My understanding of Vygotsky's use of "replace" is non-interactionist.
Ratner describes this somewhat is his intro to *Child Psychology*. Replace
was justified with the double German meaning of "in place of" rather than
"instead of". What this meant for Vygotsky was related to Luria's work on
brain damage, in that, when the higher mental processes were destroyed with
brain danage the lower or biological processes kicked in.
For me, this characterization is too dualistic and I find the areas of his
work where he discusses a functional system more useful. In this sense, a
higher or cultural mental process is not in opposition to the biological,
but rather the biological is part of that system. On the other hand, I am
not comfortable with ideas of evolutionary history or developmental history
for that matter, as somehow apposed (interacting) with the
cultural-historical.
So, culture or history replacing the natural was not my point, but rather
that they can not be seperated in the first place. I think if we take
Pinker, the socio-biologists, or even Latour's notion of bio-political, the
divisions are not so easily seperated. I tend the see the
cultural-historical as that which surrounds more than a particular time
scale. So, I guess maybe there is some disagreement with "the interweaving
of the cultural historical and phtylogenetic lines of history" because for
me it would imply there is a phylogenetic line is not cultural historical.
Did you get it wrong? I would say no because that would imply someone had
it right. This is why I struggle when I hear something akin to so and so
may not be in line with a CHAT perspective. I tend to see CHAT as a broad
perspective shared by members of XCMA and elsewhere not a select few. I
don't think it excludes the biological, "I" just don't believe it exists
for us as a species outside of the cultural-historical.
Nate
----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Cole <mcole who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
To: <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Friday, October 29, 1999 6:54 AM
Subject: interfunctionally integrated versus replaced
>
> Hi nate-- You wrote:
>
> The biological processes were replaced
> by the cultural ones.
> The interweaving of the cultural historical and phtylogenetic lines of
history
> does not, in my opinon, does not imply replacement, as in the
> idea that laws of nature are more and more being replaced by the laws
> of history. All of this is treated extensively in parts of Cultural
Psychology
> to which the earlier discussion of that book did not get to.
>
> Did I get it wrong?
> mike
>