“Back to the future”: toward Luria's holistic cultural science of human brain and mind in a historical study of mental retardation

Eli Lamdan,Anton Yasnitsky

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2013.00509

Abstract

is dedicated to yetanother interesting topic: the interplaybetween brain research and special educa-tion, its theory and practice.In search of a historical precedentand the cultural prototype of contem-porary acute interest in the interplaybetween neuroscience and special educa-tion we discover an author well knownamong general readers and, likeother pio-neers of brain research, among the neu-roscience academics: the Russian scholarAlexanderLuria(1902–1977). Theneurol-ogist and bestselling author Oliver Sacks,a great admirer of both Luria’s schol-arly and case-based idiographic writings,discussed the secret of Alexander Luria’ssuccess as the unusual combination ofcomplementary “classic” and “romantic”approaches in the latter’s research, prac-tice, and thinking (Cole et al., 2013;Sacks, in press). Yet, such a descriptionremains somewhat incomplete unless oneadds to it yet another utterly importantdimension: Luria’s social activism in hisyouth, the transformative stance of hisresearch, and cultural and holistic under-pinnings of his theory of human biosocialand cultural-historical psychoneurolog-ical development—the theory that helaunched decades ago working hand-in-hand with another luminary and pio-neer of human sciences, Lev Vygotsky(1896–1934), the prominent cultural andMarxistpsychologist.Thesesocialandcul-tural dimensions of Luria’s approach area considerable addition to his holism ofthe kind of a combination of “classicaland romantic science” that does not nec-essarily exceed the natural borders of anorganism as seemingly isolated from his-torically evolving social, cultural, and psy-chological environment (Proctor, 2011).Such a “higher order,” “cultural holism”of Luria’s approach still further empow-ers his theory in its effort to deal with arange of issues and problems of practicaland applied nature, and thus appears tobe of immense interest to contemporaryscholarsand practitioners.In sum, Luria appears highly relevantto the topic of our present discussion ofthe neurological approach to special edu-cation in its search of identity. Little isknown nowadays about Luria’s period oftransformation from cultural psychologistof Vygotskian type to the neuropsychol-ogist as we know him now. Even lessknown is the fact that at certain point inhis early career in 1930s Luria became aprofessional who could be best describedas a neurologically-inclined

Highlights

The numerous successes of contemporary neuroscience and neuropsychology are obvious and undeniable
Brain research is clearly on the rise these days, and brain-related studies are rapidly growing in numbers and expanding in newer cross-disciplinary fields such as brain, mind, and. . . education, computation, consciousness, memory, cognition, behavior, culture, the arts, creativity, and the like
In search of a historical precedent and the cultural prototype of contemporary acute interest in the interplay between neuroscience and special education we discover an author well known among general readers and, like other pioneers of brain research, among the neuroscience academics: the Russian scholar Alexander Luria (1902–1977)

Summary

Introduction

The numerous successes of contemporary neuroscience and neuropsychology are obvious and undeniable. In search of a historical precedent and the cultural prototype of contemporary acute interest in the interplay between neuroscience and special education we discover an author well known among general readers and, like other pioneers of brain research, among the neuroscience academics: the Russian scholar Alexander Luria (1902–1977). Such a “higher order,” “cultural holism” of Luria’s approach still further empowers his theory in its effort to deal with a range of issues and problems of practical and applied nature, and appears to be of immense interest to contemporary scholars and practitioners.

Results

Conclusion