[Xmca-l] Re: Unit of Analysis
Andy Blunden
ablunden@mira.net
Thu Sep 7 19:55:26 PDT 2017
David, the germ cell of artefact-use is the use of our own
body. Our various body parts are essentially artefacts.
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
https://andyblunden.academia.edu/research
On 8/09/2017 12:45 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
> Andy:
>
> We're currently translating Chapter Three of pedology of
> the adolescent into Korean. You know that Vygotsky likes
> to begin at the beginning. So Vygotsky is discussing the
> way in which the first year of life both is and is not the
> same as intra-uterine development. He points out that
> there are three "activities" (and that is the term that he
> uses) that are similar.
>
> a) Feeding. Although the child now uses animal functions
> perfectly well (that is, the child responds to hunger and
> even actively seeks milk) the nature of the child's food
> does not depend on these animal functions: it is still, as
> it was during gestation, a product of the mother's body.
>
> b) Sleep. Although the child has periods of wakefulness
> and activity, the main (as opposed to the leading)
> "activity" is inactive sleep, and the child does not keep
> a twenty-four hour cycle any more than she or he did in
> the womb. Even the use of the twenty-four hour cycle is an
> adaptation to the circadian rhythm of the mother as much
> as the establishment of the child's own circadian rhythm.
>
> c) Locomotion. Although the child now has space to move
> arms and legs, the human child doesn't use them for
> locomotion for many months after birth and instead depends
> on mother, just as a marsupial that has a morphological
> adaptation for this purpose would.
>
> Vygotsky's point is that these activities are not yet
> mediated; if they were, then the child's discovery of her
> or his own ability to act upon objects ("tools") and the
> child's discovery of her or his ability to mean ("signs")
> would not have the significance that they do. Ergo,
> historically, genetically, developmentally there must
> necessarily exist activity which is not made up of
> mediated actions.
>
> David Kellogg
>
> On Fri, Sep 8, 2017 at 10:51 AM, Andy Blunden
> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
> "Andy added the notion that experts need basically to
> be able to agree reliably on examples of the unit" ?
> Researchers need to be clear about the unit of
> analysis each of them are using and of course,
> collaboration is much easier if you are all using the
> same unit of analysis. Exemplars are a way of
> substantiating a concept while a concept remains
> unclear or diverse, just like lists of attributes and
> definitions - all of which still fall short of a
> concept. To grasp the concept of something, like "unit
> of analysis," you have to know the narrative in which
> the concept is situated. Narrative knowledge and
> conceptual knowledge are mutually interdependent. The
> first three chapters of the story of "unit of
> analysis" as I see it are in my paper "Goethe, Hegel &
> Marx" to be published in "Science & Society" next
> year:
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Goethe-Hegel-Marx_public.pdf
> <http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Goethe-Hegel-Marx_public.pdf>
> - Vygotsky is the 4th chapter.
>
> "What makes water not an element, but a compound, are
> the relations between the subunits" ?
> The idea of a water molecule pre-dates he discovery of
> its composition as H2O and all the chemical properties
> related to that. As David suggested, it is the much
> more ancient knowledge of the "water cycle" - rain,
> snow, hail and fog ... run-off, streams, rivers, lakes
> ... seas, oceans ... vapour, steam ... - which is
> expressed in the idea of a "water molecule" - a tiny
> particle which all these things are made of, but which
> combines in different forms of movement to give us the
> various physical forms of what is all water. It is an
> unfortunate choice for a archetypal example, because
> it appears to contradict my claim that the concept of
> the unit must be visceral. The water molecule is so
> small it can be held in the hand, tossed around and
> stacked together only in the imagination. Nonetheless,
> like with metaphors, it is our visceral knowledge of
> particles (stones, pieces of bread, household objects,
> etc) which makes the concept of a "water molecule"
> something real to us, whose manifold physical
> properties arising from its V-shape, and its
> electrical stickiness, are meaningful. This contrasts
> with the 18th/19th century idea of "forces" and
> "fields" which are intangibles (though of course we
> find ways of grasping them viscerally nonetheless).
>
> Different phenomena are grasped by the way one and the
> same units aggregate. The unit relates to the range of
> phenomena it unifies. Different insights are provided
> by different units, *not necessarily in a hierarchy*.
> But a hierarchy of units and in particular the
> micro/macro pair are a theme which runs right through
> this narrative, the micro in some way "explaining" the
> macro which in turn explains the main phenomena:
> cell/organism, atom/molecule, commodity/capital, word
> meaning/utterance, artefact-mediated action/activity,
> etc. I am interested in this micro/macro relation but
> personally (despite my interest in Hegel) I am not a
> fan of trying to systematise the world with a
> "complete set" of units. Just one unit gives us an
> entire science. Let's not get too carried away. :)
>
> I hold the view, with A N Leontyev, that *Activities
> are composed of artefact-mediated actions and nothing
> else*. Any move away from this destroys the
> ontological foundation and takes us into metaphysics.
> If it is not an artefact-mediated action or aggregate
> of such actions, what the hell is it???
>
> Andy
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> <http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>
> https://andyblunden.academia.edu/research
> <https://andyblunden.academia.edu/research>
> On 8/09/2017 3:41 AM, David Dirlam wrote:
>
> The issues that have arisen in this discussion
> clarify the conception of what sort of entity a
> "unit" is. Both and Andy and Martin stress the
> importance of the observer. Anyone with some
> experience should have some sense of it (Martin's
> point). But Andy added the notion that experts
> need basically to be able to agree reliably on
> examples of the unit (worded like the
> psychological researcher I am, but I'm sure Andy
> will correct me if I missed his meaning).
>
> We also need to address two other aspects of
> units--their classifiability and the types of
> relations between them. What makes water not an
> element, but a compound, are the relations between
> the subunits (the chemical bonds between the
> elements) as well as those with other molecules of
> water (how fast they travel relative to each
> other), which was David Kellogg's point. So the
> analogy to activity is that it is like the
> molecule, while actions are like the elements.
> What is new to this discussion is that the
> activity must contain not only actions, but also
> relationships between them. If we move up to the
> biological realm, we find a great increase in the
> complexity of the analogy. Bodies are made up of
> more than cells, and I'm not just referring to
> entities like extracellular fluid. The
> identifiability, classification, and
> interrelations between cells and their
> constituents all help to make the unit so
> interesting to science. Likewise, the constituents
> of activities are more than actions. Yrjo's
> triangles illustrate that. Also, we need to be
> able to identify an activity, classify activities,
> and discern the interrelations between them and
> their constituents.
>
> I think that is getting us close to David
> Kellogg's aim of characterizing the meaning of
> unit. But glad, like him, to read corrections.
>
> David
>
> On Wed, Sep 6, 2017 at 10:08 PM, Andy Blunden
> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>> wrote:
>
> Yes, but I think, Martin, that the unit of
> analysis we
> need to aspire to is *visceral* and sensuous.
> There
> are "everyday" concepts which are utterly
> abstract and
> saturated with ideology and received
> knowledge. For
> example, Marx's concept of capital is
> buying-in-order-to-sell, which is not the
> "everyday"
> concept of capital at all, of course.
>
> Andy
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> <http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>
>
> <http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> <http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>>
> https://andyblunden.academia.edu/research
> <https://andyblunden.academia.edu/research>
> <https://andyblunden.academia.edu/research
> <https://andyblunden.academia.edu/research>>
>
> On 7/09/2017 8:48 AM, Martin John Packer wrote:
>
> Isn’t a unit of analysis (a germ cell) a
> preliminary concept, one might say an everyday
> concept, that permits one to grasp the
> phenomenon
> that is to be studied in such a way that
> it can be
> elaborated, in the course of
> investigation, into
> an articulated and explicit scientific
> concept?
>
> just wondering
>
> Martin
>
>
> On Sep 6, 2017, at 5:15 PM, Greg Thompson
> <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com
> <mailto:greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
> <mailto:greg.a.thompson@gmail.com
> <mailto:greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>>> wrote:
>
> Not sure if others might feel this is an
> oversimplification of unit of
> analysis, but I just came across this in
> Wortham and Kim's Introduction to
> the volume Discourse and Education and
> found
> it useful. The short of it is
> that the unit of analysis is the unit that
> "preserves the
> essential features of the whole".
>
> Here is their longer explanation:
>
> "Marx (1867/1986) and Vygotsky (1934/1987)
> apply the concept "unit of
> analysis" to social scientific
> problems. In
> their account, an adequate
> approach to any phenomenon must find
> the right
> unit of analysis - one that
> preserves the essential features of
> the whole.
> In order to study water, a
> scientist must not break the substance
> down
> below the level of an
> individual H20 molecule. Water is made
> up of
> nothing but hydrogen and
> oxygen, but studying hydrogen and oxygen
> separately will not illuminate the
> essential properties of water. Similarly,
> meaningful language use requires
> a unit of analysis that includes aspects
> beyond phonology,
> grammar, semantics, and mental
> representations. All of these
> linguistic and
> psychological factors play a role in
> linguistic communication, but natural
> language use also involves social
> action in a
> context that includes other
> actors and socially significant
> regularities."
>
> (entire chapter can be found on
> Research Gate at:
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319322253_Introduction_to_Discourse_and_Education
> <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319322253_Introduction_to_Discourse_and_Education>
>
> <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319322253_Introduction_to_Discourse_and_Education
> <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319322253_Introduction_to_Discourse_and_Education>>
> )
>
> I thought that the water/H20 metaphor
> was a
> useful one for thinking about
> unit of analysis.
>
> -greg
>
> -- Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu
> <http://greg.a.thompson.byu.edu>
> <http://greg.a.thompson.byu.edu
> <http://greg.a.thompson.byu.edu>>
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
> <http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson>
>
> <http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
> <http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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