, BTW -
ISBN 0-684-80451-4), he called his first chapter "Whatever Happened to
Organisms?". Reminding the reader that early in this century there was a
general awareness in biology of the necessary integrity of organisms as
units, but was "forgotten" in the overall enthusiasm for a more
reductionistic, more mechanistic theory. It would seem that a genocentric
biology, for example, predominated because it played more strongly into
cultural myths, rather than its actual capacity to fully explain
biological phenomena.
I see here that Goodwin teaches at Open University...hmm, fancy that, the
same august halls as the Maturana seminar...
It is my understanding that Maturana's desire is to present the ideas in
such a way that they circle back upon themselves, letting the participant
enter into the somewhat dizzying circuity of this point of view - Escher's
Drawing Hands (cited in T of K) is my favorite representation. I'm
guessing perhaps that's why there's little emphasis put on his
"intellectual legacy." Just a thought.
--Jackie Mullen J.Mullen@agora.stm.it
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>