Re: [xmca] zpd zbr zedpd and zoped

[Carol Macdonald <carolmacdon@gmail.com>]

When one of my colleagues discovered some rampant plagiarism in students'
essays, he called the core, which was common to them all, the Ur-essay.
Carol

On 6 January 2011 18:23, Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com> wrote:

> Yes, very helpful, Andy.  Interesting neologism, "Urunit."  Your
> explanation gives me an intuitive sense, a place to start - and some more
> questions.
>
> Google translates 'Urphaenomen' as 'primary phenomenon' while Babel
> translates it as 'elemental phenomenon'.  One translation could be seen as
> more of a time concept, and the other, spatial, or as you suggest, cellular.
>
> A little more googling finds 'Ur-' as possibly meaning a number of closely
> related concepts, both in terms of 'essential units', and also in terms of
> 'genesis'.  A list of English substitutes for the German 'Ur-' includes the
> ones you mention, original and prototypical, and a few others: primary,
> elemental, ancient, fore-, primal, greatgrand-, primitive, primeval, proto-,
> and archetypal, in a quick search.
>
> These kinds of meanings makes this term especially interesting to use in
> the dialectical senses you and Mike are giving it.  The mixture of the
> simultaneous senses of time and space gives the impression the word has had
> a contradictory evolution.  Ur was also an ancient city in Mesopotamia, one
> of the oldest, became a world famous archeological dig, and is likely the
> birthplace of Abraham.  A lot seems to be packed into that two-letter German
> prefix and its history!
>
> Did Marx, Engels or Hegel use the prefix 'Ur-' in a significant way?
>
> And who (if anyone knows) introduced terms such as "ur characteristic" and
> "ur model" into English?  What meanings are generally being given to these
> terms?
>
> - Steve
>
>
>
>
> On Jan 6, 2011, at 1:12 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:
>
> I'll respond to your question about the meaning of "ur," Steve.
>>
>> "Ur-" is a prefix that is used in German, actually. It has been around
>> since the year dot in German, but it has become a bit of a fad recently for
>> English speakers.
>> Ur- is a prefix which means original or prototypical. I mostlly know it
>> from Goethe's idea of /Urphaenomen/ which is the original of Vygotsky's
>> "unit of analysis", should I say, the Urunit? This is because of
>> Goethe/Hegel/Marx/Vygotsky's idea that in order to understand some complex
>> process as a whole (i.e. a /Gestalt/) then you have to begin with the
>> simplest unit of it, it's germ or cell. So the reference is to an
>> (artefact-mediated) action as the ur- of psychology and cultivated human
>> life.
>>
>> Does that help, Steve?
>>
>> Andy
>>
>>
>> Steve Gabosch wrote:
>>
>>> ... "Generalizing Dual Stimulation.
>>>
>>> * The ur characteristic of higher psychologically (culturally mediated)
>>> human action is that it operates indirectly, through the environment.
>>> * DS method is the ur model of human action incorporates the environment
>>> as tools for action.  But it must be generalized into group as well as
>>> individual circumstances."
>>>
>>> Mike urges the non-Russians at the conference to ask their fellow Russian
>>> attendees what 'ur' means.
>>>
>>> So - to our fellow Russian speakers - what does 'ur' mean in Mike's
>>> slide?
>>>
>>>
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