An earlier paper (Pask, 1976) introduced conversational techniques, some involving a human participant in dialogue with a student, others involving a mechanically or computer implemented 'participant' through which the student 'talks to himself' under restrictions imposed by the device. In either case (human or mechanical monitoring) the subject matter of a conversation is represented in a liberally conceived, but standard, fashion, as a conversational domain consisting in an entailment structure (embodying one or more description schemes and indicating the many ways in which one topic may be known in terms of or derived from others) and behaviour graphs (one for each topic in the domain) that prescribe what may be done to model or explain the topic in question. Within this framework, the conversational techniques secure, or approximate, a standard condition for experiments on learning.
Gordon PaskRelated topics
case computer condition conversation description device dialogue done domain early embodying entailment fashion framework human known learning matter mechanical model paper participant pask question standard structure student subject topic under others behaviour monitoring waysRelated quotes
A work upon the plan originally contemplated by the Author seems still to be required, to initiate the young and uninstructed in the study of those MEDALS 0F CREATION-those electrotypes of nature-the mineralized remains of the plants and animals which successively flourished in the earlier ages of our planet, in periods incalculably remote, and long antecedent to all human history and tradition. With this conviction the present volumes are offered... as a guide for the Student and the Amateur Collector of fossil remains; for the intelligent Observer who may desire to possess a general knowledge of the subject, without intending to pursue Geology as a science; and for the Tourist who may wish, in the course of his travels, to employ profitably a leisure hour in quest of those interesting memorials of the ancient physical revolutions of our globe, which he will find everywhere presented to his observation.
Gideon Mantell
To conclude, if we call light, those rays which illuminate objects, and radiant heat, those which heat bodies, it may be inquired whether light be essentially different from radiant heat? In answer to which I would suggest that we are not allowed, by the rules of philosophizing, to admit two different causes to explain certain effects, if they may be accounted for by one. ...If this be a true account of the solar heat, for the support of which I appeal to my experiments, it remains only for us to admit that such of the rays of the sun as have the refrangibility of those which are contained in the prismatic spectrum, by the construction of the organs of sight, are admitted under the appearance of light and colors, and that the rest, being stopped in the coats and humors of the eye, act on them, as they are known to do on all the other parts of our body, by occasioning a sensation of heat.
William Herschel
He ventured to enter his most earnest protest against the mode in which several Members of that House were inclined to treat anything that ran out of the common ruck-and introduced them to schemes and ideas which former debates had not reached. The scheme of the hon. Gentleman was not new-he should not have thought that it was new to many Members of that House; the literature of the country had been full of it for three or four years. They all instinctively felt that it was a scheme that had no chance of success. It was not of our atmosphere-it was not in accordance with our habits; it did not belong to us. They all knew that it could not pass. Whether that was creditable to the House or not was a question into which he would not inquire; but every Member of the House the moment he saw the scheme upon the Paper saw that it belonged to the class of impracticable things.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. There was a widespread myth of the 1970s, a myth along Tom Kuhn's (1962) Structure of Scientific Revolutions lines. The Keynesianism, which worked so well in Camelot and brought forth a long epoch of price-level stability with good Q growth and nearly full employment, gave way to a new and quite different macro view after 1966. A new paradigm, monistic monetarism, so the tale narrates, gave a better fit. And therefore King Keynes lost self esteem and public esteem. The King is dead. Long live King Milton!
Contemplate the true facts. Examine 10 prominent best forecasting models 1950 to 1980: Wharton, Townsend–Greenspan, Michigan Model, St. Louis Reserve Bank, Citibank Economic Department under Walter Wriston's choice of Lief Olson, et cetera. ... M did matter as for almost everyone. But never did M alone matter systemically, as post-1950 Friedman monetarism professed.
Paul Samuelson
In biology the Cartesian view of living organisms as machines, constructed from separate parts, still provides the dominant conceptual framework. Although Descartes' simple mechanistic biology could not be carried very far and had to be modified considerably during the subsequent three hundred years, the belief that all aspects of living organisms can be understood by reducing them to their smallest constituents, and by studying the mechanisms through which these interact, lies at the very basis of most contemporary biological thinking. This passage from a current textbook on modern biology is a clear expression of the reductionist credo: 'One of the acid tests of understanding an object is the ability to put it together from its component parts. Ultimately, molecular biologists will attempt to subject their understanding of cell structure and function to this sort of test by trying to synthesize a cell.
Fritjof Capra
