Re: levels

From: Nate Schmolze (vygotsky@home.com)
Date: Thu Jul 05 2001 - 16:18:59 PDT


I have enjoyed the messages, in particular, Ana's mentioning of play. Like Diane, I was not sure what was included in the terminology. I was given the following by Goggle's nice dictionary service.

phy·log·e·ny (f-lj-n)
n. pl. phy·log·e·nies
The evolutionary development and history of a species or higher taxonomic grouping of organisms. Also called phylogenesis.
The evolutionary development of an organ or other part of an organism: the phylogeny of the amphibian intestinal tract.
The historical development of a tribe or racial group.

[Greek phlon, race, class; see phylum + -geny.]

phylo·genic (-jnk) adj.

Here is where I get confused with the talk - cultural-historical, cultural, or historical being thought of as another level from phylogeny (evolution, species history). Now certain elements of AT - Vygotsky, Luria, Leontev, Illyenkov etc - utilize the cultural historical in such a way that it would of course have a species focus.

I guess my question would be this if phy·log·e·ny is species history would not it encompass both the evolutionary and cultural historical approaches to it.

I guess further unpacking would be helpful to me - when one says phylogenesis what is being referred to, is it simply evolutionary in the biological sense or are historical things like language, labor etc. included. Then when we say cultural-historical are we talking about a more local in contrast to species history.

I guess I am wondering about a definition for phylogenesis assuming it is one of those concepts (like culture)used by multiple parties but understood differently.

Nate Schmolze
http://members.home.net/schmolze1/
schmolze1@home.com

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Albert Camus (1957):
An execution is not simply death. It is just as different from the privation of life as a concentration camp is from prison. It adds to death a rule, a public premeditation known to the future victim, an organization which is itself a source of moral sufferings more terrible than death. Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have
to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.
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