B: Gordon Pask, M.A. Cantab, denizen of South London & the world, lives insinuated into our minds as some `P-individuals' of both the `trans-M-individual', and `intra-body-M-individual' sorts do in my mind. This conversation I'm transcribing is between some one of more-or-less his P-individuals Mr."A", and one of my own old ones Mr."B".

A:You say (at Level-zero) that you are recording this conversation; why (I ask at Level-star), are you doing so?

B: That they may colonize others too!(level L-*)

A:And why (at level-Lstar-prime) are you explaining why you are doing so to me (and them) in just this way?

B: because as that profoundest of all Alices once remarked (at level L*'):"What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?".

A: Quite so; we'll get to the pictures later if you can spare half a crown? - Of course Alice was an holist, whereas Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was, qua Christchurch mathematician, much constrained to expressing derivations serially.

B: My guess is that Dodgson-Carroll was in your terms "versatile" more than either `serialist' or `holist'.

A: Indeed yes -probably Carroll was the mainly holist P-individual, while C.L. Dodgson M.A. Oxford was mainly serialist; together in internal conversation they were indeed most versatile old chums!

B; If anything the Curiosa Mathematica of 1888 was quite as versatile as the Alice books of 1865. A: Well of course a full conversation-theoretic `understanding' (explanation of how one derives them) of either work would require at least Gunther logic, and probably some of Lou Kaufman's strange knot topology to boot. B: There is now available a more accessible child of Gunther logic produced by: Muskens, Reinhard Meaning & Partiality, Stanford, CSLI pubns(1995). A: Present moment participants in the widening and deepening and rendering more coherent, learning conversation, are the historical product of indefinitely long lineages of conversation-actors, some of which must be explored before we can go on together. To do so, I suggest you start with my, Glanville edited Festschrift, published as volume 10, number 3,(1993) of Systems Research (-Although I believe a better name for that journal would have beeen System Research).

Gary Boyd, Concordia U. Montreal 1996. .