Abstraction and embodiment: exploring the process of grasping a general

This paper reports from a case study which explores kindergarten children’s mathematical abstraction in a teaching–learning activity about reflection symmetry. From a dialectical perspective, abstraction is here conceived as a process, as a genuine part of human activity, where the learner establishes “a point of view from which the concrete can be seen as meaningfully related” (van Oers & Poland Mathematics Education Research Journal, 19(2), 10–22, 2007, p. 13–14). A cultural-historical semiotic perspective to embodiment is used to explore the characteristics of kindergarten children’s mathematical abstraction. In the selected segment, two 5-year-old boys explore the concept of reflection symmetry using a doll pram. In the activity, the two boys first point to concrete features of the sensory manifold, then one of the boys’ awareness gradually moves to the imagined and finally to grasping a general and establishing a new point of view. The findings illustrate the essential role of gestures, bodily actions, and rhythm, in conjunction with spoken words, in the two boys’ gradual process of grasping a general. The study advances our knowledge about the nature of mathematical abstraction and challenges the traditional view on abstraction as a sort of decontextualised higher order thinking. This study argues that abstraction is not a matter of going from the concrete to the abstract, rather it is an emergent and context-bound process, as a genuine part of children’s concrete embodied activities.

Assimilation, Integration or Inclusion? A Dialectical Perspective on the Organizational Socialization of Migrants

Given the increasing importance of migrations around the world, and the challenges that migrants face in entering the labor market, the process of socialization of migrants into organizations deserves more attention from management scholars. Indeed, societal discourses promoting equality and diversity often appear to be in contradiction with the unequal power relations migrants experience on entering the workforce. Drawing on a dialectic perspective and a qualitative meta-synthesis methodology, we show how the practices engaged in by organizations to socialize migrant employees are deeply embedded in and influenced by macro-social contexts that may place migrants at a disadvantage, giving rise to emerging tensions. We examine a range of contingencies that can mitigate the inequalities that migrants experience, and we reveal a variety of dynamic dialectical pathways surrounding migrant socialization practices through which they may be reproduced or transformed depending on the mutual relationships between situated conditions, emerging tensions and human praxes.

Visualizing the cultural landscape gene of traditional settlements in China: a semiotic perspective

China has a deep traditional culture and a long history, and is rich in traditional settlements (designated as “Famous Historic-Cultural Villages/Towns”, “Chinese Traditional Villages” by Chinese Government). To help people develop these traditional settlements to achieve the great goal of Chinese National Rejuvenation, Chinese scholar put forward the Cultural Landscape Genes of Traditional Settlements (CLGTS) in 2003. Since then, CLGTS theory has been employed to solve the issues of Chinese traditional settlements, such as the identification and regionalization of cultural landscape genes in traditional settlements, and the understanding of architectural features. Although CLGTS theory has made great strides in many application fields, there is still a lack of scientific findings in exploring the symbol mechanism from a perspective of semiotics. To explore this, we firstly examined the core features of CLGTS through a dialectical perspective. We analyzed two features of CLGTS in depth. First, CLGTS is the dialectical combination of macro settlement image and micro cultural factors of traditional settlements, material appearance and inherent traditional cultural implications, overall features and local self-renewal mechanisms, qualitative and quantitative methods, superiority of cultural factors and rich cultural connotation. Second, CLGTS is famous for its nonlinearity, self-organization, and self-iteration due to various spatial shapes and complex structures. Based on the above, we first proposed the concept of Symbolization Method of CLGTS (SM-CLGTS). Then, we further explored the key features, classification methods, and corresponding representation methods of CLGTS symbols. Finally, by using Visual C#.net program language, we developed a prototype system of the Traditional Landscape Genetic Symbol Database (TLGSD) to create and centrally manage CLGTS symbols. Test results show that TLGSD can meet the needs of constructing a CLGTS symbol database for a given region. This study is of great significance to explore and contribute to visualizing the CLGTS symbols.

The Mystery of the Lorentz Transform: A Reconstruction and Its Implications for Einstein’s Theories of Relativity and cosmology.

The Lorentz Transformation (LT) is an arbitrary and poorly conceived mathematical tool designed to make Maxwell’s electromagnetism conform to Galilean relativity, which formed the basis of classical mechanics and physics. A strange combination of this transform with an axiomatic assumption by Albert Einstein that the velocity of light c is an absolute and universal constant has led to an idealist, geometrical and phenomenological view of the universe, that is at variance with objective reality. This conundrum that has lasted for more than hundred years has led to rampant mysticism and has impaired the development of positive knowledge of the universe. The present reconstruction of LT shows that the gamma term, which fueled mysticism in physics and cosmology is, on the contrary, a natural outcome of the subjective geometrical rendition of the speed of light and the idealist unification of abstract space and time into a 4D “spacetime” manifold; by Minkowski and Einstein. Only a materialist dialectical perspective of space and time can rid physics of all mysticism arising out of LT; from the quantum to the cosmic.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Post-Traumatic Growth in Dialectical Perspective: Implications for Practice

This article provides the conceptualization of the post-traumatic development (PTD) in terms of a dialectical unity of the processes of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and post-traumatic growth (PTG); practical implications for eco-centered facilitation of post-traumatic growth and development. The results of the research indicate that the process of personality development is paradoxical, irreversible and scarcely predictable. In dialectical perspective the attractor of change is not about the content of transient forms (such as trauma, success, flow) but the stabilization of their change: thesis – antithesis – synthesis. As compared to PTG, PTD’s outcome is the systemic transition to the novel (not better or positive) identity. PTSD as well as PTG constitute minor cycles within the major cycle of PTD. The core metaphor of change as personality development is the work of the immunity system (SPI) which has an ambivalent nature: on the one hand, it defends the personality from the influence of adversarial agents and on the other – proactively guards it from stagnation and lack of confrontation and discontinuity. Principals of PTD facilitation: (a) the situation of psychological help (PH) is a case of a transition to a social level of personality self-regulation; (b) an inquiry for PH contains a narrative with necessary and sufficient elements for post-traumatic growth and development; (c) these elements are objectified in paradoxes, contradictions, incongruences as the source of personality development; (d) the task of PTD facilitator is to support the explication of internal change programs by maintaining the position of ambiguity tolerance and sensitivity to accidental flow of events.

The Paradox Perspective and the Dialectics of Contradictions Research

This chapter compares paradox and dialectical perspectives on managing contradictions and engages the debate on the further development of the paradox perspective. This perspective provides guidance to managers on how they can increase organizational effectiveness in the face of seemingly irreconcilable tensions. It presents contradictions as persistent, stable, separable, and controllable. The dialectical perspective, in contrast, depicts contradictions as difficult to disentangle from their contexts, continuously changing, and transformed through oppositional processes. While paradox scholars have called for incorporation of dialectics into the paradox perspective, they have done so in a way that preserves rather than challenges or expands the conceptual core of the paradox perspective. This chapter advocates that scholars take a dialectical approach and experiment in establishing a new perspective that sublates the paradox and dialectical perspectives. This contradictions perspective would situate the experience of paradox as one moment in time within a never-ending dialectical process. I briefly discuss the possible outline of this perspective and highlight articles that have moved in its direction.

Six related essays on argumentative style

This introduction to the special issue devoted to argumentative style describes the way in which this collection of six papers came about. It recapitulates the main thrust of the issues that are included. All authors share the pragma-dialectical perspective on argumentative style set forth in the first contribution, in which argumentative style is connected with strategic manoeuvring. In analysing argumentative styles, they concentrate on different kinds of argumentative discourses and have a different emphasis in carrying out their analyses.