Seeing historically: Goethe and Vygotsky's 'enabling theory-method'

Journal/Book: Cult Psychol. 2000; 6: 6 Bonhill Street, London EC2a 4Pu, England. Sage Publications Ltd. 233-252.

Abstract: We can study dead forms from a distance, seeking to understand the pattern of past events that caused them to come into existence. We can, however, enter into a relationship with living forms and, in making ourselves open to their movements, find ourselves spontaneously responding to them, and in so doing, we can gain a sense of their character, fn other words, from within our dialogically structured involvements with other living things, a kind of relationally responsive understanding, quire different from the referential-representational kind of understanding familiar to us in cognitive psychology, becomes directly available to us. Thus, rather than seeking to explain a child's present activities in terms of their causes in the past, from the standpoint of an external observer, we can turn to a quite different aim: that of perceiving in a present behavior the possibilities and opportunities it offers for further developments. Orientation toward this aim is what I think is so special about both Vygotsky's and Goethe's historical methods of inquiry into the development of living forms.

Note: Article Shotter J, Univ New Hampshire, Horton Social Sci Ctr, Dept Commun, Durham,NH 03824 USA

Keyword(s): development; dialogicality; relational-responsive; responsiveness; understanding

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