Drawing As a Space for Social-Cognitive Interaction

Drawing is recognized as a powerful tool to learn science. Although current research has enriched our understanding of the potential of learning through drawing, scarce attention has been given to the social-cognitive interactions that occur when students jointly create drawings to understand and explain phenomena in science. This article is based on the distributed and embodied cognition theories and it adopted the notion of we-space, defined as a complex social-cognitive space, dynamically established and managed during the ongoing interactions of the individuals, when they manipulate and exploit a shared space. The goal of the study was to explore the role that collaborative drawing plays in shaping the social-cognitive interaction among students. We examine this by a fine-grain multimodal analysis of a pair of middle school students, who jointly attempted to understand and explain a chemical phenomenon by creating drawings and thinking with them. Our findings suggest that collaborative drawing played a key role in (i) establishing a genuine shared-action space, a we-space, and that within this we-space it had two major functions: (ii) enabling collective thinking-in-action and (iii) simplifying communication. We argue that drawing, as a joint activity, has a potential for learning, not restricted to the cognitive process related to the activity of creating external visual representations on paper; instead, the benefits of drawing lie in action in space. Creating these representations is more than a process of externalization of thought: it is part of a process of collective thinking-in-action.

Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty

As part of a collective thinking project, article proposes that all Black Canadians move to Nova Scotia to set up a decolonial, anti-racist, non-patriarchal, abolitionist settlement. Recognizing the denial of the right to collective self-determination for Black Canadians, this article explores how Black Canadians can work in solidarity with Indigenous solidarity movements to correct the injustices of settler-colonialism.

The Hard-Boiled Anthropocene and the Infrastructure of Extractivism

This essay suggests that hard-boiled crime fiction in the United States has developed the kind of “deep infrastructural ethic” that John Durham Peters says is present in much modern thought. The essay attempts to illuminate the genre’s infrastructural ethic and its corresponding affordance for environmental critique by tracing its expressions through a sample of significant texts in the hard-boiled and noir canons, and by concluding with a sustained reading of Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife (2015). These readings demonstrate that hard-boiled narratives enable readers to perceive the ways in which extractivist infrastructures are frequently built upon and facilitate the exploitation of both human and environmental resources. Hard-boiled texts help readers see capitalism’s extractivist infrastructure as a type of material and intellectual entrapment that ultimately undermines the common good and the planetary commons. Further, this essay argues that hard-boiled crime fiction attends to what AbdouMaliq Simone calls “infrastructures of relationality” and thus points a way out of the material and metaphysical entrapments of an extractivist economy’s infrastructure. The infrastructures of relationality that emerge in a world in which climate crises have broken down the infrastructures of capitalism provide a platform from which individuals can practice a mode of collective thinking and being that provides an alternative to the alienation upon which extractivism depends. In short, the hard-boiled genre is not only one of the Anthropocene’s earliest cultural responders but is also a vital genre for making sense of our contemporary situation in a deeper stage of the Anthropocene.

The Healing of Historical Collective Trauma

Historical collective trauma is embedded in the shared consciousness of a collective, which can be considered as being the collective’s culture. The healing of historical collective trauma is a most complex and challenging task. At the core of it is a collective process of working through painful and overwhelming experiences, which is only possible in a safe and supportive environment. This process involves remembering and making sense of defined events and depends on the possession of a capable and authentic “collective thinking apparatus,” which is proposed here, to be a function of a collective’s culture. The healing of single, defined traumatic events is, in many instances, limited by a pervasive, insidious, and continuing process of damage to and distortion of the underlying culture. This is a complex form of cultural trauma that needs to be addressed in order for the healing of historical collective trauma to be fully accomplished.

ANALYSIS OF PARADIGM SHIFT AND IRRATIONALITY IN THOMAS KUHN’S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

In this article, I will explore Kuhn’s arguments concerning his claims of “paradigm shift in science is irrational”. First, I will do this by looking into Kuhn’s opinions about paradigms, normal science, and revolutions by taking reference to his writings. Second, I will try to understand influences and ideas located in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. Third, I will look into the scientific examples that related to Kuhn’s claims about paradigm changes as irrational. I considered the paramount importance of historical and well-known examples in science. This is as to why and how Kuhn has concluded and understood the stages and effects of paradigm changes are irrational in the collective thinking of the masses in the science world. To get the bottom of Kuhn’s claims in the light of wider scientific changes, I will try to demonstrate relationships between Kuhn’s specific notions and these scientific examples. To do this, I came up with the main question and two close objectives so that complete the article in a manner that the article focuses on deeper layers of Kuhn’s claims how paradigm changes in science are irrational.

Thinking in the Network

The aim of this paper is to examine the monograph titled Thinking in the Network (2018), written by Miroslav Marcelli. The monograph is a contribution to a better understanding of the phenomenon of collective intelligence that is formed under the influence of new digital media, and one that could help us solve national or global problems. Marcelli emphasizes that collective intelligence needs to be cultivated. The author agrees and adds that it may be a new evolution of humanity, because the cognitive abilities have to adapt to collective thinking under the influence of digital media and communication in the cyberspace.

Meme language, its impact on digital culture and collective thinking

Memes have become an increasingly common form of modern communication, which has recently attracted great research interest. In this article we analyze "language - memes", its influence on digital culture and collective thinking. The Internet, by expanding social content, contributes to the variability of cultural codes and consequently changes an individual’s cultural identity throughout life. The culture composed of cultural groups is defined as a kind of macro-code, consisting of numerous codes that are commonly used to interpret reality among members of the cyber community. Identity is also transmitted through the use of a specific language during interaction, which is a marker of discourse, in which Memes represent a distinctive business card. Linguists, as well as specialists in other disciplines (such as philosophy, anthropology) use each other’s work to study the interrelationships and mutual influences of language and culture. The study proposed a hypothesis about the influence of the Internet on changes in society’s thinking, the formation of the Internet culture and language, using the example of meme language, which is confirmed by the analysis of Internet survey. The interdisciplinary nature of the research is due to the use of mathematical method and the logic of meme language, its impact on digital culture and collective thinking, which is represented in the responses of respondents to the questions in online questionnaires.

Strategies for Social and Educational Inclusion in Visually Impaired People

The chapter focuses on the development of tools containing the basics of Braille and methods that help the people to manage this type of language to enhance the strength of collective thinking in educational statements, taking into account key background; this is why the development of tools containing the basic aspects of the Braille system and the necessary methods to enable the subject to master this type of language, enhancing the strength of collective thinking at the educational level, are so important. However, one of the main challenges in learning Braille is to engage the individual in literacy processes, which is why the creation of learning cards is proposed, to enable people to learn Braille.