Verbatim

Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We [...]

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Proprioception, the perception of movement and spatial orientation arising from stimuli inside the body, is a medical concept. Although the name for it is not well known, the phenomemon is familiar to all of us. Our proprioceptors incessantly inform us that we are standing up, inclining our head, squinting our eyes, or clenching our fists. [...]

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These antiquated terms - “blue-green algae,” “protozoa,” “higher animals,” “lower plants,” and many others - remain in use despite their penchant to propagate biological malaise and ignorance. The use of these insults to the living benefits those people whose budgets, class notes, and social organization depend on their continuity. I suggest that one reason Wallin’s [...]

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Each age interprets its universe in terms of what is currently important to it. Ancient animistic people wanting to make sense of the starry sky saw it as a zoo of people and animals—the Hunter, the Swan, the Lion, the Dog. The mechanical age of the eighteenth century bred a mechanistic philosophy; in the [...]

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For centuries, a common habit among learning theorists has been to characterize cognitive processes in terms of prevailing technologies. Among the tools and machines that have been used to describe thinking are catapults, hydraulics, telegraphs, telephone switchboards, and, most recently, computers.
The further one goes back into history, the more inappropriate such comparisons seem. And, conversely, [...]

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Learning cannot be designed. Ultimately, it belongs to the realm of experience and practice. It follows the negotiation of meaning; it moves on its own terms. It slips through the cracks; it creates its own cracks. Learning happens, design or no design. And yet there are few more urgent tasks than to design social infrastructures [...]

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Some part of the system (…an organization, a community, a team, a nation) notices something. It might be in a memo, a chance comment, a news report. It chooses to be disturbed by this. Chooses is the operative word here–the freedom to be disturbed belongs to the system. No one ever tells a living system [...]

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We often think of memory in a nostalgic or trivial way - such as knowing the capital of the United States or being able to find our car keys - and as somethng relating simply to the past. Yet the reason our brains have remarkabley powerful capacities for memories is that memory is actually for [...]

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The democratization of technology has made NGOs more powerful and terrorism more lethal. The United States must adjust its mental framework to this new landscape. Our post-9/11 focus has been on the use of hard power - the top board - when the problems we face stem from transnational issues on the bottom board. One [...]

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