In Defense of Pluralism:

An Essay in Trespass
Anindya Datta

As I read the "Call for Papers" for this second volume of the PSC Journal
on Writing Across the Curriculum, I feel I can claim that this essay belongs
to one of the suggested topics, namely, reflections on writing in the disciplines.
Five years ago, Sally Boland put me on the original committee called the
Task Force on Writing Across the Curriculum. I attended quite religiously
the first few meetings of the Task Force and even made some comments
from time to time as the ebb tides of adrenaline alternated with the flow
tides. Much of my comments was not very well focused, partly because
I did not, to start with, have an adequate idea of what writing across the
curriculum meant. Instinctively, however, I made one comment, that the
projects for writing had to be very different for the different disciplines,
that we must eschew Procrustean uniformity. Mary-Lou Hinman was
anxious to embark on the program and I was too ignorant to be of much
help. So, I initiated and accomplished my replacement by a person whose
certitude about the summum bonum of life allows me generally, albeit para­
doxically, to preserve my own values at some safe distance.

The Task Force took off soon thereafter, and Mary-Lou's expostula­
tions and remonstrations worked wonders with me. I was converted to
her cause. I participated in a well-attended and well-orchestrated work­
shop, discovered some fascinating persons like Robert Hayden, and even

44 Writing Across the Curriculum, Vol. II, August 1990

DOI: 10.37514/WAC-J.1990.2.1.06
 In Defense of Pluralism: An Essay in Trespass 6

did some writing assignments in the presence of a mixed gathering and

read them aloud. Shortly after that, I introduced "writing" (Journals,
Reports, etc.) in my courses as a regular and systematic feature. Things
were quite upbeat for some time and my original caveat, that the projects
of writing had to be very different for different disciplines, was about to
recede into oblivion, when suddenly came a rude awakening, the circum-
stances of which may be less important here than the question that was
raised in my mind afresh.

There is a fundamental, but unresolved, question of what makes good

teaching in a discipline which simultaneously enables the students to write
well in that discipline. In what follows, I shall attempt to provide a sketch
of some material, which veers around the problematique centered in this
fundamental, but unresolved, question. The limitation of space will not
permit me to do more.

Following Plato, a body of thought aspiring to resemble anything like

a philosophy of education must have, to a greater or less degree, an ethical
theory justifying a goal, a metaphysical theory supporting some of its
operational implications, and an epistemologicalframework explaining the
effectiveness of the teaching methods. Whatever the importance of it to
the modern mind, a secularized refrain in terms of Locke, namely, the
production and maintenance of a good society, defined as one in which
people find pleasure or happiness in the performance of duty (or, perhaps,
pursuit of life), gets inscribed on the mast of any modern-day educational
project. With metaphysics being held at bay, therefore, the epistemological
desideratum turns out to be the most contested ground in the modern
education system.

In Europe in the inter-war period, and in America until as late as the

early ~ O ' Seducational
, psychology fell under the domination of behavior-
ism, which sought to banish "mind" from all theory of education. It was
almost a non-arguable thesis, a pronunciamento, a policy statement, in the
name of objective methods. Fortunately, its spell was not too long-lived.
 46 Writing Across The Curriculum (August 1990)

Today even among the behavioral revisioniststhe naive model of stimulus-

response is 110 longer in use. The organism, 0, as a black box, has been
inserted into the the S - O R model, and interactive feedbackshave appeared
in other models. The decisive break with behaviorism, however, came
first tentatively with the Gestalt psychologists and then more dramatically
with Piaget and his followers, and the linguistic theorist, Chomsky. Although
they offer very different perspectives on the nature of language and its
development, both Piaget and Chomsky are firmly opposed to the view
that human learning can be understood in terms of the reinforcement
connections between stimulus and response. The fact, however, remains
that the bane of behaviorism is still widespread, sometimes under different
rubrics, often incognito, in our education system.

Today even a freshman knows something about cognitive science, the

most active field in the theory of learning. Cognition is defined as the
"mental activities-how information enters the mind, how it is stored and
transformed, and how it is retrieved and used to perform such complex
activities as problem solving and reasoning. Thinking-the manipulation
and transformation of information inmemory-and language-a sequence
of words-are important aspects of cognition." (Santrock, Psychology, 2nd
edition, 1988). And how is language defined?-"a sequence of words that
involves infinite generativity, displacement, and rule systems. The rule
systems include phonology (sound system), morphology (meaning of
sounds we say and hear), syntax (how words are combined for acceptable
phrases and sentences), semantics (meaning of words and sentences), and
pragmatics (ability to engage in conversation effectively)."

So, language, it would seem, is a highly complex, but strictly rule-

governed, infinitude. And the newly emerging cognitive science seeks to
deal with the mediation of our knowledge of the external world by rep-
resentations, i.e., by mental objects that stand for things outside. It should
follow then that the mediation that connects mental representations in
different disciplines with their corresponding expressions through written
language will call for different kinds of facilitation for its efficiency. When
a mathematical discipline is at issue, there can be some fascinating, though
 In Defense of Pluralism: An Essay in Trespass 47

unsuspected, features involved.

Philosophically speaking, cognitive science has very pronounced

Cartesian implications. The first such implication is that representations
have no necessary connection to the things they represent (often a
mathematician's stock-in-trade), known as representational skepticism.
The second implication is that it is possible to study the mind without
paying any attention to the reality it is supposed to represent (again often
a mathematician's stock-in-trade), known as methodological solipsism.
The third implication is that mind and body are two different kinds of
things, known as Cartesian dualism.

When a discipline (say, a mathematical discipline) is so characteris-

tically imbued with the first two implications, is it possible that the mapping
into language in such a case is best accomplished with a stricter adherence
to the structural formalism? At a lower level of abstraction, we may point
out that the cognitive science, as it is developing, is not free from very
thorny ontological and epistemological issues. When a mathematical
statistician deals with the concept of R2 (goodness of fit), is she dealing
with a propositional attitude or an example of qualia (feltexperience)? Is
it know that or know how? Is it procedural,declarative, or tacit knowledge?
One may know declaratively that a bicycle has two wheels and that one
must balance in order to ride it. One may not know how to ride a bicycle
on that basis. That requires prolonged problem-solving, which a learner
of mathematics must undertake (one can also learn to work out a mathe-
matical problem by rote, without learning). As Kohler showed, such
problem-solving needs insight, preceded by cool, quiet, prolonged pon-
dering.

Incidentally, take this questionable, but standard, claim. Integration

of ideas is supposed to be facilitated when there is a direct relation between
two ideas, and impeded when the relation must be inferred. A textbook
example is as follows:
 48 Writing Across The Curriculum {August 1990)

Intergration facilitated:
Ed was given an alligator for his birthday. The al-
ligator was his favorite present.
Integration delayed :
Ed was given lots of things for his birthday. The
alligator was his favorite present.
(Weiten, Psychology, 1989)

Will it be invariably wrong to say that the second case, by creating

a momentary suspense and the appropriate atmosphere, makes a deeper
impression on the mind? The second one is cooler, quieter and more
effective. A mathematician may prefer the second one! It may be more
like a mathematical conclusion.

What I am driving at is that a discipline like mathematics, for example,

is a uniquely structured discipline, and human language, too, is a complex,
but highly structured, matter. It is possible that lectures in mathematics,
for example, at the college level should be more structured, not less; that
students may both learn mathematics and write about it better when a
cool, quiet, formal, non-emotional environment prevails in the classroom,
free from the excesses of noisy catechism. Such an environment may not
be created successfully overnight. We may need to teach our students of
the IAC (Introduction to the Academic Community) course what to expect
in some of the disciplines in particular, that neither being couch-potatoes
nor behaving hyperactively in the classroom is appropriate or beneficial,
that emotion can also be recollected in tranquility. Or, alternatively, it takes
the right emotion to control emotion. (Incidentally, one of my nephews
finished College Algebra at the age of eight or nine, helped non-intrusively
along by me. Later in life, he also rearned the National Science Foundation,
US. President’s Award for young investigators in science. It was all
accomplished in tranquility. He has written two books and many papers
since then. I am also finding my students writing their journals quite well
on the basis of my relatively structured lectures.)

Indeed, the connections between mathematics and language may be

 In Defense of Pluralism: An Essay in T r e s p s 49

very deep and organic. In his Managua lectures, Chomsky speculated on

the mathematical abilityof human beings, considering that it was never
a factor in evolution. He thought the mathematical ability of human beings
might just be a reflection of some other ability. What is that ability?
Probably language. In a certain abstractsense, the structure of mathematics
is abstracted from the structure of language.

But that is a deeper matter which may never be resolved. In the

meantime, we may quite advisedly ponder over the followingremarks of
Bertrand Russell on the contrast between Behaviorism and Gestalt psy-
chology:

Animals studied by Americans rush about frantically,with

incredible dispIay of hustle and pep, and at last achieve
the desired solution by chance. Animals observed by
Germans sit still and think, and at last evolve the solution
out of their inner consciousness.

(quoted in Johnson-Laird, Computer and the Mind, 1988)

That should inhibit any unthinking zeal on the part of anybody for
regimenting our teachers' styles.

References

Chomsky, Noam: Language and Problems of Knowledge-Managua Lectures,

1988.
Eco, Urnberto (ed.): Meaning and Mental Representations, 1988.
Edwards, Paul (ed.): Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1972.
Felman, Shoshana: Literature and Psychoanalysis, 1982.
Johnson-Laird,Philip: Computer and the Mind-An Introduction to Cognitive
Science, 1988.
 50 Writing Across The Curriculum (August 7990)

Kohler, W.: The Mentality of Apes, 1925.

Schwyzer, Hubert: The Unity of Understanding-A Study in Kantian Problems,
1990.
Santrock, John: Psychology, 1988.
Stillings, Neil, et al.: Cognitive S c i e n c e - - A n Introduction 1989.
Vygotsky, Lev (ed. by Kozulin, Alex): Thought and Language, 1988.
Weiten, Wayne: Psychology, 1989.
Wood, David: How Children Think and Learn, 1988.

Born in Dhaka in BangladBh,Anindya Datta had his early education in Calcutta,

India. He did his graduate work at the University of Calcufta, Washington
University and Florida State University. He taught in the University System of
Florida for nine years before he came to the Plymouth State College in 1983, where
he teaches economics. Professor Datta was recently named the 1990 Distinguished
Teacher at Plymouth State College.