That article connects to several ongoing threads, Andy. But lets see if
others are interested before I directly comment.
Instead, I think that the cover of the current issue of the New Yorker
magazine provides interesting food for thought one concepts and their
representations. It is accessible from www.newyorker.com
<http://www.newyorker.com>. Try to click on the cover and than use
control+ (on a pc) to get a larger and larger imaged. The different
layers of meaning appear to move between the syntagmatic and
paradigmatic dimensions of meaning making. Besides,
its clever.
mike
On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 6:38 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
I just had a read of Mike's 1982 paper with Roy D'Andrade on the
influence of schooling on concept formation:
http://lchc.ucsd.edu/Histarch/ap82v4n2.PDF
Great paper!
It occurred to me that Luria is in agreement with many others that a
hierarchical system of categories, a taxonomy, is the archetype of
the "abstract" concept. Luria's conception of how this relates to
prior forms of concept (affective and concrete) is the main point of
interest in the article, but I would like to question whether this
taxonomical idea is valid as the archetype of the "true" concept.
The article claims that taxonomical practices ("true" or not) are
archetypal school practices, and this is an interesting and
different question.
An interesting counterpoint to this is Hegel's classification of 3
different components which he thinks must *all* be present in the
formation of a true concept:
The subject is (a) ascribed certain qualities; (b) seen as having
having a certain place in a system of social practice; and (c) taken
under its genus, as belonging to a certain living whole.
Further, I think (c) does not actually amount to the kind of
Linnaean hierarchical family tree, but could also be interpreted
like genre and archetype without the implied underlying totality.
Also, there is all too much room for subsuming (c) under (a) as
almost all of present-day philosophy and natural science are wont to do.
Mike, you have done a lot of work on the role of this "taxonomical
activity" in and out of school. Davydov on the other hand,
emphasises (b) as opposed to (a). It would be interesting to
investigate concept-formation on this wider frame.
Andy
--
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*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
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