RE: [xmca] artefacts, tools and instruments?

Dear Dima (ANOTHER dear XMCAer who uses "dear" as a salutation!)
   
  I'm reading the work of Rene Zazzo, who was a student of Henri Wallon (one of the earliest French child psychologists, and also one of the first explicitly Marxist ones). Zazzo and Wallon were both close to the Soviets (because they were French communists) and they were, accordingly, acquainted with the work of Leont'iev, and Vygotsky was certainly well acquainted with Wallon's work.
   
  The book I'm reading is "Le devenir de l'intelligence" and it's quite gripping. He wrote it during the Nazi occupation of France (while fighting in the Resistance) and actually published it illegally before Paris was liberated (I think he had distribution problems; my copy is a first edition and the pages were not cut).
   
  Zazzo uses "instrument" to distinguish animal tool use from human tool use. Animals pick up sticks and stones and use them as temporary instruments; but this use is not systematic or intellectual, which is another way of saying it is not social. An instrument is a handy piece of the environment used to solve some practical problem, while a tool is a piece of the environment which has been transformed through labor with a practical problem in mind.
   
  The difference might seem insignificant, but Wallon and Zazzo are developing a PROLEPTIC definition of intelligence. They accept that intelligence is a plastic (as opposed to a rigid) response to the environment. But they also accept that the difference between plasticity and rigidity is quantitative not qualitative. How, then, to explain the qualitative differences we find between intelligent macaques that wash sweet potatoes to improve their taste and, for example, the sort of quasi-intelligent behavior we occasionally see in XMCA posts?
   
  The answer Zazzo offers is that both instrument use and tool use are developed with practical problems in mind but with tool use it is the "in mind" part that has developed to the point where it can actually overthrow the unmediated tyranny of the practical problem. For example, I am actually writing this without any clear idea of its immediate usefulness to my own work, but a vague sense that it might be useful later on today when I have to tackle a major piece of writing. Otherwise, I might be emptying the wastebaskets in my office and tidying up my desk, the same way an animal tries to keep part of its burrow free of filth for the purpose of eating and sleeping. For that reason alone, I am very grateful for the question!

  Best wishes,
  David (Kellogg)
  Seoul National University of Education

       
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Received on Fri Mar 14 15:36 PDT 2008