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Re: [xmca] Arne Raeithel's "genealogy"

Andy, thinking on this a bit further, it seems to me that these diagrams are trying to do two different things at the same time. One is to provide helpful contextual information to anyone reading LSV's texts. I think this itself is a valuable enterprise, one that compensates a little for the minimal teaching of the history of the discipline in psychology, at least. A diagram serving this purpose need go no further towards the present than the end of Vygotsky's life. And for this the lines to and from Vygotsky himself would be redundant; he would be connected to everyone.
A second task, and a distinct one in my view, would be a diagram indicating forms of, and influences on, CHAT today. Here people like Helmholtz and Fichte would, I think, not play a role - their influence would be entirely mediated by LSV. And such a diagram would be more detailed about the present: for example, the last row of your diagram is almost exclusively people working in the US; it would be helpful to see here Scandinavian, German, British, etc. schools of CHAT.
I'm not volunteering you for the work (nor do I have time to do it myself), just trying to think through the role of this kind of representational reconstruction of intellectual history. 

Martin


On Nov 9, 2009, at 12:18 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:
Yes, it is mind-boggling. Probably better for people to produce a multiplicity of different perspectives, than try to produce a master view. There are so many angles!
Lewin is interesting. Not only was he close to the Frankfurt School, but he also worked with Vygotsky, and I suspect this is where Vygotsky got a lot of his Hegel from. 

Andy

Martin Packer wrote:
Andy, I think the map is interesting and useful. But how about this. I was exploring further on the virtual library that I mentioned in a prior message. It turns out there's quite a lot there in English, not only German. I had been enjoying myself browsing through scans of the papers of Carl Stumpf, who was teacher of both Kurt Lewin and Edmund Husserl. Teacher-student seems to me one important connection between figures. Lewin apparently had regular contact with the Frankfurt School (connection of 'colleague') before leaving for the US, where he would have found himself transplanted into the new milieu of behaviorism. 
I think Mike is right, we need 3D!
Martin
On Nov 8, 2009, at 9:07 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:
I've been thinking ... What these diagrams lack is any information about why a writer is included and what they contributed to CHAT. Would anyone on the list like to put their hand up to write a paragraph (max 100 words probably) on a writer on the diagram explaining their contribution to CHAT and their sources? I would be happy to collate them and fix the essays to hyperlinks on the names of each writer? ... if others do most of the writing ... then the diagram might be genuinely useful. 

Andy

Andy Blunden wrote:
Mmmmm. I didn't sign up for an intellecual map of the universe here! The French Revolution produced a mass of political theory of course, but also, it is widely regarded as the inspiration for Classical German Philosophy, which is one of our sources. World War One? I don't know, but I have thought in the past that what Vygotsky called "The Crisis in Psychology", viz., the myriad of conflicting currents in psychology suddenly contesting each other after WW1, was some kind of reaction to WW1 and the Russian Revolution. The Reformation and the Industrial Revolution deserve mention somewhere too, in the atlas of ideas. ... 
Andy
mike cole wrote:

Hmmmmm, like the French revolution or world war I for example?
:-)
mike
On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 4:18 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net >> wrote: 

  Both Arne's and mine are listed on
  http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/index.html and both are in that
directory. I too would be interested in seeing some other versions. 
  Something might emerge out of the crowd.
It is interesting isn't that it is a quite small number of ... what do you say? ... millieux? events? movements? which produced the main 
  ideas, via a whole mass of individual writers.

  Andy

  mike cole wrote:
I think your pictured genealogy is interesting, Andy. I thought 
      Arne's was too, and I a sure others can make interesting
modifications. If anyone could do this in three D it could get 
      really fascinating.
Part of what makes for the partiality of any such attempt is the position of the creator. Arne was a radical cultural historical 
      cognitive scientist of the
      70's-90's (roughly), an importatant odd hybrid and unusually
      nice guy.
Maturana, who is on his list, with Varela, were central figures 
      on bringing
dynamic systems into the discussion but you do not know about 
      him just
as many of us do not know some of the figures you name, and the 
      connections such as Dilthey-Wundt or Mead-Dilthey-American
pragmatism are poorly known altogether, but fascinating (to me!) 
      in their implications.
And, of course, the historical events that various of us might 
      highlight as
      most relevant are going to vary as well.
Thanks for the new tool to think with. I'll try to get Arne's 
      genealogy put
up where yours is and perhaps others will contribute from their 
      perspectives.
      mike

      On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 6:42 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
      <mailto:ablunden@mira.net> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
      <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>> wrote:

         Well, here's my shot at it:
           http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Paper/Genealogy-CHAT.pdf
I have tried to deal with your very valid point, Martin, that 
      it is
more the milieux than individuals, but I have also just omitted a billion possible arrows so it is readable. It needs more than one 
         person to do this.

         Andy
         Martin Packer wrote:
My question about the map is what the links represent. After all, one scientist or philosopher may accept the ideas or 
             another, or react against them, or modify them, or
      misunderstand
them. Seems to me each of these is a different link. Also, a family tree indicates two parents for every progeny, where Arne's genealogy seemingly shows spontaneous generation - one figure alone can produce another. And wouldn't we want to 
      have a
way to map the milieus within which people were working? 
      Perhaps
             something along the lines of the social fields that
      Bourdieu was
fond of sketching, but with an added historical dimension. 

             Martin

             On Nov 4, 2009, at 1:44 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:
To tell the truth Louise, there are a couple of names I don't know and half a dozen I know so little about I 
      don't
know why they're included ... or not. Two of the three "outcomes" are people who think humans are a type of computer, so I am not surpised that this genealogy is 
      odd to
me. But there is sooooo much out there. So much to 
      read. :(
Up till a few weeks ago I thought that starting with 
                 Descartes was not justified, but I take that back
      now. But
                 somehow, Rene's nemesis, Aristotle, needs to be
      included as
                 well.
I don't know anything about Vico, but I find Locke, 
      Berkeley
and Leibniz to be rather peripheral to *our* story. 

                 Kant certainly deserves an important place, but I
      think his
                 nemesis, Goethe, may be more important for us.

                 Fichte is actually the inventor of Activity as a
philosophical concept (I just learnt that Hegel asked 
      to be
                 buried next to Fichte; like Goethe, very under
      recognized in
                 the Anglophone world).

                 Hegel is the inventor of Cultural Psychology, so
      agreed there.
I think Stirner and Mach are total diversions from our tradition. But maybe someone can explain to me their 
      role.
Wundt and Dilthey are important, though I don't know 
      them well.
Feuerbach is a bit of a footnote, but if you're going to have Feuerbach, you've gotta have Moses Hess, author of "Philosophy of the Deed", and inspiration for "Theses on Feuerbach". Of course if you think Frege, Russell and 
      Turing
are important to the genealogy of CHAT, then you wouldn't 
                 want Hess.

                 MARX, obviously, in CAPS.
And I would have lines from a whole bunch of people 
      going to
Dewey, as well as Peirce and Mead, but even though Peirce was the elder, I don't think you can give him such 
      priority.
                 Dewey surely was the leader. Arguable.
And where are the Gestaltists? Again, not for computer cognition, but there needs to be lines between Goethe and Kant and then to von Ehrenfels, and on to Koehler and Co. 

                 Russian linguists like Potebnya, but I don't know
      where they
                 came from.

                 And these threads are all tied together with LS
      Vygotsky, yes?
Freud has to be mentioned (I forget his sources), with 
                 arrows to Luria. And after Vygotsky and Luria you
      have ANL
                 and thus to present day people,
I guess, you can't leave out Piaget, and I don't know 
                 Piaget's sources.
I know some people rate Merleau-Ponty, but if you're 
      going
                 to give Merleau-Pony a seat, you have to put in
      Lukacs and
Horkheimer. I guess Habermas for discourse ethics, etc. 

                 I have no idea why Husserl and Heidegger get a
      mention. I my
                 humble opinion, as clever as they might be, their
      impact on
                 Activity Theory has only been negative.

                 I have no idea why Bergson is mentioned: was he a
      source for
                 Piaget? Don't know why Nietzsche is there.
      Interesting guy,
                 but so are many others. Why von Uexhill?
I agree that Wittgenstein rates a mention, though I don't know how much of a source he has been for us. He is some 
                 kind of version of Activity Theory.

                 Frege, Russell and Turing are nothing to do with
      CHAT. What
                 about anthropologists??

                 Never heard of Maturana.

                 That's my reaction,

                 Andy

                 Louise Hawkins wrote:

                     Andy,
I remember seeing this diagram a number of years ago, and I found it useful as a big picture diagram to 
      get my
                     head around the significant theorist.
                     Regards
                     Louise Hawkins
Lecturer - School of Management & Information Systems 
                     Faculty Business & Informatics
                     Building 19/Room 3.38
                     Rockhampton Campus
                     CQUniversity
                     Ph: +617 4923 2768
                     Fax: +617 4930 9729
                      -----Original Message-----
                     From: Andy Blunden [mailto:ablunden@mira.net
      <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
                     <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
      <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>] Sent: Wednesday, 4 November
                     2009 01:05 PM
                     To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
                     Subject: [xmca] Arne Raeithel's "genealogy"
                            http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/Theoretical%20connections.jpg
I never found this map very useful to be honest. 
                     Andy
                     mike cole wrote:
Have you found Arne Raeithel's "genealogy" of cultural-historical, activity theory thinkers 
      from
several years back. I am sure it is somewhere at 
                         lchc.ucsd.edu <http://lchc.ucsd.edu>
      <http://lchc.ucsd.edu>
<http://lchc.ucsd.edu>. Perhaps you (and Andy, 
                         and.....) could update it with
more detail. Hegel generated so much that has 
      been
"laundered" by subsequent "original" thinkers its totally amazing, and ditto Mead (whose writings i know far better, although very inadequately).
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