[xmca] To Gordon Wells: Concepts and the ideal

Gordon,
My replies to your emails are being returned by the mail administrator.
My most recent reply is below. Hope the message reaches you via xmca. :)
Andy
At 05:41 PM 12/10/2007 -0700, you wrote:
>Andy,
>
>Perhaps you didn't receive my message or were too busy to answer it. But
>I'd stll very much like to know your views if you can spare the time
>
>I'd like to know how you see the relationship between what Wartofsky
>called tertiary artifacts and Ilyenkov's explanation of the ideal. I was
>thinking of, for example, Newton's laws of motion or Vygotsky's
>concept/metaphor of the zpd. Are these ideal in the same way as commodity?
>
>Gordon
>--
>Gordon Wells
>Department of Education
>University of California, Santa Cruz http://people.ucsc.edu/~gwells

Oh, I did reply to a message like that on 10th October. It must have gone
astray somehow Gordon. I am never too busy to answer an email message from
a friend or comrade.

Firstly, I have skimmed a book of Wartofsky's but I did not proceed to
study him. It looked a bit interesting, but I wouldn't say more than that.
After Marx and Hegel, it is Vygotsky, then Ilyenkov and Peirce I look to. I
have just never had the time to get into Wartofsky. Can I leave Wartofsky
out of it and try to respond to your question from my own point of view?

At 05:41 PM 12/10/2007 -0700, you wrote:
>I'd like to know how you see the relationship between what Wartofsky
>called tertiary artifacts and Ilyenkov's explanation of the ideal. I was
>thinking of, for example, Newton's laws of motion or Vygotsky's
>concept/metaphor of the zpd. Are these ideal in the same way as commodity?

Newton's Laws of Motion: certainly these are ideals. It takes a bit of
breaking down to see the ontology behind them though, doesn't it? The laws
rely on or maybe even define certain categories of space, time and motion.
But human beings, like all creatures, are born realists, so these "laws"
are ascribed to Nature or God, rather than our own practical activity. Of
course, they do have a basis in Nature, as does human life. So the issue is
that our ideals of time and distance were made into material things by
means of measuring sticks and clocks of various kinds, and the practice was
established that time and distance are entities which exist independently
of human activities but by means of clocks and measuring rods these
entities can be measured. It took Einstein to really think all this
through. Kant for example was misled because he accepted the objective
existence of time and space and their intelligibility by means of Pure
Reason. In fact, time and space could not be measured until the relevant
instruments were created along with practices of measuring time and space,
as abstractions from quantities of material or work done.

Does that help with Newton? That's off the cuff. Now that you mention it,
it's interesting stuff isn't it, but my physics and maths days are behind
me now. :)

Re the ZPD: This appears to be a widespread idea amongst learning
theorists. It involves imagining, abstracted from any given learner, a
space of activities or abilities recognised within a given community, an
ideal constructed and abstracted from the experience mainly of teaching in
that community I guess, and then posing the existence of zones or regions
and boundaries definable in this space of socially useful abilities. So any
given person can move about in a space of their present abilities, and
outside that space is a space of what they can't do .... yet, and a border
region, a DMZ if you like, which they can do with assistance. Now I'd have
to say that this vision of ability-space is an ideal. It relies on the
codification of abilities recognised as useful within a given community,
and objecified in the form of an education system with its books, libraries
and qualification certificates for teachers and students, etc., and a whole
discourse of "education".

Does that make sense?

Andy

  Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
mobile 0409 358 651

_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
Received on Sun Oct 14 19:03 PDT 2007