> The idea of an individual baby discovering the world as like the
> activity of science is basically the error in the positivist model of
> the scientific process... CB
>
> ----------
>
> Science proper is of course a collective activity, maybe one of the most
> collective of all. On the other hand nobody can teach a baby to walk,
> nobody teaches them to talk. They do those on their own. Where I think
> the collective or social body comes into play is the child's
> overwhelming need to be within that embrace. That's the motivation that
> drives much of the learning and figuring out.
>
> So then all the touching and handling and the speech parents do is the
> social body that in turn creates the universe within which walking and
> talking occur. Even so, the baby has to perform by themselves.
>
> CG
>
Chuck, your kid didn't watch you walk all over the place and try to imitate it? You didn't take you kid out into arenas where all sorts of other people were walking, making walking something all the more desirable to imitate/learn? You (and others) didn't pick your kid up and prop them back up after s/he fell on their butt while tracking along a wall and you didn't bend over and give your thumb(s) or pinky(s) to your kid to help them stabilize themselves when they were learning to walk? You didn't talk to your kid/s and engage in mutual babble, smiling and providing other rewards for the development of new kinds of verbal interaction with your kid/s? In what world do kids learn to walk and talk on their own? Having just gone through this twice in the last six years your stance strikes me as just plain weird. Did I miss something? -APR