Chapter 4: Studying The Movement of Thought

Methodologies hide as well as reveal. The danger is that the affordances of a methodology overshadow its limitations thus constraining research. Paraphrasing the words of Karl Duncker (1945), the problem is that the functioning of familiar methodologies narrows our perception of phenomena so as to blind us to certain aspects. Duncker conducted experiments on problem solving and “functional fixedness.” For example, he gave participants matches, a candle, and a box of tacks, and asked them to fix the candle to a soft wall. Duncker found that participants would try to tack the candle to the wall directly or use the matches to melt it onto the wall. The solution was to tack the box on to the wall and then use the box to support the candle. Why did participants fail to see the role of the box in the solution? First, Duncker argued that participants were trapped in the conventional use of the box as a means to store the tacks. Second, he pointed out that the presence of the tacks and the possibility of melting the wax, and the conventional use of both of these for securing things, blinded participants to the secondary function of the box. In the present chapter we suggest that much contemporary methodology has become functionally fixed on identifying variables and consequently has become blind to the actuality of psychological processes, namely, the situated real-time semiotic mediation of thought and action.