At 08:57 AM 8/2/2001 +0200, Johann van der Merwe wrote:
>Dear All
>In connection with Ken's post re the misuse of terms: I find it
>interesting how different people can interpret the same word or term in
>different ways. I'm sure that we have all come across this.
I agree with this. There is very little terminological apprehension and
discipline. Too much intellectual anarchy when it comes to scholarly
discourse. The two words that were at the bottom of the discussion
"reflective" and "reflexive" were treated as mere words, not like terms.
There is a distinctive difference between a word and a term. The approach
to the clarification of the terms was not based on scholarly rationality,
but rather, on everyday reasoning.
You might disagree with me, but there is too much tolerance toward everyday
reasoning, hands-on-thinking (instead of heads-on-thinking) and empowerment
through methodological anarchy. We do not gain anything from this -- we
just roam in a vicious circle for years.
Verstehen is a term that is introduced by Max Weber and the pathos of this
term comes in conjunction with Soziologie -- Verstehen Soziologie. Weber
was an intellectual and he had a disdain for hands-on-thinking. He as a man
of high culture and a phylosophical mind and his Verstehen approach towards
understanding the world was in opposition to the social physics of
Durkheim and latter, the logical empiricists. His disagreement was not
fueled by the low practical value of social physics, but rather, its
mechanistic approach to the complexity of the social phenomena.
I also want to express my dismay how many people believe in the high
effectiveness of the hands-on-thinking. I will agree that it has its
advantages in low-intellectual situations that require high level of motor
skills and process organization. However, it is pretty inefficient in
situations that require understanding the essence of phenomena and abstract
concept in particular. You can't understand the concept of culture by
engaging in hands-on exercises. One needs abstract thinking capabilities.
Hands-on exercises are not the best methods for developing abstract
thinking. Abstract thinking is about intellectual appropriation.
Regards,
Lubomir Popov
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