In the early part of the 20th century a child
psychologist (he preferred to be known as a genetic epistemologist, but that’s
a different story) became interested in how people learn. A careful observer,
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) noticed that learning wasn’t simply a smooth, easy
process of absorbing knowledge but instead proceeded in fits and starts. He called
it disequilibrium.
Don’t let the jargon throw you, because the phenomenon it
identifies is simple, straightforward, and common. We’ve all experienced
disequilibrium. The basic idea is this. We tend to hold a view of life and
reality with which we are relatively comfortable. Things fit and life makes
sense. Then we hear or see or experience something that does not fit neatly
into our view of things, and as a result we feel uneasy. Maybe life makes less
sense, or we wonder whether the truth of this new thing might cast doubt on
some of the rest of what we have assumed is true. So we wrestle with it all
until the new thing makes sense—maybe because we’ve discovered more about it or
maybe because we’ve adopted a whole new framework into which this new thing
fits. This second possibility—a change in framework—is usually referred to as a
paradigm shift, but the important
thing is that in either case we have learned.
Piaget observed that this process of disequilibrium is
involved in learning that moves us towards wisdom—as opposed to learning that merely
consists of absorbing new data. So, as we grow to maturity we move from
equilibrium (where everything fits together nicely) to disequilibrium (where
some idea or event doesn’t seem to fit into our view of things), and finally to
a new equilibrium (where we’ve made some shift so the new thing fits in and
ease is restored). This process, Piaget argued, is essential to human learning.
[Note: I’m going to let
Piaget speak for himself here. If you
are uninterested in how he expressed it, feel free to skip this paragraph.]
In studying the development of knowledge in children Piaget saw “a process
leading from certain stages of equilibrium to others, qualitatively different,
and passing through multiple ‘non-balances’ and re-equilibrations.”1
He concluded that these periods of disequilibrium are important in cognitive
formation since they provide motivation for growth, a process which may involve
the painful realization that one’s ideas and convictions fail to make adequate
sense of life and reality. “[I]t is clear,” he argued, “that one of the sources
of progress in the development of knowledge is to be found in imbalance as such
which alone can force a subject to go beyond his present state and to seek new
equilibriums.”2 Thus for Piaget knowledge is understood to be “a
system of transformations that become progressively adequate,” punctuated by
and motivated by periods when the individual finds their cognitive equilibrium
disrupted.3 Trained in biology, Piaget observed organisms adapting
to their environment and applied this model to cognitive development. In his
view, intellectual growth is an ongoing process that includes four aspects:
schema, assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium. Schema are the “cognitive
structures” or mental categories each individual develops to name, organize,
and make sense of life and reality.4 Assimilation occurs when the
environment presents new information or data which is absorbed into the
existing schema. Some new data, however, does not mesh with the individual’s
existing schema but instead conflicts with or fails to fit into the mental
categories they have developed. This requires accommodation to occur, whereby
the existing schema is refined, made more elaborate, or some new schema is
developed. To the extent that this process of cognitive development is balanced
and undisturbed, the individual is in the preferred state of equilibrium.
Disequilibrium occurs, however, when imbalance produces a state of unease, when
information that doesn’t seem to make sense must be made to fit into our
understanding of life and reality. These temporary disturbances, though
uncomfortably destabilizing, are necessary if the individual is to grow, since
they provide motivation to accommodate new information and the opportunity to
develop schema that more adequately embraces things as they are. “Only intelligence,”
Piaget said, “capable of all its detours and reversals by action and by
thought, tends towards an all-embracing equilibrium by aiming at the
assimilation of the whole of reality.”5
I think Jean Piaget is correct: disequilibrium is a process
essential to learning. I am convinced of it for two reasons. First, I’ve
experienced it. And second, the Scriptures of the Christian faith (which I
accept as God’s written revelation), and Jesus Christ (who I accept as God’s
personal, living revelation), are so disequilibrating as to knock people off
their feet—sometimes quite literally. I’ll come back to this interface between
Christian faith and disequilibrium in later posts, but for now let me tell you
a story of disequilibrium I experienced.
It involved art appreciation class in college. I had been
raised in a home and church that saw the arts as an unnecessary luxury at best,
a worldly sensuous danger at worst. Even if there were good painting in the
museum, finding them amidst the nudes and decadence was like trying to find a
meal in a garbage dump. And abstract art was silly and meaningless, something
preachers reminded us with a chortle their child could do. I grew up shaped by
this perspective, because it was all I knew. Then I signed up for art appreciation
at the University of Minnesota. I thought it would simply be an easy way to get
three credits of core liberal arts requirements out of the way.
It was a bad learning environment in almost every way. The
class was huge and so was held in an auditorium, rows of seats lined up before
a stage and a large drop-down screen. There was no interaction, merely lecture,
our instructor talking about the works of art projected on the screen. He
didn’t even bother with eye contact, but always faced the screen, his back to
us. I don’t even remember him being a particularly scintillating speaker.
I was captivated, however, by the beauty projected on that
screen. I had not been exposed to art, and growing up in a missionary’s family
had provided a level of isolation that was fairly complete. So, it was new to
me. And though I could not have verbalized it at the time, beauty in art
touched me deeply, in a way that was almost frightening, because it evoked a
sense of awe that I had rarely known.
I don’t remember being conscious of moving from artwork that
was representational to pieces that could be called abstract. The instructor
stood there, back to us, telling us what he saw, how to look at the pieces,
what the artist seemed to be communicating, how there was a language of form
and shadow, color and line, shape and composition that could express longing
and love, fear and hope, despair and redemption. And wonder of wonders, I began
to see. It was like a whole new world was opening before me, a world of beauty
and creativity, of brokenness and pain, of dreams and grace. I was stunned, and
the class left me reeling. I knew, deep in my heart that this new world for all
its possibilities called into question my old one, and suddenly certainty was
in short supply and the faith that formed the core of my being was shown to be
insufficient. Over weeks old beliefs cracked open with questions, then hardened
into doubts, and slid towards unbelief.
One of my assignments that semester was to write a paper on a
piece of art hanging in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. I went to look at
the piece hesitantly. My girlfriend came with me, a lovely woman from a farm in
a northern Minnesota who would later become my wife. Margie and I stood before
the work and looked and talked, and looked some more. If memory serves, the
piece I wrote about was a large canvas by Larry Rivers (1923-2002). I haven’t
been drawn to Rivers’ work as a whole, but that day in the gallery was at the
heart of a period of several years of profound disequilibrium for me. As we
looked and talked, the painting seemed to unfold before me, and soon the paper
was too short to contain all I saw and thought. More profoundly, my view of
things no longer made sense, and I was increasingly haunted with a sense of
dis-ease. I found myself thinking and rethinking, questioning and searching,
reading and discussing, and as weeks stretched into months and years, sometimes
I feared I would teeter into despair. Margie and I walked through it together.
In the end, my disequilibrium provoked a paradigm shift. What
I experienced in art appreciation class was not new data I could absorb into my
beliefs as a Fundamentalist. My Fundamentalist worldview, values, convictions,
and theology were insufficient, incapable to account for the expression of
beauty, craft, and human creativity I had encountered. All I wanted was three
easy credits to help maintain my student deferment in order to stay out of the
Viet Nam war. Little did I know that signing up for that class would be one in
a growing series of experiences that would force me to go back to basics, and
in the process discover something of God. In hindsight, that poorly taught
class is one of the very best learning experiences I have ever encountered.
Have you learned by experiencing a period of disequilibrium?
Would you be willing to share something of your experience in a comment? I’d
love to hear your stories.
Graphics: Picture of monkey in what seems to me as a perfect
expression of disequilibrium (www.calxibe.com).
Picture of Jean Piaget (http://faculty.weber.edu/pstewart/6030/6030.html). Makoto Fugimura Four Holy Gospels, a project of Crossway publishing
(http://www.crossway.org/).
Endnotes:
1. Jean Piaget, The
Development of Thought: Equilibrium of Cognitive Structures (New York, NY:
Viking Press, 1975, 1977), 3.
2. Jean Piaget, The
Development of Thought: Equilibrium of Cognitive Structures (New York, NY:
Viking Press, 1975, 1977), 12.
3. Jean Piaget, “Genetic Epistemology” in Jean Piaget: The
Man and His Ideas by Richard I. Evans, trans, Eleanor Duckworth (New York, NY:
E. P. Dutton & Company, 1973), xliv.
4. Barry Wadsworth, Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development: An Introduction for Students of Psychology and Education (New
York, NY: David McKay and Company; 1971), 10.
5. Jean Piaget, Intelligence,
quoted in P. G. Richmond, An Introduction
to Piaget (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1970), 78.
This entry was posted
at Monday, January 31, 2011
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Art,
Beauty,
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Disequilibrium
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