Eric offers a beginning to the discussion

From: MnFamilyMan@aol.com
Date: Wed Oct 03 2001 - 19:19:49 PDT


Much in the vain of the obstacle language represents I would like to jump to
the fifth chapter. Not because I don't find the first four chapters
important but because it isn't until then that Vygotsky starts to discuss the
process language plays in forming a scientific discipline.

From page 248 of chapter 15 (?) I put the question mark because I clicked on
chapter 5 of the menu, so I am assuming it is a typo.
"It is important to make two points.
1. Every natural-scientific concept, however high the degree of its
abstraction
from the empirical fact, always contains a clot, a sediment of the concrete,
real
and scientifically known reality, albeit in a very weak solution, i.e., to
every ultimate
concept, even to the most abstract, corresponds some aspect of reality which
the
concept represents in an abstract, isolated form. Even purely fictitious, not
natu-
ral-scientific but mathematical concepts ultimately contain some echo, some
reflec-
tion of the real relations between things and the real processes, although
they did
not develop from empirical, actual knowledge, but purely a priori, via the
deductive
path of speculative logical operations. As Engels demonstrated, even such an
ab-
stract concept as the series of numbers, or even such an obvious fiction as
zero,
i.e., the idea of the absence of any magnitude, is full of properties that
are quali-
tative, i.e., in the end they correspond in a very remote and dissolved form
to real,
actual relations. Reality exists even in the imaginary abstractions of
mathematics."

What he states after this point is extremely important for understanding this
point. I won't paste it here however, because this may not be where we want
to begin our discusion of this stunning document. I am perfectly happy
waiting on commenting on Vygotsky's view of language unitl we have hashed
over his historical perspective of the crisis.

Eric
    



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