Martin
Here you are.
Ed
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On Jan 4, 2009, at 10:10 PM, Martin Packer wrote:
Thanks, Ed. I'm reading the dictionary definition of 'reflection,' andthere's nothing even close to 'having an effect.' But I've surfed around and the word is indeed translated as reflection. Does your Russian dictionaryprovide any more detail? Martin On 1/4/09 9:12 PM, "Ed Wall" <ewall@umich.edu> wrote:Martin It appears the root is more or less отрaжáть (отрaзить)and, at least according to my dictionary, has the sense of reflectingor having an effect. However, my qualifications are dated. Ed On Jan 4, 2009, at 7:01 PM, Martin Packer wrote:At the end of last year several of us were trying to figure out whether 'reflection' is a good term to translate the way Vygotsky and leontiev wrote about 'mental' activity. Michael Roth pointed out that the German word that Marx used was Widerspiegeln rather than Reflektion (see below). I don't think anyone identified the Russian word that was used. I still haven't found time to trace the word in Vygotsky's texts, English and Russian. But an article by Charles Tolman suggests that the Russian term was 'otrazhenie.' Online translators don't like this word: can any Russian speakers suggest how it might be translated? Reflection (German: Widerspiegelung; Russian: otrazhenie)Tolman, C.W. (1988). The basic vocabulary of Activity Theory. ActivityTheory, 1, 14-20. Martin On 10/25/08 12:40 PM, "Wolff-Michael Roth" <mroth@uvic.ca> wrote:Hi Martin, Marx does indeed use the term "widerspiegeln" in the sentence you cite. Das Gehirn der Privatproduzenten spiegelt diesen doppelten gesellschaftlichen Charakter ihrer Privatarbeiten nur wider in den Formen, welche im praktischen Verkehr, im Produktenaustausch erscheinen - den gesellschaftlich nützlichen Charakter ihrer Privatarbeiten also inder Form, daß das Arbeitsprodukt nützlich sein muß, und zwar fürandre - den gesellschaftlichen Charakter der Gleichheit der verschiedenartigen Arbeiten in der Form des gemeinsamen Wertcharakters dieser materiell verschiednen Dinge, der Arbeitsprodukte.But the Duden, the reference work of German language says that thereare 2 different senses. One is reflection as in a mirror, the other one that something brings to expression. In this context, I do not see Marx draw on the mirror idea. For those who have trouble, perhaps the analogy with mathematical functions. In German, what a mathematical function does is "abbilden," which is, provide a projection of, or reflection, or whatever. You have the word Bild, image, picture in the verb. But when you look at functions, only y = f(x) = x, or -x gives you what you would get in the mirror analogy. You get very different things when you use different functions, log functions, etc. Then the relationship between the points on a line no longer is the same in the "image", that is, the target domain. We sometimes see the word "refraction" in the works of Russianpsychologists, which may be better than reflection. It allows you to think of looking at the world through a kaleidoscope, and you get allsorts of things, none of which look like "the real thing." Michael On 25-Oct-08, at 9:01 AM, Martin Packer wrote: Michael, Here's one example from Marx, and several from Leontiev, if we can get into the Russian too. "The twofold social character of the labour of the individual appears tohim, when *reflected* in his brain, only under those forms which areimpressed upon that labour in every-day practice by the exchange of products." Marx, Capital, Chapter 1, section 4. " Activity is a non-additive unit of the corporeal, material life of the material subject. In the narrower sense, i.e., on the psychological plane,it is a unit of life, mediated by mental *reflection*, by an *image,*whose real function is to orientate the subject in the objective world." Leontiev, Activity & Consciousness. " The circular nature of the processes effecting the interaction of the organism with the environment has been generally acknowledged. But the main thing is not this circular structure as such, but the fact that the mental*reflection* of the objective world is not directly generated by theexternal influences themselves, but by the processes through which the subject comes into practical contact with the objective world, and which therefore necessarily obey its independent properties, connections, and relations." ibid" Thus, individual consciousness as a specifically human form of thesubjective *reflection* of objective reality may be understood only as the product of those relations and mediacies that arise in the course of the establishment and development of society." ibid Martin _______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca _______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
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