Well, events have transpired to prevent me from making a quick trip out of
town for a meeting this evening, followed by a 4am race for home to greet
a visitor at lab meeting. As a result, a brief comment on some recent messages.
(the easier ones!) :-)
Eric-- I have not directly commented on Alex Kozulin's ideas. In fact, my
copy of his book is missing and I am on a hunt for it. I am perfectly open
to such a discussion, but I would need Alex's text and would want to invite
him to participate.
In another message your wrote: You appear very
resilent to giving up the strength of activity as the unit and push hard for
qualitative understanding of all degrees of activity.
I simply don't understand what you are saying here. As you know from reading
*Cultural Psychology* I came to the concept of activity note from Soviet
psychology but from my earliest, amateur field work in Liberia. It was not,
for me, an abstract category, but a common sense place to start trying to
figure out about people engaged in actions we might call mathematical as a
way to get a handle on schooling difficulties. Perhaps as a result, I
continue to struggle with concepts like object which seems to float too
freely in what I read by many of my contemporaries. Yrjo appears to be able to
use the term consistently, but I often get woozy when trying to figure out
whether people are confusion action/goal and activity/object-motive.
Thanks to Steve for his retrospective travel through xmca. I would like to
believe that his impression is correct, but I am very sensitive to the forum's
inadequacies, among which the relative absence of women's voices, non-American vvoices, and voices of American people of color stand out with painful
clarity.
Gordon-- We will do all we can to make the course materials available. I will
use the extra time provided me today to work on a trial baloon syllabus, taken
partly from a course that Yrjo and I taught here a few years ago. But there
will be limits in some cases.
All -- A new logon procedure is about ready to float out to you all. I am
awaiting installation. As always, if it displeases, please dis-play your
suggestions for improvement.
mike
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