I think we were trying to concentrate of whether
Vygotsky was a contextualist. If we imagine he could
say: lets pu it in context", it would mean: "let us
examine which part of history that context belonged
too, how it was influenced by other contexts, which
values were used and created at the time". This kind
of thinking would be true even we were to study what
happened last weekend (it was very sunny here in
B'ham).
Anna Popova
--- "Cunningham, Donald James" <cunningh@indiana.edu>
wrote:
> Mike, I am closely related to one Mr. H. Dumpty who
> assures me that I
> can use a word any way I like to mean what ever I
> choose. But isn't that
> the problem we all face in using an everyday word to
> circumscribe a
> particular meaning? The container metaphor is very
> strong for the word
> "context", as in "let's put that in context". Oh
> well, I'm happy to be
> allied with Bateson in any context. He is one of my
> intellectual
> heroes.
>
> If you really want to confuse people, use the term
> "objective world" as
> the medievalists used it. For them this term meant
> the world "as
> experienced"!
>
> I also confess to an assumption of a "real world".
> If I'm just making
> this all up, I can't believe that I would actually
> create the notion
> that tax cuts can balance the budget.
>
> La di da, so it goes.......djc
>
> Don Cunningham
> Indiana University
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Cole [mailto:mcole@weber.ucsd.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 5:07 PM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: umwelt and context
>
>
> Hi Don--
>
> The fact that you equate context and environment vis
> a vis standard
> academic discourse places you among those like Mc
> Dermott (in the
> Chaiklin
> and Lave volume) who beat on the "context as
> container" metaphor and
> the later Bateson who insists on relation
> understandings of context.
>
> I believe I think of context more or less the way
> you use the term,
> umwelt, although parts of your discussion vis a vis
> human raise flags
> for me. The definition of culture seems pretty
> externalist, in that you
> say
> it has an impact on people.
>
> And when you write: Words, pictures, bodily
> movements and the like
> generate signs
> for objects which need have no basis in the real
> world and which can be
> manipulated independent of that world.
>
> another flag goes off. Assumed real world and an
> organism whose signs
> need
> have no basis in it?
>
> Am I wrong, Ana, in thinking that your way of
> thinking about context
> is like Don's use of umwelt?
>
> Pondering in So Cal where the sun has reappeared.
> mike
>
=====
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