Here is a next turn from David Cook.
mike
>From d.cook who-is-at sheffield.ac.uk Fri Nov 21 06:12:36 1997
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 14:12:05 +0000 (GMT)
>From: D Cook <D.Cook who-is-at sheffield.ac.uk>
To: Mike Cole <mcole who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Subject: Re: Ideas of Vygotski in Physical Science
Hello again,
Thanks for you help and interest I will check out the reference
(what did you mean "from Sheffield" - is there something I've missed?
Basically what I want to say is a detailed elaboration on something like:
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Language and logic (which is abstracted from language) are mental
tools which are developed in the individual's interactions with
society and with his own experience just as material tools are
developed from shared and individual experience. The idea that the
whole of logic is inherent in the untutored, uncultured human mind
turns out to be as absurd as expecting the more tangible products of
human culture with which we make ``observations'' to occur naturally;
to expect, for example, to find microscopes or mass spectrometers
growing on trees.
The logical structures in our thinking with which we are so familiar
and seem to us to be part of nature because they are abstracted from
and inextricably linked with our language, have been developed from
experience with finite systems and which do not involve
self-referential concepts.
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Does this sound sensible?
Regards,
Dave
Dr. David B. Cook
The Dept. of Chemistry
The University of Sheffield
SHEFFIELD
S3 7HF UK
Phone +44 (0)114 2229528
FAX +44 (0)114 2738673
http://spider.shef.ac.uk/
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I forbore enlightenment in my youth, and became, as they say in
melodramas, ``the wreck you now behold''.
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