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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... | 30000010345148 | QH360.5 D48 2014 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
Empirical and philosophical perspectives on scaffolding that highlight the role of temporal and temporary resources in development across concepts of culture, cognition, and evolution.
"Scaffolding" is a concept that is becoming widely used across disciplines. This book investigates common threads in diverse applications of scaffolding, including theoretical biology, cognitive science, social theory, science and technology studies, and human development. Despite its widespread use, the concept of scaffolding is often given short shrift; the contributors to this volume, from a range of disciplines, offer a more fully developed analysis of scaffolding that highlights the role of temporal and temporary resources in development, broadly conceived, across concepts of culture, cognition, and evolution.
The book emphasizes reproduction, repeated assembly, and entrenchment of heterogeneous relations, parts, and processes as a complement to neo-Darwinism in the developmentalist tradition of conceptualizing evolutionary change. After describing an integration of theoretical perspectives that can accommodate different levels of analysis and connect various methodologies, the book discusses multilevel organization; differences (and reciprocality) between individuals and institutions as units of analysis; and perspectives on development that span brains, careers, corporations, and cultural cycles.
Contributors
Colin Allen, Linnda R. Caporael, James Evans, Elihu M. Gerson, Simona Ginsburg, James R. Griesemer, Christophe Heintz, Eva Jablonka, Sanjay Joshi, Shu-Chen Li, Pamela Lyon, Sergio F. Martinez, Christopher J. May, Johann Peter Murmann, Stuart A. Newman, Jeffrey C. Schank, Iddo Tavory, Georg Theiner, Barbara Hoeberg Wimsatt, William C. Wimsatt
Author Notes
Linnda R. Caporael is Professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
James R. Griesemer is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis.
William C. Wimsatt is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. He was awarded the 2013 David L. Hull Prize by the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology.
Table of Contents
| Series Foreword | p. ix |
| Preface | p. xi |
| Acknowledgments | p. xiii |
| Developing Scaffolds: An Introduction | p. 1 |
| I Toward Materiality: Three Perspectives | p. 21 |
| 1 Reproduction and the Scaffolded Development of Hybrids | p. 23 |
| 2 Evolution, Groups, and Scaffolded Minds | p. 57 |
| 3 Entrenchment and Scaffolding: An Architecture for a Theory of Cultural Change | p. 77 |
| II Scope and Scale | p. 107 |
| 4 Excitable Media in Medias Res: How Physics Scaffolds Metazoan Development and Evolution | p. 109 |
| 5 Communication and the Evolution of Cognition | p. 125 |
| 6 Models as Scaffolds for Understanding | p. 147 |
| III Generativity, Entrenchment, and Boundaries | p. 169 |
| 7 Stress in Mind: A Stress Response Hypothesis of Cognitive Evolution | p. 171 |
| 8 Onwards and Upwards with the Extended Mind: From Individual to Collective Epistemic Action | p. 191 |
| 9 Scaffolding on Core Cognition | p. 209 |
| IV Granularity and Reciprocality | p. 229 |
| 10 Symbols as Scaffolding | p. 231 |
| 11 Technological Scaffoldings for the Evolution of Culture and Cognition | p. 249 |
| 12 Some Problems of Analyzing Cultural Evolution | p. 265 |
| V Reproduction and Development | p. 283 |
| 13 Scaffolding in Economics, Management, and the Design of Technologies | p. 287 |
| 14 The Reproduction of the Social: A Developmental System Approach | p. 307 |
| 15 Biocultural Coconstruction of Brain Plasticity across the Life Span: From Cognitive Training to Neurotransmitters | p. 327 |
| 16 Footholds and Handholds: Scaffolding Cognition and Career | p. 343 |
| Developing Scaffolds: An Epilogue | p. 363 |
| Contributors | p. 389 |
| Index | p. 391 |
