Re: doing/making
Rolfe Windward (rwindwar who-is-at ucla.edu)
Fri, 16 Aug 1996 11:52:02 -0700
Yes, somehow the ecology/activity (interactional) system is supervenient
(and much of our immediate response likely mimetic) but without an extended
meaning system it becomes so difficult to explain leaps of intuition, a way
to make the situation "other" that is not wholly contingent upon
environment. Perhaps it is as Edleman suggests, there is a time delay in
consciousness (we _remember_ the present). George Steiner points out that
the inventive use of the future tense is really what makes "alternity"
possible but there is also this other view: that changes, possibly ones we
cause ourselves (even accidentally), in the ecology/activity system somehow
_become recognizable_ ...they can be "remembered."
I still mull over Arne's connected 'star diagrams' from time to time in an
effort to think this through but since I'm neither aware of a sufficiently
comprehensive (or accessible) theory of models nor one of language it's
mostly an exercise in my own future tenses. Somehow the categories I'm using
are getting in the way but I have a hunch that a rapprochement between
biology and the social sciences will be necessary to do the job in any case.
Rolfe Windward [UCLA GSE&IS: Curriculum & Teaching]
e-mail: rwindwar who-is-at ucla.edu (Text/BinHex/MIME/Uuencode)
70014.0646 who-is-at compuserve.com (text/binary/GIF/JPG)