I agree this is an important passage (which incidentally vindicates my
previous insistence that the middle chapters which don't deal so directly
with psychology are worth reading ;)). However, despite the manuscript being
fragmentary, I think it's best to start at the beginning and work through
it.
We seem to be in a bit of a jumble at the moment where nobody is quite clear
what's happening (or rather lots of different things are happening at the
same time). I thought that before I went on holiday a fortnight or so ago
that we had volunteers for all the chapters. There still seems to be
sufficient interest in the project but nobody willing to take the lead role
for the first four chapters. (I will repeat my offer to deal with the middle
section though there may be better qualified xmca'ers.) If this is the only
obstacle, I suggest we set a date to start the discussion and, rather than
have a lead person, we all just fire off our observations on the 1st 4
chapters. A slightly disorganised discussion is better than no discussion at
all.
Bruce
PS: The reference to chapter 15 refers to the structure of the volume of the
collected works in which 'Crisis' comes. It is chapter 5 of 'cRISIS' from
which your quote comes, Eric.
From page 248 of chapter 15 (?) I put the question mark because I clicked
on chapter 5 of the menu, so I am assuming it is a typo.
"It is important to make two points.
1. Every natural-scientific concept, however high the degree of its
abstraction
from the empirical fact, always contains a clot, a sediment of the concrete,
real
and scientifically known reality, albeit in a very weak solution, i.e., to
every ultimate
concept, even to the most abstract, corresponds some aspect of reality which
the
concept represents in an abstract, isolated form. Even purely fictitious,
not natu-
ral-scientific but mathematical concepts ultimately contain some echo, some
reflec-
tion of the real relations between things and the real processes, although
they did
not develop from empirical, actual knowledge, but purely a priori, via the
deductive
path of speculative logical operations. As Engels demonstrated, even such an
ab-
stract concept as the series of numbers, or even such an obvious fiction as
zero,
i.e., the idea of the absence of any magnitude, is full of properties that
are quali-
tative, i.e., in the end they correspond in a very remote and dissolved form
to real,
actual relations. Reality exists even in the imaginary abstractions of
mathematics."
What he states after this point is extremely important for understanding
this point. I won't paste it here however, because this may not be where we
want to begin our discusion of this stunning document. I am perfectly happy
waiting on commenting on Vygotsky's view of language unitl we have hashed
over his historical perspective of the crisis.
Eric
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