I do liked very much what you had written above. Where can I find
other enuciations made by you in "written way"?
I remembered Nietzsche eternal "lunch-time" of sun.The absolut
present.
Ricardo.
Ana M. Shane wrote:
>
> Mike,
>
> The citation page for Vygotsky:
> "The old adage that child's play is imagination in action must be reversed:
> we can say that imagination in adolescents and school children is play
> without action" in: The role of Play in Development (Ch. 7), Mind in
> Society, p.93, Harvard University Press, 1978.
> Other paraphrases about the "object/meaning" and "action/meaning" ratios
> and their inversions are all from the same chapter.
>
> I am currently writing a paper on Imagination and the Concept of Time in
> Psychology in which I am trying to use Einstein's Theory of Relativity,
> Bateson's concepts of Play and Fantasy, Lewin's Field Theory, as well as
> Vygotsky's theory of Play and Imagination. This is why Prolepsis is a very
> important notion for me, and I am not quite sure that I understand it in
> the same way you do.
>
> Briefly: whenever we conceptualize future and/or past, we are bringing them
> into the present, but at the same time we are changing the "body of
> reference" or the "coordinate systems" by which we are determining these
> time categories (Einstein's terminology). What does it mean? The Future and
> Past exist ONLY in the consciousness, i.e., without their
> conceptualization, they are not there in the Present. From the "point of
> view" of, let's say, a rock, a mountain, a river, there is no future and no
> past. They exist in the Present. To be able to look at the Past (which
> brought about their present shape) and at the Future (which will depend on
> their present shape and relevant geophysical processes, one has to be able
> to create another coordinate system (body of reference)in which one can
> "freely" move in the dimension of time, and take a "look" at the Past and
> at the Future AS IF they were in the present. This other coordinate system
> is built through the cultural mediation which creates a history, i.e. the
> Past with a meaning in the Present, and which creates the Future with a
> significance for the Present. However, the Time in this other coordinate
> system is not the Physical time any more, it is a "cultural-historical"
> time, and very different form the physical one. We do not behave in the
> Present only, rather, we behave with our knowledge and beliefs about the
> Past (individual and social) and we behave with our beliefs, anticipations
> and wishes about the Future.
> OK, you may ask, where is the imagination here? I think that play in its
> most rudimentary and in its most developed forms is the basic mechanism for
> creating this other coordinate system. It enables us to "take a look at" or
> to "make an image of" something which is not present, and even something
> which is present! (vo/obraz/zhenie in Russian, "za/mishly/annie" in
> Serbo-Croatian: "into-thought-making"). What is important here is the
> ABOUTness because play is not merely living or existing (like a rock, a
> mountain, a river), but being able to SEE the life from another
> perspective. In fact, ABOUTness is the rudimentary act of reference
> inherent in any symbolic behavior. The difference between actual existence
> (living) and a perspective on this existence is seen clearly in Vygotsky's
> (he cites Sully) example of the two sisters who played being sisters. (pp.
> 94-95 in Mind in Society). While "in life the child behaves without
> thinking that she is her sister's sister, in the game of sisters playing
> "sisters", however, they are both concerned with displaying their
> sisterhood." (ibid: p. 95). In one sense "sisters" is a physical fact which
> does not have to enter into consciousness at all, but in the
> cultural-historical sense "sisters" is a value category, a system of
> prescribed cultural rules of behavior, feelings and anticipations.
> When it comes to the PAST and FUTURE, they exist only as
> cultural-historical entities and as such they are carry values and
> significances which are beyond the physical time. They are created through
> imagination - or processes of "into-thought-making" or "into-image-making"
> which themselves derive from communication in play. Einstein's example of
> the different coordinate systems is an image of a train passing a certain
> embankment. The train is long (infinite) and is continuously passing along
> all the points of the embankment. Standing on the embankment, one can only
> see a certain section of the train which is passing at present. But being
> on the train, (another body of reference, or coordinate system) gives one
> another perspective of the "same" embankment. Einstein discussed, of course
> differences in the measures of space and time between the embankment and
> the train.
> To me, being able to get on this train in the first place, is being able to
> create, or to imagine, another coordinate system (body of reference) in
> which the Past and the Future are always Present (you can walk up and down
> the train). But of course this isn't the same Present any more.
>
> References:
>
> Bateson, G. (1972), A Theory of Play and Fantasy, in: Steps to an Ecology
> of Mind, Balantine Books, pp. 177-193
> Einstein, A. (1952), Relativity, the Special and the General Theory, New
> York, Crown Publishers, Inc.
> Lewin, K. Defining the "Field at a Given Time" (1943) in: Field Theory in
> Social Science, Chicago, Harper & Row, pp. 43-59
> Vygotsky, L.S. (1933/1978), The Role of Play in Development, in Mind in
> Society, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, pp. 92-104
>
> Ana
>
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