WALDON IN
CONTEXT
2006
SUMMARY
OF NAMES CITED
Page
Sherrington,
Sir Charles Scott
2
References
(Hannaford) footnotes, p6
WALDON
IN CONTEXT
.
. the rudiments of a cultural
scientific framework for Dr Geoffrey Waldon’s ideas on human survival and
the creation of experience. TB
2006
1 HISTORY
& TRADITION
Geoffrey
Waldon was most insistent that he worked out his theories of human development
and learning from scratch, based upon his own observations of the baby and
growing child. There is plenty of
evidence that this is true: many of the important aspects of his ideas do not
appear anywhere in the historical literature that I am aware of,
Nevertheless,
there is a tradition, going back at least to the middle of the 19th Century,
that would provide valuable nourishment for his way of looking at human
behaviour and understanding.
Sir Charles Scott Sherrington,
Nobel prize-winning physiologist, is commonly described as the founder of
neurophysiology, and over the course of his immensely long life (1857 - 1952) he
systematically investigated the workings of the human nervous system on an
unprecedented scale.
One
of his major contributions to the “biology of behaviour” is his highlighting
of the crucial role of proprioception in
the human sensory apparatus, which enables contemplation of the motor
theory of thought.
Jean Piaget, zoologist and
psychologist, put together a theory of child development that placed great
emphasis on the play activities of the growing child.
Although
he never devised a theory of learning as such, his observations on how children
develop through distinctive “stages” of understanding, and his emphasis on
the critical importance of spatial
exploration in the child’s play, have proved immensely useful for other
workers in the field.
Arnold Gesell was one of the eminent
pre-behaviourist psychologists who, from the 1920s on, along with a number of
associates, made detailed and non-intrusive observation of children in their
natural environment - at play, both alone and with their peers - the cornerstone
of his ideas on the crucial role of self-directed play in the building of the self
and the social persona.
Gilbert Ryle, Professor of Metaphysics at Oxford University
through the 1940s, may seem an unlikely inclusion in this roll-call of relevant
names from the past, but amongst his many musings on the nature of human
understanding was the observation that thinking
and movement are extreme points on the same
continuum [my emphasis].
Whether
he intended it or not, this statement puts him, at least temporarily, in the
same school as those neuroscientists who have come to espouse the motor
theory of thought.
Finally,
Edouard Seguin, a French educationalist and polymath, wrote in 1866 of his
educational endeavours with children who were regarded as ineducable
“idiots”, in the terminology of the day:
We shall use objects, paints,
crayons, scissors, paper, and all manners of models and constructions in our
efforts to let purpose and meaning emerge from the lives of these unfortunates .
. .
2 CONTEMPORARY CONTEXT
In
a series of articles in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, published between
1995 and 1997, Rodney Cotterill has
described in some detail his researches into the relationship between
electrochemical activity in the central nervous system and the processes that
may be termed thought, and directed
action.
He
concludes that motor activity - physical movement - is the only possible source
of the phenomenon that he chooses to call “consciousness”: this term is used
in such a broad way that it includes everything that we may mean by
“understanding”.
Cotterill
is Professor of Biophysics at the Danish Technical University, Lyngby.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Maxine
Sheets-Johnstone, an independent scholar who lectures in the Department of
Philosophy at the University of Oregon, has written a formidable Natural
History of Consciousness (republished in
The Primacy of Movement, 1998).
In this she traces how the
proprioceptive capacity of all animals, from the earliest single celled
organisms through to the particular multicellular complexity of human beings,
gives rise - directly, and without need
for additional components or levels of explanation - to all those forms
of knowings that are embodied in the phrase “corporeal consciousness”.
Key ideas are embodied in the
terms “animate form” – the thing that moves in a lifelike way (i.e. not a
stone rolling down a hillside) because it is alive; and the
“tactile-kinaesthetic” body – which interacts with and creates its
[understanding of] its world, the foundational element in the (bodily) system,
regardless of the total number of “senses” it is supposed to deploy.
In
1996, Dr T Roberts, former Reader in
Physiology at the University of Glasgow, put a “position paper” on Sensory
Perception on to the Internet, inviting peer scrutiny on the ideas he was
setting forth.
It
is significant that these ideas are not especially unusual, historically, but
seem radical in present circumstances. Do
not rely just on the evidence of “the [Aristotelian] five senses”, he is
saying, some other factor, derived from proprioception, is the central component
in our making sense of the world (in Waldon, this component is the fundamental process
- as opposed to the activity - of sorting and matching).
What
is striking, though, is that Roberts mentions in passing, as if it is widely
accepted fact, that motor activity - simply, movement - is clearly the basis of
learning, since it generates new sensory input from both the
proprioceptors and, in a monitoring role, the exteroceptors (usually in the form
of vision, hearing and sense of touch).
Also
in 1996, the philosopher Natika Newton
published a book irresistibly entitled Foundations
of Understanding, in which she traces the origins of [mental] Imagery,
Language, and Emotion to the basic movement patterns which are common to all
human beings.
As
she remarks at one point in the book, drawing on recent neuroscientific work by
Ito and Damasio, the brain mechanisms underlying abstract thought are extremely
similar to those underlying action-planning in the context of bodily movement.
Jean Ayres, developmental psychologist,
devised a theory about the crucial role of what she terms “sensory
integration”.
In
this, emphasis is placed upon the importance of achieving balance and
coordinated bilateral movements in order for normal development to take place.
Through
the organisation of the senses (including proprioception), the nervous system
itself is organised and the whole of the child - mind, body, emotions, spirit,
if you like - can become harmonious and grounded (Ayres makes much of the human
being’s relationship with gravity).
I
believe that Sensory Integration and
Learning Disabilities, published in 1974 in Aageles, USA, by Western
Psychological Services, gives a comprehensive account of her ideas as they apply
to both “able” and “learning disabled” people.
In
a book entitled The Hand: How its Use
Shapes the Brain, published by Pantheon in the USA and reviewed in the issue
of New Scientist of 26 September 1998,
Frank Wilson makes some intriguing
points.
As well as arguing his central
tenet, that fortuitous changes in hand design, made possible by permanent
bipedal walking following descent from the trees, have led to the evolution of a
large brain - rather than vice versa - he comments on the peculiar significance
of cerebral asymmetry and on the development of spontaneous pointing in human
beings, at around [postnatal] age 14 months.
Bilaterally
complementary versatile hands; greater general ability; development of
recognisably human patterns of thought, and spoken language as the tool-using
mechanism that we are so familiar with -
this is an enticing model of evolution, although why it is not already generally
accepted seems puzzling to me. What
other theories are in town?
The
author ends by advocating an educational system that includes plenty of
“hands-on” contact with real objects, in itself worth the price of the book,
I'd suggest.
Finally, Carla Hannaford, a neurophysiologist working in education in the USA, has produced an invaluable easy-to-read book, Smart Moves: Why learning is not all in your head, which could serve as a primer for the role of the whole body, including the nervous system, in the processes of learning. A flavour of her thesis may be conveyed by this extract from the chapter entitled :
Assumptions about what's "mental" and
what's "physical”
(USA
spelling throughout)
The very idea that areas of the brain responsible for human movement could be located in the cerebral cortex, presumed to be the province of higher thought, was troubling even to scientists when it was first proposed. The German physicians Eduard Hitzig and Gustav Fritsch first made this discovery in 1864, confirming it by stimulating the cortical surface on living dogs and observing muscular contractions on the opposite sides of the body. When the English neurologist John Hughlings Jackson suggested the existence of a motor cortex within the cerebral hemispheres, he definitely touched a different sort of nerve. "There seems to be an insuperable objection to the notion that the cerebral hemispheres are for movement," he wrote in 1870. "The reason, I suppose, is that the convolutions of the cortex are considered to be not for movement but for ideas."[i]
This objection still persists today, and in fact is addressed by Howard Gardner in his delineation of the Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence:
A description of use of the body as a form of intelligence may at first jar. There has been a radical disjunction in our recent cultural tradition between the activities of reasoning, on the one hand, and the activities of the manifestly physical part of our nature, as epitomised by our bodies, on the other. This divorce between the "mental" and the "physical" has not infrequently been coupled with a notion that what we do with our bodies is somehow less privileged, less special, than those problem-solving routines carried out chiefly through the use of language, logic, or some other relatively abstract symbolic system.[ii]
In addition to many other pertinent observations, Gardner points out that rather than considering motor activity as subservient to “pure” thought, we might follow neuroscientist Roger Sperry in reversing our perspective and consider thinking as an instrument directed to the end of executing actions. “Rather than motor activity as a subsidiary form designed to satisfy the demands of the higher centres, one should instead conceptualize cerebration as a means of bringing into motor behaviour additional refinement, increased direction towards distant, future goals and greater overall adaptiveness and survival value.”[iii]
Learning involves the building of skills, and skills of every manner are built through the movement of muscles – not just the physical skills of athletes, dancers and artisans, but also the intellectual skills used in classrooms and workplaces. Storytellers entertain, teachers teach, politicians lead through the complex muscular expressions of language, speech and gesture. Medicine, art, music, science: competence in these and other professions develops through an intricate internal networking among thought, muscles, and emotions. Skills are all of a piece, muscles are no less important to skill development than any other component.
