ABSTRACT
In this chapter I relate conceptual coordination to Piaget’s and Chomsky’s theories of learning. I conclude that a coordination perspective bridges theories of mechanism (e.g., grounded in biological processes of neural map formation) and theories of knowledge construction (grounded in transformation of existing conceptual relations). On the one hand, we view development as mechanical or physically constrained, on the other, as functional or semantically constrained. Kauffman’s (1993) theory of self-organizing processes, which spans phenomena from molecular genetics to language and economics, is a new way of bringing together the view of mechanism and cognitive product (knowledge). In particular, I consider how neural activation can be viewed in terms of autocatalytic sets of “grammar strings”—generalized coordination sequences that order and operate on each other. Viewing conceptual coordination processes as both the carrier and constructor of memory-content and assembly process-I suggest a way to disentangle the dichotomy between mechanism and meaning, variously described as syntax versus semantics, form versus content, and structure versus process.
