Late
morning. While Jill cleans you are off doing errands. Carol is presently
looking for a ‘garden seat’ at Lowe’s. – Amorella
1202
hours. Waiting for Carol at Barnes and Noble after taking a Craftsman tool back
to Best Buy after finding it in the trunk – no doubt from the Geek Squad fellow
who installed the Garmin backup camera a month or so ago.
You had lunch at Smashburgers after a stop
at Kroger’s and now you are facing west at the far north parking lot of Pine
Hill Lakes Park. Carol is on page 118 of Harlen Coben’s Play Dead. Yesterday
you discovered a new BBC article on multiple universes. Drop it in here. –
Amorella
**
**
BBC Culture
•
The Big Questions Universe
•
•
Why there might
be many more universes besides our own?
•
The idea of parallel universes
may seem bizarre, but physics has found all sorts of reasons why they should
exist.
•
By Philip Ball 21 March 2016
Is our Universe one of many?
The idea of parallel
universes, once consigned to science fiction, is now becoming respectable among
scientists – at least, among physicists, who have a tendency to push ideas to
the limits of what is conceivable.
In fact there are almost
too many other potential universes. Physicists have proposed several candidate
forms of "multiverse", each made possible by a different aspect of
the laws of physics.
The trouble is, virtually by definition we probably
cannot ever visit these other universes to confirm that they exist. So the
question is, can we devise other ways to test for the existence of entire
universes that we cannot see or touch?
Worlds within worlds
In at least some of these
alternative universes, it has been suggested, we have doppelgängers living
lives much like – perhaps almost identical to – our own.
That idea tickles our ego
and awakens our fantasies, which is doubtless why the multiverse theories,
however far-out they seem, enjoy so much popularity. We have embraced
alternative universes in works of fiction ranging from Philip K. Dick's The
Man in the High Castle to movies like Sliding Doors.
Indeed, there is nothing
new about the idea of a multiverse, as philosopher of religion Mary-Jane
Rubenstein explains in her 2014 book Worlds Without End.
In the mid-16th century,
Copernicus argued that the Earth is not the centre of the Universe. Several
decades later, Galileo's telescope showed him stars beyond measure: a glimpse
of the vastness of the cosmos.
So at the end of the 16th century, the Italian
philosopher Giordano Bruno speculated that the Universe might be infinite,
populated by an infinite number of inhabited worlds.
The idea of a Universe
containing many solar systems became commonplace in the 18th Century.
By the early 20th Century,
the Irish physicist Edmund Fournier d'Albe was even suggesting that there might
be an infinite regression of "nested" universes at different scales,
ever larger and ever smaller. In this view, an individual atom might be like a
real, inhabited solar system.
Scientists today reject that notion of a
"Russian doll" multiverse, but they have postulated several other
ways in which multiverses might exist. Here are five of them, along with a
rough guide to how likely they are.
The patchwork universe
The simplest multiverse is
a consequence of the infinite size of our own Universe.
We do not actually know if
the Universe is infinite, but we cannot rule it out. If it is, then it must be
divided into a patchwork of regions that cannot see one another.
This is simply because the
regions are too far apart for light to have crossed the distance. Our Universe
is only 13.8 billion years old, so any regions further than 13.8 billion light
years apart are utterly cut off.
To all intents and
purposes, these regions are separate universes. But they will not stay that
way: eventually light will cross the divide and the universes will merge.
If our Universe really does contain an infinite
number of "island universes" like ours, with matter and stars and
planets, there must be worlds identical to Earth somewhere out there.
It may sound incredibly
unlikely that atoms should come together by chance into an exact replica of
Earth, or a replica that is exact except for the colour of your socks. But in a
genuine infinity of worlds, even that strange place must exist. In fact, it
must exist countless times.
If so, then somewhere
almost unimaginably far off, a being identical to me is typing out these words,
and wondering if his editor is going to insist on radical revisions. [nice
try Phil - ed]
By the same logic, rather
farther away there is an entire observable universe identical to ours. This
distance can be estimated at about 10 to the power 10 to the power 118 metres.
It is possible that this is not the case at all.
Maybe the Universe is not infinite. Or even if it is, maybe all the matter is
concentrated in our corner of it, in which case most of the other universes
could be empty. But there is no obvious reason why that should be, and no sign
so far that matter gets sparser the farther away we look.
The inflationary multiverse
The second multiverse
theory arises from our best ideas about how our own
Universe began.
According to the
predominant view of the Big Bang, the Universe began as an infinitesimally tiny
point and then expanded incredibly fast in a super-heated fireball. A fraction
of a second after this expansion began, it may have fleetingly accelerated at a
truly enormous rate, far faster than the speed of light. This burst is called
"inflation".
Inflationary theory
explains why the Universe is relatively uniform everywhere we look. Inflation
blew up the fireball to a cosmic scale before it had a chance to get too
clumpy.
However, that primordial
state would have been ruffled by tiny chance variations, which also got blown
up by inflation. These fluctuations are now preserved in the cosmic microwave
background radiation, the faint afterglow of the Big Bang. This radiation
pervades the Universe, but it is not perfectly uniform.
Several satellite-based telescopes have mapped out
these variations in fine detail, and compared them to those predicted by
inflationary theory. The match is almost unbelievably good, suggesting that
inflation really did happen.
This suggests that we can
understand how the Big Bang happened – in which case we can reasonably ask if
it happened more than once.
The current view is that
the Big Bang happened when a patch of ordinary space, containing no matter but
filled with energy, appeared within a different kind of space called the
"false vacuum". It then grew like an expanding bubble.
But according to this
theory, the false vacuum should also experience a kind of inflation, causing it
to expand at fantastic speed. Meanwhile, other bubble universes of "true
vacuum" can appear within it – and not just, like our Universe, 13.8
billion years ago, but constantly.
This scenario is called
"eternal inflation". It suggests there are many, perhaps infinitely
many, universes appearing and growing all the time. But we can never reach
them, even if we travel at the speed of light forever, because they are
receding too fast for us ever to catch up.
The UK Astronomer Royal Martin Rees suggests that
the inflationary multiverse theory represents a "fourth Copernican
revolution": the fourth time that we have been forced to downgrade our
status in the heavens. After Copernicus suggested Earth was just one planet
among others, we realized that our Sun is just one star in our galaxy, and that
other stars might have planets. Then we discovered that our galaxy is just one
among countless more in an expanding Universe. And now perhaps our Universe is
simply one of a crowd.
We do not yet know for
sure if inflationary theory is true.
However, if eternal
inflation does create a multiverse from an endless series of Big Bangs, it
could help to resolve one of the biggest problems in modern physics.
Some physicists have long
been searching for a "theory of
everything": a set of basic laws, or perhaps just a single
equation, from which all the other principles of physics can be derived. But
they have found there are more alternatives to choose from than there are
fundamental particles in the known universe.
Many physicists who delve
into these waters believe that an idea called string theory is the best
candidate for a "final theory". But the latest version offers a huge
number of distinct solutions: 1 followed by 500 zeros. Each solution yields its
own set of physical laws, and we have no obvious reason to prefer one over any
other.
The inflationary
multiverse relieves us of the need to choose at all. If parallel universes have
been popping up in an inflating false vacuum for billions of years, each could
have different physical laws, determined by one of these many solutions to
string theory.
If that is true, it could help us explain a strange
property of our own Universe.
The fundamental constants
of the laws of physics seem bizarrely fine-tuned to the values needed for life
to exist.
For example, if the
strength of the electromagnetic force were just a little different, atoms would
not be stable. Just a 4% change would prevent all nuclear fusion in stars, the
process that makes the carbon atoms our bodies are largely made of.
Similarly, there is a
delicate balance between gravity, which pulls matter towards itself, and
so-called dark energy, which does the opposite and makes the Universe expand
ever faster. This is just what is needed to make stars possible while not
collapsing the Universe on itself.
In this and several other
ways, the Universe
seems fine-tuned to host us. This has made some people suspect
the hand of God.
Yet an inflationary multiverse, in which all
conceivable physical laws operate somewhere, offers an alternative explanation.
In every universe set up
in this life-friendly way, the argument goes, intelligent beings will be
scratching their heads trying to understand their luck. In the far more
numerous universes that are set up differently, there is no one to ask the
question.
This is an example of the
"anthropic principle", which says that things have to be the way we
find them: if they were not, we would not be here and the question would never
arise.
For many physicists and
philosophers, this argument is a cheat: a way to evade rather than explain the
fine-tuning problem.
How can we test these
assertions, they ask? Surely it is defeatist to accept that there is no reason
why the laws of nature are what they are, and simply say that in other
universes they are different?
The trouble is, unless you have some other
explanation for fine-tuning, someone will assert that God must have set things
up this way. The astrophysicist Bernard Carr has put it bluntly: "If you don't
want God, you'd better have a multiverse".
Cosmic natural selection
Another kind of multiverse
avoids what some see as the slipperiness of this reasoning, offering a solution
to the fine-tuning problem without invoking the anthropic principle.
It was formulated by Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute
for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. In 1992 he proposed that
universes might reproduce and evolve rather like living things do.
On Earth, natural
selection favours the emergence of "useful" traits such as fast
running or opposable thumbs. In the multiverse, Smolin argues, there might be
some pressure that favours universes like ours. He calls this
"cosmological natural selection".
Smolin's idea is that a "mother" universe
can give birth to "baby" universes, which form inside it. The mother
universe can do this if it contains black holes.
A black hole
forms when a huge star collapses under the pull of its own gravity, crushing
all the atoms together until they reach infinite density.
In the 1960s, Stephen
Hawking and Roger Penrose pointed out that this collapse
is like a mini-Big Bang in reverse. This suggested to Smolin
that a black hole could become a Big Bang, spawning an entire new universe
within itself.
If that is so, then the
new universe might have slightly different physical properties from the one
that made the black hole. This is like the random genetic mutations that mean
baby organisms are different from their parents.
If a baby universe has physical laws that permit
the formation of atoms, stars and life, it will also inevitably contain black
holes. That will mean it can have more baby universes of its own. Over time,
universes like this will become more common than those without black holes,
which cannot reproduce.
It is a neat idea, because
our Universe then does not have to be the product of pure chance. If a
fine-tuned universe arose at random, surrounded by many other universes that
were not fine-tuned, cosmic natural selection would mean that fine-tuned
universes subsequently became the norm.
The details of the idea
are a little woolly, but Smolin points out that it has one big advantage: we
can test it.
For example, if Smolin is
right we should expect our Universe to be especially suited to making black
holes. This is a rather more demanding criterion than simply saying it should
support the existence of atoms.
The brane multiverse
When Albert
Einstein's theory of general relativity began to come to public
attention in the 1920s, many people speculated about the "fourth
dimension" that Einstein had allegedly invoked. What might be in there? A
hidden universe, maybe?
This was nonsense.
Einstein was not proposing a new dimension. What he was saying was that time is
a dimension, similar to the three dimensions of space. All four are woven into
a single fabric called space-time, which matter distorts to produce gravity.
Even so, other physicists
were already starting to speculate about genuinely new dimensions in space.
The first intimation of
hidden dimensions began with the work of the theoretical physicist Theodor
Kaluza. In a 1921
paper Kaluza showed that, by adding an extra dimension to the
equations of Einstein's theory of general relativity, he could obtain an extra
equation that seemed to predict the existence of light.
That looked promising. But where, then, was this
extra dimension? But so far, there is no evidence that this is the case – let
alone proof that a black hole really can spawn an entirely new universe.
The Swedish physicist
Oskar Klein offered an
answer in 1926. Perhaps the fifth dimension was curled up into
an unimaginably small distance: about a billion-trillion-trillionth of a
centimetre.
The idea of a dimension
being curled may seem strange, but it is actually a familiar phenomenon. A
garden hose is a three-dimensional object, but from far enough away it looks
like a one-dimensional line, because the other two dimensions are so small.
Similarly, it takes so little time to cross Klein's extra dimension that we do
not notice it.
Physicists have since
taken Kaluza and Klein's ideas much further in string theory. This seeks to
explain fundamental particles as the vibrations of even smaller entities called
strings.
When string theory was developed in the 1980s, it
turned out that it could only work if there were extra dimensions. In the
modern version of string theory, known as M-theory, there are up to seven
hidden dimensions.
What's more, these
dimensions need not be compact after all. They can be extended regions called
branes (short for "membranes"), which may be multi-dimensional.
A brane might be a
perfectly adequate hiding place for an entire universe. M-theory postulates a
multiverse of branes of various dimensions, coexisting rather like a stack of
papers.
If this is true, there
should be a new class of particles called Kaluza-Klein particles. In theory we
could make them, perhaps in a particle accelerator like the Large Hadron
Collider. They would have distinctive signatures, because some of their
momentum is carried in the hidden dimensions.
These brane worlds should remain quite distinct and
separate from each other, because forces like gravity do not pass between them.
But if branes collide, the results could be monumental. Conceivably, such a
collision could have triggered our own Big Bang.
It has also been proposed
that gravity, uniquely among the fundamental forces, might "leak"
between branes. This leakage could explain why gravity is so weak compared to
the other fundamental forces.
As Lisa Randall
of Harvard University puts it: "if gravity is spread out over large extra
dimensions, its force would be diluted."
In 1999, Randall and her
colleague Raman Sundrum suggested that the branes do not just carry gravity, they produce
it by curving space. In effect this means that a brane
"concentrates" gravity, so that it looks weak in a second brane
nearby.
This could also explain why we could live on a
brane with infinite extra dimensions without noticing them. If their idea is
true, there is an awful lot of space out there for other universes.
The quantum multiverse
The theory of quantum
mechanics is one of the most successful in all of science. It explains the
behaviour of very small objects, such as atoms and their constituent
fundamental particles. It can predict all kinds of phenomena, from the shapes
of molecules to the way light and matter interact, with phenomenal accuracy.
Quantum mechanics treats
particles as if they are waves, and describes them with a mathematical
expression called a wave function.
Perhaps the strangest
feature of a wave function is that it allows a quantum particle to exist in
several states at once. This is called a superposition.
But superpositions are
generally destroyed as soon as we measure the object in any way. An observation
"forces" the object to "choose" one particular state.
This switch from a
superposition to a single state, caused by measurement, is called
"collapse of the wave function". The trouble is, it is not really
described by quantum mechanics, so no one knows how or why it happens.
In his 1957
doctoral thesis, the American physicist Hugh Everett suggested
that we might stop fretting about the awkward nature of wave function collapse,
and just do away with it.
Everett suggested that
objects do not switch from multiple states to a single state when they are
measured or observed. Instead, all the possibilities encoded in the wave
function are equally real. When we make a measurement we only see one of those
realities, but the others also exist.
This is known as the
"many worlds interpretation" of quantum mechanics.
Everett was not very
specific about where these other states actually exist. But in the 1970s, the
physicist Bryce DeWitt
argued that each alternative outcome must exist in a parallel reality: another
world.
Suppose you conduct an
experiment in which you measure the path of an electron. In this world it goes
one way, but in another world it goes another way.
That requires a parallel
apparatus for the electron to pass through. It also requires a parallel you to
measure it. In fact you have to build an entire parallel universe around that
one electron, identical in all respects except where the electron went.
In short, to avoid wave function collapse, you must
make another universe.
This picture really gets
extravagant when you appreciate what a measurement is. In DeWitt's view, any
interaction between two quantum entities, say a photon of
light bouncing off an atom, can produce alternative outcomes and
therefore parallel universes.
As DeWitt put it,
"every quantum transition taking place on every star, in every galaxy, in
every remote corner of the Universe is splitting our local world on earth into
myriads of copies."
Not everyone sees
Everett's many-worlds interpretation this way. Some say it is largely a
mathematical convenience, and that we cannot say anything meaningful about the
contents of those alternative universes.
But others take seriously
the idea that there are countless other "yous", created every time a
quantum measurement is made. The quantum multiverse must be in some sense real,
they say, because quantum theory demands it and quantum theory works.
You either buy that argument or you do not. But if
you accept it, you must also accept something rather unsettling.
The other kinds of
parallel universes, such as those created by eternal inflation, are truly
"other worlds". They exist somewhere else in space and time, or in
other dimensions. They might contain exact copies of you, but those copies are
separate, like a body double living on another continent.
In contrast, the other
universes of the many-worlds interpretation do not exist in other dimensions or
other regions of space. Instead, they are right here, superimposed on our
Universe but invisible and inaccessible. The other selves they contain really
are "you".
In fact, there is no
meaningful "you" at all. "You" are becoming distinct beings
an absurd number of times every second: just think of all the quantum events
that happen as a single electrical signal travels along a single neuron in your
brain. "You" vanish into the crowd.
In other words, an idea that started out as a
mathematical convenience ends up implying that there is no such thing as
individuality.
Testing the multiverse
Given the strange
implications of parallel universes, you might be forgiven some skepticism about
whether they exist.
But who are we to judge
what is weird and what is not? Scientific ideas stand or fall, not by how they
"feel" to us, but by experimental testing.
And that is the problem.
An alternative universe is separate from our own. By definition, it is beyond
reach and out of sight. On the whole, multiverse theories cannot be tested by
looking for those other worlds.
Yet even if other universes cannot be experienced
directly, it might be possible to find evidence to support the reasoning behind
them.
For example, we could find
strong evidence for the inflationary theory of the Big Bang. That would
strengthen, but not prove, the case for an inflationary multiverse.
Some cosmologists have
proposed that an inflationary multiverse might be more directly tested. A
collision between our expanding bubble universe and another one should leave
detectable traces in the cosmic microwave background – if we were close enough
to see them.
Similarly, experiments
envisaged for the Large Hadron
Collider could search for evidence of the additional dimensions
and particles implied by the braneworld theory.
Some argue that
experimental verification is over-rated anyway. They say we can gauge
the validity of a scientific idea by other means, such as
whether it rests on sound logic spun from premises that do have observational
support.
Finally, we might make
statistical predictions.
For example, we could use the inflationary
multiverse theory to predict which values of the physical constants would be
expected in most universes, and then see whether these are close to the ones we
see – on the basis that there is no reason to expect us to be anywhere special
in the multiverse.
At any rate, it does seem
odd that the multiverse keeps cropping up wherever we look. "It's proven
remarkably hard to write down a theory which produces exactly the universe we
see and nothing more," says physicist Max Tegmark.
Even so, it is not clear
that newspaper headlines will announce the discovery of another universe any
time soon. Right now, these ideas lie on the border of physics and metaphysics.
In the absence of any
evidence, then, here is a rough-and-ready – and frankly subjective – ranking of
the probabilities of the various multiverses, the most likely first.
The patchwork multiverse
is hard to avoid – if our Universe really is infinite and uniform.
Cosmic natural selection
is an ingenious idea but involves speculative physics, and there are a lot of
unanswered questions.
Brane worlds
are far more speculative, because they can only exist if all those extra
dimensions do, and there is no direct evidence of that.
The quantum multiverse
is arguably the simplest interpretation of quantum theory, but it is also
vaguely defined and leads to an incoherent view of selfhood.
http://www.bbcDOTcom/earth/story/20160318-why-there-might-be-many-more-universes-besides-our-own?ocid=ww.social.link.facebook
** **
1449
hours. Yesterday Heather and others responded to the BBC article on my Facebook
page.
** **
Heather Waymouth /react-text -- Have you looked at any of the research on the
multiplicity of identity? Some runs parallel to the idea of multiple literacies
and disciplinary literacies which excites me. Check out James Gee's work on discourses
or Elizabeth Birr Moje's work on literacy and identity. Not necessarily
universes within but at least dimensions! I read something recently about
looking at identity as a prism as well... I'll try to find that one for you
too.
** **
1528
hours. I found more relevant (to me) information on Gee. His ideas do show a
different way of relating to a person’s character.
** **
James Paul Gee
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James Gee born April 15, 1948) is a researcher who has worked
in psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, bilingual education
and literacy. Gee is currently the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of
Literacy Studies at Arizona State University, originally appointed there in the
Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education. Gee is a faculty
affiliate of the Games, Learning and Society group at the University of
Wisconsin – Madison and is a member of the National Academy of Education. . . .
Discourse/discourse
In his work in social linguistics, Gee explored the concept of Discourse
("big D" Discourse). In Gee's work, discourse ("little
d") refers to language-in-use. When discussing the combination of language
with other social practices (behavior, values, ways of thinking, clothes, food,
customs, perspectives) within a specific group, Gee refers to that as Discourse.
Individuals may be part of many different Discourse communities, for example “when
you ‘pull-off’ being a culturally specific sort of ‘everyday’ person, a ‘regular’
at the local bar…a teacher or a student of a certain sort, or any of a great
many other ‘ways of being in the world’” (p. 7).
Discourse Communities
Furthermore, being able to function within a Discourse may carry
advantages in different situations. For example, if a person is raised in a
family of lawyers, the Discourses of politics or business may come very easily
to that person. In the United States, those are all Discourses of power and
they are closely related. Another person raised in a very different Discourse
community might find himself or herself at a disadvantage when trying to move
within the Discourse of business, trying to get a loan, for instance. One
Discourse community is not inherently better than another; however, power
within a society may be unequally represented within different Discourses.
Situated Language
In Gee's view,
language is always used from a perspective and always occurs within a context.
There is no 'neutral' use of language. Meaning is socially constructed within
Discourse communities.
New Literacies
According to Gee, there are at least two reasons why we should
consider literacy in broader terms than the traditional conception of literacy
as the ability to read and write. First, in our world today, language is by no
means the only communication system available. Many types of visual images and
symbols have specific significances, and so “visual literacies” and literacies
of other modes, or the concept of multimodal literacy, are also included in Gee’s
conception of new literacies. Second, Gee proposes that reading and writing
(the ‘meat’ of literacy according to the traditional notion of the term) are
not such obvious ideas as they first appear. “After all,” he states, “we never
just read or write; rather, we always read or write something in some way”. In other words, according to which type of text we read there
are different ways in which we read depending on the “rules” of how to read
such a text. Literacy to Gee, even if it is the traditional print-based
literacy, should be conceived as being multiple, or comprising different
literacies, since we need different types of literacies to read different kinds
of texts in ways that meet our particular purposes in reading them.
Furthermore, Gee also argues that reading and writing should be
viewed as more than just “mental achievements” happening inside people’s minds;
they should also be seen as “social and cultural practices with economic,
historical, and political implications”. So, in Gee’s view, literacies are not
only multiple but are inherently connected to social practices. In order to
expand the traditional view of literacy as print literacy, Gee recommends that
we think first of literacy in terms of semiotic domains. By this, he means “any
set of practices that recruits one or more modalities (e.g., oral or written
language, images, equations, symbols, sounds, gestures, graphs, artifacts,
etc.) to communicate distinctive types of meanings”. There is a seemingly
endless and varied range of semiotic domains, including (but certainly not
limited to) cellular biology, first-person-shooter video games, rap music, or
modernist painting. Most pundits would describe this conception of literacies
as a key element in what has come to be known as the New Literacy Studies. In short,
this theoretical and methodological orientation emphases studying
language-in-use and literacies within their contexts of social practice. It
includes work by colleagues such as Brian Street, Gunther Kress, David Barton,
Mary Hamilton, Courtney Cazden, Ron Scollon, and Suzie Scollon, among others.
Gee's current
work in the field of new literacies has seen him shift in his research focus
somewhat from studying language-in-use to examining the Discourses of a range
of new social practices—with a particular emphasis on video games and learning.
Gee applies many key concepts from his previous research to studying video
games. For example, Gee continues to argue that if we take reading to mean
gaining understanding (instead of simply decoding letter sounds and words), one
needs to be able to recognize or produce meanings inherent to any one semiotic
domain in order to be literate in that domain. As such, and as Gee sets out in
his text What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, one can
be literate in the semiotic domain of video games if he or she “can recognize
(the equivalent of “reading”) and/or produce (the equivalent of “writing”)
meanings” in the video game domain. Therefore, because new literacies are
multiple and attached to social and cultural practices, Gee explains that
people need to (1) be literate in many different semiotic domains, and (2) be
able to become literate in other *new* semiotic domains throughout their lives.
This theoretical orientation aligns with work in the broad field of "new
literacies" research—by colleagues such as Colin Lankshear, Michele
Knobel, Henry Jenkins, Kevin Leander, Rebecca Black, Kurt Squire, and Constance
Steinkuehler, , among others.
Games
More recently, Gee's work has focused on the learning principles
in video games and how these learning principles can be applied to the K-12
classroom. Video games, when they are successful, are very good at challenging
players. They motivate players to persevere and simultaneously teach players
how to play. Gee began his work in video games by identifying thirty-six
learning principles that are present in - but not exclusive to - the design of
good video games. Gee argues for the application of these principles in the
classroom. Gee's video game learning theory includes his identification of
twelve basic learning principles. He identifies these as: 1) Active Control, 2)
Design Principle, 3) Semiotic Principle, 4) Semiotic Domain, 5) Meta-level
Thinking, 6) Psychosocial Moratorium Principle, 7) Committed Learning Principle,
8) Identity Principle, 9) Self-knowledge Principle, 10) Amplification of Input
Principle, 11) Achievement Principle, 12) Practice Principle, 13) Ongoing
Learning Principle, 14) Regime of Competence Principle.
Good Learning Principles in Video Games
Gee condenses and clusters these principles even more closely in
an article following the publication of his video games and learning book. Gee
believes good education involves “applying the fruitful principles of learning
that good game designers have hit on, whether or not we use a game as a carrier
of these principles" (p. 6). Thus, Gee organizes the condensed list
of good learning principles is in three student-centered, classroom-friendly
clusters: “Empowered Learners; Problem Solving; Understanding" (p. 6).
Under Empowered Learners, Gee includes the learning principles
of “co-design,” “customize,” “identity,” and “manipulation and distributed
knowledge.” These principles incorporate the idea that an engaged student is
active in designing and customizing their own learning experience, can learn by
taking on new identities (e.g. in explore career paths or specialized skill
sets in simulated roles), and feels “more expanded and empowered when they can
manipulate powerful tools in intricate ways that extend their area of
effectiveness" (p. 8).
The Problem Solving category includes the learning principles of
“well-ordered problems,” “pleasantly frustrating,” “cycles of expertise,” “information
‘on demand’ and ‘just in time,’” “fish tanks,” “sandboxes,” and “skills as
strategies.” In these first three principles, Gee argues, the scaffolding and
ordering of problems learners face is key in keeping them right at their Zone
of Proximal Development in different levels of skill-building. For each of
these levels, Gee specifies key elements (present in the latter four learning
principles): carefully prioritized information, relevant and applicable facts,
and a set of related skills with which to construct strategies in a safe and
authentic context.
In Gee’s cluster of Understanding principles, he includes “system
thinking,” and “meaning as action image.” In “system thinking”, students have
an overview of their learning context as a distinct system with its own
naturally reinforced set of behaviors and embedded values. Here, the meanings
of words and concepts become clear – not through “lectures, talking heads, or
generalities" (p. 14) – but through the experiences the
players/students have (“meaning as action image”).
Gee's other
principles as found on page 64 of his 2007 book, What Video Games have to Teach
us about Learning and Literacy, are: "Psychosocial Moratorium"
principle, Committed Learning Principle, Identity Principle, Self-Knowledge
Principle, Amplification of Input Principle, and Achievement Principle.
Additionally, in the book on page 68, Gee further lists the Practice Principle,
Ongoing Learning Principle, and the "Regime of Competence" Principle.
Identity Theory
James Gee defines identity as: “Being recognized as a certain ‘kind
of person,’ in a given context…” (p.99). Gee talks of identity differences
based on social and cultural views of identity and identifies four of these
views, each of which are influenced by different forms of power, though they
all have an effect on one another. Gee describes them as “four ways to
formulate questions about how identity is functioning for a specific person
(child or adult) in a given context or across a set of contexts” (p. 101).
The first of Gee’s identity perspectives is what he calls “the
nature perspective (or N-identities)” (p. 101). N-identity represents an
identity people cannot control, one that comes from forces of nature. An
example of this type of identity would be male or female. While the person has
no control over the sex they were born with, this identity only means something
because society and culture say this biological difference is important. Gee
explains this idea further by stating, “N-identities must always gain their
force as identities through the work of institutions, discourse and dialogue,
or affinity groups, that is, the very forces that constitute our other
perspectives on identity” (p. 102).
“[T]he institutional perspective (or I-identities)” (p. 102)
refers to identities set by authorities within an institution. An example of an
I-identity is a student, whose identity is defined by the school as an
institution with rules and traditions the student must follow. Gee claims these
I-identities can be something imposed on a person, such as being a prisoner, or
can be a calling for the person, such as being a college professor. The third
perspective Gee identifies is the “discursive perspective (or D-identities)”
(p. 103). D-identity refers to an individual trait, such as caring.
D-identities are a matter of social interaction that only become identities
because “other people treat, talk about, and interact” with the person in ways
that bring forth and reinforce the trait (p. 103). According to Gee “D-identities
can be placed on a continuum in terms of how active or passive one is in ‘recruiting’
them, that is, in terms of how much such identities can be viewed as merely
ascribed to a person versus an active achievement or accomplishment of that
person” (p. 104).
The final
identity perspective Gee identifies is the “affinity perspective (or
A-identities)” (p. 105). A-identities are built by shared experiences as
part of an affinity group, which according to Gee’s definition is a group that
share “allegiance to, access to, and participation in specific practices” (p. 105). Joining these groups must be something the person has chosen to
do and feels a part of in order for the A-identity to be built. Gee explains
this further by stating, “While I could force someone to engage in specific
practices, I really cannot coerce anyone into seeing the particular experiences
connected to those practices as constitutive (in part) of the ‘kind of person’
they are” (p. 106).
Selected and
edited from -- https://en.wikipediaDOTorg/wiki/James_Paul_Gee
** **
More on this tomorrow, boy, only we will
reference this all to Merlyn himself, as the singular character in your
stories. Post. – Amorella
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