Andy Steve Gabosch wrote:
I think Mike's point, when he pointed out this cover, was that it used a variety of intriguing and unstable taxonomic methods, and I agree. Trying to categorize all the taxonomies as "male-female" doesn't work, and I don't think "go together like a horse and carriage" works universally, either. Does salt and pepper really go together like a horse and carriage, or a lock and key? What about two identical objects? Or a magnet and a compass? I think the key is that we can't actually find a single concept that fits all pairs. I do agree with your excellent point about functional versus property-based pairings, as in "table settings" versus "round things." I think Vygotsky addresses this kind of distinction in his attempt to categorize different kinds of complexes. Thinking about that, perhaps what we are looking at in that cover art with about 27 pairs of objects is an amusing and varied collection of pseudoconcepts.- Steve On Jun 27, 2010, at 3:36 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:I know that Vygotsky categorises "family groups" as a type of complex, but I think that when someone sees, for example, knife, fork, plate and spoon as forming a set, (a.k.a. a "table setting") this is, in my view, a qualitatively different thing from seeing as a set a plate, a bicycle wheel and a rainbow as a group (a.k.a., "round things"). The former understand things as belonging to some larger functional group; the latter abstracts one contingent attribute from things and groups them together on that basis.The New Yorker cover has pairwise family groups, things which "go together like a horse and carriage."Andy Steve Gabosch wrote:Andy, I agree - the pairs represented on the magazine cover don't seem to be binary. That is, none of the pairs seems to represent only two possible categories. (A side remark on binary classification - your comments reminded me of the old Porphyrian tree, which takes a category and then divides it into two classes, and then divides one or both of those classes into two, and keeps repeating. An example of such a tree: all reality is made of either thought or extended bodies; all bodies are either animate or inanimate; all animate bodies are either plants or animals; all animals are either vertebrates or invertebrates; all vertebrates are either mammals or non-mammals, etc. etc.) I am not exactly sure what a complementary mutually constituting set is. Would a bow and a violin, and a match and a firecracker, qualify? How about fire and ice? Two identical objects? An egg and a slice of bacon? That pesky magnet and compass? Your point about Vygotsky's "family groups" - that is, complexes - is apt. That method of classification allows us to associate just about any two things that share at least one property (eaten for breakfast, use magnetism, either hot or cold, etc.) I didn't know it was an inherent property of all artifacts that another artifact exists that fits it. It is certainly often true. If you include the human body as a type of artifact, I think I would agree with this idea as being universal, since all human-produced artifacts are extensions in some way of humans themselves. Hence, all artifacts must "fit" either to another artifact or directly to a human body. If you don't include the human body, and are only referring to fitting to other artifacts or objects, I am curious how this intriguing claim could be demonstrated as always being true. (For example, if you subtract the human, what does a magic wand fit?) I am also curious who makes this claim ...- Steve On Jun 26, 2010, at 9:23 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:I didn't mean male-female just in the graphic sense in which the idea is used in engineering, Steve, but in the slightly more general sense. It is similar to the binary classification of the world found in French sociology and anthropology, e.g. Bourdieu (good/bad, weak.string, cognition/feeling, etc.), but the examples shown on the New Yorker cover seem to me to be pairwise complementary mutually constituting sets, rather than binary divisions of the world.From there I think in 2 directions: 1. to the "family groups" which is the first way (acc to LSV) that small children begin to make sets of things before they have their heads bent into abstracting attributes to make sets, and 2. that it is an inherent property of all artefacts that their meaning is contained, not just in their use in some form of practice, but in the existence of another artefact that fits it. E.g., the meaning of a key is that somewhere sometime there is a lock which it fits.Nice pic. Andy Steve Gabosch wrote:Since I got sidetracked by a New Yorker cover art jig saw puzzle on that site, and then had to do some rummaging around to get to the right place, I thought I'd give the specific url for the cover art that Andy and Mike are talking about. (Not that the jig saw puzzle wasn't kind of fun. I never did one on a computer before.)http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2010-06-28On the "male-female" concept, I get that many of the paired objects on the cover involve insertion and reception (e.g., lock and key, nut and bolt, electrical socket and plug, vase and flower, corked wine bottle and corkscrew, dust pan and brush). But this concept doesn't apply to all of the pairs, and other concepts might also apply to these pairs. Some objects are identical (green dots). Others are nearly so, except for handedness (gloves, shoes). Some can be logically paired for culinary reasons, at least by New York standards (egg and bacon, salt and pepper, bread and butter, oil and vinegar). The pairing of the magnet and compass has me most perplexed. Those two objects are usually kept apart for practical reasons, aren't they? I'm pretty sure that particular pairing falls outside of a gender-based taxonomy, but I'm not sure whether it qualifies as paradigmatic, syntagmatic - or just plain contrary and contradictory! :-)) Thinking of Shirley's comments, fun exercises like this, looking for the insights that Mike and Andy offer into this cover art (and re-looking up what those linguistic terms that Mike used mean) strike me as ways of playing with higher cognitive concepts, which leads us toward more capably applying them. Looking at levels of grammar, meaning, taxonomy can be fun. But, to point to Shirley's main line of interesting questions, I don't know how higher cognitive concepts like these could be taught only "orally," or if trying to restrict lessons about them to somehow being strictly oral is even desirable. On the other hand, oral skills in this regard should not be neglected - we need to not just be able to think at a desk, but also on our feet. I am just now reading a chapter in History of the Development of the Higher Mental Functions where LSV stresses the importance of writing, drawing and playing in cognitive development, as well as of course mastering oral speech, from at least the age of four or so. Being able to move back and forth between these "languages," (speaking, writing, drawing, playing), as Vygotsky called them, seems to be essential in developing the higher mental functions. Learning grammar concepts, I would think, requires both oral and written speech, and even some drawing skills. I know I need to use all three of these "languages" to learn new grammatical concepts. It would be much harder to learn such things only orally, wouldn't it? At the same time, learning about grammar through writing and drawing strengthens my oral abilities. And, in any case, it sure helps when that stuff can be done playfully! So, back to fun. Just how **did** that magnet and compass hook up, anyway? Sigh. Maybe I'm just being too taxonomically Western-collegiate. Perhaps one of Luria's old Uzbek colleagues would have just the right taxonomical explanation for why those two artifacts wound up holding hands ...- Steve On Jun 26, 2010, at 4:21 PM, Shirley Franklin wrote:I'm also interested in this too.I had a conversation with a friend who trains up teachers in schools and works with pupils, mainly who have English as a second language. She was telling me that she uses a Hallidayan genre model to help develop the children's speaking, and to make them express themselves in higher levels of thinking.I am troubled by this. i am interested in Hallidayan genre teaching , as i think you can use a genre pedagogy to help pupils to develop their written language, and in the process develop their thinking. I am fascinated by how focusing on the different levels of the text you can induct kids into thinking in ways appropriate to the context and discipline, especially by working at the levels of the word - concepts and grammar- sentence and text.But I am not sure that you can do this orally. Can you tell pupils how to frame their oral expression, to make them express themselves in a "higher cognitive way"? It seems bizarre - because I think we use language as a tool for thought. Can teaching more sophisticated oral linguistic structures impact on thinking.I hope this makes sense. Its' been bothering me all day! Best to all Shirley On 26 Jun 2010, at 17:02, ulvi icil wrote:I am interested on the effect of schooling on concept formation, therelationswhip between everyday and scientific concetps as a candidate research topic for my master thesis that I will start to work October 2010onwards ! Ulvi 2010/6/26, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>:That article connects to several ongoing threads, Andy. But lets see ifothers are interested before I directly comment.Instead, I think that the cover of the current issue of the New Yorker magazine provides interesting food for thought one concepts and their representations. It is accessible from www.newyorker.com. Try to click on the cover and than use control+ (on a pc) to get a larger and largerimaged.The different layers of meaning appear to move between the syntagmatic andparadigmatic dimensions of meaning making. Besides, its clever. mikeOn Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 6:38 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:I just had a read of Mike's 1982 paper with Roy D'Andrade on theinfluenceof schooling on concept formation: http://lchc.ucsd.edu/Histarch/ap82v4n2.PDF Great paper!It occurred to me that Luria is in agreement with many others that a hierarchical system of categories, a taxonomy, is the archetype of the "abstract" concept. Luria's conception of how this relates to prior formsofconcept (affective and concrete) is the main point of interest in the article, but I would like to question whether this taxonomical idea isvalidas the archetype of the "true" concept. The article claims thattaxonomicalpractices ("true" or not) are archetypal school practices, and this is aninteresting and different question. An interesting counterpoint to this is Hegel's classification of 3 different components which he thinks must *all* be present in theformationof a true concept:The subject is (a) ascribed certain qualities; (b) seen as having havingacertain place in a system of social practice; and (c) taken under itsgenus,as belonging to a certain living whole.Further, I think (c) does not actually amount to the kind of Linnaean hierarchical family tree, but could also be interpreted like genre and archetype without the implied underlying totality. Also, there is all toomuch room for subsuming (c) under (a) as almost all of present-day philosophy and natural science are wont to do. Mike, you have done a lot of work on the role of this "taxonomicalactivity" in and out of school. Davydov on the other hand, emphasises (b)asopposed to (a). It would be interesting to investigate concept-formationonthis wider frame. 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