Of Metaphors and Paradigms: Rejecting the 'Commonsense' View of Reading.

For many years, methods of teaching reading have been based upon a mechanistic paradigm that something can be understood by reducing it to its most basic parts. This scientific paradigm has led to several misconceptions about reading: (1) that comprehension can be reduced to separately identifiable parts, (2) that meaning is contained within the text and has no connection to the reader, and (3) that reading is a tangible thing rather than a process. These misconceptions encourage a false dichotomy between reading and comprehension. There is an organic paradigm emerging in physics that takes into account the transaction between "observer" and "observed," the so-called "quantum leap." There are several ways in which this modern paradigm parallels and lends support to the psycholinguistic schema-theoretic view of reading. First, there is no separation between observer and observed, reader and text, reading and comprehension. Second, the whole (universe, sentence, text) is not merely the sum of separately identifiable parts. Third, meaning is determined through transactions (between observer and observed, reader and text). Fourth, the basic nature of the universe and of reading is a process. (HTH)