[Xmca-l] Re: Thought and language as oscillating and pulsing [or not]

[HENRY SHONERD]

Mike,
“Entanglement” is a great construal of my mind most of the time. I so much appreciate the external scaffolding of my piece of intersubjectivity. I am grateful for what’s left of this fragile connection between “my" subjectivity and “my” objectivity. Hey I came up with an interesting blending/compound: Geriat-tickle: seniorly humorous. 
Henry
  
> On Jan 31, 2015, at 5:53 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:. 
> 
> Thank you for the video and for the reference to Vera's use of the term
> "enlacement" to describe the relation of phylogeny and cultural history,
> Henry. I have been accustomed to thinking in terms of "entanglement." What
> I like about enlacement is the that it provides an aesthetic quality to the
> their mutual engagement, and culture is all about aesthetics.
> 
> Separately on the mobious bach
> mike
> 
> On Sat, Jan 31, 2015 at 2:43 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Larry,
>> I guess it was you who got the Mobius strip into this thread a few days
>> ago, which I geriatically and vaguely reacalled after my wife showed me
>> earlier today the attached from Vimeo. Until now, I have never really
>> understood where Bach’s Crab Cannon got its name. I love how the video
>> makes that clear. Some years back a musician friend of mine told me that he
>> saw his guitar fretboard like a mobius stip, no top or bottom, an Eternal
>> Golden Thread, as Hofstadter would have it. Many years ago I remember Vera
>> John Steiner's writing and talking about the INTERLACEMENT of biological
>> and cultural factors in human development. How beautiful this cluster of
>> metaphors. How generative. How creative. It just occurred to me that the
>> efforts on another thread to create an architecture for a data base seem to
>> be working for a mobius kind of seamlessness. Don’t bother stop me. It will
>> all pass by tomorrow night.
>> Henry
>> 
>> http://vimeo.com/69715960 <http://vimeo.com/69715960>
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Jan 25, 2015, at 9:35 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I have imaginally been walking with Zinchenko who is telling me about his
>>> chats with Schpet and Vygotsky.
>>> Zinchenko is engaged in rehabilitating the centrality of the meaning
>>> of "meaning" to processes of phenomenological historical understanding,
>> and
>>> interpretation.  His conversation is in the form  of a rejoinder [or
>>> joining back] with Vygotsky and Schpet with who he wants to bring out
>> their
>>> mutually shared thesis on the relation of thought and word.
>>> Zinchenko uses metaphors to poetically embody his attempt to have
>>> "meanings" more modest place with Vygotsky take on a more prominent and
>>> central quality.
>>> 
>>> Zinchenko wrote:
>>> "A good image for the mutual relationships of meaning and sense is a
>> Mobius
>>> strip.  In the process of understanding or thinking, we encounter
>>> oppositely encountered *acts of making sense of meanings and sense giving
>>> meaningful signs to senses *[authors emphasis], which are transformed
>> into
>>> each other. In Russian, 'meaning' ['znachenie'] and 'sign' ['znak'] have
>> a
>>> common root and, hence, the untranslated italicized phrase sounds like a
>>> Russian pun. On the outer side of the strip may be meaning, which is
>>> transformed into sense as a result of the act of making sense, and this
>>> *becomes* the internal side of the *same* strip. Assigning a meaningful
>>> sign to sense  makes an *analogous *transformation. Anyway, it was
>> highly
>>> productive for Vygotsky to change the *focus* from *'meaning*' to
>> sense.  *Such
>>> a change *brings his views closer to those of Shpet. [page 228]
>>> 
>>> I will pause here but want to point out how the metaphor of the Mobius
>>> strip has a similar quality to the hermeneutical movement of "fusions of
>>> horizons"
>>> 
>>> Larry
>>> 
>>> On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 7:51 AM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Thank you, Martin!
>>>> Henry
>>>> 
>>>>> On Jan 24, 2015, at 1:49 PM, Martin John Packer <
>> mpacker@uniandes.edu.co>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> This is the information I have, Henry.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Freiberger-Sheikholeslami, E. (1984). Gustav G. Shpet: Hermeneutical
>>>> logic and philosophical semiotics. In J. Deely (Ed.), Semiotics 1984
>> (pp.
>>>> 381-391). Bloomington: Semiotic Society of America.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Martin
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Jan 24, 2015, at 2:37 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Martin,
>>>>>> Thank you very muchfor the article on Sheet. I think the readings and
>>>> dialog generated will help me understand much better Vygotsky and his
>>>> context by getting a better grip on the long view, through the eyes of
>>>> hermeneutics. Do you know when the Freiberger-Sheeikholes article was
>>>> written?
>>>>>> Henry
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Jan 24, 2015, at 10:26 AM, Martin John Packer <
>>>> mpacker@uniandes.edu.co> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I am sure that there are differences between LSV and Shpet, as Larry
>>>> points out. But there are also striking similarities. Here is a little
>>>> background:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Martin
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> <Freiberger-Sheikholeslami 1985 Gustav G. Shpet He.pdf>
>>>>>>> On Jan 24, 2015, at 11:39 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Martin will be sending us an article on Shpet.
>>>>>>>> I therefore did some background exploration and discovered that
>> Shpet
>>>> and
>>>>>>>> Vygotsky differed on the notion of "oscillation".
>>>>>>>> Vygotsky believed thought and language oscillated while Shpet
>>>> disagreed.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Zinchenko clarifies Vygotsky's understanding in this paragraph
>>>>>>>> that Zinchenko wrote in his chapter "Thought and Word, the
>> Approaches
>>>> of L.
>>>>>>>> S. Vygotsky and G. G. Shpet": It uses the metaphor of rain [which I
>>>>>>>> associated with the other thread on rain]
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> "Thought and word are no less polyphonic than mind.  Yet, there is a
>>>>>>>> long way to go to arrive at this conclusion.  And it is hard to
>>>>>>>> overestimate the input of Shpet and Vygotsky, along with Aleksandr
>>>> Potebnya.
>>>>>>>> Out of all the polyphony of mind and thought, out of all the various
>>>>>>>> possibilities of origins, Shpet and Vygotsky   gave their preference
>>>> to the
>>>>>>>> word, although they understood it differently.  Let us start from
>>>>>>>> Vygotsky's metaphorical description: *What is simultaneous in
>> thought
>>>> is
>>>>>>>> successive in language.*  It would be possible to compare a thought
>>>> with a
>>>>>>>> cloud that showers a rain of words.  This is why the transition from
>>>>>>>> thought to language is a very complicated process of *dismemberment*
>>>> of a
>>>>>>>> thought and its recreation in a word.  On the next page, Vygotsky
>>>> wrote,
>>>>>>>> 'continuing this picturesque comparison, we should liken the
>>>> motivation of
>>>>>>>> thought to the wind that sets the clouds in motion.'  If something
>>>> can *pour
>>>>>>>> itself, *it means that it already exists.  Therefore we can
>>>> understand the
>>>>>>>> given metaphor as saying that thought, already existing is
>> *expressed
>>>> *in a
>>>>>>>> word"  [emphasis in the original]
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> This quote draws attention to Vygotsky perceiving *oscillation
>>>> *behind the
>>>>>>>> movement of thought and language. Shpet did not see thought and
>>>> language as
>>>>>>>> oscillating.  Zinchenko's goal in his article is not to place the
>>>>>>>> approaches of Shpet and Vygotsky in opposition but to present them
>> as
>>>>>>>> mutually complimentary approaches.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> I hope to learn from others on the complexity of the notions of
>>>>>>>> oscillating movement of thought and language situated within words.
>>>>>>>> Polyphonic notions
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an object
> that creates history. Ernst Boesch.