[Xmca-l] Re: Laws of evolution and laws of history

Andy Blunden ablunden@mira.net
Wed Jan 14 20:24:05 PST 2015


Peg, does my remark that writing was invented "for administrative 
purposes" stand up?
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/


Peg Griffin wrote:
> About writing origins, Henry: There's some accessible and reliable info
> through that U of Chicago Oriental Institute museum web-site I mentioned.
> You can download the catalog for free - over 200 pages of good essays and
> illustrations.
> http://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/shared/docs/oimp3
> 2.pdf 
> The first chapter has a good discussion about writing and other early
> graphic representations from art and administrative functions.  It has a
> reasonable bibliography.  Subsequent specialized chapters also carry good
> documentation.  It's certainly a good start if you want to follow this up.
>
> Peg Griffin, Ph. D.
> Washington, DC 20003
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of HENRY SHONERD
> Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 7:18 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Laws of evolution and laws of history
>
> Yes, thank you, Helen
> I have a couple of questions:
> 1)The movie Cave of Forgotten Dreams focuses on cave drawings of Southern
> France that date back 32,000 years. Writing may date back only about 5
> thousand years, but I understand that writing systems begin with
> pictographs, like in the caves of southern France. Is that relevant to this
> thread?
> 2) Does oral history count as history?
> Henry
>
>
>
>
>
> I have a question 
>   
>> On Jan 14, 2015, at 2:30 PM, Peg Griffin <Peg.Griffin@att.net> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks, Helena!  It is lovely.  A while ago I had skimmed it but 
>> misplaced ways to get to it for deep reading and use of it.
>> Besides just liking this sort of thing, I've had some luck getting 
>> teacher ed students to see contemporary cultural and language 
>> diversity a little differently when they get a chance to see history 
>> they might have missed out on in their prior education.
>> Peg
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
>> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Helena Worthen
>> Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 2:06 PM
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Cc: 'Mikhail Munipov'
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Laws of evolution and laws of history
>>
>> And there's this:
>>
>> https://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/201102/roads.of.arabia.htm
>>
>> This is a gorgeous exhibit, if it comes near you. For the text about 
>> writing
>> 2000-1500 BCE, scroll about half way down. The exhibit has stones, set 
>> side by side, with different ancient scripts.
>>
>> Helena Worthen
>> helenaworthen@gmail.com
>>
>> On Jan 13, 2015, at 7:16 PM, Peg Griffin wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> Here's a little side track:  There's a web trace of a 2010 
>>> well-curated
>>>       
>> museum exhibit on writing from the U of Chicago Oriental Institute.
>>     
>>> http://oi.uchicago.edu/museum/special/writing/
>>>
>>> And here are a few little outtakes:
>>> 		"four instances and places in human history when writing was
>>>       
>> invented from scratch - in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica - 
>> without previous exposure to or knowledge of writing. It appears 
>> likely that all other writing systems evolved from the four systems we 
>> have in our exhibition."
>>     
>>> 		"the earliest cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia (today's
>>>       
>> Iraq), dating to about 3200 BC,"
>>     
>>> 		" early Egyptian writing that includes tags and labels from
>>>       
>> the tombs of the first kings (about 3320 BC) as well as hieroglyphic 
>> writing and other scripts from the Nile Valley."
>>     
>>> 		" Chinese writing, which emerged about 1200 BC, will be
>>>       
>> shown on oracle bones"
>>     
>>> 		" Mayan hieroglyphs from the 7th century AD will show how
>>>       
>> early Mesoamericans wrote."
>>     
>>> 		" Long believed to have been invented in Phoenicia in about
>>>       
>> 1000 BC, the earliest alphabetic texts are now those found in the Sinai.
>> This earliest alphabet was derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs as early 
>> as
>> 1800 BC, well over five hundred years earlier than had been known."
>>     
>>> There are some lovely little animations about the development of 
>>> cuneiform
>>>       
>> and one animation about a hieroglyph changing and eventually 
>> appropriated for a Greek letter.
>>     
>>> I love this little site and fear the day I try to open it and find U 
>>> of Chicago has abandoned it. Peg
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: xmca-l-bounces+peg.griffin=att.net@mailman.ucsd.edu
>>> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+peg.griffin=att.net@mailman.ucsd.edu] On 
>>> Behalf Of Andy Blunden
>>> Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 9:24 PM
>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>> Cc: Mikhail Munipov
>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Laws of evolution and laws of history
>>>
>>> Actually, I think that "the more that human beings become removed 
>>> from
>>>       
>> animals in the narrower sense of the word, the more they make their 
>> own history consciously" is near as dammit what you are looking for.
>>     
>>> Engels of course lacked good information. Even in his day Vygotsky 
>>> had
>>>       
>> poor information. In "Ape, Primitive Man and Child", "primitive" is 
>> taken to mean "non-literate", as it was for Luria in his Central Asian 
>> expedition, and a great deal of emphasis is put on the origins and 
>> development of *writing*. But writing only appears in Egypt c. 2,000 
>> BCE I think, in any case, in evolutionary time scales 5 minutes ago. 
>> The development of writing is nothing to do with evolution of the species.
>>     
>>> Vygotsky defines primitive man as follows:
>>>
>>>   "This term is commonly used, admittedly as a conventional label, to
>>>   designate certain peoples of the uncivilized world, situated at the
>>>   lower levels of cultural development. It is not entirely right to
>>>   call these peoples primitive, as a greater or lesser degree of
>>>   civilization can unquestionably be observed in all of them. All of
>>>   them have already emerged from the prehistoric phase of human
>>>   existence. Some of them have very ancient traditions. Some of them
>>>   have been influenced by remote and powerful cultures, while the
>>>   cultural development of others has become degraded.
>>>   "/Primitive man, in the true sense of the term, does not exist
>>>   anywhere at the present time, /and the human type, as represented
>>>   among these primeval peoples, can only be called "relatively
>>>   primitive." Primitiveness in this sense is a lower level, and the
>>>   starting point for the historical development of human behaviour.
>>>   Material for the psychology of primitive man is provided by data
>>>   concerning prehistoric man, the peoples situated at the lower levels
>>>   of cultural development and the comparative psychology of peoples of
>>>   different cultures."(Preface, 1930, Italics in the original)
>>>
>>> And from the start, this chapter is framed as "cultural development" 
>>> as
>>>       
>> distinct from "evolutionary development." Chapter 1 on primates 
>> focuses on the limited use of tools possible for apes, with the 
>> implication that the cultural development around the emergence of 
>> labour, i.e., the production of tools, was part of evolutionary 
>> development, prior and leading up to the formation of homo sapiens 
>> sapiens. There is no chapter covering the period between 2 million 
>> years ago and say `00,000 years ago, where cultural and biological
>>     
> formation are interacting.
>   
>>> According to Engels and others including Dewey, speech emerges
>>>       
>> simultaneously with tools. Dewey makes the point that a tool is not a 
>> tool until its use is institutionalised, linking social, symbolic and 
>> tool-using activity together.
>>     
>>> Andy
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> -
>>> --
>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>>
>>>
>>> mike cole wrote:
>>>       
>>>> So perhaps its just my bad memory, Andy. the issues remain central. 
>>>> THANKS for the appropriate links!
>>>> mike
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 4:51 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net 
>>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>   There can only be two sources of this idea: Engels' "Part Played
>>>>   by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man" (1876)
>>>>
>>>>         
>> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/ind
>> ex.htm
>>     
>>>>   and the Introduction to "Dialectics of Nature" (1883)
>>>>   http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch01.htm
>>>>
>>>>   In the latter work, after explaining how freeing the hands by
>>>>   adopting an erect gait, led to the use of tools, meaning labour,
>>>>   and this led to the expansion of the brain, language and sundry
>>>>   other changes, and thus eventualy the emergence of human beings as
>>>>   a species. Then he says:
>>>>
>>>>      "With men we enter /history/."
>>>>
>>>>   In the earlier document, he says: "Labour begins with the making
>>>>   of tools" which Engels claims happened before the formation of
>>>>   modern homo sapiens, contributing to that formation rather than
>>>>   being a product of the formation of modern humans, and he narrates
>>>>   a story which continues from this point up to socialist revolution
>>>>   as if it were one continuous story, blurring over the distinction
>>>>   between evolution of the species and historical development of
>>>>   culture.
>>>>   The nerest we come to your quote is: "the more that human beings
>>>>   become removed from animals in the narrower sense of the word, the
>>>>   more they make their own history consciously." The "narrower
>>>>   sense" I presume means biological differentiation. So this could
>>>>   count for what you are looking for, Mike.
>>>>
>>>>   Andy
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> --
>>     
>>>>   *Andy Blunden*
>>>>   http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>>>   <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>   mike cole wrote:
>>>>
>>>>       Dear Colleagues--
>>>>
>>>>       I seem to recall reading an idea, that I recall being
>>>>       attributed to Engels,
>>>>       that (rooughly) "more and more the laws of evolution are being
>>>>       replaced by
>>>>       the laws of history."
>>>>
>>>>       Can anyone enlighten me either as to the source of this
>>>>       "quotation" or as
>>>>       to the source of my own confusion in this regard?
>>>>
>>>>       mike
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal with a natural science as an 
>>>> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         
>>     
>
>
>
>
>   



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