Chapter One, "The Study Of Human Development"
As described in the introductory chapter, most theories of human development hinge on dualities; nature versus nurture, continuity versus discontinuity, universal versus context-specific. And more detailed: Erikson, for instance, lists the psychosocial stages "trust vs. mistrust," "autonomy vs. shame and doubt," "initiative vs. guilt," and so on. The learning theory, as expressed by B.F. Skinner, predicts development based on the feedback to a given behavior - reinforcement vs. punishment. Piaget's cognitive-development theory internalizes this process and gives the individual more agency, but it's still a series of experiments that succeed or fail.
Why are there so many dualities in human development? I'm not suggesting that researchers or theorists are rigidly assigning behaviors and individuals ENTIRELY into column A or column B - for instance, it is increasingly accepted that the true answer to "nature vs. nurture" lands somewhere in the middle - but still, for all these big questions, there are two poles and you must answer based inside that duality.
Why? There are two possibilities I can think of.
First, that it is a echo of the scientific method being applied to these questions. A well-designed experiment will either prove the hypothesis, or fail to prove it. This either/or, wired in to the discernment technique, is amplified and carried out into the larger theories.
The second possibility, not entirely separate from the first, is that duality is intrinsic to how humans view the world. Our brains are difference engines, sorting and categorizing everything we see into as few different piles as possible. "That thing will eat me" or "I can eat that thing." It's how we've always interpreted the world, long before it was codified into the scientific method; therefore, it's how we develop within the world.
- Ben
Hi Benjamin,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your thought that it's how we interpret the world. There are so many people in this world compared to the theories that we read about in Chapter 1. Each person is an individual, which means we are unique, so we all have different perceptions of how we view events and situations that occur in our life. I do believe that we can either shape our life into a positive or negative experience by the way we think. We have a choice; it's not the situation, it's how we react to a situation that can really make a difference in our lives.