For both Harre and Vygotsky, language development is really the crucial territory

Both Vygotsky and Piaget knew that development is complex, that it involves the inside and the outside of existence and that it requires both individual transformation and collective emergence. But when one reads the works of these two theorists one can't help but be struck by the very different explanatory orientations that they each had in their research and their theoretical propositions. The point that concerns me here is that while Ken has incorporated the Piagetian approach into his model, he hasn't fully accommodated within the integral framework the insights from the Vygotskian tradition of developmental studies. This oversight impacts considerably on the way Integral Theory is currently used to treat the exterior aspects of topics such as politics, ecology, community development, education and spiritual development...

My objective in pointing this out is not to call into question Piaget's genius or contribution to developmental studies, or to be critical of Wilber's treatment and application of Piagetian ideas. I simply wish to draw attention to the importance that Wilber places on western European and American models of development, as exemplified in the Piagetian approach. A traditions that sees development generated by the active engagement of individuals and which results in interior structural transformations. Of course, Piaget is not the only developmental theorist who takes this perspective in the explanation of human growth. That development is the result of the rearrangement of internal schemas, moralities, cognitive structures, and mental capacities is a view that is shared by many theorists and is an assumptions that underpin most of the theories that come under the banner of developmental psychology. Freud, Loevinger, Kohlberg, Mahler, Graves, Kegan, Commons, Alexander and many other major figures in developmental psychology also belong to this tradition.

But there are other traditions that no not come from this individualist-interiorist-constructivist perspective and these schools of human development do not hold these assumptions about the source of developmental change. More to the point, the distinctive viewpoints of these alternative models have, unfortunately, not been fully integrated within the set of explanatory principles that Integral Theory draws on. In contrast to the prominence in Wilber's writing granted to Piaget and co, there is a relatiove lack of reference to, and application of models that take an exterior-centric perspective. These include the very well-known and well-researched cultural-historical and activity theory (CHAT) approaches. The CHAT models of human development have been active in Russia and Europe for at least 50 years and in America since the 1970's, however, their most eminent theorist, Lev Vygotsky, is not referenced in any of Wilber's writings...

Vygotsky via Hegel and Marx asserts that there is an intimate connection between the human habitats and the defining qualities of human psychological processes. Social environments are suffused with the achievements of prior generations in powerful forms. Vygotsky brought together the cultural means with the idea that people mediate their actions and those of all following generations through artefacts. This is the real source of development for Vygotsky...

Like Vygotsky, Harre sees the source of individual and collective consciousness not in the evolving interior structures of image, symbols, concepts and theories but in the social systems of hierarchical activity and scaffolding that surround, support, encourage each and all to the degree that they can experience and participate. Harre's book "Personal Being" is a fascinating read for any integralist who is familiar with Wilber's "Sex Ecology Spirituality. It predates Wilber's first exposition of the AQAL model by 10 years and yet it proposes many of the same insights in terms of the basic dimension of personal and public identity. In this book Harre puts forward the thesis that personal being has a social origin...

For both Harre and Vygotsky, language development is really the crucial territory to be explained in human development. Both of them saw language as moving from the exterior to the interior and that the ego-centric speech of the infant is a stepping stone in that exterior-to-interior progression. The genetic, organic and biological necessities must be present, of course, but they are not sufficient for the development of language, mature thought and stable self-identity (as the studies of feral and isolated children have shown). In this sense cognitive development comes out of the social world of language and gesture and not out of the self-generated emergence of cognitive structures. Social realms draw out the intention and the meaning through the basic processes of social learning. Mark Edwards, 2004 The Depth of the Exteriors Part 2: Piaget, Vygotsky, Harre and the Social Mediation of Development integral world