Re: Form / deform RE: [xmca] Tools, thought, & signs (Bruner, Peirce, Newton)

This turns out to be an interesting topic for me because I have been
corresponding with
Seth Chaiklin and the Moscow grad seminar about the idea of "neoformations"
in Russian.

The word has some of the connotations that Tony points to-- bildung, for
example.
One Russian word for education is obrazovanie image-making (literally)
neoformation
is novoobrazovani -- new- image-making one would think. But no, It is used
to refer
to the formation of a tumor or a volcano. Seth says that the same is true of
bildung.

About "deform." What I had in mind is, say, the act of reaching for
something, a piece of fruit, say. Long human phylogenesis of that action.
But when a stick, or a snippers, is
included into the action, the "natural reaching" action is deformed
(transformed too) and
subordinated to the constraints of the incorporated new element, call it
what you will.

mike

On 7/8/07, David Williamson Shaffer <dws@education.wisc.edu> wrote:
>
>
> Tony--
>
> I reserve the right to think more about the distinction you raise, but at
> the momentI don't think I was intending a difference in these formulations
> (no pun intended). I would use them all as synonyms for "mediate". There
> are
> different connotations, of course. Deform in particular is nice for its
> connotations, particularly in the context of pedagogical questions, it
> seems
> to me.
>
> But Mike and Katie (and others) may see the matter differently. In fact,
> I'm
> sure others do.
>
> I'm OK with making distinctions in the sense that it would be interesting
> (and perhaps useful) to think about what the differences we perceive might
> be. But I guess I am suggesting (and we are suggesting in TfT) that the
> differences will be within type rather than between type. That is,
> different
> properties of ontologically similar entities.
>
> But what do others think?
>
> David
>
>
>
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> >Behalf Of Tony Whitson
> >Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2007 10:05 PM
> >To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> >Subject: Form / deform RE: [xmca] Tools, thought, & signs (Bruner,
> Peirce,Newton)
> >
> >David, Katie, and Mike:
> >
> >Could you just add something brief about what you mean by "deform," vs.
> >e.g. "trans-form", "re-form," etc.?
> >
> >Since I've been thinking about it over the last year, I'm seeing "form"
> >and "formation" as more and more important (note Mike's "morphology" is
> >also about form). This includes recovery of what Aristotle meant by the
> >(badly translateed) idea of "formal cause" (somebody brought that up on
> >this list a few months ago, but I was too busy to respond then).
> >
> >In European languages the vocabulary on education retains the idea of
> >"formacion" "Bildung" etc., but I often see these words used in ways that
> >suggest that the sense of formation (as distinct from, say, production)
> >is no longer salient. And when these words are translated into Chinese or
> >Japanese, the distinctive sense of "formation" is also not evident, it
> >seems to me. I'm guessing that German-Korean dictionaries translate
> >"Bildung" as the same Korean word that's used as the translation for the
> >English word "education" (David?).
> >
> >On Sun, 8 Jul 2007, David Williamson Shaffer wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> FWIW, I think in some ways the issues Tony raises at the end of his
> post
> (or
> >> near the end) is central from a theoretical perspective:
> >>
> >>>> There seems no reason for trying to sort things into categories, as
> being
> >>>> either "tools" or "signs" — the question, rather, would be whether we
> are
> >>>> presently concerned with something as it participates in the activity
> of
> >>>> sign-relations, or as it functions within tool-relations.
> >>
> >> Ontologically, Katie and I are arguing, as you suggest here, there is
> no
> >> difference between sign and tool--a position which we note contrasts
> with
> >> Vygotsky, but as you point our (and as we discuss in the paper) is not
> >> unique.
> >>
> >> I think this matters, in part, because of Mike's reply below. He
> writes:
> >>
> >>> Re 2: Tools may or may not amplify. But they certainly re-mediate--
> they
> >>> change the morphology of action, in a sense, they "deform" "natural"
> >>> action.
> >>
> >> I think the point Katie and I were trying to get at in toolforthoughts
> (both
> >> the term and the paper) is that there is no such thing as "natural"
> action.
> >> All action is deformed (to use Mike's term here).
> >>
> >> Actually, to be fair, we argue, although not in these terms, that we
> can
> >> *assume* such a thing as "natural" action, but that we have to
> recognize
> >> this is just an assumption--and of course a cultural-historically
> determined
> >> one at that.
> >>
> >> Mike is correct in saying (as he did in an earlier post) that this
> analysis
> >> applies equally to both non-computational tools and computational ones.
> But
> >> computational tools open up new possibilities for action--or to use
> Mike's
> >> terms again, new kinds of deformations. As Mcluhan suggests, we tend to
> see
> >> new deformations as unnatural--the old ones have already been
> naturalized,
> >> after all.
> >>
> >> Mike, I'd love to talk more about this last point over a bear, but
> wildlife
> >> being scarce at least for the moment and certainly as long as Bush is
> in
> >> office, let me say for the moment that I agree--and I think Donald
> would
> >> too--that the point of "cognitive cultures" is less to suggest that we
> can
> >> characterize thinking in one age or another by a particular cognitive
> form,
> >> than it is to identify when substantially new deformations appear.
> (Donald
> >> argues that the human mind is a palimpsest--he calls it a
> "hybrid"--where
> >> old forms are retained with the new.)
> >>
> >> That matters because in a time of rapid change in the nature of
> available
> >> deformations, we have to be especially careful about these
> >> assumptions--because assumptions about what is natural and what is
> deformed
> >> have pedagogical consequences.
> >>
> >> Thanks again for the thoughtful comments and perspectives....
> >>
> >> David
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> >On
> >>> Behalf Of Mike Cole
> >>> Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2007 7:24 PM
> >>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> >>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Tools, thought, & signs (Bruner, Peirce, Newton)
> >>>
> >>> Thanks for the synoptic discussion, Tony.
> >>>
> >>> I think Bruner is at least partially mistating things at the beginning
> of
> >>> your post:
> >>> "What is most characteristic of any kind of tool-using," he wrote, "is
> not
> >>> the tools themselves, but rather the program that guides their use. It
> is
> >> in
> >>> this broader sense that tools take on their proper meaning as
> amplifiers
> of
> >>> human capacities and implementers of human activity." ….
> >>>
> >>> What bothers me about this well known formulation, even though I
> initially
> >>> thought it just fine, is two things: 1) the strong boundary between
> >>> the "program that guides the action" and the tool; 2) the notion of
> >>> amplification.
> >>>
> >>> Re 1: See Bateson, (and, I believe, both Merleu-Ponty and Heidegger)
> using
> >>> the blind man and stick metaphor about "where the mind ends."
> >>> Suppose I am a blind man, and I use a stick. I go tap, tap, tap.
> Where
> >>> do I start? Is my mental system bounded at the hand of stick? Is
> >>> it bounded by my skin? Doe it start half way up the stick? Does it
> start
> at
> >>> the tip of the stick? ((Steps to an ecology of mind, p. 459).
> >>>
> >>> Bateson goes on to discuss how "the mind" slides up and down the stick
> and
> >>> out away from the stick, "depending."
> >>> Wertsch, in Mind as Action spends a lot of time discussing about a
> unit
> of
> >>> analysis he calls "person acting with mediational means in cultural
> >>> context." The short form of JSB's idea here belies that unit of
> analysis
> >>> and the fusions it points to.
> >>>
> >>> Re 2: Tools may or may not amplify. But they certainly re-mediate--
> they
> >>> change the morphology of action, in a sense, they "deform" "natural"
> >>> action. Peg Griffin and I wrote about this in an article called
> "Cultural
> >>> amplifiers reconsidered" which is not in electronic form. Anyone
> interested
> >>> we can get it into such form. The basic idea is to think of
> amplication
> as
> >>> increased amplitude of a signal without change in its form; that is
> >>> not human, artifact-mediated, activity.
> >>>
> >>> Very interesting about Newton. It gives one pause to think when one
> hears
> >>> discussions of human progress. Now uneducated farmers can
> >>> kill hundreds, and soon thousands, with some simple apprenticeship in
> >>> killing, but they stand on the shoulders of giants of course.
> >>>
> >>> Thanks Tony, thought provoking once again.
> >>> mike
> >>>
> >>> On 7/8/07, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Before we move on to the next article, there are things I've said
> about
> >>>> tools, thought, and signs that were offered more or less as
> assertions,
> >>>> without the explanation needed to make sense of them. This longish
> post
> >>>> attempts to remedy that.
> >>>>
> >>>> A much more readable version (layout, formatting, live links, and
> even
> a
> >>>> photo of the inscription that was minted on the edge of Newton's
> coins)
> >> is
> >>>> posted at
> >>>> http://postcog.net/2007/06/16/tools-thoughts-signs/
> >>>> I would suggest that anybody who wants to read this post should read
> it
> >>>> there, and come back here if you would want to discuss anything from
> it
> >> on
> >>>> this email list.
> >>>> ------------
> >>>>
> >>>> This post relates to a discussion of Shaffer and Clinton (2007) on
> the
> >>>> eXtended Mind, Culture and Activity discussion list (XMCA) in June
> and
> >>>> July
> >>>> of 2007.
> >>>>
> >>>> 1. Bruner and tools for thought
> >>>>
> >>>> In the toolforthoughts article, computer technology is the focus of
> >>>> discussion about tools in relation to thought. Noting Levi-Strauss'
> >>>> observation "that totems (e.g., animals and other natural objects)
> were
> >>>> not
> >>>> chosen because they were good to eat, but because they were good to
> think
> >>>> with," Paul Dillon implicitly raised a question of tools for thought
> as
> >>>> something more general than computers in the world we live in.
> >>>>
> >>>> Other examples are suggested in Peter Dow's account of a curriculum
> >>>> development project headed by Jerome Bruner (circa 1965):
> >>>>
> >>>> Concern with teaching about technology had been a persistent [p.
> 87]
> >>>> theme from the beginning at ESI Social Studies. …. Bruner linked
> >>>> technology
> >>>> to the development of man's conceptual powers. "What is most
> >>>> characteristic
> >>>> of any kind of tool-using," he wrote, "is not the tools themselves,
> but
> >>>> rather the program that guides their use. It is in this broader sense
> >> that
> >>>> tools take on their proper meaning as amplifiers of human capacities
> and
> >>>> implementers of human activity." ….
> >>>>
> >>>> Early efforts to define the technology unit and translate these
> >>>> general
> >>>> notions into effective classroom materials bogged down in debates
> over
> >> how
> >>>> broadly to define the term tool. Should the discussion of tools be
> >>>> restricted to physical objects, or is a logarithm a tool? Is the
> Magna
> >>>> Carta
> >>>> a tool? Is E = mc2 a tool? Should the technology materials include
> >>>> perspectives from disciplines as diverse as mathematics and history?
> One
> >>>> of
> >>>> the difficulties in trying to construct a unit on this topic was the
> lack
> >>>> of
> >>>> a clear conceptual structure for defining what technology is and for
> >>>> considering its social implications. Here, as with the other topics,
> some
> >>>> of
> >>>> the most interesting issues and questions fell outside of the
> framework
> >> of
> >>>> established academic categories. … (Dow, 1991, pp. 86-7)
> >>>>
> >>>> 2. Peirce, thought, & signs
> >>>>
> >>>> Schaffer and Clinton draw from Latour's strategy for correcting what
> >>>> Latour
> >>>> sees as the problem of treating the human and the non-human
> >>>> asymmetrically.
> >>>> It seems to me, though, that what Latour sees as a problem arises
> from
> an
> >>>> assumed Cartesian dualism. The problem does not arise, in the first
> >> place,
> >>>> within a Peircean perspective that does not presume that kind of
> dualism
> >>>> between the human and the natural, or the human and the artificial.
> >>>>
> >>>> Peirce recognized the world as constituted semiosically, with humans
> >>>> ourselves emerging within our participation in the semiosis that was
> well
> >>>> underway before we got here. Peirce understood the entire universe as
> >>>> "perfused with signs":
> >>>>
> >>>> It seems a strange thing, when one comes to ponder over it, that
> a
> >>>> sign
> >>>> should leave its interpreter to supply a part of its meaning; but the
> >>>> explanation of the phenomenon lies in the fact that the entire
> universe
> —
> >>>> not merely the universe of existents, but all that wider universe,
> >>>> embracing
> >>>> the universe of existents as a part, … that all this universe is
> perfused
> >>>> with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs (Peirce, CP
> 5.448;
> >>>> cf. Whitson, 2007, p. 322 ).
> >>>>
> >>>> Peirce says "all thought is in signs," understanding "thought" as as
> an
> >>>> activity of the world (not just humans), and "signs" also in a sense
> >>>> that's
> >>>> not limited to human communication. From Whitson (2007, pp. 296-7):
> >>>>
> >>>> As distinguished from semiology [i.e., in the tradition of
> Saussure
> —
> >>>> including Greimas and Latour], as well as earlier historic forms of
> >>>> semiotics [e.g., with the Stoics], semiotics following the work of C.
> S.
> >>>> Peirce is today, first and foremost, the study of semiosis, or the
> >>>> activity
> >>>> of triadic sign-relations, recognizing that
> >>>>
> >>>> the whole of nature, not just our experience of it, but the
> whole
> >>>> of
> >>>> nature considered in itself and on the side of its own and proper
> being
> >> is
> >>>> the subject of semiosis — the process and product, that is, of an
> action
> >>>> of
> >>>> signs coextensive with and constructive of the actual world as well
> as
> >> the
> >>>> world of experience and imagination. (Deely 1994: 187-188)
> >>>>
> >>>> As Peirce observed, 'To say … that thought cannot happen in an
> >>>> instant,
> >>>> but requires a time, is but another way of saying that every thought
> must
> >>>> be
> >>>> interpreted in another, or that all thought is in signs' (CP 5.253).
> Once
> >>>> the semiosic character of thought is recognized, thought itself is
> >>>> understood in a more general sense, such that
> >>>>
> >>>> Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears
> in
> >>>> the
> >>>> work of bees, of crystals, and throughout the purely physical world;
> and
> >>>> one
> >>>> can no more deny that it is really there, than that the colors, the
> >>>> shapes,
> >>>> etc., of objects are really there. … Not only is thought in the
> organic
> >>>> world, but it develops there. (CP 4.551)
> >>>>
> >>>> What exactly is it that Peirce says is 'really there' in the
> physical
> >>>> world, as undeniably as the colors and the shapes of objects? What
> Peirce
> >>>> is
> >>>> referring to is the semiosic action of triadic sign-relations:
> >>>>
> >>>> It is important to understand what I mean by semiosis. All
> >>>> dynamical
> >>>> action, or action of brute force … either takes place between two
> >> subjects
> >>>> …
> >>>> or at any rate is a resultant of such actions between pairs. But by
> >>>> 'semiosis' I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which
> is,
> or
> >>>> involves, a coöperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its
> object,
> >> and
> >>>> its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way
> >>>> resolvable into actions between pairs. (CP 5.484; original emphasis)
> >>>>
> >>>> What, then, are tools, or toolforthoughts? Are they different from
> signs,
> >>>> species of signs, or what?
> >>>>
> >>>> 3. Newton, signs, and tools
> >>>>
> >>>> rough coinageAmong the problems tackled by Isaac Newton, over the
> course
> >>>> of
> >>>> his varied career, was the problem of preserving England's currency
> >>>> against
> >>>> counterfeiting and "clipping" (filing off precious metal from the
> edges
> >> of
> >>>> coins). As head of the Royal Mint, Newton oversaw torture to induce
> >>>> confessions, capital punishment, and even having offenders drawn and
> >>>> quartered to protect the value of the royal coinage.
> >>>>
> >>>> Newton's mint began the practice of making coins with ridges around
> the
> >>>> edge
> >>>> so that clipping could be easily detected; and also, at that time,
> >>>> actually
> >>>> engraving the edge with the words "DECUS ET TUTAMEN" — a phrase that
> >> might
> >>>> be literally translated as "an ornament and a safeguard," but which
> we
> >>>> might
> >>>> also recognize as an engraving that is announcing itself as "both a
> sign
> >>>> and
> >>>> a tool."
> >>>>
> >>>> 4. Of tools and signs (umbrella example)
> >>>>
> >>>> Let's try this example: Suppose I know that you always check the
> weather
> >>>> on
> >>>> your computer before you go out for lunch. Today I notice you picked
> up
> >>>> your
> >>>> umbrella on your way out the door. Without checking the weather for
> >>>> myself,
> >>>> I take my own umbrella with me when I go out. From a Peircean
> >> perspective,
> >>>> my action of taking my umbrella is one of the three terms in a
> triadic
> >>>> sign-relation: My action is an interpretant determined by your action
> >> (the
> >>>> representamen), interpreted as a sign of possible rain (the
> object-term
> >> in
> >>>> this triad). Here the umbrella participates in the activity of
> triadic
> >>>> sign-relations.
> >>>>
> >>>> When we get outside, either of us might be preoccupied with holding
> our
> >>>> umbrella in the right position so it doesn't get blown inside-out by
> the
> >>>> wind. Now our concern is with the umbrella in its tool-relations — or
> >>>> simply
> >>>> its instrumental use as a tool for keeping dry.
> >>>>
> >>>> There seems no reason for trying to sort things into categories, as
> being
> >>>> either "tools" or "signs" — the question, rather, would be whether we
> are
> >>>> presently concerned with something as it participates in the activity
> of
> >>>> sign-relations, or as it functions within tool-relations.
> >>>>
> >>>> What do you think?
> >>>>
> >>>> Dow, Peter B. Schoolhouse Politics: Lessons from the Sputnik Era.
> >>>> Cambridge,
> >>>> Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.
> >>>>
> >>>> Peirce, Charles S. Collected Papers. Cambridge: Belknap Press of
> Harvard
> >>>> University Press, 1866-1913/1931-1958.
> >>>>
> >>>> Shaffer, David Williamson, and Katherine A. Clinton.
> "Toolforthoughts:
> >>>> Reexamining Thinking in the Digital Age." Mind, Culture, And Activity
> 13,
> >>>> no. 4 (2007): 283-300.
> >>>>
> >>>> Whitson, James Anthony. "Education à la Silhouette: The Need for
> >>>> Semiotically-Informed Curriculum Consciousness." Semiotica 164, no.
> 1/4
> >>>> (2007): 235-329.
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> xmca mailing list
> >>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >>>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> xmca mailing list
> >>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> xmca mailing list
> >> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >>
> >
> >Tony Whitson
> >UD School of Education
> >NEWARK DE 19716
> >
> >twhitson@udel.edu
> >_______________________________
> >
> >"those who fail to reread
> > are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
> > -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
>
> _______________________________________________
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Received on Mon Jul 9 11:46 PDT 2007