[Xmca-l] Re: The Stuff of Words

[Andy Blunden]

David, in this paper https://www.academia.edu/30657582/

if you do a search for "chair" you will see an extended 
quote from a Hegelian called Heikki who is using production 
of chairs rather than tables as an example for concepts, 
after which you will see my critique (with which I am sure 
you will agree) and then if you flip to the mention of 
"chair" at the bottom of page 7 you see a surprising thing 
about the production of chairs which illustrates Mike's 
point about how pencils are carriers of historical practices.

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://home.mira.net/~andy
http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making 

On 1/05/2017 4:58 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:
> And tables carry with them the practice of eating "at 
> table" and meeting a the board room table etc., it not 
> that the table carries the idea of table but is the bearer 
> of practices, which have refined the size and shape of 
> tables for eating, talking, etc. LIkewise pencils are for 
> cursive writing on paper. not scratching hieroglyphics 
> into clay.
>
> Great quote from Mike! There is a LOT of resistance to 
> this idea ... everywhere. It smells of Marxism.
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://home.mira.net/~andy
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making 
>
> On 1/05/2017 4:43 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
>> Gordon Wells quotes this from an article Mike wrote in a 
>> Festschrift for
>> George Miller. Mike is talking about artefacts:
>>
>> "They are ideal in that they contain in coded form the 
>> interactions of
>> which they
>> were previously a part and which they mediate in the 
>> present (e.g., the
>> structure of
>> a pencil carries within it the history of certain forms 
>> of writing). They
>> are material
>> in that they are embodied in material artifacts. This 
>> principle applies
>> with equal
>> force whether one is considering language/speech or the 
>> more usually noted
>> forms
>> of artifacts such as tables and knives which constitute 
>> material culture.
>> What
>> differentiates a word, such as “language” from, say, a 
>> table. is the
>> relative prominence
>> of their material and ideal aspects. No word exists apart 
>> from its material
>> instantiation (as a configuration of sound waves, or hand 
>> movements, or as
>> writing,
>> or as neuronal activity), whereas every table embodies an 
>> order imposed by
>> thinking
>> human beings."
>>
>> This is the kind of thing that regularly gets me thrown 
>> out of journals by
>> the ear. Mike says that the difference between a word and 
>> a table is the
>> relative salience of the ideal and the material. 
>> Sure--words are full of
>> the ideal, and tables are full of material. Right?
>>
>> Nope. Mike says it's the other way around. Why? Well, 
>> because a word
>> without some word-stuff (sound or graphite) just isn't a 
>> word. In a
>> word, meaning is solidary with material sounding: change 
>> one, and you
>> change the other. But with a table, what you start with 
>> is the idea of the
>> table; as soon as you've got that idea, you've got a 
>> table. You could
>> change the material to anything and you'd still have a 
>> table.
>>
>> Wells doesn't throw Mike out by the ear. But he does 
>> ignore the delightful
>> perversity in what Mike is saying, and what he gets out 
>> of the quote is
>> just that words are really just like tools. When in fact 
>> Mike is saying
>> just the opposite.
>>
>> (The part I don't get is Mike's notion that the structure 
>> of a pencil
>> carries within it the history of certain forms of 
>> writing. Does he mean
>> that the length of the pencil reflects how often it's 
>> been used? Or is he
>> making a more archaeological point about graphite, wood, 
>> rubber and their
>> relationship to a certain point in the history of writing 
>> and erasing?
>> Actually, pencils are more like tables than like 
>> words--the idea has to
>> come first.)
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Macquarie University
>>
>>
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