Being-in-the-World and the Horizons of Learning: Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Cognition WOLFF-MICHAEL ROTH University uf Victoria ABSTRACT: The work of Heidegger and Wittgenstein still influences research and development in such areas as sociology of science, cognitive science, and design of computer-based work environments. The purpose of this article is to show how the wntings of Heidegger and Wittgenstein can be used to: (a) throw new light on studies of real-time learning in school science,(b) understand the situated nature of cognition during science activities, and (c) inform the design of new learning environments. Two vase studics arc used to illustrate the fruitfulnecs of ouch an approach. KEYWORDS: Science education, cognition, phenomenology, ontology, language game, computer design. representations. social practice, coparticipation, resources. Introduction Traditional cognitive science research has treated human knowledge as something that is entirely bounded by an individual's skull. Researchers in # diversity of fields including the sociology of sciemific knowledge, cthnumethudology, history of science, cognitive anthropology, cognitive. science, and artificial intelligence increasingly question such a conception of knowledge (¢.g., Chapman, 1991, Suchman, 1987). This research decenires waditivnal voncepis of kuowlcdgs Ly ouygsating that cognition is coextensive with the interactions of human agents and their world. It is therefore insufficient to model competence, understanding, and learning by means of mental manipulations of ubstract syiubuls represcating the world, Rather, to understand the nature, efficiency, and rapidity of human actions, researchers now consider how intelligent behaviour arises from the engagement of the individual with. structures in the world: they vousidc: the fundamental vondition of any agent as “being-in-the-world.” Here, cognition is distributed across social, material, and historical aspects of the situation each in turn depending on the situated interpretation of the agent (Dreyfus, 1991; Roth, 1996a). Much of this work in cognition and learning has been influenced by Heidegger and Wittgenstein, who thought of human activity in terms of shared social practices, All current suciul practice theories of knowing, Icarning, and understanding take their central elements from these two philosophers (Dreyfus, 1992).' This includes the pivotal role of language in structuring our experiential world, the absence of explicit Interchange, Vol. 28/2 & 3, 145-157, 1987. ©Kiuwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.146 WOLFF-MICHAEL ROTH symbolic representation of contexts and tools during competent action, and the role of community as a resource for an individual's concernful actions. Some researchers have gone beyond mere analytical applications of philocophical conecpts and use these concepts in the practice of analysis, design, and development of new computer- rich workplaces (¢.g., Ehn, 1992; Winograd & Flores, 1987). The purpose of this paper is to show how the work of Heideggor and Wittgenstein encourages us to change our thinking about students’ learning of science. Such a change in perspective gives rise to concomitant changes in the ways we: (a) plan student activities in echool science, and (b) conduct roacarch about cciones learning, I begin by sketching some concepts central to Heidegger and Wittgenstein and practical applications. I proceed to present two case studies from my own work to show the relevance of these concepts to science education. Heidegger and Wittgenstein in Theory and Practise The social practice perspective of cognition adopted in this essay is based on the pragmatism inherent in Wittgenstein's iater and Heidegger's early years.? Both saw the human condition as fandamentally linguistic and social: “What the younger Heidegger tells us about the socivhistorical situation of Dasein is just what the older Wittgenstein tells us about our situation in regard to language — that when we try to transcend it by turning metaphysical we become self-deceptive, inauthentic” (Rorty, 1991, p. 51). This imescapability from being-in-the-world resulis in an existence that is fundamentally characterized by contingency. The upshot of such contingency is that ‘we cannot predict the outcomes of human activity in advance, which leads to my understanding of voguitivu aud Iemuing as situated and emergent rather than deterministic processes. Language Language plays a central role in the work of both philosophers: “Language is the house of being. In its home man dwells”; and, “I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven, the ‘language-game'” (Heidegger, 1978, p. 145; Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 5). With the term “language-game,” Wittgenstein meant to foreground the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity or form of lite. Consequently, he viewed the meaning of words not as something inherent but as emergent from their use. Because language is a life form, there is a mutually constitutive relationship between language and world: “What looks as if it had to exist, is part ot the language” (Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 25). Heidegger, too, regards the world of experience and language as coemerging. His systematic and. deliberate blurring of the distinctions between language, humans, and being corresponds to Wittgenstein's blurring between language and its object: ““I'o describe a fact,’ or ‘the description of a fact’ is also a misleading expression for the assertion stating that the fact obtains, since it sounds like: ‘describing the animal that [ saw'” (Wiugenstein, 1993, p. 302). That is, speaking, thinking, and acting are inextricably bound up with one another. Based on his reading of Wittgenstein and Heidegger,BEING-IN-THE-WORLD AND THE HORIZONS OF LEARNING 7 Rorty asks us “to sec this linguistic behaviour as continuous nonlinguistic behaviour, and to see both sorts of behaviour as making sense” as we engage in purposive activity (1991, p. 58). Representations: Tools, Things, and Words Human agents do not usually maintain a world model in duet minds: things first and foremost are ready-to-hand — a hammering carpenter no more represents the hammer as it moves through specific coordinates in space, than I represent the keyboard white | write this sentence.” The hammer and keybuwd wie aoady-tuelancd or, in other words, transparent, so that users no longer notice them. The situation. changes during breakdown. Here, things become, present-at-hand. We attend to them, and, in our concernfll search for causes of the problem, these things take on specific aspects to be represented: “When its unusability is thus discovered, equipment becomes conspicuous” (Heidegger, 1962, p. 102). That is, things become for us what They are through our inwipictation during Licakduwn. Absence is also a kind of breakdown: we notice things when they are missing, not at hand or un-ready-to-hand. “The more urgently we need what is missing, and the more authentically it is encountered in this un-readiness-tu-haud, all the more obtrusive docs that which is ready to hand become” (p. 103). Ontology The ontologicel status of things is not given a priori. It arises from naming and using them in concerful activity. Concermful activity, praxis, deals with pragmata, “things.” That is, by using things iz-order-to do something, we constitute the ontological character of things and their aspects. In the process of naming and interpreting, language foregrounds things and aspects, and makes manifest that about which it talks: “Discourse ‘lets something be seen’ ... that 1s 1t lets us see something from the very thing which the discourse is about” (Heidegger, 1962, p. 56). But this is not to be understood “as if we were talking such ‘aspects’ into the entities” we encounter (p. 101). In naming and interpreting, “we take apart in its ‘in-order-to’ that which is circumspectively ready-to-hand, and we concern ourselves with what becomes visible through this process” (p. 189). The discovery of something as something, the emergence of structure in that which becomes visible, is a contingent achievement because naming and interpreting are functions of an individual's previous experience and goals as contingently attended. Heidegger insisted on the priority of the ready-to-hand over the present-at-and, and on the inseparability of being-in-the-world from purposive activity and language. Like Wittgenstein, he attempted to construct being as a seamless, indefinitely extensible web of relations with others and things in the world of our experience. Heidegger saw that rediscovered in the actor network and social practice approaches to science studies (e.g., Latour, 1987). Social practice becomes mere social practice when we recognize its contingency, something into which we have been thrown and which evolves in indeterminate ways.148 WOLFF-MICHAEL ROTH Learning: Participation in Life Forms Heidegger and Wittgenstein encourage us to think about knowing and learning in a new way. Doth av wucateusive with participating in life fuius o1, as Lave (1993) suggested, in communities of practice. In this view, science is one among many efforts that continually adapts its discursive and material tools to a constantly expanding world. Onc learns a language as onc icams how to play a game: by watching how others play and by participating in the game. The available language and tools shape our practices and limit how we interpret the world and how we act in it. Language and tools therefore constitute fovizune for our intuynutive aul practical actions. The experience of knowing and learning as forms of participation is quite common within the scientific community. Here, participation in laboratory activities with graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and professors constitutcs knowing, and increasing participation constitutes learning. Because there are family resemblances between the language games — those played in science laboratories versus thoce on the street —_ transitions from one to the other aro possible. Anyone who, at some point, traversed this trajectory of increasing participation in the activities of natural science can tell stories of how “laboratory life” increasingly became meaningful: words and actions take on new meaning as they are reorganized in a new life form. Laboratory Life (Latour & Woolgar, 1979) and Beamtimes and Lifetime (Traweek, 1988) are both compelling accounts of language and life forms in scientific laboratories. Designing Tools for the Workplace Heidegger and Wittgenstein have practical relevance, as can be seen trom their influence on the design of computer-based workplaces. The following examples are televant to science teaching because teachers are in many respects like designers of new workplaces — they too provide ertitacts, tools, and instructions. Language Games and Computer Design Traditional design frequently fails because the designers’ tacit assumptions and common sense are necessary to repair troubles in human-machine interactions (Suchman, 1987). The conception of knowing as competent participation in language games and life forms has led a group of Scandinavian designers to the “participatory design” of computer-based workplaces (Ehn, 1992). The design of computer-based environments intelligible to future users requires both designers and users to speak a common language, to participate in a common form of life. That is, before Scandinavian designers could create new workplaces, they had to create opportunities to develop, with the future users, a common language game suitable to communicate their respective interests. They achieved this by using focal artifacts that constituted sites for engaging in conversations with users. They produced mockups, prototypes, and scenarios that were modified as the common ground between participants increased. Together, designers and end users produced and participated in a new language game. The fact that any communication was possible at all rested in theBEING-IN-THE-WORLD AND THE HORIZONS OF LEARNING: 149 family resemblance of the root language game all participants brought to the design situation. However, users and designers did not need to understand each other fully when they participated in design-by-doing: “panicipation in a lunguage yume of design and the use of design artifacts can make constructive but different sense to users and designers” (Ehn, 1992, p. 126). In the end, designers and users had created aset of new tools (und assuciaied practices) duit were inuuediately twansparent in the users’ world. Ontological Design Designers create not only new workplaces but new world-views. In designing new tools for the workplace, “the programmer designs the language that creates the world in which the user operates” (Winograd & Flores, 1987, p. 165). An important consideration must be to design ready-to-hand or transparent tools that permit users to get their jobs done without drawing attention to themselves, The success of the Macintosh user interface has been attnbuted to the tact that if was easily accommodated within users’ current practices (among others, their language) and therefore was rapidly ready-to-hand (Brown & Duguid, 1992). Another important consideration 1s provision for breakdown (of machines and understanding). The ontological ambiguity of all tools and instructions dooms to failure all attempts to design for the elimination of trouble, because the unexpected always happens (Suchman, 1987). It will theretore not be possible to design away all exigencies and misunderstandings. Ontological design focuses on the management of trouble, whether of communicative or operative nature, and on the anticipation of breakdown. What designers of computer-based workplaces must include, then, is a “sufficient network of auxiliary conversations about system availability, support, training, modification, and so on” (Winograd & Flores, 1987, p. 173); that is, designers must not only produce new equipment but also encourage new language games that allow the human-computer interactions to realize their potential. Most failures of large computer systems can be accounted for by breakdowns in the embedding sociotechnical network, rather than the equipment itself. Two Case Studies from Science Education Heidegger and Wittgenstein foreshadowed the importance of contingency, emergence, social practice, and relational nature of cognition that is now being recognized in recent artificial intelligence, cognitive science, cognitive anthropology, science studies, and education research. In this section, I present two case studies that illustrate how these ideas bear on science education, and in this, throw new light on cognition, learning, and curriculum design. The first example is based on a simple machines unit that I recently designed and taught in an urban elementary school in western Canada. The second example comes from a research project concerning the analysis of video data collected during the teaching of chaos theory to a grade 10 physics class in an academically oriented German high school.150 WOLFE-MICHAEL ROTH Constructing “Mechanical Advantage” Design considerations. Recently, I planned and taught a curriculum on simple mashines.4 The ourriculum design was bascd on notions of: (a) huvwing a participation in social practices, (b) individual learning as the increasing participation in these practices; and, (c) collective learning as the concomitant change in know- ledge resources available to the community as a whole. Artifacts were designed as sites that allowed students to develop and increase competence in language and tool- related practices, negotiate meanings, and expand their experiences. That is, the learning environment was designed for participation, the developmont of rondy-to- hand tools, and breakdown. Student- and teacher-produced artifacts were central sites for developing competence and understandings. My main focus was on developing of students! language games rclated to simple machines. However, I did not want just any language game to emerge, but was interested in fostering those that showed some resemblance to language games in scientific communitiee on this topic. The underlying avoumption was that any founded and robust scientific practice about simple machines had to develop from students’ current, pre-unit practices and had to be grounded in their experience. By choosing inscriptions and associated physical models that are relevant in other domains of discourse, I could set the stage for producing, maintaining, and developing new, more appropriate practices. To allow for inereasing participation and temporary breakdowns in understanding, that is, to create a system of recurrent conversations, I designed four types of activity structures that differed in terms of the social configuration (whole class, small group) and the origin of the central, activity organizing artifact (teacher- designed, student-designed): * Whole-class teacher-directed conversations on the topics of simple pulleys, blook and tackle, lovers, inclined planes, work, and winagy in the proscuce uf a physical device and its representation on a transparency (about 25% of the unit). + Small-group teacher-designed investigations of topics related to simple machines {about 15% of the unit). * — Small-group design — which includes conception and construction — of four hand-powered machines (about 30% of the unit). * Student-led whole-class presentation of design artifacts with question and answer sessions (about 30% of the unit). Learning processes and products. The different social situations allowed students to develop, appropriate, and negotiate new language games. Here, students began talking in new ways by means of tentative use. Stabilization of these new ways of talking occurred when there was some sort of resonance — a concurrent deployment of the language by others — and the emergence of a fit between language and the world. Our study of language surrounding “mechanical advantage” documented students’ rapid appropriation of a practice. [he appropriation process roughly occurred in four stages. At first, | introduced new language about “mechanical