Rethinking Vygotskian Cultural-Historical Theory in Light of Pepperian Root Metaphor Theory : Dynamic Interplay of the Organicism and Contextualism

Abstract

This article examines Vygotskian cultural-historical theory by putting it into dialogue with Stephen Pepper's root metaphor theory. I focus on Vygotsky's insistence on the dialectical unity of the phylogenetic and ontogenetic domains in ontogenesis, which he articulated in his account of how the natural-psychological and cultural-psychological lines of development merge with the emergence of speeching in ontogenesis. I compare Vygotsky's two genetic domains and Pepper's world hypotheses of organicism and contextualism. I argue that Vygotsky transcended what is often thought of as a fundamental dichotomy between organicism and contextualism. In accomplishing this effective reconciliation, Vygotsky demonstrated that it is possible both to traverse the ontological schism between subjective psychology and objective psychology, and to foreground the integrative, complex, dynamic, emergent, and mediated nature of human consciousness.