Imagined conversations: the relevance of hypertext, pragmatism, and cognitive flexibility theory to the interpretation of “classic texts” in intellectual history

What does it mean to understand a “classic text” in the history of social thought? Recent pragmatist arguments in intellectual history suggest that it is a matter of placing the text within some larger context, viewing it from a variety of perspectives, and “using it” to satisfy one’s own interests and purposes. What is the best means to “advanced knowledge acquisition”? Reeent theories of learning in cognitive psychology suggest that we view “ill-structured knowledge domains” as landscapes, to be “criss-crossed” in a variety of directions, from multiple perspectives. Hypertext is a technology for doing both of these things. Quite independently, but sharing a foundation in pragmatism and the later Wittgenstein, each of these disciplines thus encourages further mearch in the development and implementation of hypertext systems for learning. Such research is being carried out in the Hypermedia Laboratory and the Cognitive Flexibility Laboratory at the University of Illinois, with implications for the way hypertext systems are designed and implemented, and the p&lagogical problems to which they are applied. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that copies are not made or distributed for direct comercial advantage, the ACM copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the Association for Computing Machinery. To copy otherwise, or to republish, requks a fee and/cw specific permission. @1992 ACM O-89791-547-X/92/0011 /0141/ $1.50