RE: [xmca] activity and reification

[anna sfard <annasfar@math.msu.edu>]

If I understood your question right, Larry, you are asking whether
development of concrete concepts, such as apple, as described by Martin, and
of more abstract concept, such as number, as described by me, have anything
in common. If this indeed is the question, I can only speak of my
impression, because I'm not sure whether I have a good grasp of Martin's
thinking. And the impression is: of course they do. There is reification of
processes involved in both of them. Except that the perceptual accessibility
of the apple, as opposed to that of number (which is a reification of
discursive rather than physical processes)makes a big difference in how the
concepts actually develop and, more specifically, in the role of physical
experience versus social interaction played in each of them. Hope this
answer matches your question, even if is not quite satisfactory.

anna  
  
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of Larry Purss
Sent: Friday, April 22, 2011 5:42 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [xmca] activity and reification

Anna and Martin

Anna wrote

For kids, words do not partition the world in objects mainly, the way they
do for grownups. Not even nouns. For the little (and cute) ones, words
translate into routines - ways of doing things. One can see it with
particular clarity in math. To give just one basic example out of the
infinity of possibilities: Numbers begin their existence as procedures of
counting - something you can see when your repeated question "How many
cookies do I have here?" makes the child to repeat the counting rather than
prompting her to simply state the last word she has prfeviously uttered in
this process. It will take time till the reification/ objectification of
number words occurs. Just like "bottle" serves a baby as a trigger for the
routine of getting fed, so are the words such as "many", "more", etc. mere
prompts fos r counting. In this latter case, however, unlike in the former,
this procedure (counting) is a social game rather than anything that would
have any direct practical significance.
e difference is
Martin you described how thw terms "apple" and "pomme" [fruit of fruits] are
reifications of particular historical enactments which have lost their
historical grounding and must be re-discovered.

Anna or Martin

Do you see both what the child is developing as it turns an enactment into a
number and the adult developing the word pomme as equivalent processes of
enactments becoming reified?

Larry
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