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These files are maintained strictly for historical reference, research, and recordkeeping purposes,
and the content has not been altered or updated since archiving.
Content on this site may not meet current digital accessibility standards.
If you require an alternative, accessible format of any information found on this site,
please contact Bruce Jones, bjones@ucsd.edu to request an accommodation.
--------------------------Ascending from the abstract to the concrete is achieved through specific epistemic or learning actions. Together these actions form an expansive cycle or spiral. An ideal-typical sequence of epistemic actions in ascending from the abstract to the concrete may be described as follows:
• The first action is that of questioning, criticizing, or rejecting some aspects of the accepted practice and existing wisdom. For the sake of simplicity, we will call this action questioning.
• The second action is that of analyzing the situation. Analysis involves mental, discursive or practical transformation of the situation in order to find out origins and explanatory mechanisms.
• The third action is that of modeling a new explanatory relationship in some publicly observable and transmittable medium. This means constructing an explicit, simplified model of the new idea, a germ cell, that explains the problematic situation and offers a perspective for resolving and transforming it.
• The fourth action is that of examining the model, running, operating, and experimenting on it in order to fully grasp its dynamics, potentials, and limitations.
• The fifth action is that of implementing the model, concretizing it by means of practical applications, enrichments, and conceptual extensions.
• The sixth and seventh actions are those of reflecting on and evaluating the process and consolidating its outcomes into a new stable form of practice.
-------------------- MCA 19(1) pp. 288-289. Andy mike cole wrote:
Dear Colleagues-- I have been reminded of an issue that has been nagging at me for some time, that we have not had a discussion of any of the articles in the special issue of MCA called "concepts in the wild." The article selected by a plurality of voters was by Chuck Bazerman on concepts in the process of writing. But no one has commented on the article. That seems to me a shame. In fact, the entire issue, with its stellar set of authors and papers is worth discussing, and I figure there will be more articles on this general theme in the time to come, spanning as it does, the story of all those practice in which we acquire and deploy concepts in organizing our social life and experience the world.
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