Metaphor, recursive systems, and paradox in science and developmental theory

The contradictions found at any level of abstraction among concepts such as subject-object, whole-part, synthesis-analysis, metaphor-observation, organicism-mechanism, and interpretationism-realism cannot be eliminated or resolved at that level. They can, however, be reconciled into productive paradoxes by recognizing them as components of recursive systems. The resolution of the paradox occurs only at the next higher level of abstraction where a synthesis can be established. However, this synthesis at the next higher level entails its own contradictions. These can again be reconciled into productive paradoxes through the recognition of broader recursive systems. This progressive solution continues at each iteration, or level or recursion, and it is illustrated in Fig. 5. In the figure, the innermost cycle represents the knowing organism, knowing in the paradoxical cycle of metaphor-assumptions-concepts-observations. This knowing organism is explained and hence understood, and the paradoxes reconciled, only by moving to the next level of recursive cycle. At this next level, the first level of abstraction, psychological theories operate to explain the phenomenological knowing organism of the first cycle. In fact, it is only by moving to this level that we transcend the paradox of man knowing and explaining himself. And only by moving to this level do we avoid the vicious circularity that could befall the use of recursive systems. However, the theories themselves involve a new paradoxical cycle of metaphor-assumptions-concepts-observation. Thus, explanation of this level requires movement to the next level of abstraction or next outer cycle. Here metatheoretical assumptions provide the transcendence and the opportunity to reconcile the paradoxes of psychological theory. But this level too operates in a cycle of paradoxes and consequently the process continues as it does for any dialectic process. In closing, I should in fairness note that I have outlined only one type of solution to contradictions that are found among approaches to the game called science and the game called developmental psychology. It is a solution that draws heavily on the categories of dialectical method, and it is just this method that is both the reason for, and the consequence of, the organismic metaphor. Thus, my solution generates its own contradiction for I have again, as Scholnick argues, based my solution at some level of organicism: a point that will not escape the discerning realist or, for that matter, the discerning rationalist.