Nate wrote:
>When I said de-biologize I was referring to development not culture (: I
>don't see biology outside culture so I'm not sure how I feel about hybridity
>here. In activity theory/ post modernism I have usually seen it used as
>sort of a third space.
Indeed, Nate, I have shifted focus. Maybe it is because,
"development" is already largely de-biologized, as I pointed to the
word use in "research and development" except with some
psychologists perhaps. Isn't it also significant that you see the
term "development" rarely used in the genetic (by way of genes)
context. I guess this will come when the present feelings of guilt
will fade since genetic engineering is exactly what the term covers
technically.
Whether biotic factors are really of (almost) no importance in
ontogenetic changes in later years as compared to childhood and youth
I dare to doubt on the basis of lots of data and personal experience.
You consider development to be understood as a "hybridity" thing and
decide preferably against. I would find that only a cheap "solution"
within the habitual opposition between nature and culture. On a
background of cultural organization of life and living (together) to
be understood as a mere and partial or extended reorganization of
their biotic organization I see no need to firstly break the two
apart and secondly to put them together again. Culture is not an
addition to, rather an expansion of the biotic.
Also, I always wonder, in this connection, at the ease everybody (by
general language use) misses to distinguish between the biotic and
the biological. In parallel, by the way, with the psychic and the
psychological. Why should the use of "psychic" put one in the
para-realm. Is it really true that what these two sciences say about
their object domain is the only thing we are to believe about those
phenomena? This is imperio-linguistics! Also consider the case of the
physical and the physiological where the distinction has changed from
its original (until into the earlier 19th century) and regular
phenomena vs. conceptualization distinction to the dead vs. living
matter opposition. Occasionally I have proposed the word
"physicological" to mark and oppose that widespread category error
against "physical" in the naive sense.
Alfred
-- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Alfred Lang, Psychology, Univ. Bern, Switzerland --- alfred.lang@psy.unibe.ch Website: http://www.psy.unibe.ch/ukp/langpapers/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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