Recapitulation

After Darwin, the biogenetic law became popular:

the development of an individual repeats the biological development of its species.

Psychologists went further.

They supposed that the development of a child from birth to maturity repeats the development of humanity from the first human being to our days.

But what does “repeats” mean?

The equality of two processes means that:

Each of these processes can be divided into stages.
The two resulting sequences of stages can be identified with one another.

But in what sense?

Literally, the Middle Ages, which lasted at least 500 years, cannot be identified with a part of human life, which lasts at most 100 years.

And not literally?

Let us recall the P-procedure for checking knowledge.

Let us recall the third of the eight rules: the task is in the background.

What is our task?

In 1989 my wife and I announced the creation of a school with an unusual program.

We postulated that the goal of school education is to establish contacts between the Student and Culture.

The question immediately arises: at what age should which culture be studied?

If culture = the history of culture = the history of humanity, then the principle of recapitulation gives a simple answer. At each age one should study one epoch.

But which epoch?

This is where the principle of recapitulation would be useful, if it had come to us in operational form.

But if we want to press it into operational form, we need to find the rule of identification:

age - epoch.

Today we claim that:

Society develops: the tasks whose solution is considered exemplary for a given epoch become more complex.
The development of the child is the same.

But how can we identify the tasks of the child and the tasks of society?

We need to measure the complexity of a task by a certain scale, preferably a discrete one.

Then the child’s age and the corresponding historical epoch will coincide on the scale of complexity of exemplary tasks.

Complexity in the Narrow and Broad Sense

The level of complexity can be understood in a narrow sense and in a broad sense.

Narrow meaning: there are tasks, there is a method for determining complexity - apply the method.

Broad meaning: there is Life - a continuous, unarticulated flow.

In the flow there are vortices: points where the flow freezes and one can postpone action and think.

If we begin to think, this is already a situation.

If we decide to choose optimal behavior for the situation, then this is a problem.

If the problem has a criterion for what counts as a good solution, then this is a task.

A task has a certain complexity. If we move backward, then a problem has its own complexity: one or several. A situation has its own. A vortex has its own.

This is about tasks.

The Person and Markers

A person tuned to a certain class of complexity demonstrates certain markers that can be recognized.

This is about the person.

Communities

Communities can be real or pseudo.

A real community catches these markers and decodes them as levels of complexity.

As a rule, a real community has levels that must be demonstrated, and levels that are forbidden to demonstrate.

As a rule, there are people who monitor this.

Some candidates are accepted into such a community, others are not, and some are expelled from the community for this.

A pseudo-community is selected by researchers according to a certain feature. For example, by age or by mastery of a profession.

But then these selection factors lead to the fact that a person demonstrates some markers and does not demonstrate others.

The demonstrated markers show the exemplary level of the group.

If there are several levels, the highest one is taken.

If we speak of “children of a certain age,” this is a pseudo-group.

Children do not intend to demonstrate certain markers.

But they involuntarily launch different activities.

If we cut off what is atypical and rare, then activities of a certain complexity remain.

This complexity is the level of the pseudo-group.

We have already shown that humanity as a pseudo-group moves along the scale of levels.

Below we will show that age pseudo-groups possess the same property, in a certain sense.