After my sister Fanny passed away, we closed the piano and moved away. We moved up to the Bronx where my father was a builder and we moved into one of the buildings that he built. During the summer we used to go away on vacation. My sister Rose used to go for the entire summer because her two children went to camp nearby. And my mother used to go there, I think, for the whole summer too. Continue reading
Since its publication in 1871 as part of Through the Looking-glass, Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” has become one of the quintessential examples of “nonsense poetry” in the English language. Such a classification largely reflects the poem’s apparent non-referentiality when set against the background of a theory of language that claims unambiguous reference as the sole (or at least, highest) goal of language use. Since Carroll used a number of words that appeared to have “no sense”, and hence no referents, “Jabberwocky” as a whole appeared to be not fully “meaningful”, and hence not fully referential — i.e. the poem appeared to be “nonsense”. Continue reading
This paper is an attempt to weave an account of developmental psychology that is alternately descriptive and normative. In the descriptive mode it takes the discipline as data for which it seeks an explanation. In the normative mode, it takes the discipline as an enterprise for which it seeks optimal goals, theories and methodologies. Descriptive, it is anthropological, examining a Western sociocultural artifact. Normative, it is psychological, participating in a scientific undertaking to systematically study human ontogeny. Descriptive, it is on the outside looking in; normative, it is on the inside looking out. Collectively this paper claims that developmental psychology neither is what it says it is nor what it ought to be and asks: What is this project called “developmental psychology” and how ought it best be conducted? Continue reading
This paper is an essay in the full sense of the word: it is an attempt — and essay — to simultaneously work out two problems, one theoretical and one practical. On the one hand it seeks to articulate a theory of texts in social contexts. On the other it seeks to apply such a perspective to Homer’s Odyssey. From the point of view of the first problem, then, the Odyssey is simply an example, an empirical means to a theoretical end. From the point of view of the second problem, however, an understanding of the Odyssey is an end in itself. Continue reading
Did you ever want to be a hero? As a child did you ever fantasize about being the Lone Ranger? Or a knight in shining armor? Perhaps your taste ran more towards Superman and Batman. Continue reading