Paul,
Is not there a danger with this line of argument too? It is "true" of
course - up to a point but it also make it seem so out there. I guess what
I'm asking is it necessary to go back millions of years. Vygotsky's point
that "lower" remains unchanged, but becomes something different -
transformation - seems important. Allen, a systems dude, said something
interesting in regards to form of the brain and all that has stuck with me.
When we look at animals there seems to be as with chimps a relationship
between the size of the brain and intellect. This is not so with humans,
our "higher" is more of a cultural organization in which we were able to
pass the phsyicality to a certain extent.
The only reason I say this is if we take the "marxist "anthropological
argument or the evolutionary one of the brain, we are left with the chicken
and egg thing. Kind of a Lamarck - Darwin dialectic of sorts, but it seems
Vygotsky approached it somewhat differently. Development as a species in
not so much on how activity - millions of years - changes the brain, but
rather how it was left in tact so to speak. The "human eye" as Marx
mentions, or Vygotsky's higher mental processes where the physical,
biological become a different thing.
Memory is a nice example - over millions of years - if memory - brain -
adapted itself we would probally need rather large brains or at least
different ones than we currently have. This might not have been efficient
for other physical reason, but with written language for example the
capabilities of memory was expanded expotentially with out changing the
structure of the brain.
Three explanations ?
1) Evolutionary - consciousness, activity is constained and / or determined
by the bran. We are have consciousness because we have evolved as a species
over time.
2) Lamark-Anthro - Activity, tool use over millions of years has forced
the brain, eye, hand to adapt to the development of human activity.
3). Vygotsky, Luria, (Leontev?) - The lower (biological) are replaced (put
underneath) by higher cultural mental processes. They are not changed so to
speak as in the Lamarkian view but become part of a cultural-historical
system. Transformation seems important here - for example with a child
learning to write (penmanship) there is this hand-eye coordination which is
essential for written language, but this reorganization occurs without
changing either the eye or the hand. However, with this cultural
reorganization the hand and the eye become a very different thing -
transformation.
I think 2 and 3 are both motivated by dialectical thinking, but have
different implications. One last example, I have never liked datebooks, I
would rather keep them in memory (culturally developed of course). Recently
of course I have by necessity needed to develop a system which has greatly
expanded my memory while leaving my brain in tact so to speak. For me, (3)
takes one out of the chicken-egg problem (interactionism) that Leontev
talked about. It seems then that (2) and (3) may be different dialectical
responses to (1) that would be interesting to explore. Marx and Engels
were used in different ways to validate both, yet it seems they have
different implications.
Nate
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul H.Dillon [mailto:illonph@pacbell.net]
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2000 10:52 AM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: RE: RE: On Leontiev
Phillip posted ,
> actually, yes - because the egg is part of the constraints of the
> activity - just as the structure of the eye is part of the constrait of
> sight - along with cultural notions of color and meanings of black /
> white / red / yellow - etc.
To the contrary, I think the important point is precisely that the
structure of the eye has developed as part of tool mediated activity and
adapted to that activity over the course of several million years
(particularly the eye and the hand as in the oh-so-important "hand-eye"
coordination necessary for the manipulation of tools). In general I agree
with you about the constraining character of physical reality whose inner
structure we can know through the fact of our activity, but with respect to
the physical organization of the human species itself, it must always be
seen as the product of cultural evolution at least for the past few million
years or so (maybe more). That is what the archaeological record shows us
(pace Andy).
Paul H. Dillon
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