"A reflection"
Teacher Research as
- phenomenology - What am I experiencing?
- epistemology - How do I know I know what I know?
- ethnography - What is it like to be them?
Mr. Palomar
As an introduction to the book and its contribution to your experience in educational research, let me outline much of what you did great work articulating yesterday (with much thanks to Dr. Phil Carspecken).
Observing a wave (1.1.1)
In this first chapter, Calvino explores sense perception of the physical world, with social and cultural factors backgrounded as much as possible. All we basically have in this chapter is Mr. Palomar and "waves." You neatly noticed that we cannot escape culture, we can only background it. It still operates by supplying categories, words, and analogies for sense perception.
Although Calvino could have chosen any physical object or phenomenon to investigate for the purposes of analyzing sense perception, he picked a rather difficult one: waves forming near an ocean shore and moving to break on a beach. Why start his book on experience here?
One possible reason is a belief, on the part of Calvino, that an examination of wave perception will illuminate common structures of all sense perception, including and more significantly the taken-for-granted features of the more common. By focusing on the most purely visual entry in the entire book, Calvino helps call attention to horizon of factors that constitute the objective, visual world. Or as we might understand it, “making the invisible visible." The difficulties involved in examining perception of waves are simply easier to see than these same difficulties present when examining a bowl, pencil, rock and other physical objects that display consistent shape. Here, then, he allows
the reader to explore the phenomenological narrative of experience, that of Mr. Palomar.
From this perspective, the ocean symbolizes how reality outside of human knowledge and experience is pressed into various shapes and patterns by the act of perception. When we look, meaning comes through the schema that orders experience in our minds. The ocean, for Mr. Palomar, is like Kant’s notion of the “thing in-itself”; something we do not have direct access to because it is already interpreted by the time we are conscious of it. Structures of perception filter experience through language, culture, socio-economic and educational background - structures located within the apparatus of perceiving rather than in the objects themselves. Here again, we hear echoes of van Manen, reminding of the responsibility to "make thoughtful sense of the meaning the child's experience has for the child as well as for the adult."
Waves may be taken to represent any perceptual object that arises from the interaction of our perceptual apparatus with the world around us. The ways in which we perceive waves reveal processes and structures involved in all object perception. Like Tiffany thinking like her daughter, how we see functions from what we know.
What are some of the things that emerge from Mr. Palomar's efforts that might throw light upon all sense perception?
Notice that Mr. Palomar, like all of us, is capable of perceiving waves unproblematically. It is only when he tries consciously to perceive a wave, as some sort of well defined object, that questions and problems arise. It is only when he restricts his holistic modes of experience in order to really focus on just his visual perceptions that difficulties come up. The whole thrust of phenomenological philosophy made use of this sort of thing: common and unproblematical perceptions do become problematical and interesting when one subjects the experience of perception to careful scrutiny. This happens whether one investigates how we perceive grass, stones, trees, ideas, emotions, memories, music, waves ...., anything and everything!
Waves, like all sense objects, are "seen" as foregrounds within a horizon of contrasts: other waves, the shore, the sky. All objects of perception appear against a background of apperception. Apperception means, ap-perception or "perceived-with". The apperceptual background is necessarily perceived with the perceptual foreground because the contrast between foreground and background is necessary to give form. Waves are more difficult to see as discrete objects partly because their backgrounds often shift to disrupt the foreground over time.
The holistic dimension to sense perceptions is not directly perceived but must be arrived at through a reflection. Or, as van Manen writes, “And yet it only through the quest of fundamental reflection that we can become more fully who we are ...” Analysis disrupts the taken-for-granted; per William James, "with critical philosophy, havoc is made of everything."
This line bears more general philosophical lesson to be learned from Mr. Palomar's study of waves on page 6: "If it were not for his impatience to reach a complete, definitive conclusion of his visual operation, looking at waves would be a very restful exercise for him and could save him from neurasthenia, heart attack, and gastric ulcer. And it could perhaps be the key to mastering the world's complexity by reducing it to its simplest mechanism."
Science has basically been an effort to reduce the universe to its simplest mechanisms. It has been an effort to do so that begins with sense experiences. It must take certain types of sense experience to be unproblematical. Waves would not be chosen as a beginning place for the assumptions made by most scientists regarding unproblematical sense experience. But the exercise of examining waves could be used by a phenomenologist or by a postmodern philosopher to cast doubt on all sense experience and thus put the project of science into question. The point is not to negate science, but rather to recast the significance of scientific theory and relativize it somewhat.
By staring at waves, the structures taken for granted in common sense experience all of a sudden appear to be problems. Sense experience is revealed to be based on structures that may have as much to do with the nature of consciousness or culture as the nature of a reality existing independently of our knowledge and experience. This insight has informed several schools of philosophy. Calvino articulates the insight on page 7: "Is this perhaps the real result that Mr. Palomar is about to achieve? To make the waves run in the opposite direction, to overturn time, to perceive the true substance of the world beyond sensory and mental habits?"
But Mr. Palomar is unable to take this insight any further. Perhaps it is because he hoped to perceive the truth he sought, rather than find it in some non-perceptual way. But what other way could there be? At this point in the novel, sense perception remains the paradigm of unproblematical, certain knowledge for Mr. Palomar: thoughts can only direct more efforts at "directly perceiving". And these efforts come to no avail. Perception is found to be un-graspably complex to Mr. Palomar and yet no other type of experience is revealed to promise a more certain type of knowledge.
For our purposes, then, is Mr. Palomar limited in the kinds of data he can collect and limited in the forms of analysis in which to understand the data? Does too much of the subjective and normative lies in the background? Is he, perhaps like you, yet not ready to deal with the data fully?
Comments are discussion are welcome
Observing a wave (1.1.1)
In this first chapter, Calvino explores sense perception of the physical world, with social and cultural factors backgrounded as much as possible. All we basically have in this chapter is Mr. Palomar and "waves." You neatly noticed that we cannot escape culture, we can only background it. It still operates by supplying categories, words, and analogies for sense perception.
Although Calvino could have chosen any physical object or phenomenon to investigate for the purposes of analyzing sense perception, he picked a rather difficult one: waves forming near an ocean shore and moving to break on a beach. Why start his book on experience here?
One possible reason is a belief, on the part of Calvino, that an examination of wave perception will illuminate common structures of all sense perception, including and more significantly the taken-for-granted features of the more common. By focusing on the most purely visual entry in the entire book, Calvino helps call attention to horizon of factors that constitute the objective, visual world. Or as we might understand it, “making the invisible visible." The difficulties involved in examining perception of waves are simply easier to see than these same difficulties present when examining a bowl, pencil, rock and other physical objects that display consistent shape. Here, then, he allows
the reader to explore the phenomenological narrative of experience, that of Mr. Palomar.
From this perspective, the ocean symbolizes how reality outside of human knowledge and experience is pressed into various shapes and patterns by the act of perception. When we look, meaning comes through the schema that orders experience in our minds. The ocean, for Mr. Palomar, is like Kant’s notion of the “thing in-itself”; something we do not have direct access to because it is already interpreted by the time we are conscious of it. Structures of perception filter experience through language, culture, socio-economic and educational background - structures located within the apparatus of perceiving rather than in the objects themselves. Here again, we hear echoes of van Manen, reminding of the responsibility to "make thoughtful sense of the meaning the child's experience has for the child as well as for the adult."
Waves may be taken to represent any perceptual object that arises from the interaction of our perceptual apparatus with the world around us. The ways in which we perceive waves reveal processes and structures involved in all object perception. Like Tiffany thinking like her daughter, how we see functions from what we know.
What are some of the things that emerge from Mr. Palomar's efforts that might throw light upon all sense perception?
Notice that Mr. Palomar, like all of us, is capable of perceiving waves unproblematically. It is only when he tries consciously to perceive a wave, as some sort of well defined object, that questions and problems arise. It is only when he restricts his holistic modes of experience in order to really focus on just his visual perceptions that difficulties come up. The whole thrust of phenomenological philosophy made use of this sort of thing: common and unproblematical perceptions do become problematical and interesting when one subjects the experience of perception to careful scrutiny. This happens whether one investigates how we perceive grass, stones, trees, ideas, emotions, memories, music, waves ...., anything and everything!
Waves, like all sense objects, are "seen" as foregrounds within a horizon of contrasts: other waves, the shore, the sky. All objects of perception appear against a background of apperception. Apperception means, ap-perception or "perceived-with". The apperceptual background is necessarily perceived with the perceptual foreground because the contrast between foreground and background is necessary to give form. Waves are more difficult to see as discrete objects partly because their backgrounds often shift to disrupt the foreground over time.
The holistic dimension to sense perceptions is not directly perceived but must be arrived at through a reflection. Or, as van Manen writes, “And yet it only through the quest of fundamental reflection that we can become more fully who we are ...” Analysis disrupts the taken-for-granted; per William James, "with critical philosophy, havoc is made of everything."
This line bears more general philosophical lesson to be learned from Mr. Palomar's study of waves on page 6: "If it were not for his impatience to reach a complete, definitive conclusion of his visual operation, looking at waves would be a very restful exercise for him and could save him from neurasthenia, heart attack, and gastric ulcer. And it could perhaps be the key to mastering the world's complexity by reducing it to its simplest mechanism."
Science has basically been an effort to reduce the universe to its simplest mechanisms. It has been an effort to do so that begins with sense experiences. It must take certain types of sense experience to be unproblematical. Waves would not be chosen as a beginning place for the assumptions made by most scientists regarding unproblematical sense experience. But the exercise of examining waves could be used by a phenomenologist or by a postmodern philosopher to cast doubt on all sense experience and thus put the project of science into question. The point is not to negate science, but rather to recast the significance of scientific theory and relativize it somewhat.
By staring at waves, the structures taken for granted in common sense experience all of a sudden appear to be problems. Sense experience is revealed to be based on structures that may have as much to do with the nature of consciousness or culture as the nature of a reality existing independently of our knowledge and experience. This insight has informed several schools of philosophy. Calvino articulates the insight on page 7: "Is this perhaps the real result that Mr. Palomar is about to achieve? To make the waves run in the opposite direction, to overturn time, to perceive the true substance of the world beyond sensory and mental habits?"
But Mr. Palomar is unable to take this insight any further. Perhaps it is because he hoped to perceive the truth he sought, rather than find it in some non-perceptual way. But what other way could there be? At this point in the novel, sense perception remains the paradigm of unproblematical, certain knowledge for Mr. Palomar: thoughts can only direct more efforts at "directly perceiving". And these efforts come to no avail. Perception is found to be un-graspably complex to Mr. Palomar and yet no other type of experience is revealed to promise a more certain type of knowledge.
For our purposes, then, is Mr. Palomar limited in the kinds of data he can collect and limited in the forms of analysis in which to understand the data? Does too much of the subjective and normative lies in the background? Is he, perhaps like you, yet not ready to deal with the data fully?
Comments are discussion are welcome
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