Jim
On Wed, 16 Sep 1998, Bill Barowy wrote:
> John's insights into emergent properties and dynamics of the complex system
> in relation to 'unit of analysis' helped me gather enough courage to look
> at chapter 2 of Mind as Action. My reaction to what I am finding there is
> delight with some reconciliation of my own struggles and further
> understanding of action as the unit of analysis.
>
> At first read, the quote by Vygotsky about water being irreducible to
> hydrogen and oxygen struck a sour note with me. I wanted to edit the last
> line to read 'He will never succeed in explaining the characteristics of
> the whole by [only] analyzing the characteristics of its elements."
> because of course it helps to know that water is composed of hydrogen and
> oxygen and this does make all the difference in the world - it is water not
> carbon dioxide for example, which is what you would get if you combined
> carbon and oxygen. I wanted to add "and he would not succeed unless he
> also analyzes its elements", but who am i to criticize publically and
> sociall the words of Vygotsky or Wertsch? Especially because one author is
> present?
>
> Well, semiosis be damned unless I can. :-) Vygotsky most likely did not
> know of the process of molecular 'building up' - starting with a
> description of isolated atoms and watching their structures gradually
> transform, in response to each other, as one (analytically) brings them
> together, until finally they make up each other as the molecule, with a new
> structure and continuous degrees of difference in structure, from those
> *practically* isolable to individual atoms and those completely considered
> molecule and indivisible.
>
> Jim introduces 'isolation' which allows the process I am interested in
> preserving, and does not carry the end-of-the-line sense that 'reduction'
> does. Isolation becomes viable because it is like what Catalina Laserna
> calls 'zooming in' - you focus more tightly for a while, always with the
> perspective in mind that this is a piece of a bigger picture. So with
> this, I will continue to think about the 'building up' of complex dynamics,
> tentatively termed action, in the modeling I am doing, and must get back
> to, and also revisit another method, thought-experiment, which may be also
> isolationist in nature, I now realize, not reductionist.
>
>
> Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
> Technology in Education
> Lesley College, 29 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790
> Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169
> http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/Barowy.html
> _______________________
> "One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
> and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
> [Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
>
>
>