At 4:07 PM -0500 1/22/00, Mike Cole wrote:
>that structure in the environment/interaction was being snuck into the
>head making for theorizing that was misguided.
Sorry to barge in between Mike and Owen, but I have a few moments before dinner and can see affordances in the human-made environment addressed in Alfred Lang's four processes of his extended Semiotic Function Circle, and perhaps this can be extended a little more to include the natural world as well, where interactions among natural things will happen as ExtrA processes, i.e light electrons interacting with atoms in the sun to produce light that we read by, fluorescent bulbs being the artifactual analog.
http://www.cx.unibe.ch/psy/ukp/langpapers/papers1990-93/1993_noncartesian_art.html
I see a different way in which CHAT from Yrjö's 1987 book addresses this -- yet there is, otherwise, a section that indexes ecology giving way to economy in the evolution of culture "what used to be ecological and natural becomes economic and historical", and I can see how this is to be supported, yet in that evolutionary departure, natural processes are moved from the focus of the theory, although not removed entirely.
Here is a 'slippery slope' to consider. In the book "Annapurna" by Arlene Blum, she describes cutting across, i.e. traversing, the slope of Mount Everest.
'Once on Mount Everest I was traversing a treacherous flake of rotten ice with
Norbu, A Sherpa. He yelled to me, "Wait, memsahib." Watching him rummage
through his pack, I assumed he was looking for ice screws to anchor us to the slope.
He finally found what he was looking for - holy rice. He prayed, tossed the rice
over his shoulder and then informed me that now we could cross the rotten ice
safely.
"What about ice screws?"
"No problem, memsahib. Mountain gods happy."
Though many Sherpas are expert at using modern technical-climbing techniques
and equipment, they still believe that their survival in the mountains depends
primarily on fate and the goodwill of the mountain gods. They ready themselves
for the most severe climbing not only by perfecting their skill, but also by praying
and making offerings to these gods. The time had finally come to make offering to
the mountain spirits who lived on the slopes of Annapurna." p96
In the extended function circle, processes internal to the rotten ice (ice of bad quality), such as its breaking apart, map to ExtrA processes and people making sense of those processes (perceived affordances/constraints) may be nominally accounted in the IntrO and IntrA processes, although I'd maintain more generally that the full function circle is involved, such as when Arlene jabs the rotten ice with her ice ax. In contrast, activity theory may consider the mountain, the ice, to be the material object (am I wrong in this interpretation?) and the boots, the crampons, and the ice axe, among other things are the mediating artifacts. But there is not an counterpart to ExtrA processes, perhaps, due to the movement of the theory's focus away from the structure of the natural environment.
And then, processes that are usually low-level operations (i.e. walking in an airport), become actions again in the mountain environment, where repeatedly moving the feet foward takes all the concentration of the climber. Under these new environmental-and-physiological conditions, the climber almost performs as a child in the early stages of walking. The physical fatigue, oxygen depletion, lack of sleep, dehydration, disorientation etc. are constraints to which the climber, with ropes, axes, crampons, clothes etc., and the corresponding affordances of these artifacts, responds. History helps. Sometimes climbers are re-oriented by ropes left behind by previous climbers, hopefully showing the way to the summit.
We think of one of the elements to the ExtrA processes as 'gravity' today. Before gravity was invented, folks thought of things as proceeding to their natural places. Arlene and the Sherpa's natural place may have been somewhere between their position and the foot of Mount Everest. With Einsteins theory of general relativity, we can think of the two as following a trajectory in a curved space-time (1), physically constrained by the surface of the mountain(2), and friction keeping the climbers from slipping along that slope. The Sherpa's ideas include mountain gods, and so the tossing of the rice. (Who knows what it is that actually makes one fall off a mountain!) At first blush I conclude that what we DO (ExtrO) is under the influence of the structures in the head (better said the dynamic patterns of the mind-brain -- IntrA ) AND the structures in the environment/interaction (dynamic patterns of the natural-and-artifactual world influencing with the human -- ExtrA, IntrO)
Before my focus is blurred with the many different things to consider from here, I'd like to add that I have found the triangles of chat to be very useful for thinking of schools coordinating around children studying ecology -- same problem -- people interacting with each other and a natural environment. There are elements of the study, such as what is happening when a child picks up a pond macroinvertebrate, that is more readily described in the semiotic function circle, and perhaps 'constraints-and-affordances' better fit there as well, as the child realizing how to catch the macroinvertebrates with a net.
Time for dinner. Any reactions?
(1) the counterpart to Newton's gravity is curved space-time.
(2) "locally" they would otherwise fall straight down, without the constraining surface of the earth they would fall into an orbit. The theory does not offer any new insights to a climber wishing not to fall off a mountain.
Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
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."]
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