Re: Re: Re: [xmca] Help? - Microgenesis, Microgenetic, Microgeny?

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Hi David-- Thanks for all the re-minding.

Why does Vygotsky reject bicycle riding (learning a phonetic alphabet to
read for meaning too?) as an example of a developmental change? It is a
qualitative change in the organization of consituent functions, it
reorganizes not only the system of psychological/psychomotor functions, it
is mediated by culture, it brings about a simultaneous change in the
person's relationship to his/her environment.

Seems to qualify. What's wrong here?
mike

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 3:16 PM, kellogg <kellogg59@hanmail.net> wrote:

>   Greg--
>
>
>
> The funny thing is that in Korean there is an identical expression: "halka
> malka". And in Chinese the yes/no question is essentially nothing but an
> elaboration of "willy-nilly".
>
>
>
> It's hard to imagine that there is NOTHING at the basis of the
> legal-juridical model of human action except contractualism, just as it's
> hard to imagine that Saussurean linguistics is ONLY based on an infinite
> number of curiously non-negotiable agreements about word meanings.
>
>
>
> It seems to me that there's just a kernel of truth here. In order to
> engage in any semiotic behavior at all, you have to recognize that
> something is a sign. And in order to recognize that something is a sign,
> you have to recognize that it was intended to stand for something else. And
> in order to recognize that sometime was intended to stand for something
> else, you have to recognize that there is intelligent life out there after
> all.
>
>
>
> I guess if I were looking for a single "a-ha!" moment, a moment where one
> can point to a hair and see a beard, that would be it!
>
>
>
> Mike--
>
>
>
> "Riding a bicycle" is a perfect example of where our bicycle built for two
> meets a fork in the road.
>
>
>
> Bike riding is actually one of the activities that Vygotsky explicitly
> rules out as instances of development (along with typing and playing golf).
> It is an instance of learning, but not development. So I thought we ought
> to reserve the term "microgenesis" for only those types of learning which
> in a given social context (that of education) can be linked to the
> ontogenesis of mind. And that meant, after the age of one, those types of
> learning that are centrally about language.
>
>
>
> Unfortunately, I think that unreadable book review by me in MCA is the
> only written record of our conversation on whether microgenesis was a kind
> of learning or learning a kind of microgenesis. It was mostly over the
> telephone. I had just discovered Mescheryakov's brilliant article on
> Vygotskyan terminology (in the Cambridge Companion) and I was looking, in
> my usual little-boy-with-a-toy-hammer mode, for ways to over-extend it:
>
>
>
> 1) Natural functions are acquired before cultural ones, but within
> cultural functions...
>
> 2) Social functions are acquired before individual ones, but within
> individual functions...
>
> 3) Extramental functions are acquired before intra-mental functions, but
> within intra-mental functions..
>
> 4) Spontaneous, everyday functions are acquired before nonspontaneous,
> academic ones
>
>
>
> I thought all of these could be seen as instances of a very general
> principle "Outside-in!" so long as we accept "outside" as referring to
> the environmental and "inside" as referring to the semiotic. It could then
> be differentiated according to:
>
>
>
> 1) The phylogenetic zone of proximal devleopment (caves before houses,
> hair before clothes)
>
> 2) The sociogenetic zone of proximal development (discourse before
> grammar, speech before verbal thinking)
>
> 3) The ontogenetic zone of proximal development (egocentric speech beore
> inner, finger counting before mental math)
>
> 4) The microgenetic zone of proximal development (in English--Germanic
> vocabulary before Latinate and Greek, in Korean, pure Korean words before
> those of Chinese origin)
>
>
>
> You pointed out to me that this assumed that microgenesis was a rather
> special kind of microgenesis--the kind that linked learning to ontogenetic
> development. And you said, correctly, that this was not the way the term is
> normally used. You then recommended that I review this book, and I did. I
> also wrote an article on the subject (which was indignantly rejected by MCA
> but eventually published by the Modern Language Journal).
>
>
>
> *
> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01236.x/abstract
> *<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01236.x/abstract>
>
>
>
> The problem with the microgenesis book I reviewed was that I didn't really
> find the discussions of exactly when a person could be said to have
> perceived a dot as a man very enlightening, and I found that some of the
> studies in the book were of activities that were clearly not linked to
> mental development in any way (e.g. murder and suicide).
>
>
>
> Of course, people do tend to prefer their own inventions, and I found
> myself sticking to my own understanding of microgenesis, that is, that
> microgenesis should really be reserved for the kind of learning that leads
> to ontogenesis, just as iin Vygotsky the ontogenesis of mind is really
> reserved for the kind of growth that culminates in sociogenesis or
> socio-re-genesis rather than simply growth in general (and, of course,
> sociogenesis should be reserved for forms of culture which increase man's
> mastery of his environment as well as of that part of the environment which
> is his own behavior).
>
>
>
> Now, I know that this is the kind of selective and directed developmental
> view which many people on the list reject. I have been thinking a bit about
> why this is so, since it seems to be at the bottom of my inability to
> integrate my own thinking with that of people to whom I otherwise feel a
> very strong intellectual affinity (e.g. you and Martin). It seems to me
> that, since the 2008 collapse in particular, there has been a strong
> tendency amongst Western intellectuals to REVERSE the millenium old
> assumption that we had about nature and nurture, according to which if
> something is natural there is nothing to be done, but if something is
> "socially constructed" then it can be easily deconstructed and
> re-constructed. Since 2008, we have had almost the reverse prejudice: if
> something is natural, it may easily be altered; our tragedy is that we
> cannot seem to change our own behavior.
>
>
>
> Needless to say, there is a great deal of truth in this insight; I think
> it is one of the great insights of our time. The problem is that I seem to
> be stuck in an earlier time, when the semiotic behavior of Chinese people
> was very  far in advance of their ability to control the environment,
> and mass literacy simply meant that large quantities of materials which
> might otherwise have been usefully employed as toilet paper, could now only
> be read, simply because in order to shit you have to be able to eat.
>
>
>
> (My mother-in-law, who survived the famine, still thinks of food as the
> only real private property, and then only when it has actually been eaten.)
>
>
>
> David Kellogg
>
> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>
>
>
>
>
>
> <kellogg59@hanmail.net>
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