Nate wrote what was, to me, a crucial series of LEARNING questions:
>I have enjoyed the messages, in particular, Ana's mentioning of play.
>Like Diane, I was not sure what was included in the terminology. I was
>given the following by Goggle's nice dictionary service.
>
>phy·log·e·ny (f-lj-n)
>n. pl. phy·log·e·nies
>The evolutionary development and history of a species or higher taxonomic
>grouping of organisms. Also called phylogenesis.
>The evolutionary development of an organ or other part of an organism:
>the phylogeny of the amphibian intestinal tract.
>The historical development of a tribe or racial group.
>
>[Greek phlon, race, class; see phylum + -geny.]
>
>phylo·genic (-jnk) adj.
>
>Here is where I get confused with the talk - cultural-historical,
>cultural, or historical being thought of as another level from phylogeny
>(evolution, species history). Now certain elements of AT - Vygotsky,
>Luria, Leontev, Illyenkov etc - utilize the cultural historical in such a
>way that it would of course have a species focus.
these haven't really been adressed, so i'd like to re-post my own
questions, ideas, readings,
responding to the question of "phylogeny" and ownership in "biological"
science, etc. - seems to me
a crucial area, in terms of meaning and language,
but then it's also likely "gone" in the game here,
like,
i'm getting an ice-cream cone out of left field while the rest are playing
the game? baseball. what a mystery. :)
oh, as one of those subjects that can't creatively be pursued,
what do we understand as the difference?
i mean, to me the difference is in a particular consciousness
organized with a particular hierarchy of symbolic activity
-
the disregarded quote i posted, to me, rather clarifies the difference
between "rules" and '"animal behavior" but hey, is it so simple?
it seems to me
the questions are here. BUT maybe i really don't understand. wouldn't be
the first time ! ;)
cheers
diane
http://baserv.uci.kun.nl/~los/Articles/telles.html
ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE AND DYNAMICS OF CULTURE
Tiziano Telleschi
Therefore in a phylogenetic perspective,culture did not arise when
neurobiological evolution reached a level of structuring adequate to
produce it. It would be futile to claim that first there was nature, then
there were animals, and then, later, there was man: for there cannot exist
a more advanced biological set-up prior to the onset of the cultural
structuring of which the biological domain is itself composed. Instead, it
must be assumed that by making use of pre-existing social modules and
early symbolic elaborations, living beings proceeded at one and the same
time towards biological maturation and cultural development, in a mutually
influencing dialectic. It follows that these symmetrical processes, now no
less than in previous ages, require man to optimize his biological nature,
not limiting himself to living either purely in the symbolic or purely in
the social sphere. This implies that the social and the symbolic are
stages rather than finaldestinations in the human evolutionary process. A
further implication is that the symbolic accession of the biological must
always be followed by liberation of the symbolic, so that man is not
ultimately entrapped by culture.
This trend towards the transvaluation of initial data and incrementation
of their meaning - which I will call constitutivity (in Kantian terms)
gives substance to hypotheses of symmetry between experiences over
prolonged periods of time (phylogenesis, history of meanings) and
short-term experiences (ontogenesis, history of subjective senses), and
between the process of integration of levels of realization of existence
(biological, social, cultural) and that of integration of the cerebral
'strata'.Confirmation of this analysis is to be found in the final
development of those elements which contribute to construction of man as a
whole.
The reversibility of this process (i.e. the inverse path: from the
symbolic to the biological through the intermediary of the
social)triggered what could be described as a "cross-catalysis"
betweensocio-cultural factors andspecies characters, whereby some of the
achievements obtained in rising to the symbolic plane allowed spin-off
effects back onto the biological plane. This feed-back created new
organizational, semantic and societal levels that became progressively
moulded to the requirements of living beings (the "gene strategy", as it
was termed by Sabino Acquaviva: 1983). That this reversibility became
consolidated is to be ascribed to its amalgamation with motivating fluxes,
inasmuch as the endeavor to make a mental translation ofevents influenced
the psyche of evolving living beings, thereby affecting their sensitivity
and becoming imprinted in their chemical-physical traces opened up by
cerebral expansion. Thus strong emotion, astonishment at mystery, hope,
fear and complex operative sequences were transformed into curiosity,
interest, creativity, art, spiritual penetration of the world, that is to
say, categories of mental states of eternal man searching for goals:
categories that - then as now - would be able to provide an account of
material life.
**
END of QUOTE. this still awes me. but then i might be, as Kurt Cobain
claimed, dumb.
cheers dears,
diane
"I want you to put the crayon back in my brain."
Homer Simpson
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
vancouver, bc
mailing address: 46 broadview avenue, montreal, qc, H9R 3Z2
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