Structuralism and Its Heuristic Implications

Abstract

ed pattern of change over time. In contrast to Piaget's ultimate appeal to God, Foucault committed himself only to limit as a principle of causation. Consequently, he expressly rejected possibility of a transcendental consciousness, locating regulative power of practices in practices themselves. The rules of formation were considered conditions of existence, coexistence, maintenance, modification, and disappearance within a given discursive formation (1972, p. 38). Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982) accused Foucault of making implausible and unjustified claims regarding prescriptive power of description (p. 96), arguing that it is not legitimate to hypostatize observed formal regularities which describe discursive formations into conditions of these formations' existence (p. 83). Further, they claimed that the causal power attributed to rules governing discursive systems is unintelligible . How, they asked, do discursive practices .form and govern speakers and statements, subjects, and objects they take to be meaningful? (p. xx). Foucault's answer is, by limiting them. According to Foucault's view, form depends on presence of certain possibilities and absence of others. The constraints of knowledge and discourse are limits of possibilities of a given time. Structure is a function of limit. Heuristic Implications of Structuralism Structuralism points to viability of interdisciplinary translation and algorithmic learning. If there is unity of underlying structure, and if knowledge were organized hierarchically according to universal principles, it would be possible to trace transdisciplinary path of a concept; that is, analogous phenomena could be identified in what presently are considered different fields. Thus, truths obtained in one domain could be seen to hold for all others, given proper transmutation of form. Similarly, formal relations could be learned in abstract, and then applied to particular cases. In education, this means that instruction could proceed in opposite direction from present convention (specific to general), so that abstract relations and general principles would form basis for instruction in particulars.