[Xmca-l] Re: The Stuff of Words
Greg Thompson
greg.a.thompson@gmail.com
Mon May 8 20:22:57 PDT 2017
Andy,
My privileging of Hegel's Phenomenology is not because I think it is the
only worthwhile book that he has written. Rather, it is the only book of
his that I have had time to deal with in any substantial fashion. To try to
make sense of a single book of his is an incredibly time-consuming task and
I'm afraid am not a good enough scholar (quick enough reader, etc.) to be
able to take on another one. I was simply trolling for some insight into
Hegel's treatment of Here, This, Now, and how it fits into his larger work
(the Logic as well). But I guess that will have to wait for another
lifetime (or at least until retirement).
Cheers,
greg
On Sun, May 7, 2017 at 8:28 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> The reason why I picked out icon/index/symbol of all the many
> firstness/secondness/thirdnesses Peirce offers us is that all the rest
> are found in Hegel and systematically elaborated there. But not
> icon/index/symbol. As you know Greg I am not one of those that think that
> The Phenomenology is the only book Hegel wrote, so I will refer you to the
> Science of Logic, chapter on the Concept (a.k.a. Notion).
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://home.mira.net/~andy
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
> On 8/05/2017 12:12 PM, Greg Thompson wrote:
>
>> Andy (and others),
>>
>> I agree that Peirce seems a good complement to Hegel.
>>
>> One interesting bit where there seems to be some overlap is in Hegel's
>> interest in what Silverstein calls, using Peircean language, "referential
>> indexicals" (these are signs which have referential value but their
>> referential value is primarily indexical - pronouns are a classic example,
>> but see my next sentence for more examples). I can't recall where I saw
>> this in Hegel's writing but it seems like he has a bit somewhere on "Here,
>> This, Now" (as translated). Do you recall where this is? Or what Hegel is
>> "up to" in that section? I've always wondered.
>>
>> As mentioned above, Silverstein makes quite a bit of the importance of
>> referential indexicals in everyday talk. He calls them the "skeleton" on
>> which we hang the rest of discourse (and without which, our discourse would
>> be meaningless). And closer to home, in Stanton Wortham's essay Mapping
>> Participant Deictics, Wortham makes the case for the importance of mapping
>> participant deictics in the talk of a classroom. He argues that you can
>> understand quite a bit about the social structure of a classroom by
>> following how different participant deictics are deployed.
>>
>> Anyway, back to Hegel, Andy, I'd be interested to hear about Hegel and
>> his Here, This, Now.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> -greg
>>
>>
>> On Sun, May 7, 2017 at 6:32 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:
>> ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>
>> Oh Henry I don't see Peirce as Linguist. Only a
>> Linguist would see Peirce as a Linguist, because they
>> see everything as a branch of Linguistics. I see
>> Peirce as a Philosopher. And he could claim to be
>> utterly incapable of managing his own life as the
>> foremost qualification for being a philosopher. Peirce
>> was a Logician who invented two different schools of
>> philosophy: Pragmatism and Semiotics.
>>
>> I value Peirce's Icon/Index/Symbol in particular
>> because it is a logical triad which Hegel never
>> theorised and it nicely complements Hegel helping us
>> understand how Logic is in the world. For Peirce,
>> Semiotics is something going on in Nature before it is
>> acquired by human beings, which is an idea I
>> appreciate. He is also worthy of praise for how he
>> overcame all kinds of Dualism with both his Semiotics
>> and his Pragmaticism.
>>
>> A total madman. A real Metaphysician,
>>
>> Andy
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> Andy Blunden
>> http://home.mira.net/~andy <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
>> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
>> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-
>> decision-making>
>>
>> On 8/05/2017 3:22 AM, HENRY SHONERD wrote:
>>
>> David and Andy,
>> I have seen Peirce’s categories firstness,
>> secondness and thirdness on the chat before, and
>> certainly you were part of that discussion. I
>> would like to understand that better, also how it
>> relates to the three categories of signs (iconic,
>> indexical and symbolic). I have been reading your
>> “Thinking of Feeling” piece and wonder how that
>> might relate, which I hope so, since it would
>> bring development into the mix. Also (sorry!),
>> Andy’s Academia articles on political
>> representation and activity/social theory are
>> probably relevant in some way, though Andy
>> probably sees language as a figure against a
>> larger ground and a linguist (like Peirce) turns
>> the figure/ground relationship around?
>> Henry
>>
>>
>> On May 5, 2017, at 4:01 PM, David Kellogg
>> <dkellogg60@gmail.com
>> <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Greg:
>>
>> (As usual, I don't see the problem. I usually
>> don't see these problems
>> until the tide is well and truly over my head.)
>>
>> Meaning is simply another word for
>> organization. Organization is always
>> present and never separable from matter: it's
>> a property of matter, the way
>> that the internet is a property of a computer.
>> Sometimes this organization
>> is brought about without any human
>> intervention (if you are religious, you
>> will say that it brought about divinely, and
>> if you are Spinozan, by
>> nature: it amounts to the same thing, because
>> "Deus Sive Natura").
>> Sometimes it is brought about by human
>> ingenuity (but of course if you are
>> religious you will say that it is the divine
>> in humans at work, and if you
>> are Spinozan you will say that humans are
>> simply that part of nature which
>> has become conscious of itself: once again, Ii
>> think it amounts to the same
>> thing). So of course there are not two kinds
>> of substance, res cogitans vs
>> res extensa, only one substance and different
>> ways of organizing it (which
>> in the end amount to the same thing).
>>
>> You say that discourse particles like "Guess
>> what?" and "so there" and
>> "because" and "irregardless" and "what you say
>> to the contrary
>> notwithstanding" are "indexical". I agree,
>> insofar as they depend on their
>> relationship to the context of situation for
>> their meaning. You say that a
>> Southern drawl is indexical, and that the
>> relationship of jazz or blues or
>> hiphop to blackness is indexical. I agree,
>> insofar as they satisfy the
>> condition I just mentioned. But "because" is
>> also a symbol, and a
>> Southerner still sounds like a Southerner when
>> he/she moves to New York
>> City (and in fact you can argue they sound
>> more so). In Africa, jazz and
>> blues and hiphop in Africa are related to
>> Americanness and not to
>> blackness.
>>
>> So your division of signs into just three
>> categories is too simple, Greg.
>> In fact, if you really read your Peirce, you
>> will discover that there are
>> tens of thousands of categories, but they are
>> generated from three
>> ineffable primitives ("firstness",
>> "secondness", and "thirdness"). So for
>> example all words are symbols insofar as you
>> have to know English in order
>> to understand "Guess what?" or "because". But
>> some words are
>> symbol-indices, symbols that function as
>> indexes, because they depend
>> on the context of situation for their meaning.
>> Without the symbolic
>> gateway, they cannot function as indices. My
>> wife, for example, cannot tell
>> a Southerner from a more general American
>> accent, and I myself still have
>> trouble figuring out who is an Australian and
>> who is an FOB bloody pom.
>> Similarly, my wife doesn't see the blackness
>> in hiphop--it sounds like
>> K-pop to her.
>>
>> I don't actually think that any signs are
>> associative or "prehensive"; I
>> think that they are all different ways of
>> looking or apprehending. So for
>> example you can apprehend a wording as a
>> symbol: a way of organizing sound
>> stuff so that it "stands for" a way of
>> organizing other stuff (sometimes
>> lunchboxes and backpacks, actual categories of
>> objects and sometimes the
>> abstract models-in-the-making that Andy calls
>> "projects"). You can also
>> look at wording as index: not as something
>> that is "associated" to the lips
>> and tongue by juxtaposition or proximity or
>> even continguity but rather
>> something that has a necessary relation to the
>> vocal tract (which is itself
>> not a physiological organ, but something
>> brought about by human
>> organization). But when I look at sound waves
>> on my Praat spectrograph and
>> think of the shelving sea, what I am trying to
>> get at is the sound stuff,
>> the noise, the firstness of the stuff of
>> words. I'm not Cezanne: I don't
>> think there is any way of doing this with my
>> eyes or ears alone: I think it
>> requires a very complex combination of tools
>> and signs to get down to
>> firstness. But as Spinoza would have said if
>> he had breakfast with
>> Bacon, the head and the hand are not much by
>> themselves, but nobody
>> has ever really shown the limits of what they
>> can do when they put each
>> other in order and start to organize the world
>> around them.
>>
>> (And that is about as much philosophy as you
>> are going to get out of me,
>> I'm afraid. The tide is galloping in....)
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Macquarie University
>>
>> PS: What I am absolutely certain of is this:
>> mediating activity is not
>> absent in sign use, pace Alfredo or
>> Wolff-Michael, but it is very different
>> from mediating activity in tool use, for the
>> same reason that painting is
>> different from wording: in painting you CAN
>> leave out the human (if you are
>> doing a dead seal for example, or if you are
>> Rothko or Jackson Pollack--but
>> keep in mind that the former committed suicide
>> and the latter murdered two
>> innocent young women). But in wording you
>> never ever can. Wording can feel
>> unmediated--in fact it has to feel unmediated
>> or it doesn't work very
>> well--but in reality it's even more mediated
>> than ever.
>>
>> dk
>>
>>
>> On Sat, May 6, 2017 at 1:09 AM, Greg Thompson
>> <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com
>> <mailto:greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>>
>>
>> wrote:
>>
>> David (and others),
>>
>> In the interests of disagreement (which I
>> know you dearly appreciate), your
>> last post included this:
>> "Words don't "cause" meaning: they provide
>> material correlates for meaning
>> and in that sense "realise" them as matter."
>>
>> I was with you up until that point, but
>> that's where I always lose you.
>>
>> I know it is a rather trite thing to say
>> but I guess it really depends on
>> what you mean by "meaning". If by meaning,
>> you mean some plane of existence
>> that runs parallel to the material stuff,
>> then this seems to be a bit of
>> trouble since this leaves us with, on the
>> one hand, "matter" (res extensa?
>> noumena?), and on the other hand "meaning"
>> (res cogitans? phenomena?).
>> Matter is easy enough to locate, but where
>> do we locate "meaning" as you
>> have described it?
>>
>> This reminds me of Saussure's classic
>> drawing on p. 112 of his Cours
>> (attached) in which "the indefinite plane
>> of jumbled ideas" (A in the
>> diagram) exists on one side of the chasm
>> and "the equally vague plane of
>> sounds" (B) exists on the other side of
>> the chasm. Each side is
>> self-contained and self-referential, and
>> never the twain shall meet. Worlds
>> apart.
>>
>> And this ties to the conversation in the
>> other thread about the
>> ineffability of meaning (as well as Andy's
>> Marx quote about a science of
>> language that is shorn from life). My
>> suspicion is that this supposed
>> ineffability of meaning has everything to
>> do with this Saussurean approach
>> to semiotics (i.e., meaningfulness).
>>
>> Peirce's triadic view of the sign offers a
>> different approach that may give
>> a way out of this trouble by putting the
>> word back INto the world. (p. 102
>> of the attached Logic as Semiotic).
>>
>> Peirce offers three kinds of relations of
>> representamen (signifier) to
>> object: iconic, indexical, and symbolic.
>> The symbol is the relation with
>> which we are most familiar - it is the one
>> that Saussure speaks of and is
>> the one that is ineffable or, in
>> Saussure's words, "arbitrary", i.e.
>> "conventional". It is the stuff of words,
>> the meaning of which is found in
>> other words (hence the sense of
>> ineffability). With only the symbolic
>> function, the whole world of words would
>> be entirely self-referential and
>> thus truly ineffable (and this is why I
>> like to say that Derrida is the end
>> of the Saussurean road - he took that idea
>> to its logical conclusion and
>> discovered that the meaning of meaning is,
>> well, empty (and thus
>> ineffable)).
>>
>> But Peirce has two other relations of
>> representamen to object, the iconic
>> and the indexical. In signs functioning
>> iconically, the representamen
>> contains some quality of the object that
>> it represents (e.g., a map that
>> holds relations of the space that it
>> represents or onomatopoeia like "buzz"
>> in which the representamen has some of the
>> qualities of the sound of the
>> bee flying by). With signs functioning
>> indexically, the relationship of
>> representamen to object is one of temporal
>> or spatial contiguity (e.g.,
>> where there is smoke there is fire, or
>> where there is a Southern twang,
>> there is a Southerner, or, most
>> classically, when I point, the object to
>> which I am pointing is spatially
>> contiguous with the finger that is
>> pointing).
>>
>> Now if I follow the argument of another of
>> the inheritors of Roman
>> Jakobson's legacy, Michael Silverstein
>> (yes, Hasan and Halliday weren't the
>> only inheritors of this tradition -
>> Michael was a student of Jakobson's at
>> Harvard... and he does a great impression
>> of Jacobson too), then we can
>> indeed locate a ground of the word (i.e.,
>> the symbolic function) in the
>> more primitive (i.e., rudimentary)
>> indexical function.
>>
>> But that argument is always a bit too much
>> for me (if there are any takers,
>> the best place to find this argument is in
>> Silverstein's chapter
>> "Metapragmatic Discourse, Metapragmatic
>> Function," or in less explicit but
>> slightly more understandable article
>> "Indexical Order and the Dialectics of
>> Sociolinguistics Life").
>>
>> Vygotsky's argument is quite a bit more
>> elegant and comprehensible: in
>> ontogeny meaningfulness begins with the
>> index, first as the index par
>> excellence, pointing (something that, as
>> Andy has previously pointed out,
>> might not be exactly how things go in a
>> literal sense, but the general
>> structure here works well, I think, as a
>> heuristic if nothing else - words
>> are first learned as indexes, temporally
>> and spatially collocated, "bottle"
>> is first uttered as a way of saying
>> "thirsty" and then later to refer to a
>> co-present object; note this is also why
>> young kids get discourse markers
>> at such a young age (and seems incredibly
>> precocious when they do!), since
>> discourse markers are primarily
>> indexical). The indexical function is the
>> rudimentary form that then provides the
>> groundwork for the development of
>> the symbolic function.
>>
>> So then, in this Peircean(Vygotskian)
>> approach, the meaning of signs is not
>> ineffable, there is a grounding for words,
>> and that grounding is the
>> indexical, the "word"/sign that is both in
>> the world and of the world.
>>
>> This seems to me a way of putting meaning
>> back into matter. And perhaps
>> speaking of words as the material
>> correlates of meaning can be a useful
>> heuristic (i.e., how else can we talk
>> about meanings and concepts given our
>> current set of meanings/concepts?). But we
>> should also recognize that if it
>> becomes more than an heuristic it can lead
>> us astray if we take it too far.
>>
>> I'd add here that I think one of the
>> greatest opportunities for CHAT to
>> make a contribution to social science
>> today is in its conceptualization of
>> "concepts" (and, by extension,
>> "meaningfulness"). I think that perhaps one
>> of the most taken-for-granted aspects of
>> social science today is the idea
>> that we know what "concepts" are. In
>> anthropology, people easily talk about
>> "cultural concepts" and typically they
>> mean precisely something that floats
>> around in some ethereal plane of
>> "meaningfulness" and which is not of the
>> material stuff of the world. Yet, this
>> runs counter to the direction that
>> anthropology is heading these days with
>> the so-called "ontological turn"
>> (I'll hold off on explaining this for now
>> since this post is already
>> running way too long, but I'll just
>> mention that one of the aims of this is
>> to get to a non-dualistic social science).
>> CHAT's conception of the concept
>> seems to me to offer precisely what is
>> needed -- a way of understanding the
>> concept as a fundamentally cultural and
>> historical thing, rather than
>> simply as an "ideal" thing. The concept is
>> the holding of a(n historical)
>> relation across time (cf. Hebb's synapse
>> or Peirce's sunflower). Concepts
>> are thus little historical text-lets.
>>
>> Okay, that was too much. Perhaps I will
>> find some time in the future to
>> return to that last part, but there is no
>> time to develop it further now.
>>
>> Anyway, I'm glad that I finally had the
>> opportunity to catch up to these
>> conversations. Delightful reading/thinking.
>>
>> I'll keep reading but no promises that
>> I'll be able to comment (as a young
>> scholar, I need to be spending my time
>> putting stuff out - and unlike the
>> rest of you, I'm no good at
>> multi-tasking... it's either one or the other
>> for me).
>>
>> Very best,
>> greg
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 4:18 PM, David
>> Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com
>> <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>>
>>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Well, yes. But if present day
>> conditions are the REVERSE of the
>>
>> conditions
>>
>> under which Vygotsky was writing--that
>> is, if the present trend is to
>> subsume labor under language instead
>> of the other way around--don't we
>>
>> need
>>
>> this distinction between signs and
>> tools more than ever? That is, if
>>
>> sloppy
>>
>> formulations like "cultural capital",
>> "symbolic violence", "use/exchange
>> value of the word" are erasing the
>> distinction between a mediating
>>
>> activity
>>
>> which acts on the environment and a
>> mediating activity which acts on
>>
>> other
>>
>> mediators and on the self, and which
>> therefore has the potential for
>> reciprocity and recursion, isn't this
>> exactly where the clear-eyed
>> philosophers need to step in and
>> straighten us out?
>>
>> I think that instead what is happening
>> is that our older generation
>> of rheumy-eyed philosophers (present
>> company--usually--excluded) are too
>> interested in the "tool power" of
>> large categories and insufficiently
>> interested in fine distinctions that
>> make a difference. But perhaps it
>> is also that our younger generation of
>> misty-eyed philosophers are, as
>> Eagleton remarked, more interested in
>> copulating bodies than exploited
>> ones. Yet these fine distinctions that
>> do make a difference equally allow
>> generalization and abstraction and
>> tool power, and the copulating flesh
>>
>> and
>>
>> the exploited muscles are one and the
>> same.
>>
>> Take, for example, your remark about
>> the Fourier transform performed by
>>
>> the
>>
>> ear (not the brain--the inner ear
>> cochlea--I can see the world centre for
>> studying the cochlea from my office
>> window). Actually, it's part of a
>>
>> wide
>>
>> range of "realisation" phenomena that
>> were already being noticed by
>> Vygotsky. In realisational phenomena,
>> you don't have cause and effect,
>>
>> just
>>
>> as in cause and effect you don't have
>> "association". Words don't "cause"
>> meaning: they provide material
>> correlates for meaning and in that sense
>> "realise" them as matter. Meaning does
>> not "cause" wording; it correlates
>> wording to a semantics--an activity of
>> consciousness--and through it to a
>> context of situation or culture, and
>> in that sense "realises" it.
>>
>> So in his lecture on early childhood,
>> Vygotsky says that the
>>
>> stabilization
>>
>> of forms, colours, and sizes by the
>> eye in early childhood is part of a
>>
>> two
>>
>> way relationship, a dialogue, between
>> the sense organs and the brain. The
>> reason why we don't see a table as a
>> trapezoid, when we stand over it and
>> compare the front with the back, the
>> reason why we don't see a piece of
>> chalk at nighttime as black, the
>> reason why we have orthoscopic
>>
>> perception
>>
>> and we don't see a man at a distance
>> as a looming midget is that the
>>
>> brain
>>
>> imposes the contrary views on the eye.
>> And where does the brain get this
>> view if not from language and from
>> other people?
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Macquarie University
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 11:55 AM, Andy
>> Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>
>> Personally, I think the first and
>> most persistently important thing is
>>
>> to
>>
>> see how much alike are tables and
>> words.
>>
>> But ... Vygotsky was very
>> insistent on the distinction
>> because he was
>> fighting a battle against the idea
>> that speech ought to be subsumed
>>
>> under
>>
>> the larger category of labour. He
>> had to fight for semiotics against a
>> vulgar kind of orthodox Marxism.
>> But we here in 2017 are living in
>> different times, where we have
>> Discourse Theory and Linguistics while
>> Marxism is widely regarded as
>> antique. As Marx said "Just as
>>
>> philosophers
>>
>> have given thought an independent
>> existence, so they were bound to make
>> language into an independent
>> realm." and we live well and truly
>> in the
>> times when labour is subsumed
>> under language, and not the other way
>>
>> around.
>>
>> Everyone knows that a table is
>> unlike a word. The point it to
>>
>> understand
>>
>> how tables are signs and word are
>> material objects.
>>
>> Andy
>>
>> (BTW David, back in 1986 I walked
>> in an offshoot of the bionic ear
>> project. The ear has a little
>> keyboard that works like a piano
>> keyboard
>>
>> in
>>
>> reverse, making a real time
>> Fourier transform of that air
>> pressure wave
>>
>> and
>>
>> coding the harmonics it in nerve
>> impulse. The brain never hears that
>> pressure signal.)
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> ------------------------------
>> Andy Blunden
>> http://home.mira.net/~andy
>> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
>> http://www.brill.com/products/
>> book/origins-collective-decision-making
>> <http://www.brill.com/products
>> /book/origins-collective-decision-making>
>> On 3/05/2017 7:06 AM, Alfredo
>> Jornet Gil wrote:
>>
>> David (and or Mike, Andy,
>> anyone else), could you give a
>> bit more on
>>
>> that
>>
>> distinction between words and
>> tables?
>>
>> And could you say how (and
>> whether) (human, hand) nails
>> are different
>> from tables; and then how
>> nails are different from words?
>>
>> Alfredo
>> ________________________________________
>> From:
>> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
>> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.
>>
>> edu>
>>
>> on behalf of David Kellogg
>> <dkellogg60@gmail.com
>> <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>>
>>
>> Sent: 01 May 2017 08:43
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture,
>> Activity
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] The Stuff
>> of Words
>>
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
>> Assistant Professor
>> Department of Anthropology
>> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
>> Brigham Young University
>> Provo, UT 84602
>> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>> <http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
>> Assistant Professor
>> Department of Anthropology
>> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
>> Brigham Young University
>> Provo, UT 84602
>> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>>
>
>
--
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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