![10 • Complexity and Education
Laplace’s assertion, it had already been acknowledged 200 years ago that the ap-
proach was not entirely pragmatic, given that a “vast” intelligence would be needed
to understand the universe in such terms. In fact, even earlier, Newton himself
recognized that the calculations associated with simple systems that involve three
or more interacting components can quickly become intractable. In the 19th cen-
tury, as scholars met up with more and more such phenomena, a new set of
methods were developed. Based on probability and statistics, these tools were
more useful for interpretation of the gross or global dynamics of complicated sys-
tems—situations such as astronomical phenomena, magnetism, molecular inter-
actions, subatomic structures, and weather patterns that might involve millions
of variables or parts.
Significantly, the development of statistical and probabilistic methods repre-
sented more a resignation than a shift in thinking. These methods did not arise
from or prompt a change in the fundamental assumption that phenomena are
locked in a fixed trajectory and reducible to the sums of their parts. The universe
was still seen as determined. The new tools were understood to provide only a
veneer of explanation, not a deep understanding. Lacking a sufficiently vast intel-
ligence and constrained by frustratingly limited perceptual capacities, humans were
grudgingly compelled to rely on coarse characterizations. The move to statistical
methods was merely an acknowledgment that no flesh-based intellect would ever
be sufficient to measure and calculate even a very small part of the intricate uni-
verse. The more complicated the phenomenon, the more one was compelled to
rely on quantified and averaged descriptions of gross patterns rather than precise
analyses of interacting factors.
By the early 1900s, however, belief in the general utility of probabilistic and
statistical representations of phenomena had begun to wane. Perhaps, some sug-
gested, neither analytic nor statistical methods could ever be adequate for the
interpretation and prediction of some phenomena. For instance, in an early ar-
ticulation of the important notion of “sensitivity to initial conditions”—or what
is now more popularly known as “the butterfly effect”—French mathematician
Henri Poincaré explained:
[E]ven if it were the case the that natural laws no longer held any secret for
us, we could still only know the initial situation approximately. If that en-
ables us to predict the succeeding situation with the same approximation,
that is all we require, and we should say the phenomenon had been pre-
dicted, that is governed by laws. But it is not always so; it may happen that
small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the
final phenomenon. A small error in the former will produce an enormous
error in the latter. Prediction becomes impossible.10](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1069750-250602100207-2fa68d01/85/Complexity-And-Education-Inquiries-Into-Learning-Teaching-And-Research-Brent-Davis-27-320.jpg)
![The Shape of Complexity • 37
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER THREE
THE SHAPE OF COMPLEXITY
CLOUDS ARE NOT SPHERES MOUNTAINS ARE NOT CONES
AND LIGHTNING DOES NOT TRAVEL IN A STRAIGHT LINE
THE COMPLEXITY OF NATURE’S SHAPES DIFFERS IN KIND
NOT MERELY DEGREE
FROM THAT OF THE SHAPES OF ORDINARY GEOMETRY
—Benoit Mandelbrot
37
A few years ago, in the United States, the George W. Bush administration intro-
duced the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.2
This proposed legislation brought
with it many implications for educators and educational researchers. For the lat-
ter, a key issue was flagged by a renewed emphasis on the distinction between
quantitative and qualitative methods.
A major trigger in the discussions the time was a symposium hosted by the
United States Department of Education on the topic of “scientifically based
research,” during which it was asserted:
Clinical trials …, the gold standard in medicine … are the only way to be
sure about what works in medicine…. [The] rules about what works and
how to make inferences about what works … are exactly the same for edu-
cational practice as they would be for medical practice.3
The thinly veiled assertion here is that “to be sure about what works,” educational
research must be experimental in design and quantitative in nature.
In chapter 2, we noted one major problem with this manner of assertion
(i.e., a failure to attend to the dramatically different time scales used to measure
the evolutions of the phenomena under study). In this chapter, we offer another
criticism, arguing that the qualitative/quantitative distinction implicit in asser-](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1069750-250602100207-2fa68d01/85/Complexity-And-Education-Inquiries-Into-Learning-Teaching-And-Research-Brent-Davis-54-320.jpg)
Complexity And Education Inquiries Into Learning Teaching And Research Brent Davis
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- 5. COMPLEXITY AND EDUCATION Inquiries into Learning, Teaching, and Research BRENT DAVIS • DENNIS SUMARA
- 6. COMPLEXITY and EDUCATION Inquiries into Learning, Teaching, and Research
- 8. COMPLEXITY and EDUCATION Inquiries into Learning, Teaching, and Research Brent Davis University of Alberta Dennis Sumara University of Alberta LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS Mahwah, New Jersey 2006 London
- 9. Camera ready copy for this book was provided by the authors. Copyright © 2006 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means, without prior written permission of the publisher. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers 10 Industrial Avenue Mahwah, New Jersey 07430 www.erlbaum.com Cover design by Clayton Kropp Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Davis, Brent. Complexity and education : inquiries into learning, teaching, and research / Brent Davis, Dennis Sumara. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8058-5934-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 0-8058-5935-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Education—Research. 2. Learning. 3. Teaching. I. Sumara, Dennis J., 1958– II. Title. LB1028.D345 2006 370.7'2—dc22 2006006883 CIP Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-free paper, and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
- 10. Dedication Preface Part 1 • Complexity Thinking 1. What is “complexity”? 2. What is “science”? 3. The Shape of Complexity 4. The Network of Complexity Part 2 • Complexity Thinking, Education, and Educational Inquiry 5. Descriptive Complexity Research: Qualities of Learning Systems 6. Descriptive Complexity Research: Level-Jumping 7. Pragmatic Complexity Research: Conditions of Emergence 8. Pragmatic Complexity Research: Vital Simultaneities Endnotes References Acknowledgments Name Index Subject Index vii ix 3 17 37 57 79 107 129 153 171 185 193 195 199 CONTENTS
- 12. DEDICATION vii We dedicate this book to our mentor and friend, William E. Doll, Jr.
- 14. PREFACE IF THINGS WERE SIMPLE WORD WOULD HAVE GOTTEN AROUND —Jacques Derrida ix This book is about the possible relevancies of complexity thinking for educa- tional practice and research. This sort of project is anything but straightforward. Complexity theory/sci- ence/thinking is young and evolving—and as we develop, it refuses tidy descrip- tions and unambiguous definitions. Indeed, it is not even clear whether it should be called a field, a domain, a system of interpretation, or even a research attitude. Nonetheless, complexity thinking has captured the attentions of many re- searchers whose studies reach across traditional disciplinary boundaries. For ex- ample, among educational researchers, the following phenomena are currently under investigation: • How does the brain work? Now that researchers are able to watch brain activity in real time, it has become clear that many long-held beliefs about its structure and dynamics—that is, assumptions about what thought and memory are, how learning happens, and so on—are misinformed if not com- pletely mistaken. • What is consciousness? Over the past century, many neurologists, psycholo- gists, and sociologists have attempted to present definitions and discipline- specific explanations of self-awareness, but is has become increasingly clear that none of these contributions is up to the task of making sense of human consciousness of self and other-than-self.
- 15. • What is intelligence? IQ scores have been climbing steadily for the past cen- tury, at a pace that cannot be explained in terms of biological adaptation, improved nutrition, or educational intervention. It appears that the sort of spatio-logical abilities that are measured by IQ tests must be readily influ- enced and enabled by experience and context. What are the conditions that contribute to increases in IQ? Can they manipulated? How is IQ related to or reflective of a broader, more encompassing conception of intelligence? • What is the role of emergent technologies in shaping personalities and pos- sibilities? The most creatively adaptive humans—that is, young children— are able to integrate the latest technologies into their existences in ways that older, less plastic adults can only envy. What might this mean for formal education, both in terms of pragmatic activity and with regard to common understandings of the purposes of schooling? • How do social collectives work? Popular assumption has it that the actions and potentialities of social groupings are sums of individual capacities. Yet it is becoming more and more evident that, on occasion, collectives can vastly exceed the summed capacities of their members. How does this happen? Can these situations be orchestrated? What might this mean for classrooms, school boards, communities, and so on? • What is knowledge? Even the most static of domains—including formal mathematics, the hard sciences, and fundamentalist religions—can be readily shown to be adapting to the shifting interests and obsessions of societies, being led as much as they lead. • What is education for? If one seriously considers the range of theories and philosophies invoked in current discussions of education, it is obvious that there is little agreement on what formal education is doing, much less on what it is intended to do. On first blush, it might appear that the only common theme across such ques- tions is that their answers are less and less self-evident. However, a closer look will reveal some deep similarities among the phenomena addressed. For example, it might be argued that each of these phenomena is pointing toward some sort of system that learns. Brains, social collectives, bodies of knowl- edge, and so on can all become broader, more nuanced, capable of more diverse possibilities. Further, each of these phenomena arises in the interactions of many sub-components or agents, whose actions are in turn enabled and constrained by similarly dynamic contexts. In very different terms, it is not always clear where one should focus one’s attentions in order to understand these sorts of phenom- ena. For instance, to research consciousness or intelligence or knowledge, does it x • Preface
- 16. make sense to focus on the level of neurological events? Or personal activity? Or social context? Or physical setting? The emergent realm of complexity thinking answers that, to make sense of the sorts of phenomena mentioned above, one must “level-jump”—that is, si- multaneously examine the phenomenon in its own right (for its particular coher- ence and its specific rules of behavior) and pay attention to the conditions of its emergence (e.g., the agents that come together, the contexts of their co-activity, etc.). This strategy is one of several that has been developed within complexity research, which has arisen over the past few decades as a disciplined and demand- ing approach to the study of events that defy simplistic analyses and cause–effect explanations. It is becoming more and more evident that complexity thinking now offers a powerful alternative to the linear, reductionist approaches to inquiry that have dominated the sciences for half a millennium—and educational re- search for more than a century. Moreover, and as developed throughout this text, complexity thinking not only enables, but compels an attentiveness to the roles of researchers in contrib- uting to the shapes of the phenomena researched. This is a particularly important issue for educators. Consider, for example, the impact of behaviorist psychology on teaching practices through the too-simplified assertion that learning can be understood in terms of chains of stimulus–response reactions … or, more recently, of constructivism-oriented research that has foregrounded and problematized the mechanical logic of behaviorism, but that does not question the assumption that the locus of learning is the individual human knower. As well-meaning as much of the associated research has been, not all of its conse- quences can be deemed positive when one is faced with jumping to the level of classrooms. In this text we argue that at least part of the problem has been the absence of a discourse that enables one to attend to different levels of complex dynamics—an absence that does not render recent research irrelevant, but that does limit the utility of much of what has been learned. To be clear, then, we have a very pragmatic intent in this book. We aim to present complexity thinking as an important and appropriate attitude for educa- tors and educational researchers. To develop this point, we endeavor to cite a diversity of practices and studies that are either explicitly informed by or that might be aligned with complexity research. We also offer focused and practiced advice for structuring projects in ways that are consistent with complexity think- ing. To illustrate the discussion, we have attempted to present a broad (but by no means comprehensive) overview of the sorts of studies that have been under- taken within education. Preface • xi
- 17. Discussions of such topics comprise the Part II of the book (chaps. 5–8). Part I (chaps. 1–4) is concerned with more global issues around complexity think- ing, as read through an educational lens. In these chapters, we interrogate the conceptual backdrop of much of contemporary work in education, all organized around the assertion that complexity thinking is not something that can be pasted into the current mosaic of interpretive possibilities. Rather, complexity repre- sents a profound challenge to much of current theory and practice. A major aspect of this text is the presentation and development of an emer- gent vocabulary around the complexities of teaching and educational inquiry. We had at first planned to include a glossary of relevant terms as an appendix, but decided against it when we found ourselves compelled to offer definitions of words whose meanings we were deliberately trying to loosen. Instead of a set of print-based definitions, then, we invite readers to consult (and, if desired, partici- pate in development of) word meanings offered on the “Complexity and Educa- tion” website.2 And, on this count, we begin by flagging a particular problem with vocabu- lary that we encountered in our opening paragraph: How does one refer to the complexity research? As a theory? A science? An attitude? For reasons that are developed in chapter 2, where we interrogate conventional understandings of the word science, we have opted for the phrase “complexity thinking”3 to refer to the specific manner in which we position ourselves. One further point before inviting you to read on: We are witnessing an ex- plosion of interest among educationists in complexity thinking. As such, we ex- pect that many of the ideas represented in these pages will be outdated or super- ceded by the time the book is in print. The intention, then, is not to offer a complete account of the relevance of complexity thinking for education, but to frame issues that we have personally found to be of significance through our decades of teaching and researching. Our intention is not to prescribe and de- limit, but to challenge readers to examine their own assumptions and theoretical commitments, whether anchored by commonsense, classical analytic thought, or any of the posts (e.g., postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, postpositivism, postformalism, postepistemology) that mark the edges of cur- rent discursive possibility. xii • Preface
- 18. PART ONE PART ONE PART ONE PART ONE PART ONE COMPLEXITY THINKING
- 20. What is “complexity”? • 3 CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER ONE WHAT IS “COMPLEXITY”? EVERYTHING SHOULD BE AS SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE BUT NOT SIMPLER —Albert Einstein Early in the year 2000, prominent physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking commented, “I think the next century will be the century of complexity.”2 His remark was in specific reference to the emergent and transdisciplinary domain of complexity thinking, which, as a coherent realm of discussion, has only come together over the past 30 years or so. Through much of this period, complexity has frequently been hailed as a “new science.” Although originating in physics, chemistry, cybernetics, informa- tion science, and systems theory, its interpretations and insights have increasingly been brought to bear in a broad range of social areas, including studies of family research, health, psychology, economics, business management, and politics. To a lesser—but accelerating—extent, complexity has been embraced by education- ists whose interests extend across such levels of activity as neurological processes, subjective understanding, interpersonal dynamics, cultural evolution, and the un- folding of the more-than-human world. This sort of diversity in interest has prompted the use of the adjective transdisciplinary rather than the more conventional words interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary to describe complexity studies. Transdisciplinarity is a term that is intended to flag a research attitude in which it is understood that the members of a research team arrive with different disciplinary backgrounds and often different research agendas, yet are sufficiently informed about one another’s perspectives and motivations to be able to work together as a collective. This attitude is cer- 3
- 21. 4 • Complexity and Education tainly represented in the major complexity science think tanks, including most prominently the Santa Fe Institute that regularly welcomes Nobel laureates from many disciplines.3 By way of more specific and immediate example, as a collec- tive, our (the authors’) respective categories of expertise are in mathematics, learn- ing theory, and cognitive science (Davis) and literary engagement, teacher educa- tion, and interpretive inquiry (Sumara). This conceptual, methodological, and substantive diversity is not simply summed together in this text. Rather, as we attempt to develop in subsequent discussions of complex dynamics, the text is something more than a compilation of different areas of interest and expertise. The transdisciplinary character of complexity thinking makes it difficult to provide any sort of hard-and-fast definition of the movement. Indeed, as we develop later on, many complexivists have argued that a definition is impossible. In this writing, we position complexity thinking somewhere between a belief in a fixed and fully knowable universe and a fear that meaning and reality are so dy- namic that attempts to explicate are little more than self-delusions. In fact, com- plexity thinking commits to neither of these extremes, but listens to both. Com- plexity thinking recognizes that many phenomena are inherently stable, but also acknowledges that such stability is in some ways illusory, arising in the differences of evolutionary pace between human thought and the subjects/objects of hu- man thought. By way of brief example, consider mathematics, which is often described in terms of certainty and permanence. Yet, when considered over the past 2500 years, mathematical knowledge has clearly evolved, and continues to do so. Even more contentious, it is often it is assumed that, while ideas may change, the universe does not. But, the viability of this sort of belief is put to question when ideas are recognized to be part of the cosmos. The universe changes when a thought changes. The fact that complexity thinking pays attention to diverse sensibilities should not be taken to mean that the movement represents some sort of effort to em- brace the “best” elements from, for example, classical science or recent postmodern critiques of scientism. Nor is it the case that complexity looks for a common ground among belief systems. Complexity thinking is not a hybrid. It is a new attitude toward studying particular sorts of phenomena that is able to acknowl- edge the insights of other traditions without trapping itself in absolutes or uni- versals. Further to this point, although it is tempting to describe complexity thinking as a unified realm of inquiry or approach to research, this sort of characterization is not entirely correct. In contrast to the analytic science of the Enlightenment, complexity thinking is not actually defined in terms of its modes of inquiry. There is no “complexity scientific method”; there are no “gold standards”4 for com-
- 22. What is “complexity”? • 5 plexity research; indeed, specific studies of complex phenomena might embrace or reject established methods, depending of the particular object of inquiry. It is this point that most commonly arises in popularized accounts of com- plexity research: The domain is more appropriately characterized in terms of its objects of study than anything else. In an early narrative of the emergence of the field, Waldrop5 introduces the diverse interests and the diffuse origins of com- plexity research through a list that includes such disparate events as the collapse of the Soviet Union, trends in a stock market, the rise of life on Earth, the evolu- tion of the eye, and the emergence of mind. Other writers have argued that the umbrella of complexity reaches over any phenomenon that might be described in terms of a living system—including, in terms of immediate relevance to this discussion of educational research, bodily subsystems (like the brain or the im- mune system), consciousness, personal understanding, social institutions, subcul- tures, cultures, and a species. Of course, the strategy of list-making is inherently problematic, as it does not enable discernments between complex and not-complex. To that end, and as is developed in much greater detail in the pages that follow (particularly, chaps. 5 and 6), researchers have identified several necessary qualities that must be mani- fest for a phenomenon to be classed as complex. The list currently includes: • SELF-ORGANIZED—complex systems/unities spontaneously arise as the ac- tions of autonomous agents come to be interlinked and co-dependent; • BOTTOM-UP EMERGENT—complex unities manifest properties that exceed the summed traits and capacities of individual agents, but these transcen- dent qualities and abilities do not depend on central organizers or over- arching governing structures; • SHORT-RANGE RELATIONSHIPS—most of the information within a com- plex system is exchanged among close neighbors, meaning that the system’s coherence depends mostly on agents’ immediate interdependencies, not on centralized control or top-down administration; • NESTED STRUCTURE (or scale-free networks)—complex unities are often composed of and often comprise other unities that might be properly iden- tified as complex—that is, as giving rise to new patterns of activities and new rules of behavior (see fig. 1.1); • AMBIGUOUSLY BOUNDED—complex forms are open in the sense that they continuously exchange matter and energy with their surroundings (and so judgments about their edges may require certain arbitrary impositions and necessary ignorances); • ORGANIZATIONALLY CLOSED—complex forms are closed in the sense that they are inherently stable—that is, their behavioral patterns or internal or-
- 23. 6 • Complexity and Education ganizations endure, even while they exchange energy and matter with their dynamic contexts (so judgments about their edges are usually based on perceptible and sufficiently stable coherences); • STRUCTURE DETERMINED—a complex unity can change its own structure as it adapts to maintain its viability within dynamic contexts; in other words, complex systems embody their histories—they learn—and are thus better described in terms of Darwinian evolution than Newtonian mechanics; • FAR-FROM-EQUILIBRIUM—complex systems do not operate in balance; in- deed, a stable equilibrium implies death for a complex system. This particular list is hardly exhaustive. Nor is it sufficient to distinguish all pos- sible cases of complexity. However, it suffices for our current purposes—specifi- cally, to illustrate our core assertion that a great many phenomena that are cur- rently of interest to educational research might be considered in terms of com- plex dynamics. Specific examples discussed in this text include individual sense- making, teacher–learner relationships, classroom dynamics, school organizations, community involvement in education, bodies of knowledge, and culture. Once again, this list does not come close to representing the range of phenomena that might be considered. Clearly, such a sweep may seem so broad as to be almost useless. However, the purpose of naming such a range of phenomena is not to collapse the diversity FIGURE FIGURATIVE REPRESENTATION OF THE NESTEDNESS OF COMPLEX UNITIES FIGURE FIGURATIVE REPRESENTATION OF THE NESTEDNESS OF COMPLEX UNITIES FIGURE FIGURATIVE REPRESENTATION OF THE NESTEDNESS OF COMPLEX UNITIES FIGURE FIGURATIVE REPRESENTATION OF THE NESTEDNESS OF COMPLEX UNITIES FIGURE FIGURATIVE REPRESENTATION OF THE NESTEDNESS OF COMPLEX UNITIES We use this image to underscore that complex unities are composed not just of smaller com ponents (circles) but also by the relationships among those components (arrows) These interactions can give rise to new structural and behavioral possibilities that are not repre sented in the subsystems on their own
- 24. What is “complexity”? • 7 into variations on a theme or to subject disparate phenomena to a standardized method of study. Exactly the contrary, our intention is to embrace the inherent complexities of diverse forms in an acknowledgment that they cannot be re- duced to one another. In other words, these sorts of phenomena demand modes of inquiry that are specific to them. Yet, at the same time, there are distinct advantages—pragmatic, political, and otherwise—to recognizing what these sorts of phenomena have in common, and one of our main purposes in writing this book is to foreground these advantages. But first, some important qualifications. WHAT COMPLEXITY THINKING ISN’T One of the most condemning accusations that can be made in the current aca- demic context is that a given theory seems to be striving toward the status of a metadiscourse—that is, an explanatory system that somehow stands over or exceeds all others, a theory that claims to subsume prior or lesser perspectives, a discourse that somehow overcomes the blind spots of other discourses. The most frequent target of this sort of criticism is analytic science, but the criticism has been lev- eled against religions, mathematics, and other attitudes that have presented them- selves as superior and totalizing. Given our introductory comments, it may seem that this complexity science also aspires to a metadiscursive status—and, indeed, it is often presented in these terms by both friend and foe. As such, it behooves us to be clear about how we imagine the nature of the discourse. To begin, we do not regard complexity thinking as an explanatory system. Complexity thinking does not provide all-encompassing explanations; rather, it is an umbrella notion that draws on and elaborates the irrepressible human ten- dency to notice similarities among seemingly disparate phenomena. How is an anthill like a human brain? How is a classroom like a stock market? How is a body of knowledge like a species? These are questions that invoke a poetic sensibility and that rely on analogy, metaphor, and other associative (that is, non-representa- tional) functions of language. In recognizing some deep similarities among the structures and dynamics of the sorts of phenomena just mentioned, complexity thinking has enabled some powerful developments in medicine, economics, computing science, physics, busi- ness, sociology … the list goes on. But its range of influence should not be inter- preted as evidence of or aspiration toward the status of a metadiscourse. In fact, complexity thinking does not in any way attempt to encompass or supplant ana- lytic science or any other discourse. Rather, in its transdisciplinarity, it explicitly
- 25. 8 • Complexity and Education aims to embrace, blend, and elaborate the insights of any and all relevant domains of human thought. Complexity thinking does not rise over, but arises among other discourses. Like most attitudes toward inquiry, complexity thinking is oriented by the realization that the act of comparing diverse and seemingly unconnected phe- nomena is both profoundly human and, at times, tremendously fecund. An important caveat of this discussion is that complexity thinking is not a ready-made discourse that can be imported into and imposed onto education re- search and practice. That sort of move would represent a profound misunder- standing of the character of complexity studies. Rather, educational researchers interested in the discourse must simultaneously ask the complementary questions, “How might complexity thinking contribute to educational research?” and “How might educational research contribute to complexity thinking?” This reflexive, co- participatory attitude is well represented in the emergence of the movement. THE ORIGINS OF COMPLEXITY THINKING As has been thoroughly described in the many popular histories of the move- ment, complexity thinking arose in the confluence of several areas of Western research, including cybernetics, systems theory, artificial intelligence, chaos theory, fractal geometry, and nonlinear dynamics.6 Many of these branches of inquiry began to develop in the 1950s and 1960s, emerging mainly out of physics, biol- ogy, and mathematics. More recently, certain studies in the social sciences, espe- cially within sociology and anthropology, have come to be included under the rubric of complexity. Given this range of disciplinary influence, it is impossible to do justice to even one aspect of the “field.” It is thus that one of our strategies in this text is to use complexity thinking itself as a case study of the sort of phenomenon that is of interest to a complexivist: It is an emergent realm in which similar but nonetheless diverse elements—in this case, sensibilities and research emphases—have coalesced into a coherent, discernible unity that cannot be reduced to the sum of its constituents. A sense of this diversity might be gleaned from the varied terms for complex systems that arose in different domains, including “complex adaptive systems” (physics), “non- linear dynamical systems” (mathematics), “dissipative structures” (chemistry), “autopoietic systems” (biology), and “organized complex systems” (information science). These names are attached to fairly specific technical meanings within their respective disciplines, but nonetheless refer to phenomena that share the sorts of qualities identified above. Use of the word complexity to label this class of self-organizing, adaptive phe- nomena dates back to the middle of the 20th century. In particular, a 1948 paper
- 26. What is “complexity”? • 9 by physicist and information scientist Warren Weaver7 is regarded by many as critical to current usage. Weaver was among the first to provide a rubric to distin- guish among complex and not-complex forms and events. In brief, he identified three broad categories of phenomena that are of interest to modern science— simple, complicated, and complex8 —which he linked to different emphases and tools in the evolution of post-Enlightenment thought. Weaver’s first category, simple systems, included those phenomena in which only a few inert objects or variables interact. Examples include trajectories, satel- lites, and collisions—in effect, the sorts of forms and events that captured the attentions of Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, and Newton in the early stages of the Scientific Revolution. Along with their contemporaries, these thinkers developed a set of analytic methods to reduce such mechanical phenomena to basic laws and elementary particles. The guiding assumption was that a more thorough knowl- edge of such fundamentals would make it possible for researchers to extrapolate their understandings to explain more complicated phenomena. The meaning of the word analytic is critical here. Derived from the Greek analusis, “dissolving,” analytic methods were literally understood in terms of cut- ting apart all phenomena and all claims to truth to their root causes and assump- tions in order to reassemble them into complete and unshakeable explanatory systems. During the early stages of the emergence of modern science,there seemed to be ample reason to have faith in this approach, given the tremendous predic- tive power of achievements like Newtonian mechanics. Although now several centuries old, these particular tools remain the principal means to examine and manipulate simple systems. Indeed, they were so effective that, by the early 1800s, confidence in analytic methods had reached an extreme, as is evident in math- ematician Pierre Simon de Laplace’s bold assertion: Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all forces by which nature is animated and the respective situations of the beings which compose it—an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit these data to analy- ses—it would embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes.9 This passage is frequently cited as the quintessential statement of determinism— that is, the philosophical attitude that there are no accidents. Everything that is going to happen is absolutely determined (fixed) by what has already happened; everything that has already happened can in principle be determined (calculated) by careful scrutiny of current conditions. The belief in a deterministic universe and faith in analytic methods persist within the scientific establishment—and rightly so. However, as evidenced by
- 27. 10 • Complexity and Education Laplace’s assertion, it had already been acknowledged 200 years ago that the ap- proach was not entirely pragmatic, given that a “vast” intelligence would be needed to understand the universe in such terms. In fact, even earlier, Newton himself recognized that the calculations associated with simple systems that involve three or more interacting components can quickly become intractable. In the 19th cen- tury, as scholars met up with more and more such phenomena, a new set of methods were developed. Based on probability and statistics, these tools were more useful for interpretation of the gross or global dynamics of complicated sys- tems—situations such as astronomical phenomena, magnetism, molecular inter- actions, subatomic structures, and weather patterns that might involve millions of variables or parts. Significantly, the development of statistical and probabilistic methods repre- sented more a resignation than a shift in thinking. These methods did not arise from or prompt a change in the fundamental assumption that phenomena are locked in a fixed trajectory and reducible to the sums of their parts. The universe was still seen as determined. The new tools were understood to provide only a veneer of explanation, not a deep understanding. Lacking a sufficiently vast intel- ligence and constrained by frustratingly limited perceptual capacities, humans were grudgingly compelled to rely on coarse characterizations. The move to statistical methods was merely an acknowledgment that no flesh-based intellect would ever be sufficient to measure and calculate even a very small part of the intricate uni- verse. The more complicated the phenomenon, the more one was compelled to rely on quantified and averaged descriptions of gross patterns rather than precise analyses of interacting factors. By the early 1900s, however, belief in the general utility of probabilistic and statistical representations of phenomena had begun to wane. Perhaps, some sug- gested, neither analytic nor statistical methods could ever be adequate for the interpretation and prediction of some phenomena. For instance, in an early ar- ticulation of the important notion of “sensitivity to initial conditions”—or what is now more popularly known as “the butterfly effect”—French mathematician Henri Poincaré explained: [E]ven if it were the case the that natural laws no longer held any secret for us, we could still only know the initial situation approximately. If that en- ables us to predict the succeeding situation with the same approximation, that is all we require, and we should say the phenomenon had been pre- dicted, that is governed by laws. But it is not always so; it may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomenon. A small error in the former will produce an enormous error in the latter. Prediction becomes impossible.10
- 28. What is “complexity”? • 11 In this assertion, Poincaré problematized the prediction-oriented project of mod- ern science. His two-pronged argument—that is, that human measurements are necessarily approximate and that errors in such approximations are not only cu- mulative but self-amplifying—meant that even the most precisely measured simple phenomena and the most rigorously verified statistical descriptions of compli- cated phenomena could (and probably would) become wildly inaccurate over time. However, there is a subtler and more important point to be drawn out of Poincaré’s statement—namely the implicit suggestion that the actions of some systems themselves contribute to the transformations of their own possibilities. That is, a linear causal model of reality, one that is based on the assumption that a knowledge of inputs is adequate to predict outputs, does not work for all sys- tems. In some cases, systems are self-transformative.11 Put differently, although a complicated system might have many components, the relationship among those parts is fixed and clearly defined. If it were carefully dismantled and reassembled, the system would work in exactly the same, predict- able way. However, there exist some forms that cannot be dismantled and reas- sembled, whose characters are destroyed when the relationships among compo- nents are broken. Within these sorts of complex systems, interactions of compo- nents are not fixed and clearly defined, but are subject to ongoing co-adaptations. The behaviors of simple and complicated systems are mechanical. They can be thoroughly described and reasonably predicted on the basis of precise rules, whereas the rules that govern complex systems can vary dramatically from one system to the next. Moreover, these rules can be volatile, subject to change if the system changes. Such precariousness arises in part from the fact that the “com- ponents” of the complex system—at least for all of the systems that are consid- ered in this text—are themselves dynamic and adaptive. The point is perhaps more apparent through an example. Consider a social unity, in which the “parts” must clearly abide by some reasonably coherent sys- tem of rules if that unity is remain viable. As any socially competent human will attest, the rules of interaction are neither stable nor universal. Codes of conduct evolve; roles, responsibilities, and liberties are always differentiated to some ex- tent; acceptable behaviors vary dramatically from one context to the next. More- over, if such rules could somehow be fixed and uniformly applied, the result would probably not be a utopia. More likely, the system would atrophy and die in short order. These realizations of the necessary and inevitable internal variability and adapt- ability of complex unities are of immense importance. In particular, they repre- sent a more-than-subtle challenge to much of the research in the humanities and social sciences that unfolded through the 1800s and 1900s—oriented by either a
- 29. 12 • Complexity and Education quasi-mechanical frame or by probability and statistics. Of particular relevance to educational research, for example, the cause–effect logic that underpinned be- haviorist psychology is not only rendered problematic by complexity thinking, but almost irrelevant in efforts to understand phenomena as complex as indi- vidual understanding and collective knowledge. Specifically, the behaviorist no- tion that learning is somehow “caused by” or “due to” experience is challenged by the complexivist sensibility that what is learned is more appropriately attribut- able to the agent than to the agent’s context. For example, the manner in which you are responding to this text is more appropriately understood in terms of your complex structure than in terms of the black markings on these pages, which only act to trigger various aspects of your embodied history. With regard to peda- gogy, then, complexivists tend to follow Freud’s assertion that teaching, under- stood in terms of determining learning, is one of the impossible professions. (We explore this point in much greater detail in subsequent chapters, particularly chaps. 6 and 7.) This sensibility, consistent with Poincaré’s insight into the impossibility of certain sorts of predictability, came to be more widely embraced in the physical sciences through the 1900s. It culminated in the formal articulation of the con- cepts of “self-organization” and “structure determinism,” introduced above. Toward the close of the 1900s, complexity scientist Stuart Kauffman flagged the significance of such notions: Since Darwin, we have come to think about organisms as tinkered-together contraptions and selection as the sole source of order. Yet Darwin could not have begun to suspect the power of self-organization. We must seek our principles of adaptation in complex systems anew.12 In other words, the prevailing belief that adaptations can be understood in terms of environmental causes, while appropriate for simple and complicated (i.e., me- chanical) systems, is utterly unsuited to complex systems. Entirely new principles of adaptation—that is, learning—are needed. It is thus that we arrive at one of our central assumptions and assertions: In this discussion of educational and research implications of complexity thinking, we are concerned with are learning systems. Moreover, following Kauffman,13 we seek our principles of learning in complex systems anew. WHAT IS “LEARNING”? WHAT ARE “LEARNERS”? To reemphasize the point, this text is framed by the assumption that learning is not simply a matter of “modification in behavior,” as asserted in much of 20th- century psychology-oriented educational research. This deeply entrenched asser-
- 30. What is “complexity”? • 13 tion, along with its orienting notion that “experience causes learning to happen” are argued here to be, quite simply, impractical and unproductive. Experience, rather, is better understood in terms of triggers than causes. Learning, then, is a matter of transformations in the learner that are simultaneously physical and behavioral—which is to say, in biological terms, structural. Learning is certainly conditioned by particular experiences, but it is “due to” the learner’s own com- plex biological-and-experiential structure, not an external stimulus. Such assertions represent a rejection of deep-seated assumptions about lin- ear causality, an aspect of determinism, that were transposed from the analytic sciences onto discussions of teaching through the 19th and 20th centuries. Cause– effect interpretations make little sense when learning is understood in terms of recursive and elaborative processes. To be clear, the issue here is not whether the universe is deterministic; it is whether attempts at deterministic explanations are relevant and applicable in a domain like education. The issue of determinism presses into the realms of cosmology and philosophy, and it is a matter of con- tinuing debate, even among complexivists. It is less contentious within education, where the assertion that teaching cannot cause learning is broadly (but certainly not universally) accepted. The complexivist reconsideration of learning goes even further. Not only are the assumptions about the dynamics of learning challenged, so is the prevail- ing belief about what a learner is. To discuss this issue, we need to be a bit more deliberate about the meaning of the word structure, which we have already used several times. It turns out that the concept is vital to broader appreciations of complexity, adaptability, and related notions. The word structure is subject to diverse, even flatly contradictory interpreta- tions. In English, two of the most prominent uses of the word are manifest in discussions of architecture and biology, and it is its biology-based meanings that are invoked here. To elaborate, when used in reference to buildings, structure prompts senses of fixed organization, preplanning, and step-following—which are in turn caught up in a web of associations that includes such notions as foun- dations, platforms, scaffolds, basics, hierarchies, and so on. The biological meaning of structure is quite different. Heard in such phrases as “the structure of an organism” and “the structure of an ecosystem,” the word is used to point to the complex histories of organic forms. Structure in this sense is both caused and accidental, both familiar and unique, both complete and in process. This usage is closer to the original meaning of the word, as suggested by its etymological links to strew and construe. Indeed, when the word was first applied to architecture some 400 to 500 years ago, it was at a time when most buildings were subject to continuous evolution as parts were added, destroyed, or other-
- 31. 14 • Complexity and Education wise altered. The structure of a building was most often understood in terms of its immediate use, not its original purpose. A very different way of explaining the distinction between architectural and biological meaning of structure is to point out that, in the biological sense, struc- ture is incompressible. The unique structure of a living system arises from and em- bodies its history. Although many of that structure’s traits might be characterized in global or general terms, the finer details—and, perhaps, most of the vital de- tails, in terms of understanding the system’s general character—can never be known or replicated precisely. In contrast, the vital aspects of a building or other static form can be specified with considerable precision, and usually in highly compressed forms such as blueprints or maps. Returning to the issue at hand, then, a learner in this text is understood to be a structuring structured structure, to borrow from Dyke.14 A learner is a complex unity that is capable of adapting itself to the sorts of new and diverse circum- stances that an active agent is likely to encounter in a dynamic world. For us, this conception of a learner alters the landscape of educational dis- course. Overwhelmingly, the word learner is used to refer to the assumed-to-be isolated and insulated individual. By contrast, in complexity terms, learners can include social and classroom groupings, schools, communities, bodies of knowl- edge, languages, cultures, species—among other possibilities. One might also move in a micro direction, extending the list to include organs and bodily subsystems, cells, neurons, and so on.15 In this way, complexity thinking suggests, it is not at all inappropriate to say that a discipline “argues” or a cell “knows” or a culture “thinks.” Such phrasings are not so much anthropomorphisms as they are ac- knowledgments of a deep similarity of dynamical structures of many phenom- ena. Importantly, in the sorts of cases just mentioned, the named learner can be considered simultaneously a coherent unity, a complex of interacting unities, or a part of a grander unity. On this point, and of considerable relevance to both education and educational research, complexity thinking foregrounds the role of the observer in the phenomenon observed. COMPLEXITY OF RESEARCH AND COMPLICITY OF RESEARCHERS As mentioned, a necessary quality of complex systems is that they are open. They constantly exchange energy, matter, and information with their contexts. In the process, they affect the structures of both themselves and their environments. The term environment must be used carefully. In complexity terms, it is not meant to imply the presence of a clear, unambiguous physical boundary between
- 32. What is “complexity”? • 15 an agent and its context. For complex systems, agents are necessarily parts of their environments. It is not always possible (or useful) to determine with cer- tainty which components are part of the system (i.e., “inside”) and which belong to the setting (i.e., “outside”). In fact, the closer one looks at the boundary of a complex/open system, the more troublesome the issue becomes. For example, at the cellular level, it is usu- ally not clear which molecules belong to the system and which to the setting when one zooms in on a cell membrane. The same is true when attempting to distinguish between person and not-person at the level of the skin, or when attempt- ing to unravel origins and authorship of a particular insight. One cannot specify simply—or, perhaps more appropriately, simply cannot specify—the locations of such boundaries in objective terms. Thus, for the purposes of studying a com- plex form, the physical or conceptual boundaries of a complex/open system are always contingent on the criteria used to define or distinguish the system from its backdrop. The critical point here is not that researchers must define boundaries of the phenomena that they study (although this is a vital point). Rather, the main issue here is that complexity thinking compels researchers to consider how they are implicated in the phenomena that they study—and, more broadly, to acknowl- edge that their descriptions of the world exist in complex (i.e., nested, co-impli- cated, ambiguously bounded, dynamic, etc.) relationship with the world. In this sense, and as is developed in greater detail in chapter 4, complexity thinking rejects scientific objectivity, relativist subjectivity, and structuralist or post- structuralist intersubjectivity as satisfactory foundations for any claim to truth. The notion of objectivity—that is, of god’s-eye truths or observerless observations— is deemed an impossible fiction. Conversely, the suggestion that individual expe- rience is sufficient for claims of facticity is rejected because it ignores the linguis- tic bases and other collective aspects of interpretations. At the same time, the notion of intersubjectivity—that is, the belief that truths that are manufactured and sustained strictly through social accord—is also deemed inadequate. Such accord is necessarily nested in the grander physical world. As the argument goes, by orienting attentions, a knower’s knowledge necessarily affects the ways a phe- nomenon is perceived and how the knower acts in relation to that that phenom- enon. And so, rather than striving for an impossible objectivity, embracing a self- referencing subjectivity, or holding to a culture-bounded intersubjectivity, for the complexivist truth is more about interobjectivity. It is not just about the object, not just about the subject, and not just about social agreement. It is about holding all of these in dynamic, co-specifying, conversational relationships while locating them in a grander, more-than-human context. It is about emergent possibility as
- 33. 16 • Complexity and Education a learner/knower (e.g., individual, social collective, or other complex unity) en- gages with some aspect of its world in an always-evolving, ever-elaborative struc- tural dance. Complexivists Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen make the point through a clever play on words. They recombine the roots of the common terms simplicity and complexity to generate simplexity and complicity. For them, simplexity refers to “the process whereby a system of rules can engender simple features. Simplexity is the emergence of large-scale simplicities as direct consequences of rules.”16 Examples of simplexities include Newtonian mechanics and formal mathematics, whose “properties are the direct and inescapable consequences of the rules.”17 As we develop in greater detail in chapter 2, a prominent issue among complexivists is that simplexities have often been (mis)taken as descriptions of “the way things truly are.” In an effort to interrupt this entrenched habit, Cohen and Stewart propose the notion of complicities as a category of phenomena in which “totally different rules converge to produce similar features, and so exhibit the same large-scale structural patterns.”18 In other words, they propose a defini- tion that is fully compatible with the meaning of complexity that we have been using in this chapter. However, with their development of the word complicity (to refer to what we are calling complexity), they powerfully foreground the fact that the researcher is always already entangled in the phenomenon researched. Researchers are aspects of even grander systems, shaped by and contributing to the shapes of the phe- nomena in ways and to extents that they simply cannot know. Such realizations render research a profoundly ethical undertaking, and this is an issue that we explore in greater detail in all of the subsequent chapters. Complexity thinking helps us actually take on the work of trying to under- stand things while we are part of the things we are trying to understand. It fore- grounds that we can never develop an objective appreciation of something of which we are part. Complexity suggests that rather than standing back from the world, we must get involved (and acknowledge our implication/complicity) in the unfoldings of the cosmos. Indeed, implication, complicity, and complexity are all derived from the Indo-Eu- ropean plek-, “to weave, plait, fold, entwine.” Such, then, is a first lesson of com- plexity thinking. As researchers interested in issues swirling about human knowl- edge—what it is, how it is developed and sustained, what it means to know, and so on—we are woven into what we research, just as it is woven into us.
- 34. What is “science”? • 17 CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER TWO WHAT IS “SCIENCE”? THEREIS NO SUCH THING AS PHILOSOPHYFREE SCIENCE; THERE IS ONLY SCIENCE WHOSE PHILOSOPHICAL BAGGAGE IS TAKEN ON BOARD WITHOUT EXAMINATION —Daniel Dennett 17 Currently, the movement that we are referring to as “complexity thinking” is more commonly called complexity science, a term that was adopted at the end of the 20th century to replace “complexity theory.” The reasons for the shift from “theory” to “science” revolved around the desire to represent complexity re- search as a scholarly and rigorous approach to research. Somewhat ironically, our decision to speak in terms of “complexity thinking” rather than “complexity science” in this text is motivated by a pervasive suspicion of the physical sciences among educators and educational researchers. This suspicion is not entirely un- founded, as we develop in this chapter. In the context of contemporary discussions of education, the word science is usually taken to refer to both a collection of established principles on the nature of the universe and the particular methods of investigation and verification by which those principles are established. These methods, at least in the manner that they are most commonly presented, are organized around the standard of proof through replication: Hypotheses become facts and theories become truths as re- searchers are able to demonstrate that predictable and repeatable results can be obtained. If this were the only sense of the word science at play in the contemporary world, then studies of complexity could never be considered scientific. Complex phenomena present two immediate problems around the criterion of replication:
- 35. 18 • Complexity and Education First, very similar systems under virtually identical circumstances and subjected to virtually identical stimuli can respond in dramatically different ways—as any teacher will attest. One simply cannot predict with any great confidence how one pupil or class will make sense of some learning event based on another pupil’s or class’s interpretations. The second problem is even more troublesome. The same system—or, at least, a system that seems to have preserved its character and iden- tity—can and will respond very differently to sets of conditions that appear iden- tical. For example, one cannot reliably predict how a student or a classroom col- lective will act based on responses in an earlier lesson, or sometimes a few min- utes previous. In other words, strict predictability and reliability of results are unreasonable criteria when dealing with systems that learn. What, then, is meant by science in the term complexity science if, as noted in chapter 1, the analytic bases of inquiry are deemed inadequate and, as just men- tioned, the criteria for verification are rendered impracticable? To begin to answer this question, we need to underscore once again that no unified response is possible. In fact, a range of perspectives on the character and status of scientific truth is represented among complexity researchers. Indeed, there is likely as much conflict and contradiction among complexivists as there is within almost any area of academic inquiry. In contrast to some other areas, how- ever, complexity researchers tend to appreciate such tensions as necessary and productive sites of insight—not matters to be flattened out, but potential triggers for richer understandings. Richardson and Cilliers2 sum up some of the variations in sensibilities that are represented across complexity research by identifying three broad schools of thought that have been represented, these being: a) HARD (OR REDUCTIONIST) COMPLEXITY SCIENCE—an approach dominated by physicists that, in effect, maintains the same desire as analytic science to un- cover and understand the nature of reality, oriented by the assumption that such a reality is determined and hence determinable. b)SOFT COMPLEXITY SCIENCE—an approach more common in the biological and social sciences that draws on the metaphors and principles developed within hard complexity science to describe living and social systems. In this case, complexity is more a way of seeing the world, an interpretive system rather than a route to or representation of reality. c)COMPLEXITY THINKING—an attitude that lies somewhere between the hard and soft approach. It is concerned with the philosophical and pragmatic im- plications of assuming a complex universe, and might thus be described as representing a way of thinking and acting.
- 36. What is “science”? • 19 Consistent with a complexivist sensibility, Richardson and Cilliers acknowledge the artificiality and illusory neatness of this classification. The varied attitudes are highly intertwined and sometimes simultaneously manifest. In fact, we suspect that a reader intent on taxonomizing parts of this book could readily classify varying portions as fitting firmly in one or another of the above categories. The purpose of the heuristic, then, is not to insist that one commit to a category, but to provide a useful device for making sense of some of the inevitable inconsis- tencies in the field—in the process, offering a more nuanced picture of complex- ity and the powerful-although-conflicted character of this particular attitude to- ward inquiry. It is important to underscore that, although there are clear disagreements around matters of research emphasis and approach, there remains a reasonable consensus among complexivists as to what constitutes a complex phenomenon or entity. That is, there is a broad agreement on the meaning of complexity and a somewhat shakier accord around the meaning of science. To render this issue less opaque, and to make clearer our own positionings, in this chapter we move through brief discussions of the three categories of complexity studies suggested by Richardson and Cilliers. SOME ORIENTING COMMENTS ON THE EVOLUTION OF COMPLEXITY SCIENCE Before moving into some of the specifics around the different sensibilities repre- sented among complexivists, it may be useful to highlight some of the phases that complexity science research has passed through over recent decades. Here we draw onWaldrop’s and Johnson’s popular accounts of the emergence of the field.3 Early studies of complex phenomena were undertaken well before the coin- ing of the phrases “complexity theory,” “complexity science,” and “complexity thinking.” In the main, this work consisted of disparate and largely unconnected investigations of specific phenomena. Examples include Jane Jacobs’ examina- tions of the rise and decline of cities,4 Deborah Gordon’s multi-year observa- tions of the life cycles of anthills,5 Friedrich Engels’ studies of the emergence of social structures in the free-market world,6 Rachel Carson’s examinations of the ecological implications of industrialized societies,7 Humberto Maturana’s research into self-producing and self-maintaining biological unities,8 and many similarly minded inquiries. Such studies were principally observational and descriptive in na- ture. The theme that unites these diverse projects is the desire to generate rich accounts of specific phenomena, oriented by a suspicion that anthills, cities, bio- logical unities, cultures, and so on must be studied at the levels of their emer-
- 37. 20 • Complexity and Education gence, not in terms of their sub-components—and certainly not in terms of fundamental particles and universal laws. Gordon, for instance, demonstrated that the lives of anthills could not be reduced to the characters or life cycles of individual ants. Rather, something qualitatively different arose in the interactions of many ants—coherences that were maintained for periods that lasted many times longer than any single ant. As more and more such studies were published, a handful of researchers undertook to identify some of the qualities and conditions that seemed to be common across the range of phenomena studied. For instance, there seems to be tremendous redundancy among the agents that come together within most com- plex systems. (As developed in greater detail in chap. 7, such redundancy is not only one of the important markers used to distinguish complex systems from complicated mechanical systems—which tend to be composed of highly special- ized, minimally redundant components—it is also one of the conditions that can be manipulated to affect the character of a complex unity.) Phrased differently, the emphasis in complexity studies moved beyond a focus on detailed descriptions of specific instances toward efforts to articulate more generalized characterizations. With the advent of more powerful and readily available computer technolo- gies in the 1970s, researchers with an interest in complex phenomena were given a tool with which they could begin to test some of their suspicions and hypoth- eses around the emergence and ongoing coherence of different systems. Very quickly, computer simulations became a major focus in complexity research— and, in fact, this emphasis served as the site around which complexity theory coalesced in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was also one of the vehicles by which complexity research was popularized through the 1980s and 1990s as simu- lations of flocking birds, growing cities, anthills, neural nets, and other complex phenomena were made available through popular software, video games, and interactive websites.9 By the 1990s, complexity research was a clearly discernible domain,evidenced by the appearance of institutes and conferences designed to bring together re- searchers who previously had little occasion to interact, along with the publica- tion of several popular histories of the nascent field.10 By then, prompted by the accumulation of inter-case comparisons, the focus of complexity research had begun to shift again.Investigators had begun to turn their attentions to the prompt- ing and manipulation of complex systems. Could one occasion the emergence of a complex unity? If so, how? Once emergent, could a complex phenomenon be deliberately manipulated? If so, how and to what extent? Phenomena subjected to this manner of questioning varied from ecosystems to immune systems, from social groupings to interneuronal networks.11
- 38. What is “science”? • 21 Such questions were (and are) investigated through a variety of means. For example, increasingly sophisticated computer simulations have been developed to model the complex relationships among neurons in the brain or species in an ecosystem. More pragmatically, some researchers have applied newly established principles of complexity to revive vanquished ecosystems, to rethink established medical orthodoxies, and to re-organize major companies.12 This emergence of a pragmatics of transformation within complexity research is associated with the change in title of complexity research, from complexity theory to complexity science. This shift was a deliberate one made by complexivists to flag the fact that research had achieved a certain rigor and respectability, if not the requirements of replication that are better suited to studies of mechanical phenomena. In our view, the shift toward considerations of pragmatics of transformation has also rendered the discourse much better fitted to the particular concerns of educators and educational researchers, given educationists’ societal responsibili- ties for deliberately affecting learners and communities. That said, the perceived utility of this sort of pragmatics varies considerably across the diverse schools of thought among complexity researchers. Returning to the three sensibilities iden- tified by Richardson and Cilliers, then, we now turn to the conceptual commit- ments implicit in these sensibilities as well as their possible relevancies and utili- ties for educators and educational researchers. HARD COMPLEXITY SCIENCE As mentioned in chapter 1, the strands of inquiry that have come to be knitted together into complexity science first arose within the physical sciences in the mid-1900s. These domains have a long history of being oriented toward the ar- ticulation of complete, unambiguous, and objective accounts of the universe, at least insofar as popular beliefs go about the scientific project.13 The desire for these sorts of accounts predates modern science by more than two millennia. It is anchored in an ancient assumption that the universe is governed by fixed, immutable laws. In this view, although dynamic, the universe is essentially unchanging—at least in terms of the sorts of phenomena that can occur and the sorts of forms that can exist.14 Of course, this view no longer prevails in either the scientific realm or the popular imagination. On the contrary, contemporary theories and worldviews tend to be infused with an evolutionary sensibility—not only an acceptance, but an expectation that things will change. Yet, it is important to underscore that wide- spread embrace of this notion is recent. Even in the sciences, broad incorporation of evolutionary principles happened barely 100 years ago. Prior to Darwin’s ar-
- 39. 22 • Complexity and Education ticulation of a scientifically defensible, evidence-based theory of evolution and subsequent adoption/adaptation of that theoretical frame within geology, sociol- ogy, psychology, and other domains, the project of science was understood in rather straightforward terms of parsing up, categorizing, and labeling the pieces of the assumed-to-be complete and dismantle-able universe. This sensibility, al- though thoroughly critiqued, has persisted and underpins the continued assump- tion that science is aimed at a totalized, fully consistent theory of everything. There is a bit of a contradiction—even paradox—here. Modern science gave rise to and has embraced a frame (i.e., evolutionary theory) that compels at least a problematization, if not outright rejection, of the very foundations of the scien- tific project that prompted the emergence of the theory of evolution. As it turns out, hard complexity science seems to be positioned within this contradiction, in its desire to assemble an objective account of the universe even while acknowl- edging the possibility of emergent forms that simply could not be anticipated on the basis of the current state of affairs. A preferred means of investigation within the hard approach is computer simulation, in which complex systems are modeled in attempts to uncover the conditions that underlie their emergence and to make sense of the transcendent capacities that arise once emergent. These simulations are, of course, rooted in mathematics, which hard complexivists typically argue to be a means to enhance one’s appreciation and understanding of the phenomenon at hand.15 Osberg,16 however, argues that mathematics can be as obfuscating as illuminating, and so we present the issues in nonmathematical terms here. To summarize Osberg’s argument, while mathematics provides powerful tools that should not be ignored, the project of bottom-up computer simulations is necessarily oriented toward the identification of essential rules or principles that can then be recombined to generate complex happenings (or, at least, convincing simulations of complex happenings). There is no disagreement that mathematics and mathematical tools are useful for these sorts of endeavors. However, as helpful as a rule-based approach may be, it is inadequate for understanding all dimensions of complexity and it can in fact be a hindrance to these understandings. A key issue is, of course, that merely complicated tools (i.e., computers) are used to model complex phenom- ena—or, to invoke the vocabulary developed by Cohen and Stewart, simplexities are being substituted for complicities.17 Such a strategy can be challenged as nec- essarily limited and limiting. At best, some argue, simulation operates on the level of analogy, thus perhaps obscuring critical aspects of complex behavior.18 Of course, computer simulation is not the only approach used within hard complexity science. Other prominent strategies include close observation and controlled experimentation—and, indeed, most of the pre-computer-era studies
- 40. What is “science”? • 23 that have come to be seen as complexity-oriented fall into one or both of these categories. These studies of beehives, cell assemblies, and other physical systems have been vital for prompting broad appreciations of the existence of complex phenomena. However, as noted above, they have also been frustrated by prob- lems with replicability, a criterion that comes along with the methods developed with analytic traditions. The importance of these issues is perhaps more evident when one considers the potential usefulness of complexity science within educational research. Clearly, there are important things to be learned by close observations of, for example, brain functioning, individual learning, and classroom collectivity. And, clearly, there are things to be learned by experimenting with, for example, varied teaching em- phases, different school conditions, and so on. Further, a well crafted simulation of, say, brain function or interpersonal dynamics can contribute significantly to teacher knowledge. However, even if one were to accept the dubious premise that such phenomena are knowable in excruciating detail, is it reasonable to expect that the resulting knowledge would be of much use to educators? Might the collective biological, experiential, social, and cultural issues that contribute to the shape of every classroom event serve to undermine the utility of such knowledge? To be clear, we are arguing here that a hard approach to complexity science, while relevant, powerful, and appropriate for certain emergent phenomena, is of limited value to educators and educational researchers. Further, a major premise of the hard approach—namely the assumed stability of the phenomenon stud- ied—is inherently problematic for educationists. The conditions and purposes of schooling are constantly shifting, and an attempt, for example, to characterize classroom dynamics in absence of this realization engenders a sort of head-in- the-sand attitude. In particular, it compels investigators to ignore their own con- tributions to the ongoing evolutions of the phenomenon studied. In arguing for different conceptions of engagement and outcomes, researchers oriented by hard complexity science cannot help but trigger unpredictable shifts in the very phe- nomena that they might hope to capture in their webs of interpretation. An atti- tude that is fitted to the study of insects and neurons, then, might be ill-suited to phenomena that evolve at the paces of human actions and interactions. SOFT COMPLEXITY SCIENCE Regardless of which school of complexivist thought is embraced, the movement has drifted a long way from the conceptions of the universe and knowledge that framed the early moments of the Scientific Revolution. At that time, the philoso- phies of René Descartes and Francis Bacon, and the predictive powers of the
- 41. 24 • Complexity and Education principles laid out by Isaac Newton and Johannes Kepler supported the emer- gent belief that the universe was a grand machine. It followed that the systems designed to make sense of this machine would be understood as (Newtonian) mechanics. And, as we discuss in more detail in chapter 3, the foundational image of the age was the line, implicit in discussions of (linear) causality, (linear) rela- tionships, and (linear) dynamics. By contrast, the core metaphors and images for complexivisits are more to- ward ecosystems, co-determined choreographies, and scale-independent fractals. For the most part, these figurative devices were first articulated by complexivists within the hard sciences and mathematics, but they have come to be increasingly embraced by researchers in education and other social sciences of the past few decades. The shift has been prompted in large part by the realization that the meta- phors and methods borrowed from analytic science, especially those tools drawn from statistics (such as linear regression), are of limited use in efforts to unravel and characterize constantly shifting phenomena. This is not to say that these interpretive tools are useless in the study of complex phenomena, however. True to the etymological root stasis, meaning “stationary, stopped,” many statistical methods are appropriate, for example, to provide snapshot images of learning and living systems. The difficulty lies in the overapplication of methods that can- not take into account that living and learning systems can and do change. By the time a statistical analysis of a complex unity is completed, its conclusions may no longer be valid. (This point is powerfully demonstrated in election polls. It is also an issue with intelligence tests and most other norm-based reference tools. For the most part, these devices are intended to measure phenomena that are far too volatile for any sort of summary statistic.) Soft complexity science,then,refers to an increasingly popular movement within the social sciences toward an embrace of images and metaphors to highlight the intricate intertwinings of complex phenomena. For example, personal memories might be characterized in terms of a fractal structure in which virtually any recol- lection, when closely inspected, can explode into a vast web of associations.19 In a similar vein, neurologists and sociologists have drawn on a subdiscourse of com- plexity science—namely network theory—to redescribe interneuronal structures and interpersonal relationships in terms of “scale-free networks”20 (see chap. 3). These efforts at redescription have not yet had as significant an impact within educational research as in neurology, psychology, sociology, and other areas of human science research. Nevertheless, there have been some notable contribu- tions to discussions of the nature of learning,21 teaching,22 schooling,23 and edu- cational research24 —mostly on the descriptive level, but the emphasis does seem
- 42. What is “science”? • 25 to be shifting toward more pragmatic recommendations for educationists (see chaps. 6 and 7). A prominent feature of these writings is an attentiveness to the figurative bases of these discussions, in contrast to popular educational discourse in which the illustrative value of metaphors have often decayed into literalness. For example, Sawada and Caley have offered the notion of dissipative structures (a term coined by Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine to refer to certain complex unities) to describe learners and classrooms.25 Doll has interrogated the metaphoric roots of the word curriculum and foregrounded its etymological relationship to the no- tion of recursion.26 (Both are derived from the Latin currere, “to run.”) He develops this idea to problematize the popular tendency to interpret curriculum in terms of linear, unidirectional programs or movements, arguing that learning is never a simple matter of directed progress. Much of our own research within education might be characterized as fitted to a soft complexity science sensibility, having characterized learning, classrooms, schools, curricula, and administrative structures in terms of nested, open, self- organized systems that operate far from equilibrium (see chaps. 5 and 7). That said, we do not regard the bulk of our work—or the bulk of the work of other educational researchers with an interest in complex dynamics—in “soft” terms. Rather, to our reading, most of it would more appropriately be described in terms of what Richardson and Cilliers call “complexity thinking.” COMPLEXITY THINKING To reiterate, complexity thinking might be described as a way of thinking and acting. Linking it to a term introduced in chapter 1, complexity thinking might be understood as an acknowledgment of one’s complicity—not just complicity with/in one’s research interests, but with/in the grander systems that contribute to the shape of and that are shaped by those research interests. As such, complexity thinking has a much more pragmatic emphasis than hard and soft attitudes toward complexity science. Its principal orienting ques- tion is neither the fact seeking “What is?” nor the interpretation-seeking “What might be?”, but the practice-oriented “How should we act?” Significantly, complexity thinking in no way represents an abandonment of science. However, it does reject an uncritical—and, at times, as unjustified—faith in the analytic method, its mechanical and statistical tools, and other features of much of educational research through the 20th century. Such uncritical embrace of analytic scientific emphases, often dubbed “scientism,” is a primary site of critique and response by those whose work might be described in terms of com- plexity thinking.
- 43. 26 • Complexity and Education Complexity thinking is fully consistent with a science that is understood in terms of a disciplined, open-minded, evidence-based attitude toward the produc- tion of new, more useful interpretive possibilities. On this count, complexity think- ing is compatible with pragmatist philosophy,27 in which truth is understood in terms of adequacy, not optimality. A claim is deemed truthful if it enables knowers to maintain their fitness—and so, in contrast to the demands for validity, reliabil- ity, rigor, and generalizability, complexity thinking is more oriented toward truths that are viable, reasonable, relevant, and contingent. Once again, this attitude foregrounds the role of the knower in the known, in contrast to the efforts of analytic science to erase any trace of the observer from the observation. As such, complexity thinking acknowledges that “compression” and “reduc- tion” of information are necessary in order to make sense of experiences. Hu- mans must differentiate, interpret, draw analogies, filter, discard, and generalize in order to deal with the vast amounts of information that confront them at every moment. Complexity thinking thus recognizes the limitations on human con- sciousness,28 but does not equate such constraints with limitations on human possibilities. On the contrary, complexity thinking within education is oriented toward the means by which humanity seems to have transcended its biological limitations. Some principal sites of inquiry oriented in this way are studies that focus on language, writing, mathematics, and other technologies that enable groups of individuals to couple their perceptions and consciousnesses, in effect, creating grander cognitive unities—collective intelligences—whose possibilities simply cannot be determined in terms of the summed capacities of individuals. In the preceding paragraphs we have made reference to several different instances of phenomena that “know” something, including science, social collec- tives, and individuals. Complexity thinking prompts this level-jumping between and among different layers of organization, any of which might be properly iden- tified as complex and all of which influence (both enabling and constraining) one another. Complexity thinking also orients attentions toward other dynamic, co- implicated, and integrated levels, including the neurological, the experiential, the contextual/material, the symbolic, the cultural, and the ecological. Each of these levels/phenomena can be understood as enfolded in and unfolding from all of the others. For instance, science cannot be understood without considering social movements and societal obsessions, nor in ignorance of the subjective interests and personal histories of individual scientists. These points can be rather difficult to appreciate, in large part because pre- vailing manners of expression in English tend to cast matters of objective knowl- edge and individual knowing as separate, non-overlapping regions. Hence the
- 44. What is “science”? • 27 prominence of such phrases as “getting things into your head,” “soaking things up,” and “taking things in.” The implicit imagery here seems to be something toward the image presented in figure 2.1, of two separate spheres linked by the unidirectional arrow of “learning.” Critiques of this figurative grounding, along with associated “banking” or “transmission” approaches with pedagogy, have been extensive and condemning over the past century. In their place, a new orthodoxy has arisen in which subjec- tive understanding is nested within objective knowledge (see fig. 2.2). Their forms are understood to exist in mutual relationship and both are understood to be dynamic and adaptive, albeit operating in much different time frames. In this emergent figurative framing, learning is understood more in terms of ongoing renegotiations of the perceived boundary between personal knowing and collective knowledge. Understood to unfold from and to be enfolded in one another, both are construed in terms of maintaining fitness. As such, learning is FIGURE POPULAR METAPHORS OF KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWING FIGURE POPULAR METAPHORS OF KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWING FIGURE POPULAR METAPHORS OF KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWING FIGURE POPULAR METAPHORS OF KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWING FIGURE POPULAR METAPHORS OF KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWING In common figurative language objective knowledge and subjective understanding tend to be framed in terms of two isolated domains that must somehow be bridged FIGURE EMERGENT METAPHORS OF KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWING FIGURE EMERGENT METAPHORS OF KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWING FIGURE EMERGENT METAPHORS OF KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWING FIGURE EMERGENT METAPHORS OF KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWING FIGURE EMERGENT METAPHORS OF KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWING In complexityoriented frames objective knowledge and subjective understanding are de scribed in terms of nested coimplicated dynamics
- 45. 28 • Complexity and Education not understood in terms of a directed movement of information or knowledge (as suggested in fig. 2.1), but in terms of continuous adaptation or coping as these co-implicated phenomena maintain their respective coherences. As will be further developed in chapter 4, the principal theories of learning that have arisen in education are subject-centered constructivisms (which focus on the individual’s efforts to maintain coherence) and social constructionisms (which are more concerned with how individual knowers are shaped by and posi- tioned within collective knowledge systems). And, as further developed in chap- ter 4, complexity thinking compels a significant elaboration of this manner of nested imagery as it presses attentions in both micro- and macro-directions. We have found nested images of the sort presented in figure 2.3 to be particularly useful in underscoring that, for example, the project of formal education cannot be understood without considering, all-at-once, the many layers of dynamic, nested activity that are constantly at play. Consistent with the fact that the boundaries of complex systems are difficult to determine, it is impossible to draw tidy lines between these sorts of organiza- FIGURE SOME OTHER LEVELS OF COMPLEX COACTIVITY FIGURE SOME OTHER LEVELS OF COMPLEX COACTIVITY FIGURE SOME OTHER LEVELS OF COMPLEX COACTIVITY FIGURE SOME OTHER LEVELS OF COMPLEX COACTIVITY FIGURE SOME OTHER LEVELS OF COMPLEX COACTIVITY Nested systems that are of interest to educational researchers extend well beyond the phe nomena of collective knowledge and individual understanding
- 46. What is “science”? • 29 tional/organismic layers. However, pragmatically speaking, they can be and often are distinguished according to the paces of their evolutions (as suggested by the time scale, on the right of fig. 2.3) and their relative “sizes.” For example, indi- vidual cognition tends to be seen as highly volatile (hence readily affected), whereas a body of knowledge or a body politic is usually seen as highly stable (hence as pregiven and fixed, at least insofar as curriculum development is concerned). By way of a more specific example, one might compare the centuries-long period that was needed for Western mathematics to incorporate a “zero concept”30 to the rapid pace at which a typical child comes to appreciate a number system that includes zero. When considered on the appropriate scales, both can appear as sudden insights that not only open up new vistas of possibility, but that also transform what had previously been accepted as true or factual.31 (By way of side note, the time scale in fig. 2.3 is also useful for understanding why some strategies of hard complexity science research cannot be unpro- blematically imposed on phenomena that are studied by educators. For example, methods developed to study ecosystems, biological phenomena, or medical is- sues are typically focused on traits at the species level—that is, phenomena that are highly stable, owing to their relatively slow evolutionary pace.) Of course, in practical terms, an educational researcher could not possibly account simultaneously for several levels of dynamic activity. Our suggestion is not at all that one must accomplish or even attempt such a feat. Rather, we are arguing for an awareness that habits of interpreting particular phenomena as fixed or fluid are dependent on the level of observation and the observer’s pur- poses, not on the phenomenon. For example, a neurophysiologist might choose to regard an individual’s understanding of “red” as fixed in order to study that person’s brain activity when objects recognized as red are encountered. A psy- chologist, in contrast, is more likely to consider the individual’s understanding of red as mutable, and might thus seek to unravel the experiences, emotions, and anticipations that contribute to the person’s subjective interpretation of redness. A sociologist might ignore subjective experiences, seeking to understand the so- cial and cultural significance of color. An anthropologist might attempt to link the sociologist’s and the neurophysiologist’s insights in an effort to understood the intertwined dynamics of biology and culture in a society’s habits of distinc- tion. And so on. As such, what red is can only be discussed in terms of the immediate worry, not in terms of some absolute, unchanging, observer-free as- pect of the universe. A point to underscore here is that, with specific regard to educational re- search, complexity thinking does not permit a simplistic separation of established knowledge and how knowledge is established. Both obey similar, evolutionary dynamics.
- 47. 30 • Complexity and Education As such, in complexity terms, the key distinction is not between product and process, but between relatively stable aspects of collective knowledge and the somewhat more volatile dynamics that underpin that stability. Of course, such sensibilities are not entirely new. They might be argued to have been represented by post-structuralist, critical, socio-cultural, social-con- structionist, and other discourses. We would not dispute this point. However, complexity thinking takes the discussion to realms that these discourses often ignore or evade. For the past few hundred years at least, the topics that have predominated within educational discourse have overwhelmingly been book-ended by the phenomena of the individual’s concerns at one extreme and society’s needs at the other. Often, in fact, these two extremes have been cast as oppositional, as evidenced in the ever-popular debates over whose interests schooling should most serve (i.e., the individual’s or society’s interests). Complexity thinking presents two challenges here. First, as suggested by fig- ure 2.3, it looks beyond the bookends of the popular debate. Second, it intro- duces the biological across all phenomena—from the subpersonal to the per- sonal, through the interpersonal, across the social and cultural, past the species level, to the interspecies space of the biosphere. In other words, complexity think- ing embraces much of structuralist, post-structuralist (see chap. 4), and critical thinking, but counters that these discourses often do not go far enough. A key issue for instance, is the nature of knowledge. Complexity thinking understands knowledge to refer to systems’ stabilized but mutable patterns of acting—and thus supports the commonsense usages of the word knowledge to refer to what humans, nonhumans, and human collectives know. By contrast, at least some branches of structuralist, post-structuralist, and critical thought cannot accom- modate such notions—with a few oriented by the extreme assertions that either “all knowledge is socially constructed” or “individuals construct their own knowl- edge.” Complexity thinking recognizes the “truth” of such claims, insofar as they are noted in relationship to specific systems. But it also suggests a limited utility to these assertions when thinking in terms of the necessarily transphenomenal enterprise of formal education (see chap. 8). WHAT IS “SCIENCE”? We have not yet answered the question that serves as the title of this chapter. To review, we have indicated that there is a significant difference between analytic and complexivist sensibilities, that complexity science nonetheless both derives from and relies on analytic science, that complexity research is hardly unified,that complexity thinking embraces a pragmatist attitude toward truth, that researchers
- 48. What is “science”? • 31 oriented by complexity thinking within the social sciences and humanities must be attentive to their complicities, and that complexity science compels one to be aware of physical-biological contexts and not merely social-cultural situations. Three additional issues remain to be developed: the quest of science, the nature of a scientific theory, and the relationship of science to other modes of Western knowledge production. The first of these issues, regarding the particular foci of scientific inquiry, can only be addressed by looking at the history and evolution of scientific research. To perhaps overtruncate the discussion, modern analytic science arose at a time that the universe was assumed to be fixed and finished. The project of all inquiry, scientific or otherwise, was thus understood in terms of naming what is. Science, true to its etymological roots of “separating one thing from another” (from the Latin scire, related to scissors, schism, and so on) or, even more anciently, to a “splitting, rending, cleaving, dividing, separating” (cf. the Greek skhizein), was ori- ented toward the project of classification. It was aimed at parsing up and naming the universe though the identification of essential traits, key distinctions, and all- encompassing taxonomies. Basic laws and fundamental units were actually byproducts of this attitude, arising as finer and finer distinctions were made. A prominent example of this distinction is the still-employed system of bio- logical classification developed by Linnaeus in the 1700s. He grouped species together into genera according to resemblances, genera into families, and so on until, at the apex of an organizational pyramid, he arrived at six kingdoms that encompassed all living forms. Similar examples can be found in all other classical branches of science, underscoring that the scientific project was originally under- stood in terms of tracing out the fault lines of the universe. Further, this project was assumed to be an accumulative one, pointed toward a complete and exhaus- tive knowledge of all things. The nature of the project changed dramatically through the 1800s as mount- ing bodies of evidence in geology, biology, astronomy, linguistics, and other do- mains pointed toward the likelihood that the universe was neither fixed nor fin- ished. Rather, it seemed to be evolving—and not in entirely predictable ways. That made at least parts of the universe moving targets, not subject to totalized taxonomies or universal laws. In brief, the evolutionary sensibilities that emerged in the sciences through the 19th century were organized around a very different attitude toward under- standing the differences and relationships among phenomena. As a result, sci- ence changed. Dramatically. It shifted from an emphasis on dichotomization to an emphasis on bifurcations. Dichotomization is derived from the Greek dikha+tomie, “two parts.” To dichotomize is to generate two independent and unambiguously
- 49. 32 • Complexity and Education defined pieces. By contrast, bifurcation is derived from the Lation bi+furca, “two- pronged” or “forked.” A bifurcation is a growth into two branches, as opposed to a fragmenting into two pieces. An immense conceptual difference between dichotomization and bifurca- tion is that the former assumes proper distinctions are unproblematic, whereas the latter always incorporates a rationale for any distinction that is made. In ef- fect, when a bifurcation is noted—in, for example, an evolutionary tree, a geneal- ogy, a history of the emergence of languages—the result is not merely two new categories, but a common origin for those categories. In other words, a bifurca- tion flags the complicity of the distinction-maker: someone is making a distinction for some reason. Bifurcations highlight not just difference, but relationship32 and the conceptual shift toward them that occurred in the latter half of the 19th century thus marked a key evolution in what science was all about. The emergence of complexity marks a further evolution. It attends not only to the bifurcations that might have contributed to the rise of a range of forms and phenomena that are currently observed, but also to the manners in which those forms and phenomena can self-organize into other, transcendent forms— entities that do not arise by branching off from other entities, but that spontane- ously emerge in the mutually specifying dynamics of already existing forms. These two transformations in the project of science—first, the shift from dichotomization to bifurcation, and second, the recognition of evolving, emer- gent, and embedded forms—unfolded alongside transformations in the nature and status of scientific knowledge. This pair of shifts might also be characterized as a movement from correspondence theories to coherence theories to complexity theories. Correspondence theories of truth are not only associated with the original scien- tific project of parsing and naming the world, they actually underpinned it. In this frame, words are uncritically understood as tags that one attaches to forms, hence the usage of the term correspondence. Word-objects were (and are—the per- spective persists in popular discourse) assumed to correspond to physical objects and events. Language, it follows, was/is a means to represent things as they are. In the early 1900s, Ferdinand de Saussure famously critiqued the belief that language comprised a collection of word-objects that correspond to real-world artifacts and actions.33 Embracing the evolutionary dynamics of Darwin rather than the separating logic of Aristotle, Saussure and many of his contemporaries argued that language is not a mapping or labeling system, but a means by which humans collectively establish and maintain coherence with one another and the grander world. As Saussure developed, a language is the product of circular (re- cursive) interactions between two or more agents. Linguistic symbols, then, are not tagging tools, but go-betweens that allow minds to connect.
- 50. What is “science”? • 33 As will be further developed in chapter 4, Saussure described language as a closed, self-referential system—that is, as a self-contained set of cross-references in which meaning arises in the contrasts and gaps among words, not in their references to external objects or events. As such, language is subject to continu- ous transformation as prompted by changes in collective obsessions, the intro- duction of new forms, and so on. The vital criterion for the persistence of lin- guistic forms was thus a sort of evolutionary fitness. Survival did not depend on correspondence to something outside the language system, but to internal fitness or consistency. This sort of coherence theories might be distinguished from correspondence theories on two principal counts. First, since the theories focus on internal fit rather than external match, the important qualities of truth are viability and utility. Consis- tent with pragmatist philosophy, as already mentioned, truth is what works, and it is subject to constant modification with new experiences and changing circum- stances. On this count, the influence of a shift in the project of science (as prompted by Darwin) is obvious. Second, the evolution of truth is most often a matter of tinkering, not massive revision. Moreover, these adjustments are made “on the fly” with little or no fanfare. Individual and collective construals of the world, that is, are rooted in the human capacity to rationalize rather than to be rational. As might be expected, this shift in understanding of the nature of language is associated with a shift in the status of scientific truths. Rather than representa- tions, coherence theories suggest that the “facts” of science are more matters of presentations. Phrased differently, claims to truth are understood as means to orient perceptions and frame interpretations, not as hard-and-fast assertions about some aspect of reality. As such, a claim to truth, like a science that is attentive to evolu- tions and bifurcations, can shift and adjust. Indeed, it must be flexible in order maintain its own internal coherence. For the most part, coherence theories were developed within the humanities and social sciences, and they were thus imposed on the physical sciences from the outside—in particular, through such notable contributions as those of Kuhn34 and Popper.35 Occasionally the sensibilities announced have met with harsh, even damning (and occasionally justified) critiques from those scientists who maintain a more correspondence-based sense of their work.36 Given this backdrop, it is thus interesting to note that complexity science has prompted the emergence of coherence-like sensibilities among many scientists over the past several decades.37 The common ground of coherence theories and complexity theories is that both are concerned with the internal relational dynamics of systems as condi- tioned by events outside of those systems. This focus has prompted a realization
- 51. 34 • Complexity and Education that the elements or agents of a system, as Cilliers comments, “have no represen- tational meaning by themselves, but only in terms of patterns of relationships with many other elements.”38 However, complexity theories embrace not only Darwinian dynamics, but also the phenomenon of self-organization. That is, complexity theories are also attentive to the possibility of emergent, transcendent forms, and this interest compels an attentiveness to the manner in which efforts at representation are co- implicated in experiences of the phenomenon at hand. As Cilliers puts it, context is “always already part of the representation.”39 This means that, in a complex network, no part of the system has any meaning in isolation from the rest of the system (an assertion shared by coherence theorists), and so one must take into account the structure of the whole system. In other words—and it is here that complexity theories split from coherence theories—complexity is incompress- ible and ever-expanding. Thus, although complexivists agree with coherence theo- rists in the assertion that representations cannot be considered atomistic units or accounts of fundamental laws or elements, they part company around the as- sumption that representations are part of a self-contained system. For complexivists, representations have no meaning or identity in themselves, but are part of a greater distributed network of meaning. Theories of reality and the vocabularies developed to describe the world are not independent from it. The distinction between coherence theories and complexity theories is subtle, but significant. The point is that complexity theories understand that they are not hermetically sealed from the universe, but part of—responsive to and responsible to—grander webs of relationship. Science in this frame is a participation is the emergence of reality, and hopefully a conscientious one in which its partialities are routinely foregrounded. The notion of distributed representation, taken seriously, compels a realization that there are no universal truths. The representations that are used to make sense of the world are products of the frames that have been chosen in order to gener- ate meaning; they are not a pure characteristic of things in themselves, but neither are they completely dissociated with those things. Rather, they are evolving and ever-expanding conversations between sense-makers, the sense made, and senso- rial encounters with the universe. Returning to a notion introduced earlier, then, complexity thinking posits that truth is not strictly a matter of intersubjectivity— coherences among humans—but of interobjectivity—conversations between a dynamic humanity within a dynamic more-than-human world. Rather than search for truth, complexity thinking suggests that the best that a knowing agent can do is to take a pragmatic stance toward the representations made. How useful are they? What do they do? What do they entail? What do they foreground and what
- 52. What is “science”? • 35 do they defer? These questions apply as much to how one teaches, what one teaches, and the intentions of formal education as they do to the projects of science. Such assertions bring us very close to the postmodern mistrust of overarching theoretical paradigms, a suspicion encapsulated in Lyotard’s emphatic statement, “I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.”40 Our invocation of this statement might seem somewhat paradoxical within this discussion of com- plexity science—a movement that is often accused of assuming the status of a new metanarrative. Indeed, this accusation is perhaps a fair one when applied to the emphases and attitudes of some involved in hard complexity science. However, it is not a justified criticism when applied to complexity thinking. As elaborated throughout this text, complexity thinking makes no claim to be a “theory of everything.” Rather, it is an attitude toward the interpretation of particular sorts of phenom- ena, one that foregrounds its own implicatedness in those interpretations and, hence, in shapes attitudes and actions toward those phenomena. It is particularly attentive to the figurative devices that are employed in its representations, espe- cially the metaphors, analogies, and images that are implicit in efforts to repre- sent. On this count, complexity thinking abandons the rationalist premise of modern science—that is, the assumption that there are irrefutable, foundational truths out of which other truths might be constructed. Quite the contrary, com- plexity thinking argues, humans are not logical creatures, but association-making creatures who are capable of logic. One must thus look at the constantly shifting web of associations to make sense of what meaning is. We undertake this project in chapter 3 through a discussion of the geometry of complexity. To frame that discussion, our purpose here is to emphasize the meta- phorical structures of complexity thinking in contrast to the assumed-logical foun- dational of analytic thought.
- 53. 36 • Complexity and Education
- 54. The Shape of Complexity • 37 CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER THREE THE SHAPE OF COMPLEXITY CLOUDS ARE NOT SPHERES MOUNTAINS ARE NOT CONES AND LIGHTNING DOES NOT TRAVEL IN A STRAIGHT LINE THE COMPLEXITY OF NATURE’S SHAPES DIFFERS IN KIND NOT MERELY DEGREE FROM THAT OF THE SHAPES OF ORDINARY GEOMETRY —Benoit Mandelbrot 37 A few years ago, in the United States, the George W. Bush administration intro- duced the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.2 This proposed legislation brought with it many implications for educators and educational researchers. For the lat- ter, a key issue was flagged by a renewed emphasis on the distinction between quantitative and qualitative methods. A major trigger in the discussions the time was a symposium hosted by the United States Department of Education on the topic of “scientifically based research,” during which it was asserted: Clinical trials …, the gold standard in medicine … are the only way to be sure about what works in medicine…. [The] rules about what works and how to make inferences about what works … are exactly the same for edu- cational practice as they would be for medical practice.3 The thinly veiled assertion here is that “to be sure about what works,” educational research must be experimental in design and quantitative in nature. In chapter 2, we noted one major problem with this manner of assertion (i.e., a failure to attend to the dramatically different time scales used to measure the evolutions of the phenomena under study). In this chapter, we offer another criticism, arguing that the qualitative/quantitative distinction implicit in asser-
- 55. Other documents randomly have different content
- 56. “I an’t what I could wish myself to be,” said Mrs. Gummidge. “I am far from it. I know what I am. My troubles has made me contrairy. I feel my troubles, and they make me contrairy. I wish I didn’t feel ’em, but I do. I wish I could be hardened to ’em, but I an’t. I make the house uncomfortable. I don’t wonder at it. I’ve made your sister so all day, and Master Davy.” Here I was suddenly melted, and roared out “No, you haven’t, Mrs. Gummidge,” in great mental distress. “It’s far from right that I should do it,” said Mrs. Gummidge. “It an’t a fit return. I had better go into the house and die. I am a lone lorn creetur, and had much better not make myself contrairy here. If thinks must go contrairy with me, and I must go contrairy myself, let me go contrairy in my parish. Dan’l, I’d better go into the house, and die and be a riddance!” Mrs. Gummidge retired with these words, and betook herself to bed. When she was gone, Mr. Peggotty, who had not exhibited a trace of any feeling but the profoundest sympathy, looked round upon us, and nodding his head with a lively expression of that sentiment still animating his face, said in a whisper: “She’s been thinking of the old ’un!” I did not quite understand what old one Mrs. Gummidge was supposed to have fixed her mind upon, until Peggotty, on seeing me to bed, explained that it was the late Mr. Gummidge; and that her brother always took that for a received truth on such occasions, and that it always had a moving effect upon him. Some time after he was in his hammock that night, I heard him myself repeat to Ham, “Poor thing! She’s been thinking of the old ’un!” And whenever Mrs. Gummidge was overcome in a similar manner during the remainder of our stay (which happened some few times), he always said the
- 57. same thing in extenuation of the circumstance, and always with the tenderest commiseration. So the fortnight slipped away, varied by nothing but the variation of the tide, which altered Mr. Peggotty’s times of going out and coming in, and altered Ham’s engagements also. When the latter was unemployed, he sometimes walked with us to show us the boats and ships, and once or twice he took us for a row. I don’t know why one slight set of impressions should be more particularly associated with a place than another, though I believe this obtains with most people, in reference especially to the associations of their childhood. I never hear the name, or read the name, of Yarmouth, but I am reminded of a certain Sunday morning on the beach, the bells ringing for church, little Em’ly leaning on my shoulder, Ham lazily dropping stones into the water, and the sun, away at sea, just breaking through the heavy mist, and showing us the ships, like their own shadows. At last the day came for going home. I bore up against the separation from Mr. Peggotty and Mrs. Gummidge, but my agony of mind at leaving little Em’ly was piercing. We went arm-in-arm to the public-house where the carrier put up, and I promised, on the road, to write to her. (I redeemed that promise afterwards, in characters larger than those in which apartments are usually announced in manuscript, as being to let). We were greatly overcome at parting; and if ever, in my life, I have had a void made in my heart, I had one made that day. Now, all the time I had been on my visit, I had been ungrateful to my home again, and had thought little or nothing about it. But I was no sooner turned towards it, than my reproachful young conscience seemed to point that way with a steady finger; and I felt, all the
- 58. more for the sinking of my spirits, that it was my nest, and that my mother was my comforter and friend. This gained upon me as we went along; so that the nearer we drew, and the more familiar the objects became that we passed, the more excited I was to get there, and to run into her arms. But Peggotty, instead of sharing in these transports, tried to check them (though very kindly), and looked confused and out of sorts. Blunderstone Rookery would come, however, in spite of her, when the carrier’s horse pleased—and did. How well I recollect it, on a cold grey afternoon, with a dull sky, threatening rain! The door opened, and I looked, half laughing and half crying in my pleasant agitation, for my mother. It was not she, but a strange servant. “Why, Peggotty!” I said, ruefully, “isn’t she come home!” “Yes, yes, Master Davy,” said Peggotty. “She’s come home. Wait a bit, Master Davy, and I’ll—I’ll tell you something.” Between her agitation, and her natural awkwardness in getting out of the cart, Peggotty was making a most extraordinary festoon of herself, but I felt too blank and strange to tell her so. When she had got down, she took me by the hand; led me, wondering, into the kitchen; and shut the door. “Peggotty!” said I, quite frightened. “What’s the matter?” “Nothing’s the matter, bless you, Master Davy dear!” she answered, assuming an air of sprightliness. “Something’s the matter, I’m sure. Where’s mama?” “Where’s mama, Master Davy?” repeated Peggotty. “Yes. Why hasn’t she come out to the gate, and what have we come in here for? Oh, Peggotty!” My eyes were full, and I felt as if I were going to tumble down.
- 59. “Bless the precious boy!” cried Peggotty, taking hold of me. “What is it? Speak, my pet!” “Not dead, too! Oh, she’s not dead, Peggotty?” Peggotty cried out No! with an astonishing volume of voice; and then sat down, and began to pant, and said I had given her a turn. I gave her a hug to take away the turn, or to give her another turn in the right direction, and then stood before her, looking at her in anxious inquiry. “You see, dear, I should have told you before now,” said Peggotty, “but I hadn’t an opportunity. I ought to have made it, perhaps, but I couldn’t azackly”—that was always the substitute for exactly, in Peggotty’s militia of words—“bring my mind to it.” “Go on, Peggotty,” said I, more frightened than before. “Master Davy,” said Peggotty, untying her bonnet with a shaking hand, and speaking in a breathless sort of way. “What do you think? You have got a Pa!” I trembled, and turned white. Something—I don’t know what, or how—connected with the grave in the churchyard, and the raising of the dead, seemed to strike me like an unwholesome wind. “A new one,” said Peggotty. “A new one?” I repeated. Peggotty gave a gasp, as if she were swallowing something that was very hard, and, putting out her hand, said: “Come and see him.” “I don’t want to see him.” —“And your mamma,” said Peggotty. I ceased to draw back, and we went straight to the best parlor, where she left me. On one side of the fire, sat my mother; on the other, Mr. Murdstone. My mother dropped her work, and arose hurriedly, but timidly I thought.
- 60. “Now, Clara my dear,” said Mr. Murdstone. “Recollect! controul yourself, always controul yourself! Davy boy, how do you do?” I gave him my hand. After a moment of suspense, I went and kissed my mother: she kissed me, patted me gently on the shoulder, and sat down again to her work. I could not look at her, I could not look at him, I knew quite well that he was looking at us both; and I turned to the window and looked out there, at some shrubs that were drooping their heads in the cold. As soon as I could creep away, I crept up-stairs. My old dear bedroom was changed, and I was to lie a long way off. I rambled down-stairs to find anything that was like itself, so altered it all seemed; and roamed into the yard. I very soon started back from there, for the empty dog-kennel was filled up with a great dog— deep mouthed and black-haired like Him—and he was very angry at the sight of me, and sprung out to get at me.
- 61. CHAPTER IV. I FALL INTO DISGRACE. If the room to which my bed was removed, were a sentient thing that could give evidence, I might appeal to it at this day—who sleeps there now, I wonder!—to bear witness for me what a heavy heart I carried to it. I went up there, hearing the dog in the yard bark after me all the way while I climbed the stairs; and, looking as blank and strange upon the room as the room looked upon me, sat down with my small hands crossed, and thought. I thought of the oddest things. Of the shape of the room, of the cracks in the ceiling, of the paper on the wall, of the flaws in the window-glass making ripples and dimples on the prospect, of the washing-stand being ricketty on its three legs, and having a discontented something about it, which reminded me of Mrs. Gummidge under the influence of the old one. I was crying all the time, but, except that I was conscious of being cold and dejected, I am sure I never thought why I cried. At last in my desolation I began to consider that I was dreadfully in love with little Em’ly, and had been torn away from her to come here where no one seemed to want me, or to care about me, half as much as she did. This made such a very miserable piece of business of it, that I rolled myself up in a corner of the counterpane, and cried myself to sleep. I was awoke by somebody saying “Here he is!” and uncovering my hot head. My mother and Peggotty had come to look for me, and it was one of them who had done it. “Davy,” said my mother. “What’s the matter?”
- 62. I thought it very strange that she should ask me, and answered, “Nothing.” I turned over on my face, I recollect, to hide my trembling lip, which answered her with greater truth. “Davy,” said my mother. “Davy, my child!” I dare say no words she could have uttered, would have affected me so much, then, as her calling me her child. I hid my tears in the bedclothes, and pressed her from me with my hand, when she would have raised me up. “This is your doing, Peggotty, you cruel thing!” said my mother. “I have no doubt at all about it. How can you reconcile it to your conscience, I wonder, to prejudice my own boy against me, or against anybody who is dear to me? What do you mean by it, Peggotty?” Poor Peggotty lifted up her hands and eyes, and only answered, in a sort of paraphrase of the grace I usually repeated after dinner, “Lord forgive you, Mrs. Copperfield, and for what you have said this minute, may you never be truly sorry!” “It’s enough to distract me,” cried my mother. “In my honeymoon, too, when my most inveterate enemy might relent, one would think, and not envy me a little peace of mind and happiness. Davy, you naughty boy! Peggotty, you savage creature! Oh, dear me!” cried my mother, turning from one of us to the other, in her pettish wilful manner, “what a troublesome world this is, when one has the most right to expect it to be as agreeable as possible!” I felt the touch of a hand that I knew was neither her’s nor Peggotty’s, and slipped to my feet at the bed-side. It was Mr. Murdstone’s hand, and he kept it on my arm as he said: “What’s this? Clara, my love, have you forgotten?—Firmness, my dear!”
- 63. “I am very sorry, Edward,” said my mother. “I meant to be very good, but I am so uncomfortable.” “Indeed!” he answered. “That’s a bad hearing, so soon, Clara.” “I say it’s very hard I should be made so now,” returned my mother, pouting; “and it is—very hard—isn’t it?” He drew her to him, whispered in her ear, and kissed her. I knew as well, when I saw my mother’s head lean down upon his shoulder, and her arm touch his neck—I knew as well that he could mould her pliant nature into any form he chose, as I know, now, that he did it. “Go you below, my love,” said Mr. Murdstone. “David and I will come down, together. My friend,” turning a darkening face on Peggotty, when he had watched my mother out, and dismissed her with a nod and a smile: “do you know your mistress’s name?” “She has been my mistress a long time, sir,” answered Peggotty. “I ought to it.” “That’s true,” he answered. “But I thought I heard you, as I came up-stairs, address her by a name that is not hers. She has taken mine, you know. Will you remember that?” Peggotty, with some uneasy glances at me, curtseyed herself out of the room without replying; seeing, I suppose, that she was expected to go, and had no excuse for remaining. When we two were left alone, he shut the door, and sitting on a chair, and holding me standing before him, looked steadily into my eyes. I felt my own attracted, no less steadily, to his. As I recall our being opposed thus, face to face, I seem again to hear my heart beat fast and high. “David,” he said, making his lips thin, by pressing them together, “if I have an obstinate horse or dog to deal with, what do you think I do?” “I don’t know.” “I beat him.”
- 64. I had answered in a kind of breathless whisper, but I felt, in my silence, that my breath was shorter now. “I make him wince, and smart. I say to myself, ‘I’ll conquer that fellow;’ and if it were to cost him all the blood he had, I should do it. What is that upon your face?” “Dirt,” I said. He knew it was the mark of tears as well as I. But if he had asked the question twenty times, each time with twenty blows, I believe my baby heart would have burst before I would have told him so. “You have a good deal of intelligence for a little fellow,” he said, with a grave smile that belonged to him, “and you understood me very well, I see. Wash that face, sir, and come down with me.” He pointed to the washing-stand, which I had made out to be like Mrs. Gummidge, and motioned me with his head to obey him directly. I had little doubt then, and I have less doubt now, that he would have knocked me down without the least compunction, if I had hesitated. “Clara, my dear,” he said, when I had done his bidding, and he walked me into the parlor, with his hand still on my arm; “you will not be made uncomfortable any more, I hope. We shall soon improve our youthful humours.” God help me, I might have been improved for my whole life, I might have been made another creature perhaps, for life, by a kind word at that season. A word of encouragement and explanation, of pity for my childish ignorance, of welcome home, of reassurance to me that it was home, might have made me dutiful to him in my heart henceforth, instead of in my hypocritical outside, and might have made me respect instead of hate him. I thought my mother was sorry to see me standing in the room so scared and strange, and that, presently, when I stole to a chair, she followed me with her
- 65. eyes more sorrowfully still—missing, perhaps, some freedom in my childish tread—but the word was not spoken, and the time for it was gone. We dined alone, we three together. He seemed to be very fond of my mother—I am afraid I liked him none the better for that—and she was very fond of him. I gathered from what they said, that an elder sister of his was coming to stay with them, and that she was expected that evening. I am not certain whether I found out then, or afterwards, that, without being actively concerned in any business, he had some share in, or some annual charge upon the profits of, a wine-merchant’s house in London, with which his family had been connected from his great-grandfather’s time, and in which his sister had a similar interest; but I may mention it in this place, whether or no. After dinner, when we were sitting by the fire, and I was meditating an escape to Peggotty without having the hardihood to slip away, lest it should offend the master of the house, a coach drove up to the garden-gate, and he went out to receive the visitor. My mother followed him. I was timidly following her, when she turned round at the parlor-door, in the dusk, and taking me in her embrace as she had been used to do, whispered me to love my new father and be obedient to him. She did this hurriedly and secretly, as if it were wrong, but tenderly; and, putting out her hand behind her, held mine in it, until we came near to where he was standing in the garden, where she let mine go, and drew her’s through his arm. It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account. She
- 66. brought with her, two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was. She was brought into the parlor with many tokens of welcome, and there formally recognised my mother as a new and near relation. Then she looked at me, and said: “Is that your boy, sister-in-law?” My mother acknowledged me. “Generally speaking,” said Miss Murdstone, “I don’t like boys. How d’ ye do, boy?” Under these encouraging circumstances, I replied that I was very well, and that I hoped she was the same; with such an indifferent grace, that Miss Murdstone disposed of me in two words: “Wants manner!” Having uttered which, with great distinctness, she begged the favor of being shewn to her room, which became to me from that time forth a place of awe and dread, wherein the two black boxes were never seen open or known to be left unlocked, and where (for I peeped in once or twice when she was out) numerous little steel fetters and rivets, with which Miss Murdstone embellished herself when she was dressed, generally hung upon the looking-glass in formidable array. As well as I could make out, she had come for good, and had no intention of ever going again. She began to “help” my mother next morning, and was in and out of the store-closet all day, putting things to rights, and making havoc in the old arrangements. Almost the first remarkable thing I observed in Miss Murdstone was, her
- 67. being constantly haunted by a suspicion that the servants had a man secreted somewhere on the premises. Under the influence of this delusion, she dived into the coal-cellar at the most untimely hours, and scarcely ever opened the door of a dark cupboard without clapping it to again, in the belief that she had got him. Though there was nothing very airy about Miss Murdstone, she was a perfect Lark in point of getting up. She was up (and, as I believe to this hour, looking for that man) before anybody in the house was stirring. Peggotty gave it as her opinion that she even slept with one eye open; but I could not concur in this idea; for I tried it myself after hearing the suggestion thrown out, and found it couldn’t be done. On the very first morning after her arrival she was up and ringing her bell at cock-crow. When my mother came down to breakfast and was going to make the tea, Miss Murdstone gave her a kind of peck on the cheek, which was her nearest approach to a kiss, and said: “Now, Clara, my dear, I am come here, you know, to relieve you of all the trouble I can. You’re much too pretty and thoughtless”—my mother blushed but laughed, and seemed not to dislike this character—“to have any duties imposed upon you that can be undertaken by me. If you’ll be so good as give me your keys, my dear, I’ll attend to all this sort of thing in future.” From that time, Miss Murdstone kept the keys in her own little jail all day, and under her pillow all night, and my mother had no more to do with them than I had. My mother did not suffer her authority to pass from her without a shadow of protest. One night when Miss Murdstone had been developing certain household plans to her brother, of which he signified his approbation, my mother suddenly began to cry, and said she thought she might have been consulted.
- 68. “Clara!” said Mr. Murdstone sternly. “Clara! I wonder at you.” “Oh, it’s very well to say you wonder, Edward!” cried my mother, “and it’s very well for you to talk about firmness, but you wouldn’t like it yourself.” Firmness, I may observe, was the grand quality on which both Mr. and Miss Murdstone took their stand. However I might have expressed my comprehension of it at that time, if I had been called upon, I nevertheless did clearly comprehend in my own way, that it was another name for tyranny; and for a certain gloomy, arrogant, devil’s humour, that was in them both. The creed, as I should state it now, was this. Mr. Murdstone was firm; nobody in his world was to be so firm as Mr. Murdstone; nobody else in his world was to be firm at all, for everybody was to be bent to his firmness. Miss Murdstone was an exception. She might be firm, but only by relationship, and in an inferior and tributary degree. My mother was another exception. She might be firm, and must be; but only in bearing their firmness, and firmly believing there was no other firmness upon earth. “It’s very hard,” said my mother, “that in my own house—” “My own house?” repeated Mr. Murdstone. “Clara!” “Our own house, I mean,” faltered my mother, evidently frightened —“I hope you must know what I mean, Edward—it’s very hard that in your own house I may not have a word to say about domestic matters. I am sure I managed very well before we were married. There’s evidence,” said my mother, sobbing; “ask Peggotty if I didn’t do very well when I wasn’t interfered with!” “Edward,” said Miss Murdstone, “let there be an end of this. I go to-morrow.” “Jane Murdstone,” said her brother, “be silent! How dare you to insinuate that you don’t know my character better than your words imply?”
- 69. “I am sure,” my poor mother went on, at a grievous disadvantage, and with many tears, “I don’t want anybody to go. I should be very miserable and unhappy if anybody was to go. I don’t ask much. I am not unreasonable. I only want to be consulted sometimes. I am very much obliged to anybody who assists me, and I only want to be consulted as a mere form, sometimes. I thought you were pleased, once, with my being a little inexperienced and girlish, Edward—I am sure you said so—but you seem to hate me for it now, you are so severe.” “Edward,” said Miss Murdstone, again, “let there be an end of this. I go to-morrow.” “Jane Murdstone,” thundered Mr. Murdstone. “Will you be silent? How dare you?” Miss Murdstone made a jail-delivery of her pocket-handkerchief, and held it before her eyes. “Clara,” he continued, looking at my mother, “you surprise me! You astound me! Yes, I had a satisfaction in the thought of marrying an inexperienced and artless person, and forming her character, and infusing into it some amount of that firmness and decision of which it stood in need. But when Jane Murdstone is kind enough to come to my assistance in this endeavour, and to assume, for my sake, a condition something like a housekeeper’s, and when she meets with a base return—” “Oh, pray, pray, Edward,” cried my mother, “don’t accuse me of being ungrateful. I am sure I am not ungrateful. No one ever said I was, before. I have many faults, but not that. Oh, don’t, my dear!” “When Jane Murdstone meets, I say,” he went on, after waiting until my mother was silent, “with a base return, that feeling of mine is chilled and altered.”
- 70. “Don’t, my love, say that!” implored my mother, very piteously. “Oh, don’t, Edward! I can’t bear to hear it. Whatever I am, I am affectionate. I know I am affectionate. I wouldn’t say it, if I wasn’t certain that I am. Ask Peggotty. I am sure she’ll tell you I’m affectionate.” “There is no extent of mere weakness, Clara,” said Mr. Murdstone in reply, “that can have the least weight with me. You lose breath.” “Pray let us be friends,” said my mother, “I couldn’t live under coldness or unkindness. I am so sorry. I have a great many defects, I know, and it’s very good of you, Edward, with your strength of mind, to endeavour to correct them for me. Jane, I don’t object to anything. I should be quite broken-hearted if you thought of leaving —” My mother was too much overcome to go on. “Jane Murdstone,” said Mr. Murdstone to his sister, “any harsh words between us are, I hope, uncommon. It is not my fault that so unusual an occurrence has taken place to-night. I was betrayed into it by another. Nor is it your fault. You were betrayed into it by another. Let us both try to forget it. And as this,” he added, after these magnanimous words, “is not a fit scene for the boy—David, go to bed!” I could hardly find the door, through the tears that stood in my eyes. I was so sorry for my mother’s distress; but I groped my way out, and groped my way up to my room in the dark, without even having the heart to say good night to Peggotty, or to get a candle from her. When her coming up to look for me, an hour or so afterwards, awoke me, she said that my mother had gone to bed poorly, and that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were sitting alone. Going down next morning rather earlier than usual, I paused outside the parlor-door, on hearing my mother’s voice. She was very earnestly and humbly entreating Miss Murdstone’s pardon, which
- 71. that lady granted, and a perfect reconciliation took place. I never knew my mother afterwards to give an opinion on any matter, without first appealing to Miss Murdstone, or without having first ascertained, by some sure means, what Miss Murdstone’s opinion was; and I never saw Miss Murdstone, when out of temper (she was infirm that way), move her hand towards her bag as if she were going to take out the keys and offer to resign them to my mother, without seeing that my mother was in a terrible fright. The gloomy taint that was in the Murdstone blood, darkened the Murdstone religion, which was austere and wrathful. I have thought, since, that its assuming that character was a necessary consequence of Mr. Murdstone’s firmness, which wouldn’t allow him to let any body off from the utmost weight of the severest penalties he could find any excuse for. Be this as it may, I well remember the tremendous visages with which we used to go to church, and the changed air of the place. Again, the dreaded Sunday comes round, and I file into the old pew first, like a guarded captive brought to a condemned service. Again, Miss Murdstone, in a black velvet gown, that looks as if it had been made out of a pall, follows close upon me; then my mother; then her husband. There is no Peggotty now, as in the old time. Again, I listen to Miss Murdstone mumbling the responses, and emphasising all the dread words with a cruel relish. Again, I see her dark eyes roll round the church when she says “miserable sinners,” as if she were calling all the congregation names. Again, I catch rare glimpses of my mother, moving her lips timidly between the two, with one of them muttering at each ear like low thunder. Again, I wonder with a sudden fear whether it is likely that our good old clergyman can be wrong, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone right, and that all the angels in Heaven can be destroying
- 72. angels. Again, if I move a finger or relax a muscle of my face, Miss Murdstone pokes me with her prayer-book, and makes my side ache. Yes, and again, as we walk home, I note some neighbours looking at my mother, and at me, and whispering. Again, as the three go on arm-in-arm, and I linger behind alone, I follow some of those looks, and wonder if my mother’s step be really not so light as I have seen it, and if the gaiety of her beauty be really almost worried away. Again, I wonder whether any of the neighbours call to mind, as I do, how we used to walk home together, she and I; and I wonder stupidly about that, all the dreary dismal day. There had been some talk on occasions of my going to boarding- school. Mr. and Miss Murdstone had originated it, and my mother had of course agreed with them. Nothing, however, was concluded on the subject yet. In the meantime, I learnt lessons at home. Shall I ever forget those lessons! They were presided over nominally by my mother, but really by Mr. Murdstone and his sister, who were always present, and found them a favourable occasion for giving my mother lessons in that miscalled firmness, which was the bane of both our lives. I believe I was kept at home, for that purpose. I had been apt enough to learn, and willing enough, when my mother and I had lived alone together. I can faintly remember learning the alphabet at her knee. To this day, when I look upon the fat black letters in the primer, the puzzling novelty of their shapes, and the easy good-nature of O and Q and S, seem to present themselves again before me as they used to do. But they recall no feeling of disgust or reluctance. On the contrary, I seem to have walked along a path of flowers as far as the crocodile-book, and to have been cheered by the gentleness of my mother’s voice and manner all the way. But these solemn lessons which succeeded those, I remember as the death-blow at my peace, and a grievous
- 73. daily drudgery and misery. They were very long, very numerous, very hard—perfectly unintelligible, some of them, to me—and I was generally as much bewildered by them as I believe my poor mother was herself. Let me remember how it used to be, and bring one morning back again. I come into the second-best parlor after breakfast, with my books, and an exercise-book, and a slate. My mother is ready for me at her writing-desk, but not half so ready as Mr. Murdstone in his easy-chair by the window (though he pretends to be reading a book), or as Miss Murdstone, sitting near my mother stringing steel beads. The very sight of these two has such an influence over me, that I begin to feel the words I have been at infinite pains to get into my head, all sliding away, and going I don’t know where. I wonder where they do go, by-the-by? I hand the first book to my mother. Perhaps it is a grammar, perhaps a history, or geography. I take a last drowning look at the page as I give it into her hand, and start off aloud at a racing pace while I have got it fresh. I trip over a word. Mr. Murdstone looks up. I trip over another word. Miss Murdstone looks up. I redden, tumble over half-a-dozen words, and stop. I think my mother would show me the book if she dared, but she does not dare, and she says softly: “Oh, Davy, Davy!” “Now, Clara,” says Mr. Murdstone, “be firm with the boy. Don’t say ‘Oh, Davy, Davy!’ That’s childish. He knows his lesson, or he does not know it.” “He does not know it,” Miss Murdstone interposes awfully. “I am really afraid he does not,” says my mother.
- 74. “Then you see, Clara,” returns Miss Murdstone, “you should just give him the book back, and make him know it.” “Yes, certainly,” says my mother; “that is what I intend to do, my dear Jane. Now, Davy, try once more, and don’t be stupid.” I obey the first clause of the injunction by trying once more, but am not so successful with the second, for I am very stupid. I tumble down before I get to the old place, at a point where I was all right before, and stop to think. But I can’t think about the lesson. I think of the number of yards of net in Miss Murdstone’s cap, or of the price of Mr. Murdstone’s dressing-gown, or any such ridiculous problem that I have no business with, and don’t want to have anything at all to do with. Mr. Murdstone makes a movement of impatience which I have been expecting for a long time. Miss Murdstone does the same. My mother glances submissively at them, shuts the book, and lays it by as an arrear to be worked out when my other tasks are done. There is a pile of these arrears very soon, and it swells like a rolling snowball. The bigger it gets, the more stupid I get. The case is so hopeless, and I feel that I am wallowing in such a bog of nonsense, that I give up all idea of getting out, and abandon myself to my fate. The despairing way in which my mother and I look at each other, as I blunder on, is truly melancholy. But the greatest effect in these miserable lessons is when my mother (thinking nobody is observing her) tries to give me the cue by the motion of her lips. At that instant, Miss Murdstone, who has been lying in wait for nothing else all along, says in a deep warning voice: “Clara!” My mother starts, colors, and smiles faintly. Mr. Murdstone comes out of his chair, takes the book, throws it at me or boxes my ears with it, and turns me out of the room by the shoulders.
- 75. Even when the lessons are done, the worst is yet to happen, in the shape of an appalling sum. This is invented for me, and delivered to me orally by Mr. Murdstone, and begins, “If I go into a cheesemonger’s shop, and buy five thousand double-Gloucester cheeses at fourpence-halfpenny each, present payment”—at which I see Miss Murdstone secretly overjoyed. I pore over these cheeses without any result or enlightenment until dinner-time; when, having made a Mulatto of myself by getting the dirt of the slate into the pores of my skin, I have a slice of bread to help me out with the cheeses, and am considered in disgrace for the rest of the evening. It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if my unfortunate studies generally took this course. I could have done very well if I had been without the Murdstones; but the influence of the Murdstones upon me was like the fascination of two snakes on a wretched young bird. Even when I did get through the morning with tolerable credit, there was not much gained but dinner; for Miss Murdstone never could endure to see me untasked, and if I rashly made any show of being unemployed, called her brother’s attention to me by saying, “Clara, my dear, there’s nothing like work—give your boy an exercise;” which caused me to be clapped down to some new labor, there and then. As to any recreation with other children of my age, I had very little of that; for the gloomy theology of the Murdstones made all children out to be a swarm of little vipers (though there was a child once set in the midst of the Disciples), and held that they contaminated one another. The natural result of this treatment, continued, I suppose, for some six months or more, was to make me sullen, dull, and dogged. I was not made the less so, by my sense of being daily more and more shut out and alienated from my mother. I believe I should have been almost stupified but for one circumstance.
- 76. It was this. My father had left a small collection of books in a little room up-stairs, to which I had access (for it adjoined my own) and which nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time,—they, and the Arabian Nights, and the Tales of the Genii,—and did me no harm; for whatever harm was in some of them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it. It is astonishing to me now, how I found time, in the midst of my porings and blunderings over heavier themes, to read those books as I did. It is curious to me how I could ever have consoled myself under my small troubles (which were great troubles to me), by impersonating my favorite characters in them—as I did—and by putting Mr. and Miss Murdstone into all the bad ones—which I did too. I have been Tom Jones (a child’s Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a week together. I have sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I verily believe. I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of Voyages and Travels—I forget what, now—that were on those shelves; and for days and days I can remember to have gone about my region of our house, armed with the centre-piece out of an old set of boot-trees—the perfect realisation of Captain Somebody, of the Royal British Navy, in danger of being beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at a great price. The Captain never lost dignity, from having his ears boxed with the Latin Grammar. I did; but the Captain was a Captain and a hero, in despite of all the grammars of all the languages in the world, dead or alive. This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it, the picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at
- 77. play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life. Every barn in the neighbourhood, every stone in the church, and every foot of the churchyard, had some association of its own, in my mind, connected with these books, and stood for some locality made famous in them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the church- steeple; I have watched Strap, with the knapsack on his back, stopping to rest himself upon the wicket-gate; and I know that Commodore Trunnion held that club with Mr. Pickle, in the parlor of our little village alehouse. The reader now understands as well as I do, what I was when I came to that point of my youthful history to which I am now coming again. One morning when I went into the parlor with my books, I found my mother looking anxious, Miss Murdstone looking firm, and Mr. Murdstone binding something round the bottom of a cane—a lithe and limber cane, which he left off binding when I came in, and poised and switched in the air. “I tell you, Clara,” said Mr. Murdstone, “I have been often flogged myself.” “To be sure; of course,” said Miss Murdstone. “Certainly, my dear Jane,” faltered my mother, meekly. “But—but do you think it did Edward good?” “Do you think it did Edward harm, Clara?” asked Mr. Murdstone, gravely. “That’s the point!” said his sister. To this my mother returned, “Certainly, my dear Jane,” and said no more. I felt apprehensive that I was personally interested in this dialogue, and sought Mr. Murdstone’s eye as it lighted on mine.
- 78. “Now, David,” he said—and I saw that cast again, as he said it —“you must be far more careful to-day than usual.” He gave the cane another poise, and another switch; and having finished his preparation of it, laid it down beside him, with an expressive look, and took up his book. This was a good freshener to my presence of mind, as a beginning. I felt the words of my lessons slipping off, not one by one, or line by line, but by the entire page. I tried to lay hold of them; but they seemed, if I may so express it, to have put skates on, and to skim away from me with a smoothness there was no checking. We began badly, and went on worse. I had come in, with an idea of distinguishing myself rather, conceiving that I was very well prepared; but it turned out to be quite a mistake. Book after book was added to the heap of failures, Miss Murdstone being firmly watchful of us all the time. And when we came at last to the five thousand cheeses (canes he made it that day, I remember), my mother burst out crying. “Clara!” said Miss Murdstone, in her warning voice. “I am not quite well, my dear Jane, I think,” said my mother. I saw him wink, solemnly, at his sister, as he rose and said, taking up the cane: “Why, Jane, we can hardly expect Clara to bear, with perfect firmness, the worry and torment that David has occasioned her to- day. That would be stoical. Clara is greatly strengthened and improved, but we can hardly expect so much from her. David, you and I will go up-stairs, boy.” As he took me out at the door, my mother ran towards us. Miss Murdstone said, “Clara! are you a perfect fool?” and interfered. I saw my mother stop her ears then, and I heard her crying.
- 79. He walked me up to my room slowly and gravely—I am certain he had a delight in that formal parade of executing justice—and when we got there, suddenly twisted my head under his arm. “Mr. Murdstone! Sir!” I cried to him. “Don’t! Pray don’t beat me! I have tried to learn, sir, but I can’t learn while you and Miss Murdstone are by. I can’t indeed!” “Can’t you, indeed, David?” he said. “We’ll try that.” He had my head as in a vice, but I twined round him somehow, and stopped him for a moment, entreating him not to beat me. It was only for a moment that I stopped him, for he cut me heavily an instant afterwards, and in the same instant I caught the hand with which he held me in my mouth, between my teeth, and bit it through. It sets my teeth on edge to think of it. He beat me then, as if he would have beaten me to death. Above all the noise we made, I heard them running up the stairs, and crying out—I heard my mother crying out—and Peggotty. Then he was gone; and the door was locked outside; and I was lying, fevered and hot, and torn, and sore, and raging in my puny way, upon the floor. How well I recollect, when I became quiet, what an unnatural stillness seemed to reign through the whole house! How well I remember, when my smart and passion began to cool, how wicked I began to feel! I sat listening for a long while, but there was not a sound. I crawled up from the floor, and saw my face in the glass, so swollen, red, and ugly, that it almost frightened me. My stripes were sore and stiff, and made me cry afresh, when I moved; but they were nothing to the guilt I felt. It lay heavier on my breast than if I had been a most atrocious criminal, I dare say.
- 80. It had begun to grow dark, and I had shut the window (I had been lying, for the most part, with my head upon the sill, by turns crying, dozing, and looking listlessly out), when the key was turned, and Miss Murdstone came in with some bread and meat, and milk. These she put down upon the table without a word, glaring at me the while with exemplary firmness, and then retired, locking the door after her. Long after it was dark I sat there, wondering whether anybody else would come. When this appeared improbable for that night, I undressed, and went to bed; and, there, I began to wonder fearfully what would be done to me. Whether it was a criminal act that I had committed? Whether I should be taken into custody, and sent to prison? Whether I was at all in danger of being hanged? I never shall forget the waking, next morning; the being cheerful and fresh for the first moment, and then the being weighed down by the stale and dismal oppression of remembrance. Miss Murdstone reappeared before I was out of bed; told me, in so many words, that I was free to walk in the garden for half an hour and no longer; and retired, leaving the door open, that I might avail myself of that permission. I did so, and did so every morning of my imprisonment, which lasted five days. If I could have seen my mother alone, I should have gone down on my knees to her and besought her forgiveness; but I saw no one, Miss Murdstone excepted, during the whole time— except at evening prayers in the parlor; to which I was escorted by Miss Murdstone after everybody else was placed; where I was stationed, a young outlaw, all alone by myself near the door; and whence I was solemnly conducted by my jailer, before anyone arose from the devotional posture. I only observed that my mother was as far off from me as she could be, and kept her face another way so
- 81. that I never saw it; and that Mr. Murdstone’s hand was bound up in a large linen wrapper. The length of those five days I can convey no idea of to any one. They occupy the place of years in my remembrance. The way in which I listened to all the incidents of the house that made themselves audible to me; the ringing of bells, the opening and shutting of doors, the murmuring of voices, the footsteps on the stairs; to any laughing, whistling, or singing, outside, which seemed more dismal than anything else to me in my solitude and disgrace— the uncertain pace of the hours, especially at night, when I would wake thinking it was morning, and find that the family were not yet gone to bed, and that all the length of night had yet to come—the depressed dreams and nightmares I had—the return of day, noon, afternoon, evening, when the boys played in the churchyard, and I watched them from a distance within the room, being ashamed to show myself at the window lest they should know I was a prisoner— the strange sensation of never hearing myself speak—the fleeting intervals of something like cheerfulness, which came with eating and drinking, and went away with it—the setting in of rain one evening, with a fresh smell, and its coming down faster and faster between me and the church, until it and gathering night seemed to quench me in gloom, and fear, and remorse—all this appears to have gone round and round for years instead of days, it is so vividly and strongly stamped on my remembrance. On the last night of my restraint, I was awakened by hearing my own name spoken in a whisper. I started up in bed, and putting out my arms in the dark, said: “Is that you, Peggotty?” There was no immediate answer, but presently I heard my name again, in a tone so very mysterious and awful, that I think I should
- 82. have gone into a fit, if it had not occurred to me that it must have come through the keyhole. I groped my way to the door, and putting my own lips to the keyhole, whispered: “Is that you, Peggotty, dear?” “Yes, my own precious Davy,” she replied. “Be as soft as a mouse, or the Cat’ll hear us.” I understood this to mean Miss Murdstone, and was sensible of the urgency of the case; her room being close by. “How’s mama, dear Peggotty? Is she very angry with me?” I could hear Peggotty crying softly on her side of the keyhole, as I was doing on mine, before she answered. “No. Not very.” “What is going to be done with me, Peggotty dear? Do you know?” “School. Near London,” was Peggotty’s answer. I was obliged to get her to repeat it, for she spoke it the first time quite down my throat, in consequence of my having forgotten to take my mouth away from the keyhole and put my ear there; and though her words tickled me a good deal, I didn’t hear them. “When, Peggotty?” “To-morrow.” “Is that the reason why Miss Murdstone took the clothes out of my drawers?” which she had done, though I have forgotten to mention it. “Yes,” said Peggotty. “Box.” “Shan’t I see mama?” “Yes,” said Peggotty. “Morning.” Then Peggotty fitted her mouth close to the keyhole, and delivered these words through it with as much feeling and earnestness as a keyhole has ever been the medium of
- 83. communicating, I will venture to assert: shooting in each broken little sentence in a convulsive little burst of its own. “Davy, dear. If I ain’t ben azackly as intimate with you. Lately, as I used to be. It ain’t because I don’t love you. Just as well and more, my pretty poppet. It’s because I thought it better for you. And for some one else besides. Davy, my darling, are you listening? Can you hear?” “Ye—ye—ye—yes, Peggotty!” I sobbed. “My own!” said Peggotty, with infinite compassion. “What I want to say, is. That you must never forget me. For I’ll never forget you. And I’ll take as much care of your mama, Davy. As ever I took of you. And I won’t leave her. The day may come when she’ll be glad to lay her poor head. On her stupid, cross old Peggotty’s arm again. And I’ll write to you, my dear. Though I ain’t no scholar. And I’ll—I’ll —” Peggotty fell to kissing the keyhole, as she couldn’t kiss me. “Thank you, dear Peggotty!” said I. “Oh, thank you! Thank you! Will you promise me one thing, Peggotty? Will you write and tell Mr. Peggotty and little Em’ly and Mrs. Gummidge and Ham, that I am not so bad as they might suppose, and that I sent ’em all my love— especially to little Em’ly? Will you, if you please, Peggotty?” The kind soul promised, and we both of us kissed the keyhole with the greatest affection—I patted it with my hand, I recollect, as if it had been her honest face—and parted. From that night there grew up in my breast, a feeling for Peggotty, which I cannot very well define. She did not replace my mother; no one could do that; but she came into a vacancy in my heart, which closed upon her, and I felt towards her something I have never felt for any other human being. It was a sort of comical affection too; and yet if she had died, I cannot think what I should have done, or how I should have acted out the tragedy it would have been to me.
- 84. In the morning Miss Murdstone appeared as usual, and told me I was going to school; which was not altogether such news to me as she supposed. She also informed me that when I was dressed, I was to come down-stairs into the parlor, and have my breakfast. There, I found my mother, very pale and with red eyes: into whose arms I ran, and begged her pardon from my suffering soul. “Oh, Davy!” she said. “That you could hurt any one I love! Try to be better, pray to be better! I forgive you; but I am so grieved, Davy, that you should have such bad passions in your heart.” They had persuaded her that I was a wicked fellow, and she was more sorry for that, than for my going away. I felt it sorely. I tried to eat my parting breakfast, but my tears dropped upon my bread-and- butter, and trickled into my tea. I saw my mother look at me sometimes, and then glance at the watchful Miss Murdstone, and then look down, or look away. “Master Copperfield’s box there!” said Miss Murdstone, when wheels were heard at the gate. I looked for Peggotty, but it was not she; neither she nor Mr. Murdstone appeared. My former acquaintance, the carrier, was at the door; the box was taken out to his cart, and lifted in. “Clara!” said Miss Murdstone, in her warning note. “Ready, my dear Jane,” returned my mother. “Good bye, Davy. You are going for your own good. Good bye, my child. You will come home in the holidays, and be a better boy.” “Clara!” Miss Murdstone repeated. “Certainly, my dear Jane,” replied my mother, who was holding me. “I forgive you, my dear boy. God bless you!” “Clara!” Miss Murdstone repeated. Miss Murdstone was good enough to take me out to the cart, and to say on the way that she hoped I would repent, before I came to a
- 85. bad end; and then I got into the cart, and the lazy horse walked off with it.
- 86. CHAPTER V. I AM SENT AWAY FROM HOME. We might have gone about half a mile, and my pocket-handkerchief was quite wet through, when the carrier stopped short. Looking out to ascertain what for, I saw, to my amazement, Peggotty burst from a hedge and climb into the cart. She took me in both her arms, and squeezed me to her stays until the pressure on my nose was extremely painful, though I never thought of that till afterwards when I found it very tender. Not a single word did Peggotty speak. Releasing one of her arms, she put it down in her pocket to the elbow, and brought out some paper bags of cakes which she crammed into my pockets, and a purse which she put into my hand, but not one word did she say. After another and a final squeeze with both arms, she got down from the cart and ran away; and, my belief is, and has always been, without a solitary button on her gown. I picked up one, of several that were rolling about, and treasured it as a keepsake for a long time. The carrier looked at me, as if to enquire if she were coming back. I shook my head, and said I thought not. “Then come up,” said the carrier to the lazy horse; who came up accordingly. Having by this time cried as much as I possibly could, I began to think it was of no use crying any more, especially as neither Roderick Random, nor that Captain in the Royal British Navy, had ever cried, that I could remember, in trying situations. The carrier, seeing me in this resolution, proposed that my pocket-handkerchief should be spread upon the horse’s back to dry. I thanked him, and
- 87. assented; and particularly small it looked, under those circumstances. I had now leisure to examine the purse. It was a stiff leather purse, with a snap, and had three bright shillings in it, which Peggotty had evidently polished up with whitening, for my greater delight. But its most precious contents were two half-crowns folded together in a bit of paper, on which was written, in my mother’s hand, “For Davy. With my love.” I was so overcome by this, that I asked the carrier to be so good as reach me my pocket-handkerchief again; but he said he thought I had better do without it; and I thought I really had; so I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and stopped myself. For good, too; though, in consequence of my previous emotions, I was still occasionally seized with a stormy sob. After we had jogged on for some little time, I asked the carrier if he was going all the way. “All the way where?” enquired the carrier. “There,” I said. “Where’s there?” enquired the carrier. “Near London?” I said. “Why that horse,” said the carrier, jerking the rein to point him out, “would be deader than pork afore he got over half the ground.” “Are you only going to Yarmouth then?” I asked. “That’s about it,” said the carrier. “And there I shall take you to the stage-cutch, and the stage-cutch that’ll take you to—wherever it is.” As this was a great deal for the carrier (whose name was Mr. Barkis) to say—he being, as I observed in a former chapter, of a phlegmatic temperament, and not at all conversational—I offered him a cake as a mark of attention, which he ate at one gulp, exactly
- 88. like an elephant, and which made no more impression on his big face than it would have done on an elephant’s. “Did she make ’em, now?” said Mr. Barkis, always leaning forward, in his slouching way, on the footboard of the cart with an arm on each knee. “Peggotty, do you mean, sir?” “Ah!” said Mr. Barkis. “Her.” “Yes. She makes all our pastry, and does all our cooking.” “Do she though?” said Mr. Barkis. He made up his mouth as if to whistle, but he didn’t whistle. He sat looking at the horse’s ears, as if he saw something new there; and sat so, for a considerable time. By-and-by, he said: “No sweethearts, I b’lieve?” “Sweetmeats did you say, Mr. Barkis?” For I thought he wanted something else to eat, and had pointedly alluded to that description of refreshment. “Hearts,” said Mr. Barkis. “Sweet hearts; no person walks with her!” “With Peggotty?” “Ah!” he said. “Her.” “Oh, no. She never had a sweetheart.” “Didn’t she though!” said Mr. Barkis. Again he made up his mouth to whistle, and again he didn’t whistle, but sat looking at the horse’s ears. “So she makes,” said Mr. Barkis, after a long interval of reflection, “all the apple parsties, and doos all the cooking, do she?” I replied that such was the fact. “Well. I’ll tell you what,” said Mr. Barkis. “P’raps you might be writin’ to her?” “I shall certainly write to her,” I rejoined.
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