You might look at Vygotsky's Primitive Man and His Behaviour
http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1930/man/index.htm for some
of Vygotsky's ideas on the relationship between the stages of the
intellectual development of the child and the culture-historical
(prehistorical) development of human consciousness. As I recall he does not
regard the development of meaningful speech to be the model for the
prehistorical development of human culture.
Victor
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Gabosch" <sgabosch@comcast.net>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>; <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 4:43
Subject: Re: Query Re Genetic Domains
> 11:23 AM 6/10/2005, Mike wrote:
>>Dear Colleagues,
>>
>>It is my impression that lot of people, following Vygotsky (summarized in
>>Wertsch, 1985) have made the programmatic claim that human ontogeny is the
>>emergent outcome of phylogenetic, cultural historical, and moment by
>>moment
>>(microgenetic) processes.
>>
>>I am looking for references that include this kind of rhetoric. I recal,
>>but cannot find, that Ronald Tharp once wrote on this topic. Yrjo's book
>>on learning by expanding certainly adopts this point of view. and......??
>>
>>Suggestions needed!
>>mike
>
>
> I suggest Ken Richardson (1998) _The Origins of Human Potential_ , Chapter
> 3, "Developmental Systems."
>
> Some tidbits:
>
> "In the previous chapter I tried to show how the standard genetic
> assumptions underlying the current framework of nature-nurture debates in
> psychology are unlikely to be valid." pg 66
>
> [In this chapter] ... I want to continue this scrutiny by showing how the
> evolved system of genomic regulations is only the first of a number of
> regulatory levels to be found in organisms living in complex environments.
> Just as the expression of structural genes have become nested in a complex
> of genomic regulations, so these have become nested in other systems of
> regulations, at additional hierarchical levels." pg 66
>
> Richardson quotes Piaget (1980): 'The epigenetic system, as we have noted,
> is highly integrated: each stage has its own system of regulations, and
> each is bound to the levels before and after by a complex of
> interregulations.' pg 71
>
> Referring to Oyama (1985): "Although we commonly speak of the genotype as
> 'creating' its appropriate phenotype through epigenetic processes, we now
> wee that it is at least as legitimate to speak of the developmental
> process 'creating' its own appropriate genotype (Oyama 1985: 49)." pg 71
>
> "I have argued in several places (e.g. Richardson 1992; Richardson and
> Webster 1996) that such learning is only achieved by the lifelong
> developmental construction of 'nested covariation hierarchies' within the
> cognitive system reflecting those in natural experience, including those
> revealed by action upon the environment. This is the kind of information
> that cognitive systems evolved to deal with. Indeed, a number of
> neuroscientists have long argued that it is such nested covariations that
> form the 'language' of higher cerebral functions (e.g. Mackay 1986)." pg
> 79
>
> "Steven Rose (e.g.1981) has long advocated a 'levels', or hierarchical
> systems view, as an antidote to reductionism of the collapsing of all the
> regulations that have evolved back into a shallow genetic determinism." pg
> 94
>
> Fascinating chapter, one of the best pieces of contemporary writing I have
> seen putting these ideas together. Vygotsky especially, but also
> Leontiev, Rogoff, Cole - yes, Mike Cole - and many others also figure into
> Richardson's presentation.
>
> - Steve
>
>
>
>
>
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