To continue, I will make reference to the argument in my paper, which was
an attempt to theorize resistance in CHAT terms. I needed to think about
the role of the NEGATIVE in learning and development, which led me
eventually to want to focus on learning in self-other terms, but to do so
without falling away from activity theory, and that let me to postulate a
trajectory parallel to but not the same as "development in mediational
means" (which is Vygotsky's contribution to learning theory); I used
Bateson for that, to think about development in person-context relations.
What Yrjo has done for me in CH 3 is to articulate how these 2 'pathways of
development' are interrelated, by way of the developing enmindment-of-body,
which works through 2 modes of modelling, both of which together describe
the person's deutero-learning and thus the sedimented
way-of-relating-to-environment(others). What is INTERESTING here is how ONE
mode of modelling leads to trans-generational learning or, can one say,
leads to phylogenetically productive activity. i.e., the development of
cross-hatches on the rifle lens is a collective and historical effort. One
minor point here in correction of Yrjo's reference to Bateson as an
evolutionary/historical thinker -- he certainly thought through
evolutionary terms, but he certainly did not think through historical
terms, if by 'historical' we refer to changes in culture. Bateson thought
dynamically about biology but he seemed to treat culture pretty synoptically.
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