Beyond Symbols: Movement, Communication and Intuition in Valéria Dienes’s Philosophy, Psychology and Pedagogy
Brigitta BALOGH, Partium Christian University / Eötvös Loránd University - Doctoral School of Education
As one of the most many-sided and creative thinkers of 20th century Hungary, Valéria Dienes has passed on us some very fruitful insights concerning the nature and upbuilding of human knowledge. As a trained mathematician, philosopher and movement artist, as well as creator of a unique „science of the movement” and movement system called „orchestics”, she combined in a very original way the perspectives and methodologies of the arts and sciences she practiced.
In my presentation, I will focus on the way how Dienes handles the link between conscious, symbol-based and/or conceptual knowledge on one hand, and (at least partly) unconscious, experience-based and non-conceptual knowledge on the other. Starting with two philosophical-psychological concepts of intuition, and relating them especially to mathematical cognition, I will outline Valéria Dienes’s approach on three levels: a) her philosophical anthropology and philosophy of communication, b) her psychological account of how human beings construct space and time by experiences of movement; c) pedagogical consequences of her insights concerning what she has called the „dead verbalism” of ordinary schooling.
