Can I make just a couple of really trivial points about Michele and Vera's
review of "Perspectives on Activity Theory". The review certainly was
enough to convince me to get my library to acquire it, but without reading
I can't say much, except that Mike Cole's "Fifth Diminsion" project looks
like something I should know about; Mike is there a website or something I
can look at?
(1) Descartes: I have a soft spot for old Rene and I think he gets a bad
press. To now blame him not only for the "Cartesian Divide" but for
empiricism as well, is I think unfair for the first person to make a
critique of Empiricism, not only that of his English contemoraries, but of
the Scholastics as well. For example, from the "Discourse on Method", 1632:
"What causes many, however, to persuade themselves that there is difficulty
in knowing this truth, and even in knowing the nature of their soul, is the
fact that they never raise their minds above the things of sense, or that
they are so accustomed to consider nothing excepting by imagining it, which
is a mode of thought specially adapted to material objects, that all that
is not capable of being imagined appears to them not to be intelligible at
all. This is manifest enough from the fact that even the philosophers in
the Schools hold it as a maxim that there is nothing in the understanding
which has not first of all been in the senses, in which there is certainly
no doubt that the ideas of God and of the soul have never been. And it
seems to me that those who desire to make use of their imagination in order
to understand these ideas, act in the same way as if, to hear sounds or
smell odours, they should wish to make use of their eyes: excepting that
there is indeed this difference, that the sense of sight does not give us
less assurance of the truth of its objects, than do those of scent or of
hearing, while neither our imagination not our senses can ever assure us of
anything, if our understanding does not intervene."
And the other little thing is the assertion twice by the authors that
"nature is revealed in change". I don't know where this comes from, don't
agree with it, and it seems to me that the idea is frequently contradicted
in text of the review. Without intervention, Change and movement are
formally indistinguishable. I would go with Theses on Feuerbach on this
one, myself: "All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their
rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this
practice."
Just trivial points I know. Very much enjoyed the review! Thanks!
Andy
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| - Andy Blunden - Home Page - http://home.mira.net/~andy/index.htm - |
| "It has been said that the very essence of civilisation consists of |
| purposely building monuments so as not to forget". L S Vygotsky 1930 |
~ Spirit, Money & Modernity, Melbourne Uni Summer School 23/24 Feb '01 ~
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