Challenging the dualistic assumptions of academic writing: Representing Ph.D. Research as embodied practice

Abstract

This article will address the tensions between dualistic traditions of our culture (cf. WERTHEIM, 1999) and new ways of understanding how people come to know what they know through embodied practice within biological and social ecosystems (e.g., DAMASIO, 1994; LEAR, 1998; LEMKE, 1995; MATURANA & VARELA, 1992). It will also raise implications of a biosocial system model for research methodology and academic writing. In my Ph.D. thesis in education I demonstrated that a significant role was played in the construction of my knowledge by my body[-mind], much of it initially outside my awareness. However, I found that theses were still expected to support the myth that learning which will advance knowledge about education is almost exclusively the product of abstract and systematic logical processes, of a disembodied spirit.