Genesis/Meaning/Chat/Lewin
Mike Cole (mcole who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Thu, 8 Aug 1996 08:38:23 -0700 (PDT)
Dear Xmca-ites,
I have been filing the ongoing discussion and have been printing
it out to take along as "summer reading" when I leave here in late August
for some time off before the fall business bursts upon the scene. I can't
attend properly now because of a heavy writing deadline. But I can attend
enough to know that there is a very important discussion taking place.
This morning as I drove into work, several parts of the discussion
rattled around in my head. They combined with two stories in the morning
paper: speculation over the existence of life on mars a billion (what could
that mean?) years ago, and a story of a self-replicating molecule that would
explain how life emerged from "the slime." The speculation is that the
mechanism is connected with RNA.
When Jim Martin got the genre discussion to the point where he was
asked, what about genesis and CHAT, I found the question overwhelming. CHAT
is about genesis, how can the relationship be summarized? I was relieved
by David Russell's answer, which struck me as an excellent road into the
question.
Ana Shane's note about Lewin and situatedness entered the mix. I
thought of Gordon Wells' article on Vygotsky and Halliday in MCA. Then I
thought about the question of "what is CHAT?"
CHAT, I thought, is the search for the understanding of human nature
that synthesizes and generalizes the confluence of these and many other
voices that adopt the notion that human history is constituitive of human
consciousness. XMCA is a medium for that joint exploration. Anyway, this
is what I have been able to make of the discussion so far. Reading the
printout of the notes in a single quiet sitting, I thought, might provide
tools for that search.
A while ago we had a discussion in XMCA about meaning. Jay Lemke
was importantly involved, and he is in Australia (seems appropriate)
and offline. If this line of discussion continues into the fall, Jay's
input would be helpful, but in the meantime, the following summary of
that discussion occurred to me:
Meaning is the residue of prior human activity embodied in artifacts,
among which tools as conventionally understood and the words of languages
are prominent kinds of artifacts. Human mind grows and expresses itself
through the artifact-saturated medium of culture, through making meaning and human life.
Back to saving and printing out.
mike
Michael Cole
Communication Department and Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition
MAAC 517 Second Floor, Q-092
University of California, La Jolla, California, 92093
Phone (619) 534-4590
Fax (619) 5347746