[Xmca-l] Re: the ancients and the moderns

Sat Apr 14 15:38:34 PDT 2018

Andy--

I too am not a historian. But my stepfather, Burt Stein, was a very good
one, and when he died in 1996 my mother and I spent about a year editing
his "History of India" for Blackwell. I learned a lot about the historian's
craft (and also that of the writer--so for example I learned that it is not
really possible to write a history as Burt wanted it to be done, from the
present to the past).

In politics and in world outlook, Burt was essentially an anarchist,
although he had been a Marxist in his youth (he organized a steel mill in
South Chicago with the help of some Trotskyists and then went to University
of Chicago on the G.I. Bill, hoping to become a China historian, but was
thwarted by McCarthyism). So he had this strong tendency to view history as
the story of the emergence of a kind of imagined anti-society he thought of
as the State, alongside the true, real society, which he called Community.
He told the story of India as a story of several thousand years of
undifferentiated State and Community, then a few hundred years
of side-by-side States and Communities, then the colonial project, which
was essentially a State as Community, and the current period of naked
communal violence, with its roots in the anti-colonial struggle, which Burt
thought of as the "Community" (i.e. the Muslim Umma, or the village caste
nexus) as State.

As you can see, Burt was a historian of what Braudel called "la longue
duree"--he wasn't interested in whether a king was the biological offspring
of the previous king or not: for him, dynastic succession, and even state
formation, was gossip and trivia and not the stuff of history. History was
the story of the Community, not the State. Indian history was essentially
tragic, and tragedy is surely an idea which DOES connect us with the
ancients, because Indian history was the story of how a real Community was
strangled with an umbilical cord by its evil ideal twin, an imagined State
(at first "segmentary" and then "centralized").

Let me give you a little example of the way in which Burt thought. The
Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity sometime in the early fourth
century, and from that date we consider that the Roman Empire was
"Christian" (even though Christians existed throughout the Roman Civil
Service before that date, and pagans were very powerful afterwards). If you
want a gossip-and-trivia link between the ancients and the moderns, the
conversion of Constantine and the subsequent Byzantine empire, rather than
the fall of Rome, is the pivotal event, and it's a story of continuity
rather than rupture.

That is, actually, much the way that European history looks to Russian
Orthodox believers! But of course it's not realistic to believe that the
beliefs of the emperor are immediately shared by every member in all the
communities of the empire. So for the medieval period, paganism and
Christianity co-exist, and we see clear evidence of this in Beowulf and
elsewhere. Even the Catholic Church, and the monastic regime you refer to,
is an example  of this syncretic period of side-by-side Theocracy and
Witchcraft, because medieval monasteries seem to have operated much as the
monasteries I visited in Tibet did--they accepted "donations" from the
people in return for tolerating, endorsing, and even enabling practices
which were essentially shamanistic.

I don't know if Constantine really dreamed of a Christian empire; he seems
to have converted for political reasons more than anything else. But the
Jesuits certainly did when they tried to convert the Chinese emperor. In
any case, even at the level of the State, that dream only really started to
come true with Gutenberg. Luther used MUSIC as much as he used printing,
because he was fully cognizant that the target audience was semi-literate.
The Reformation, not the conversion of Constantine, was the real moment of
Christianizing Europe. In the work of Ellizabeth Gaskell, who was Marx's
contemporary, we can read that even in the nineteenth century there were
shamanistic practices side-by-side with those of the Church. From Burt's
view of history, that of the "longue duree", there are no real ruptures,
because history is not the story of the State or the Church: State and
Church are only nightmares that rattle the breast of a
snoring Community.

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

Recent Article in *Early Years*

The question of questions: Hasan’s critiques, Vygotsky’s crises, and the
child’s first interrogatives
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09575146.2018.1431874>

Free e-print available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/6EeWMigjFARavQjDJjcW/full

On Sun, Apr 15, 2018 at 4:53 AM, Edward Wall <ewall@umich.edu> wrote:

> Andy
>
>       While there is much in what you say, a good bit of Greek mathematics
> was mediated through the Arabs. There is plenty of historical evidence. As
> regards it being mainly scripture, Plato has Socrates do considerable
> mathematics. Jacob Klein makes the point fairly well that there isn’t
> continuity re mathematics (ancient to modern); however that has little to
> do (in a sense) with the Roman Church. It has more to do with European
> adaptions of number. Nevertheless, my experience thinking in and outside
> mathematics classrooms, indicates a naive Greek view of number is alive and
> well.
>
> Ed
>
> "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of
> a profound truth may well be another profound truth" - Niels Bohr
>
>
>
>
> > On Apr 14, 2018, at  12:34 AM, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
> >
> > Bill, I don't have any particular recommendation for your
> > reading, but I have noticed a strange thing about how we
> > view our intellectual history.
> >
> > There is no direct connection between modern (i.e.,
> > post-Copernicus) European thinking and the ancient Greeks.
> > The only connections were mediated by the Romans, and after
> > the decline of the Roman Empire by the Roman Church, and the
> > Islamic world, and the heritage we received by this route
> > was entirely scriptural. The legacy received via the Roman
> > Church was of course a priestly one.
> >
> > So I question whether there is any continuity in "world
> > view" between the Greeks and the moderns, so the question of
> > a "change" is problematic. So far as I can see modern,
> > bourgeois consciousness arose out of the feudal societies
> > which restored themselves after the Romans left. It is true
> > that these societies were not particularly literate, so
> > written records are mostly owed to the monasteries.
> >
> > I am no historian, Bill, and maybe I'm missing something?
> >
> > Andy
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > Andy Blunden
> > ttp://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> > On 14/04/2018 2:07 PM, Bill Kerr wrote:
> >> Thanks Ed,
> >>
> >> A good Samaritan sent me a copy of "The Ethnomethodological Foundations
> of
> >> Mathematics”. I've ordered a copy of "Ethnographies of Reason.”
> >>
> >> I looked up the other two. Once again, they are quite expensive. I am
> >> interested in that change of world view that occurred b/w the Greeks and
> >> the Moderns. I read a short book about Francis Bacon by Benjamin
> Farrington
> >> that went into that .
> >>
> >> Cheers, Bill
> >>
> >> On Sat, Apr 14, 2018 at 9:38 AM, Edward Wall <ewall@umich.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Bill
> >>>
> >>>     The book "The Ethnomethodological Foundations of Mathematics” - an
> >>> ‘interesting' take on Godel’s First Incompleteness Theorem - is just a
> nice
> >>> typeset copy of his dissertation (he may have a few extra things; I
> think I
> >>> looked at it once and didn’t see much different but perhaps Michael
> thinks
> >>> otherwise) which you can get from ProQuest for about $35 or whatever
> the
> >>> going price is now. There are also a few articles which are reasonably
> >>> available and, as MIchael, mentioned "Ethnographies of Reason.” If you
> like
> >>> this sort of things, I would recommend The Ethics of Geometry by
> Lachterman
> >>> and perhaps The Origin of the Logic of Symbolic Mathematics which
> takes on
> >>> Husserl and Klein. There is, of course, a long list of other people who
> >>> have interesting takes on some of this.
> >>>
> >>> Ed Wall
> >>>
> >>> "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The
> opposite of
> >>> a profound truth may well be another profound truth" - Niels Bohr
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> On Apr 11, 2018, at  9:40 PM, Wolff-Michael Roth <
> >>> wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> Bill, the book that I really found good (I have read all of his) is
> >>>> "Ethnographies of Reason". Lots of good materials for helping readers
> >>>> understand. Michael
> >>>>
> >>>> On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 7:08 PM, Bill Kerr <billkerr@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Michael wrote:
> >>>>> the critique that E. Livingston articulates concerning
> >>>>> social constructionism, which takes the social in a WEAK sense; and
> the
> >>>>> social in the strong sense is not a construction.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I looked up Eric Livingston, The Ethnomethodological Foundations of
> >>>>> Mathematics, referenced on p. 56 of your book. The price was $202,
> ouch!
> >>>>> Publishers put marxist ideas from academics out of the reach of the
> >>> poor.
> >>>>> Can this problem be solved or mitigated under capitalism?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Thu, Apr 12, 2018 at 12:36 AM, Wolff-Michael Roth <
> >>>>> wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> Andy, to construct is a transitive verb, we construct something. It
> is
> >>>>> not
> >>>>>> well suited to describe the emergence (morphogenesis) of something
> new.
> >>>>>> This is why Richard Rorty (1989) rejects it, using the craftsperson
> as
> >>> a
> >>>>>> counter example to the poet in the larger sense, the maker of new
> >>> things.
> >>>>>> He writes that poets know what they have done only afterward, when,
> >>>>>> together with the new thing they have found themselves speaking a
> new
> >>>>>> language that also provides a reason for this language.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I also direct you to the critique that E. Livingston articulates
> >>>>> concerning
> >>>>>> social constructionism, which takes the social in a WEAK sense; and
> the
> >>>>>> social in the strong sense is not a construction.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Also interesting in this is the question of origins, and there the
> >>> French
> >>>>>> philosophers (Derrida and others) have had a lot of discussion.
> Mead's
> >>>>>> fundamental point is that "before the emergent has occurred, and at
> the
> >>>>>> moment of its occurrence, it does not follow from the past" (1932,
> >>> xvii).
> >>>>>> And concerning relations, Marx/Engels write (German Ideology) that
> the
> >>>>>> animal does not relate at all, for it, the relationship does not
> exist
> >>> as
> >>>>>> relationship
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> m
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Rorty, R 1989, *Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity*, CUP
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 7:29 AM, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org>
> >>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>> Well, I can see that as an argument, Michael. My response:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> The thing is, to interpret "construction" in an intellectual
> >>>>>>> way, leads to the conclusion that to give construction a
> >>>>>>> fundamental place in human evolution is "intellectualism,"
> >>>>>>> and actually, interpreted that way, would be utterly absurd.
> >>>>>>> But the fact is that all human actions are teleological,
> >>>>>>> that is, oriented to a goal. Of course!! no hominid ever
> >>>>>>> said to herself: "I think I will now take another step to
> >>>>>>> evolving homo sapiens." AN Leontyev does exactly the same
> >>>>>>> move in his criticism of Vygotsky.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Actually, I don't know just how the formation of social
> >>>>>>> customs, speech and tool-making interacted in the earliest
> >>>>>>> stages of phylogenesis, ... and nor do you. We do know that
> >>>>>>> all three are intimately interconnected from the earliest
> >>>>>>> times we have any real knowledge of, though.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> As to "emergence," in my opinion "emergence" is the modern
> >>>>>>> word for God. I don't know how this happens, so it must be
> >>>>>>> Emergence.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Andy
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>>>>> Andy Blunden
> >>>>>>> ttp://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> >>>>>>> On 12/04/2018 12:18 AM, Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
> >>>>>>>> Andy, there is nothing of construction. Construction may be an
> effect
> >>>>>> of
> >>>>>>>> mind, but mind did not emerge as a construction. It is a
> >>>>> manifestation
> >>>>>>> of a
> >>>>>>>> relationship.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Emergence means that what comes after cannot be predicted on the
> >>>>> basis
> >>>>>> of
> >>>>>>>> what comes before. The construction metaphor implies that (e.g.,
> the
> >>>>>>>> craftsman in the Marx/Engels case who is superior to the bee, an
> >>>>>> example
> >>>>>>>> that Vygotsky takes up).
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Construction smacks of intellectualism, precisely the
> intellectualism
> >>>>>>> that
> >>>>>>>> Vygotsky made some moves to overcome at the end of his life
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> m
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 7:09 AM, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org
> >
> >>>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>>> All of those quotes make my point, Michael, in ever so
> >>>>>>>>> slightly different words.
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> a
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>>>>>>> Andy Blunden
> >>>>>>>>> ttp://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> >>>>>>>>> On 12/04/2018 12:02 AM, Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>> I do not think mind is a construction,
> >>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>> Vygotsky (1989) writes: "Any higher psychological function ...
> was
> >>>>>> the
> >>>>>>>>>> social relation between two people" (p.56)
> >>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>> And Mikhailov (2001) suggests: "the very existence of the
> >>>>>>>>>> mind is possible only at the borderline where there is a
> continual
> >>>>>>>>>> coming and going of one into the other, at their dynamic
> interface,
> >>>>>>>>>> as it were—an interface that is defined ... by the single
> process
> >>>>> of
> >>>>>>>>> their
> >>>>>>>>>> [self and other] mutual generation and mutual determination"
> >>>>>> (pp.20-21)
> >>>>>>>>>> Bateson (1979): Mind is an effect of relations, an aggregate
> >>>>> effect,
> >>>>>>> like
> >>>>>>>>>> stereo (spatial) vision
> >>>>>>>>>> is the emergent effect of two eyes with planar images.
> >>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>> Mead (1932): "the appearance of mind is only the culmination of
> >>>>> that
> >>>>>>>>>> sociality which is found throughout the universe" (p.86).
> >>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>> Nobody says anything about construction. The to eyes don't
> >>>>> construct
> >>>>>>>>>> stereovision and space. It is an emergent phenomenon,
> >>>>>>>>>> an ensemble effect deriving from relations.
> >>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>> m
> >>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>> On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 6:47 AM, Andy Blunden <
> andyb@marxists.org>
> >>>>>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>>> I always thought that the mind was a construction of human
> >>>>>>>>>>> culture. But of course, that was not what Spinoza thought.
> >>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>> Andy
> >>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>>>>>>>>> Andy Blunden
> >>>>>>>>>>> ttp://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> >>>>>>>>>>> On 11/04/2018 11:44 PM, Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>>>> No, I am not saying that there were human beings.
> Anthropogenesis
> >>>>>> and
> >>>>>>>>>>>> generalized (societal) action *come* together. But we have to
> >>>>>> explain
> >>>>>>>>>>>> culture and cognition as emergent phenomena not as
> >>>>> *constructions*
> >>>>>> of
> >>>>>>>>> the
> >>>>>>>>>>>> mind. m
> >>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>> On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 6:15 AM, Andy Blunden <
> >>>>> andyb@marxists.org>
> >>>>>>>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> So, Michael, you are saying that there were human beings
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> before there was culture. And I gather you do not count
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> tools as units of culture.
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> Do we have to await a Psychologist to invent the word
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> "meaning" before we can poke a stick into an ant-hill?
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> Creationism makes more sense, Michael, at least it offers
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> /some/ explanation for the existence of human life.
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> Andy
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> Andy Blunden
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> ttp://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> On 11/04/2018 9:57 PM, Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Hi Bill,
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> it is not so much "socially constructed." My key point in
> the
> >>>>>> book
> >>>>>>> is
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> that
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> it is social BEFORE there can be any construction. It is
> >>>>> social,
> >>>>>>> and
> >>>>>>>>>>> this
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> is where I refer to a Vygotsky that has not been taken up,
> >>>>>> because
> >>>>>>>>>>> "every
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> higher psychological function ... was a social relation
> between
> >>>>>> two
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> people." That is, in this specific case, mathematics is
> social,
> >>>>>> was
> >>>>>>>>> the
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> relation between two people before you see it in
> individuals...
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> I think the construction metaphor breaks down when you look
> at
> >>>>>> our
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> species
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> becoming human. So before there was culture, before we used
> >>>>>> tools,
> >>>>>>>>>>> where
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> were those tools for constructing anything of the likes that
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> constructivists say that we use to construct? How can a
> hominid
> >>>>>>>>>>> construct
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> "meaning" of the branch as tool to start digging for roots
> or
> >>>>>>> fishing
> >>>>>>>>>>> for
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> termites? And how do they construct meaning of the first
> >>>>>>> sound-words
> >>>>>>>>>>> when
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> they do not have a system that would serve as material and
> tool
> >>>>>> for
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> building anything like "meaning?"
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> So yes, a learning theory has to be able to explain learning
> >>>>> from
> >>>>>>>>>>> before
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> culture (phylogenesis), before language and meaning
> >>>>>> (ontogenesis).
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> And about eclecticism---I think we would be a step further
> if
> >>>>> we
> >>>>>>>>>>> listened
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> to and pondered A.N. Leont'ev's complaint about the
> "eclectic
> >>>>>> soup
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> [eklekticheskoj pokhlebke] ... each to his own recipe" that
> >>>>>>>>>>> psychologists
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> are trying to cook (in his foreword to *Activity.
> >>>>> Consciousness.
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Personality*).
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Cheers,
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Michael
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>> On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 7:15 PM, Bill Kerr <
> billkerr@gmail.com
> >>>>>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> One interpretation of Vygotsky (Wolff-Michael Roth) argues
> >>>>> that
> >>>>>>> all
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> knowledge is socially constructed and that
> ethnomethodology,
> >>>>>>> paying
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> detailed attention in the now, is the best or only way of
> >>>>>>> detecting
> >>>>>>>>>>> and
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> evaluating what is going on . Human activity can’t be
> reduced
> >>>>> to
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> individual
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> actions. Anything individual originates in the social, be
> it
> >>>>>>> words,
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> mathematics or by implication computer science (mentioned
> not
> >>>>> in
> >>>>>>> the
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> original but because it is a current interest of mine).
> >>>>> Moreover
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> internal
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> representations or schemas seem to be denied because that
> >>>>> would
> >>>>>>> be a
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> capitulation to dualism, emphasising brain / mind activity
> >>>>>> whereas
> >>>>>>>>> the
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> real
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> deal is an integrated thinking body.
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> This world view is critical of other learning theories be
> they
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> behaviourist, cognitivist, enactivist or constructivist.
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The question that I want to explore here is the pragmatic
> one
> >>>>> of
> >>>>>>>>>>> whether
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> and how learning theory (an abstraction) makes a
> difference in
> >>>>>>>>>>> practice,
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> for busy, hard working (usually overworked) teachers. An
> >>>>>>> alternative
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> epistemology/ies which might appeal more in practice to
> real
> >>>>>>>>> teachers
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> under
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> pressure is an eclectic one centred around the issue of
> “what
> >>>>>>>>> works”.
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I believe I am better read on learning theory than most
> >>>>>> teachers.
> >>>>>>>>> See
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> http://learningevolves.wikispaces.com/learning%20theories
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Up until now I've developed an eclectic / pragmatic
> approach
> >>>>> to
> >>>>>>>>>>> putting
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> learning theory into practice. Take something from Seymour
> >>>>>>> Papert's
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> constructionism, something from Dan Willingham's
> cognitivism,
> >>>>>>>>>>> something
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> from Dan Dennett's behaviourism, something from Andy
> Clarke’s
> >>>>>>>>>>> enactivism
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> and roll them altogether in an eclectic mix. The authors in
> >>>>> this
> >>>>>>>>> list
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> could
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> be multiplied. My underlying belief was that it was not
> >>>>> possible
> >>>>>>> to
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> develop
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> a unified learning theory, that human learning was too
> complex
> >>>>>> for
> >>>>>>>>>>>>> that. As
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Marvin Minsky once said in 'Society of Mind', "the trick is
> >>>>>> there
> >>>>>>> is
> >>>>>>>>>>> no
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> trick", I think meaning no overarching way in which human's
> >>>>>> learn.
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> One big surprise in reading Wolff-Michael Roth is his
> serious
> >>>>>>>>> attempt
> >>>>>>>>>>> to
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> put an end to such eclectism and develop what appears to
> be a
> >>>>>>> unfied
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> learning theory.
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>
> >
>
>