The Neuron: Mapping a Cartography of Desire in the Transdisciplinary Connections Between Early Childhood Practices and the Neurosciences?

• In Event: Qualitative Data Analysis and Its Influence on Educational Practice and Policy

Abstract

What is a thinking mind and what counts as thinking? Are we merely neural realizations of what Clark (2011) calls a “brainbound” model? Or, is the mind some metaphysical phenomenon separate from the biological brain? Engaging in the emerging transdisciplinary field of educational-neuroscience, and trying to understand the problem of matter, mind, and thinking, it is necessary to fight, what Stengers (2007) points out as a “double fight” against dual idealist temptations; a reductive eliminativism and a humanisms metaphysics.

In this fight, the purpose of this study is to initiate a transdisciplinary data analysis of the The Neuron in different intersecting practices: scientific as well as early development and childhood practices, in order to attain relevant knowledge about what kind of educational realities and practices they might be productive of.

Theoretical framework

This study aspires to enact a New Empiricisms transdisciplinary data analysis. Theoretically, this kind of analysis rejects a materialism that can be identified with reductionism and eliminativism; that is, a reduction of the mind, thinking, and learning to the workings of neurons in the brain. Instead, it theoretically identifies with doing analyses of material-discursive practices, where matter and meaning are understood to be co-constitutive of each other (Barad 2007). Moreover, it strives to be productive of new potential realities that might have transformative effects for educational practices.

Mode of inquiry

Following Deleuze & Guattari (1987) and Mol (2002), this study makes the concept its methodology by mapping a cartography of the different desiring forces and practices that connect a number of studies in the neurosciences (including the educational-neurosciences) and practices of child development and early childhood education. A central question is what causes a researcher in a particular discipline and study to think in a specific way (Stengers 2007)? What are the material-discursive (scientific) practices, as well as the material, semiotic, and social desiring forces that are productive of this particular thinking and production of research? And what kinds of realities are produced by these practices of thinking?

Scholarly significance

The problem of what counts as thinking in educational practices is, undoubtedly, an important question. However, whether or not the neuro-sciences, the neuro-cognitive sciences, neuro-philosophy, or the philosophy of thinking can produce knowledge that is relevant to educational practices is not self-evident. The aim of this study is to map the historical, social and material (desiring) forces at play that connect the concept of The Neuron and its’ different scientific practices to the practices of early development and early childhood, in order to attain relevant knowledge about what educational consequences and practices they might be productive of.

References

Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway. Duke University Press.

Clark, A. (2007) Supersizing the Mind. Oxford University Press.

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A thousand plateaus. Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.

Mol, A. (2002) The Body Multiple. Duke University Press.

Stengers, I. (2007) “Diderot’s egg. Divorcing materialism from eliminativism”. Paper presented at the Radical Philosophy conference, Materials and Materialisms, London 12 May 2007.

Author

• Hillevi Lenz Taguchi, Stockholm University