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Re: [xmca] Passages from Chapter 5 of LSV



A question on social situation of development (SSD): how, why, in what ways, is this concept particular to children? What prevents it from being equally applicable to adults?

- Steve


On Jan 4, 2009, at 6:01 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:

Mike, I think "situation" is a relational term. At one point in the Volume 5 text, LSV goes to some length to oppose the idea that "social situation of development" is the sum of attributes of the social environment (family wealth, number of children etc) because SSD is a concept of the child's situation. This means, as I see it, that we have to make a concept of the relation of the child to their social surroundings. This is aptly summarised in the notion of the child's *status*. So for example, without any change in the attributes of the social context, the child can be expected to operate differently, i.e., act out a different status, corresponding to different expectations. Clearly this means that the "social situation of development" exists as much in the child as in the surrounding people.

Also, the individual psyche cannot be a "unit of analysis" for anyone in our tradition. It can be a datum or unit of observation, but not a unit of analysis, as I see it.

Andy

Mike Cole wrote:
I find myself, not for the first time, way behind the discussion.
I pick up only one thread. David wrote, late last year,  :--)),
For some problems (which we can call, somewhat misleadingly, psychological problems), LSV III's unit of analysis is consciousness and his explanatory principle is the social situation of proximal development (the classroom, the playground, etc.), which is in turn composed of two mutually defining
elements: imitation and generalization.
David, Andy, and I have been working, without any notable success, on
a paper on LSV, Gestalt Psychology, and ...... the social situation of
development (among other imbricated concepts). Part of the reason for
our difficulty in finishing this project is my inability to understand the
meaning(s) of the "social situation of development."
I am personally very inclined toward david's (classroom, playground, etc.) way of indexing the referent(s) of this concept. But in our discussions, and our readings of others (Seth Chaiklin was a key initiator of this effort), I lost my way. Sometimes it seems as if the SSD refers to the child and every "situation" s/he participates in, and, indirectly of course, the exosystem (there is some good data on how that exosystem influences more proximal
environments of
development, to use another slippery word). In particular, I got lost in
trying to figure out the relation between neoformations and the
circumstances (another slippery word) that provided the gestalt (another
slippery word!!) for development.
Leontiev gives the example of a child going to school who, by virtue of his (sic?) new social status now participates in a different home "situation of development" when his parents excuse him from other chores because how
he must spend time studying at school.
Help!! I am trying to drag Boris Gurievitch into this discussion, but he is
shy
about his English.
mike
PS-- I am very sympathetic to both the palimpset notion of word meaning, David, and the idea that different lines of development intersect. My own
attempts to express that idea (very inadequately!) are in *Cultural
Psychology*, where I try to make it clear that this idea was shared by such
diverse scholars
as Birdwhistle (kinesheologist -sp?), barker (ecological psychologist) and William James (whose statement of the idea i did not include because my source for it was untrackable, unlike the Summerian "classroom" that Peter
has kindly tracked down to its uncertain provenance).
A belated happy new year and wishes for a less violent 2009.
mike
But as Bronfenbrenner points out, some of the most important problems the child experiences are in the "exo-system", a set of relationships (e.g. parental employment) in which the child has no actual role and cannot take
part. Where does that fit?
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
--- On Wed, 12/31/08, Paul Dillon <phd_crit_think@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Paul Dillon <phd_crit_think@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Passages from Chapter 5 of LSV
To: packer@duq.edu, "xmc a xmx" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Wednesday, December 31, 2008, 12:51 AM
- Show quoted text -
Martin,
I'm really struck by your question as to whether David finds your
counter-proposal (i.e., LSV developing (e.g., cultivating, growing) his
ideas
dialectically (e.g., seed, sprout, vegetative, florescent)) reasonable, (I
am
supposing)  in contrast to David's interrpretation that " ...he was
constantly throwing everything away and starting over from the beginning.
".
Insofar as every question presupposes a range of answers (a domain), what
is
the domain over which you expect a response?
Do you imagine a willow might become an oak upon reflection?  Are you
casting flies?
I'm curious.
Paul
--- On Tue, 12/30/08, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Passages from Chapter 5 of LSV
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Tuesday, December 30, 2008, 1:24 PM
David,
For a while - at least ever since reading Norris Minick's Introduction
(which is insightful in many ways) - I've been thinking that Vygotsky
didn't
so much change his mind as develop in his thinking dialectically. I know that's in danger of sounding cliched, but I think I have found places in
his
texts where his earlier concepts are not simply abandoned or erased, but
truly aufgehoben (it's that grammatically correct) - maintained and
replaced
at the same time.
I haven't had the time to pursue this point systematically, and right now I can't even offer an example (though if I were try to find one it would one where reflexes show up again in his late writings). But does the suggestion
strike you as resonable?
Martin
On 12/30/08 12:14 PM, "David Kellogg"
<vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> wrote:
Second the motion! I think that one of the reasons why LSV is SO impatient
with Stern (and also Werner) is that he really can't understand
thinkers who
never change their minds. LSV had only ten years to work (and thought he
had
less). Yet he was constantly throwing everything away and starting over
from
the beginning. That's courage.

But of course that means that almost everything we read of Vygotsky's
has to
be read dendrochronologically, the way we look at tree rings. This is particularly true of Thinking and Speech, parts of which data from 1929
(Chapter Four) and parts from 1931 (Chapter Five) and parts from his
deathbed
(Chapter Six and Seven).

LSV is always going on about geological strata (Kretschmer). But perhaps
the best metaphor for reading somebody who scribbles over everything
he's ever
done every three or four years would be archaeological, or better yet,
textological: a palimpsest.

So far the most useful guide to the Vygotskyan palimpsest I've read on
this to
date is Minick's intro to Thinking and Speech, now reprinted as the
very first
chapter in Daniels' mistitled "Introduction (sic) to
Vygotsky", 2005,
Routledge.

Minick's palimpsestization (?) corresponds very well to most other
periodizations, including Veresov (though Veresov adds a pre-Marxist
Vygotsky
from before 1924 which for rather tendentious reasons he finds very
important). It will be VERY interesting to see if the work Jonna mentions
confirms it.

David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education

--- On Tue, 12/30/08, Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Passages from Chapter 5 of LSV
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
<xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Cc: "Jussi Silvonen" <jussi.silvonen@joensuu.fi>
Date: Tuesday, December 30, 2008, 8:58 AM

We would welcome Jussi's input, thanks Jonna. We almost have a
"history
of
psych" group here on
xmca at presentl. Perhaps a strength we should find a way to use better.
mike

a


Mike Cole kirjoitti 29.12.2008 kello 2.55:


Ooops, forgot to cc boris on my reply to david. He is author of,
among
other
interesting articles, the article on "LSV's
terminology"
in the Daniels et
al
Cambridge companion to vygotsky.

I forwarded the message to him.
mike

On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 4:52 PM, Mike Cole
<lchcmike@gmail.com>
wrote:
Thanks for these observations and inferences, David.
The task of reconstructing the chronology of LSV's
thinking is
a
formidable
one. I wonder if anyone anywhere has published such a
chronology.
I will
cc boris meshcheryakov who will know, if anybody does.

mike

On Thu, Dec 25, 2008 at 10:42 PM, David Kellogg <
vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:


On p. 131 of Chapter Five, LSV already has the concept of
the
psychological system, that is, the linkage of disparate
functions into a
single Gestalt, e.g. attention, association, judgement,
representation,
and
motivation in activity.

But he denies that this linkage of disparate functions has
any
effect on
the functions themselves. The relations between functions
change. But
the
functions themselves do not change.

Now, what causes the relationships between these functions
to
change?
That
is not clear. One possible answer is "activity",
and
that is the answer
that
activity theorists give. But we can see that LSV is not
entirely
satisfied
with this answer.

There are two problems. The first is that as Mike pointed
out
LSV is
using
"activity" in a non-technical sense, it is
really
just the task plus the
contraints. (Note that Prout actually translates
"task" as "problem").
In
other words, an "activity" is just a subject, an
object, and a tool.
That
brings us back to the old stimulus-response unit with
mediating
artefact!

The second is that Vygotsky suspects that when the
relations
between
functions change, the functions DO change internally as
well.
We know,
for
example, that when role play is reconstrued as rule based
games, the
"roles"
of rule based games are quite different, more abstract. So
is
the goal,
which is not to make an imaginary situation but to win a
real
prize.
So why does Vygotsky stress in this passage that the basic
processes of
attention, association, judgment, representation, and
mindset
do not
actually change? I think there are two reasons.

First of all, he is trying to critically appropriate the
work
of people
like Buhler who deny that there is anything fundamentally
new
in the
transitional age. His way of doing this is to say that
they
are correct,
but
they are ignoring the way in which the familiar old
functions
are united
in
a new Gestalt.

Secondly, this is old work, first carried out in 1929 and
written up
some
time in 1931. LSV has not yet conceptualized the actual
mechanism by
which
differentiation takes place WITHIN functions and not just
BETWEEN them.
That
does not happen until 1932, when he formulates the zone of
proximal
development, and he does not write about it until Chapter
Six.
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education





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On Thu, Jan 1, 2009 at 3:40 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com >wrote:
Thanks, Martin. Actually, I need some help with PRECISELY this point right
now.

I'm writing an article on "word meaning as palimpsest". I want to use the seventy-fifth anniversary of Thinking and Speech as a kind of platform from which to attack mainstream applied linguistics, for whom language exists as a hypostatized formal system and has always done, well, at least since
Saussure.

The mainstreamers like to say that we wild-eyed Vygotskyans are very nice people and do interesting work but the problem is that we've got no theory of language as a formal system (so says Mitchell and Myles, 1998: 161) and we can't make the kinds of neat predictions about the rate of learning and the route which learning takes which they can't make either (ditto, p. 162).

Of course the answer (my answer, anyway) is that language is NOT a formal system and can't be theorized that way, and that the "rate of learning" and the "route which learning takes" doesn't tell us what we want to know, but
the rate of DEVELOPMENT and the route that takes just might.

And part of the argument goes like this. We Vygotskyans are really not
socioculturalists. We're not even cultural-historicists. We're
just phylo-socio-onto-microgeneticists. For that matter, we're not really
Vygotskyans. We're Darwinian-Marxian-Vygotskyan-Integrationists.

One of the reasons why Vygotsky didn't like to go around shouting about Marxian psychology was that if we start appending names to what we think on every scale of semio-history at which we think about it then our discipline will end up with more principal investigators than an astrophysics paper.

Another reason is (I think) Vygotsky really rejected supra- theories, and for good reason. If you look at Mescheryakov's wonderful little chart in the Cambridge Companion, he gives us four "genetic laws", which he renders something like this, where "^" means something like "is differentiated into"
and "-->" means something like "is reorganized into".

NATURAL-->CULTURAL
                      ^
                 SOCIAL-->INDIVIDUAL
                                       ^
                                      EXTRAMENTAL-->INTRAMENTAL

^

SPONTANEOUS-->SCIENTIFIC

Of course, it's very tempting to see this as a neat little palimpsest of human culture: the first law, in which natural functions are reorganized into cultural ones, represents phylogeny, the second represents cultural historical progress, the third ontogenesis, and the fourth represents
microgenesis.

But the more I think about this, the fishier it looks. A natural "law" has no exceptions whatsoever. A socio-cultural law has infractions that are legally sanctionable, during ontogenesis, we learn laws (which we really need to start calling rules at this point) precisely by flouting them, and at the level of microgenesis, we hardly even know the rules are there unless we break them. Is there any non-metaphorical sense in which ALL of these semio-historical timescales can be said to be "lawful" or "rule- governed" or
even "patterned"?

Sure enough, when we read Vygotsky (p. 114 of Chapter Four) he's a lot more modest. The four laws are all there, but only in the context of ontogenesis.
Here's the Hanfmann and Vakar version:


"Our investigations show that speech development follows the same course
and obeys the same laws as the development of all the other mental
operations involving the use of signs, such as counting or mnemonic
memorizing. We found that these operations generally develop in four stages.
The first is the primitive or natural stage, corresponding to
preintellectual speech and preverbal thought, when these operations appear in their original form, as they were evolved at the primitive level of
behavior."

"Next comes the stage which we might call "naive psychology", by analogy with what is called "naive physics" – the child's experience with the physical properties of his own body and of the objects around him, and the application of this experience to the use of tools: the first exercise of
the child's budding practical intelligence."

"This phase is very clearly defined in the speech development of the child. It is manifested by the correct use of grammatical forms and structures before the child has understood the logical operations for which they stand. The child may operate with subordinate clauses, with words like because, if, when, and but, long before he really grasps causal, conditional, or temporal
relations. He masters syntax of speech before syntax of thought.
Piaget's studies proved that grammar develops before logic and that the child learns relatively late the mental operations corresponding to the
verbal forms he has been using for a long time."

"With the gradual accumulation of naive psychological experience, the child enters a third stage, distinguished by external signs, external operations that are used as aids in the solution of internal problems. That is the stage when the child counts on his fingers, resorts to mnemonic aids, and so
on. In speech development it is characterized by egocentric speech."

"The fourth stage we call the "ingrowth" stage. The external operation turns inward and undergoes a profound change in the process. The child begins to count in his head, to use "logical memory," that is, to operate with inherent relationships and inner signs. In speech development this is
the final stage of inner, soundless speech. There remains a constant
interaction between outer and inner operations, one form effortlessly and frequently changing into the other and back again. Inner speech may come very close in form to external speech or even become exactly like it when it serves as preparation for external speech – for instance, in thinking over a lecture to be given. There is no sharp division between inner and external
behavior, and each influences the other."

Sure, we can see that the first "stage" is a kind of residue laid down by phylogenetic evolution, just as the second one is an archaeological remnant of sociocultural progress, and the third represents the remains of the
ontogenetic mastery of tools and signs and self.

But we can also see that to the extent that we can really talk about
"laws", we cannot talk about microgenesis, and to the extent we want to talk
about "rules" we cannot talk about phylogenesis.

I think it's even stretching it to call microgenesis rule-bound; "norms" is probably more suitable, and even then what we are really interested in is precisely the nonnormative. It's not just that at each stage some things recede into the background and others get foregrounded. It's that the scale
of development itself has to develop.

On some level, phylogenesis, cultural-historical progress, ontogenesis, and microgenesis are all one thing--namely time and the changes wrought thereby. But the changes and above all the means by which they are wrought are
qualitatively different.

The laws of phylogenesis are really not useful in describing the norms of microgenesis; the connection is of such generality that referring to it as a system of laws really has to be a violation of Marx's eleventh thesis on
Feuerbach.

David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education








--- On Thu, 1/1/09, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Passages from Chapter 5 of LSV
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Thursday, January 1, 2009, 12:22 PM

It's another occasion when access to the Russian original for
"discarded"
would be helpful. After all, Vygotsky wrote of sublation as both
destruction
and preservation. My sense when reading Minnick was that when he wrote of
Vygotsky trying out and rejecting a series of candidates for unit of
analysis, one might instead see Vygotsky as exploring a complex totality, bringing first one aspect and then another to the fore. He wrote that
"When
the word sublation is used in relation to some organic feature, this does not mean that this feature is eliminated. Instead, the feature is sublated and preserved, embedded somewhere within; it recedes into the background, yielding to those regular features which arose at later stages.² This seems
to me true *in* V's account of development (where reflexes are not
eliminated but embedded) and *of* V's account of development, where a unit of analysis isn't abandoned but moves into the background as another moves
to the foreground.

Martin

On 12/31/08 10:52 AM, "David Kellogg"
<vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> wrote:

Oh, I don't think that an oak is a sublated willow. And I do think
that LSV
II, the Vygotsky of the psychological system and the criss- crossing lines
of
development, is a sublation of LSV I, the Vygotsky of the instrumental
act.
Vygotsky himself says this, though, and the end of the beginning of
Thinking
and Speech:

"This book is the product of nearly ten years work. Many of the
questions that
emerged in the investigation were not apparent to us when we began.
We were
frequently forced to reconsider our positions during the investigation.
Consequently, the results of a great deal of hard work had to be
discarded.
Much of the remainder had to be redone, restructured, or
rewritten." (p. 40).
I take it this is Vygotsky's last word, both because of the phrase
"ten years
work", which covers Vygotsky's entire career in psychology and
because it's
the preface to his posthumously published work (which originally did not
even
have a Chapter One; internal evidence suggests that in the first draft
the
Piaget chapter was the first one).

So it's LSV III speaking to us from his deathbed, inviting us to
consider
carefully what exactly was discarded, what was redone, and what was
gained
thereby.

And here we are, seventy-five years later, doing exactly that. For
example, a
lot of our discussions seem to revolve around the question of whether (as neo-Vygotskyans believe) the fixation on object-oriented activity is the
work
of a mature, continuing LSVIII or whether it was simply a discarded part
of
LSV I (as I believe).

My problems with Chapter Five (discussed in this thread) are similar.
They
have to do with whether lines of development themselves become
functionally
differentiated. LSV II says no, but LSV III (as I read him) says yes.

Finally, one of the most enduring threads of xmca has to be the zone of proximal development. It seems to me that this was the way in which LSV
III
sublated the problems with LSV II: the idea of the psychological system
was
reformulated to include a social situation of development, but this meant
discarded the idea that lines of development do not functionally
differentiate.

For some problems (which we can call, somewhat misleadingly,
psychological
problems), LSV III's unit of analysis is consciousness and his
explanatory
principle is the social situation of proximal development (the classroom,
the
playground, etc.), which is in turn composed of two mutually defining
elements: imitation and generalization.

But as Bronfenbrenner points out, some of the most important problems the
child experiences are in the "exo-system", a set of
relationships (e.g.
parental employment) in which the child has no actual role and cannot
take
part. Where does that fit?

David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education



--- On Wed, 12/31/08, Paul Dillon <phd_crit_think@yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Paul Dillon <phd_crit_think@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Passages from Chapter 5 of LSV
To: packer@duq.edu, "xmc a xmx" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Wednesday, December 31, 2008, 12:51 AM

Martin,

I'm really struck by your question as to whether David finds your
counter-proposal (i.e., LSV developing (e.g., cultivating, growing) his
ideas
dialectically (e.g., seed, sprout, vegetative, florescent)) reasonable,
(I am
supposing)  in contrast to David's interrpretation that " ...he
was
constantly throwing everything away and starting over from the beginning.
".

Insofar as every question presupposes a range of answers (a domain),
what is
the domain over which you expect a response?

Do you imagine a willow might become an oak upon reflection? Are you
casting flies?

I'm curious.

Paul

--- On Tue, 12/30/08, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Passages from Chapter 5 of LSV
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
<xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Tuesday, December 30, 2008, 1:24 PM

David,

For a while - at least ever since reading Norris Minick's Introduction (which is insightful in many ways) - I've been thinking that Vygotsky
didn't
so much change his mind as develop in his thinking dialectically. I know that's in danger of sounding cliched, but I think I have found places
in
his
texts where his earlier concepts are not simply abandoned or erased, but
truly aufgehoben (it's that grammatically correct) - maintained and
replaced
at the same time.

I haven't had the time to pursue this point systematically, and right
now I
can't even offer an example (though if I were try to find one it would
one
where reflexes show up again in his late writings). But does the
suggestion
strike you as resonable?

Martin


On 12/30/08 12:14 PM, "David Kellogg"
<vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> wrote:

Second the motion! I think that one of the reasons why LSV is SO
impatient
with Stern (and also Werner) is that he really can't understand
thinkers who
never change their minds. LSV had only ten years to work (and thought
he
had
less). Yet he was constantly throwing everything away and starting
over
from
the beginning. That's courage.

But of course that means that almost everything we read of
Vygotsky's
has to
be read dendrochronologically, the way we look at tree rings. This is
particularly true of Thinking and Speech, parts of which data from
1929
(Chapter Four) and parts from 1931 (Chapter Five) and parts from his
deathbed
(Chapter Six and Seven).

LSV is always going on about geological strata (Kretschmer). But
perhaps
the best metaphor for reading somebody who scribbles over everything
he's ever
done every three or four years would be archaeological, or better yet,
textological: a palimpsest.

So far the most useful guide to the Vygotskyan palimpsest I've
read on
this to
date is Minick's intro to Thinking and Speech, now reprinted as
the
very first
chapter in Daniels' mistitled "Introduction (sic) to
Vygotsky", 2005,
Routledge.

Minick's palimpsestization (?) corresponds very well to most
other
periodizations, including Veresov (though Veresov adds a pre- Marxist
Vygotsky
from before 1924 which for rather tendentious reasons he finds very
important). It will be VERY interesting to see if the work Jonna
mentions
confirms it.

David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education

--- On Tue, 12/30/08, Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Passages from Chapter 5 of LSV
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
<xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Cc: "Jussi Silvonen" <jussi.silvonen@joensuu.fi>
Date: Tuesday, December 30, 2008, 8:58 AM

We would welcome Jussi's input, thanks Jonna. We almost have a
"history
of
psych" group here on
xmca at presentl. Perhaps a strength we should find a way to use
better.
mike

a


Mike Cole kirjoitti 29.12.2008 kello 2.55:


Ooops, forgot to cc boris on my reply to david. He is author of,
among
other
interesting articles, the article on "LSV's
terminology"
in the Daniels et
al
Cambridge companion to vygotsky.

I forwarded the message to him.
mike

On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 4:52 PM, Mike Cole
<lchcmike@gmail.com>
wrote:
Thanks for these observations and inferences, David.
The task of reconstructing the chronology of LSV's
thinking is
a
formidable
one. I wonder if anyone anywhere has published such a
chronology.
I will
cc boris meshcheryakov who will know, if anybody does.

mike

On Thu, Dec 25, 2008 at 10:42 PM, David Kellogg <
vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:


On p. 131 of Chapter Five, LSV already has the concept
of
the
psychological system, that is, the linkage of
disparate
functions into a
single Gestalt, e.g. attention, association,
judgement,
representation,
and
motivation in activity.

But he denies that this linkage of disparate functions
has
any
effect on
the functions themselves. The relations between
functions
change. But
the
functions themselves do not change.

Now, what causes the relationships between these
functions
to
change?
That
is not clear. One possible answer is
"activity",
and
that is the answer
that
activity theorists give. But we can see that LSV is
not
entirely
satisfied
with this answer.

There are two problems. The first is that as Mike
pointed
out
LSV is
using
"activity" in a non-technical sense, it is
really
just the task plus the
contraints. (Note that Prout actually translates
"task" as "problem").
In
other words, an "activity" is just a
subject, an
object, and a tool.
That
brings us back to the old stimulus-response unit with
mediating
artefact!

The second is that Vygotsky suspects that when the
relations
between
functions change, the functions DO change internally
as
well.
We know,
for
example, that when role play is reconstrued as rule
based
games, the
"roles"
of rule based games are quite different, more
abstract. So
is
the goal,
which is not to make an imaginary situation but to win
a
real
prize.
So why does Vygotsky stress in this passage that the
basic
processes of
attention, association, judgment, representation, and
mindset
do not
actually change? I think there are two reasons.

First of all, he is trying to critically appropriate
the
work
of people
like Buhler who deny that there is anything
fundamentally
new
in the
transitional age. His way of doing this is to say that
they
are correct,
but
they are ignoring the way in which the familiar old
functions
are united
in
a new Gestalt.

Secondly, this is old work, first carried out in 1929
and
written up
some
time in 1931. LSV has not yet conceptualized the
actual
mechanism by
which
differentiation takes place WITHIN functions and not
just
BETWEEN them.
That
does not happen until 1932, when he formulates the
zone of
proximal
development, and he does not write about it until
Chapter
Six.
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education





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--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435 Skype andy.blunden
Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm

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