Re: November notions

p-prior who-is-at uiuc.edu
Sun, 7 Nov 1999 10:11:56 -0600 (CST)

I had two questions about the timescales piece. I'm not clear on what
motivates the terminological distinction of N-1 "affording" N while N+1
"constrains" N. Or in your note, Jay, you point to N-1 as "smaller-scale
constituent operations." I've taken affordance to be a notion that
combines (loose rather than determinative) enabling and constraining
effects, and in that sense lesson sequences could afford lessons and
lessons could afford episodes. I guess what I'm struggling with here is
how to distinguish the mutual shaping relations between levels, perhaps
especially at the longer-larger levels.

The second question has to do with the relation between this notion of
timescales and more familiar CHAT schemes (micro-, meso-, onto-, socio-,
phylo-genesis) and the notion of heterochrony realized through semiotic
mediation. The question is to what extent either timescales or levels of
genesis simply index time and to what extent they also point to particular
media in which, in Hutchins' sense, structure is being embedded.
Ontogenesis seems to me to be about not only periods of 60-100 years but
also about the particular ways that humans function as material-semiotic
artifacts. Likewise, mesogenesis seems to index not only intermediate time
scales, but also a certain level of social organization, the development of
a locally situated activity system. I'm thinking here too of Scribner's
suggestions on the history of psychological systems, like memory, where it
seems that it is the psychological system as well as the time scale that
was at issue.