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Re: [xmca] Co-evolution
David,
One gets so accustomed to LSV insisting that two processes are neither identical nor independent but must be considered to have a complex and changing relationship that it is rather startling to find him saying that biological evolution and historical cultural change are independent - that the second starts only once the first has ended.
But this is indeed what he writes in HDHMF. His overall point in this opening chapter is that psychologists have either ignored one process, or reduced one to the other, or treated them as independent in ontogenesis, when he wants to insist that in human ontogenesis they are uniquely woven together.
I think he is wrong on the first point, and that we now have evidence that biological evolution has continued as historical cultural change has taken place, and perhaps has even accelerated. But if anything this evidence actually strengthens the case he was making about ontogenesis. If evolution and history are woven together in phylogenesis, surely they are woven together in ontogenesis.
Martin
On Nov 11, 2010, at 8:14 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
> But Vygotsky really rejects the whole idea of co-evolution of brain and mind.
>
> In Volume 4 ("History of the Developmental of the Higher Mental Functions") he refers (p. 16) to "the development of human behavior beginning where the line of biological evolution ends".
>
> Then there is this very confusing sentence, which must be either a mistranslation or a slip of Vygotsky's pen:
>
> "The basic and all determining difference between this process (history--DK) and teh evolutionary process must be the circumstance that the development of higher mental functions occurs with a change in the biological type of man, while change in biological type is the base of the evolutionary type of development."
>
> Vygotsky immediately contradicts this:
>
> "As we know, and as has been demonstrated many times, this characteristic is also the basic difference in the historical development of man. In a wholly different type of adaptation in man, the development of his artificial organs, tools, and not a chagne in the organs and structure of the body, is of primary importance."
>
> He then says EXACTLY the opposite:
>
> "The position on development without a change in biological type acquires a completely distinctive and exceptional significance in psychology because, on the one hand, no elucidation has been produced yet for the problem of what kind of direct dependence there is of higher forms of behavior, higher mental processes or structures and functions of the nervous system and, therefore, to what extent and, what is most important, in what sense is a change and development of higher mental functions possible without a corresponding change for development of the nervous system and the brain."
>
> So despite the slip up, it's clear that Vygotsky does not accept the idea that the brain and the mind co-evolve, still less would he accept formations like Chomsky's "mind/brain". One is the product of natural evolution, and the other of cultural progress. It's not that never the twain do meet. It's that if they are to meet (as they do in ontogenesis) they must be distinct to begin with.
>
> I think there's something else here, though. Unlike Leontiev, Vygotsky ENTIRELY avoids the work of Trofim Lysenko, which he must have been very painfully aware of (Leontiev embraces Lysenkoism and does not repudiate it, even when it is safe to do so). Now, the essence of Lysenkoism is precisely the idea of co-evolution of physical and cultural lines of development IN PHYLOGENESIS, and not simply in ontogenesis.
>
> And something still more. On p. 17, Vygotsky says:
>
> "In the development of the child, two types of mental developmetn are represented (not repeated) which we find in an isolated form in phylogenesis: biological and historical, or natural and cultural development of behavior. In ontogenesis, both processes have their analogs (not parallels)."
>
> On p. 21 he says:
>
> "All the uniqueness of a transition from one system of activity (animal) to another (human) made by a child consists in the fact that the one system does not simply replace the otehr, but both systems develop simultaneously and together: a fact which is unlike any other in the history of the development of animals or in the history of the development of man."
>
> Now, it might be tempting to see this as a retreat: Vygotsky is saying that the animal system and the human system continue to evolve. That is exactly what Vygotsky is EXCLUDING: the co-development of animal activity and human activity is NOT co-evolution, but co-development; it's ontogenetic and has absolutely NO precedent in phylogenesis.
>
> With this, Vygotsky is rejecting not only Lysenko (a dangerous thing to do in 1931, the year this was written). He is also rejecting Haeckl, the biologist who coined the phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", who held that the failure of "primitives" (e.g. Jews and blacks) to develop into civilized, educated gentlemen was racial.
>
> Sure enough, on p. 26 Vygotsky distinguishes between the "feeble-minded" and the "primitive", by which he means the ONTOGENETIC (not the ethnic) primitive; the child without an education: "The primitive (...) does not devitate from the norm in natural development; he only remainsfor some reason, mostly external, outside cultural development."
>
> Now, WHY does Vygotsky emphasize so forcefully that:
>
> a) "the development of human behavior (begins) where the line of biological evolution ends" (p. 17)?
>
> b) "we do not mean to say that ontogenesis in any form or degree repeats or produces phylogenesis or is its parallel" (p. 19)?
>
> I think it's for the same reason that he emphasizes so forcefully that learning and development must be kept separately in order for the former to lead the latter. Of course, both CAN be reduced to "changes over time", and we may even imagine a false reciprocity between the two on a very abstract level.
>
> But when we ignore the sheer DIFFERENCES in time scale between phylogenesis and sociogenesis, between sociogenesis and ontogenesis, beteween ontogenesis and microgenesis, then we destroy the causal-dynamic explanation that Vygotsky wants, because we lose the causal in the dynamic.
>
> Only by DISTINGUISHING between physics and chemistry can we use explain how chemistry represents a qualitatively new form of organization of physical matter. The same thing is true of distinguishing between chemistry and biology, and also biology and culture.
>
> As Gould pointed out, even within evolution, there are very different time scales: periods of (comparatively) rapid change (although on a sociogenetic time scale they are vanishingly slow). And as Gould and Vrba argue, "exaptation' is a quite different mechanism from biological adaptation. The mind is created not by adaptation but by the sociocultural exaptation of the biologically adapted brain.
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
>
> --- On Thu, 11/11/10, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
>
>
> From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
> Subject: [xmca] Co-evolution
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Thursday, November 11, 2010, 10:23 AM
>
>
> "the more life there is, the more rocks there are"
>
> <http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2010/09/14/129858314/my-grandson-the-rock>
>
> Martin
>
> On Nov 11, 2010, at 12:58 PM, mike cole wrote:
>
>> Either way or both, rocks and humans can be said to have co-evolved, right?
>> mike
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 9:43 AM, smago <smago@uga.edu> wrote:
>> I really don't know what rocks have and don't have, aside from scientific properties like retaining heat. I only know that some people find them to have a spirit outside the bounds of human influence and belief. Beyond that, we'd need to consult someone who shares that perspective, which I've never been able to adopt personally even though my property has perhaps thousands of them, mostly from before my intervention but many that I've imported because I like rocks and they're great for building retaining walls for garden terraces and other structures that. p
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Martin Packer
>> Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2010 12:37 PM
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: Dogs
>>
>> But hang on, Peter - you're saying, then, that rocks have a spirit of their own *for* indigenous people.
>>
>> Martin
>>
>> On Nov 11, 2010, at 12:28 PM, smago wrote:
>>
>>> Sounds like the old "tree falls in the forest" thing.
>>> But I suspect that this is a Western perspective. As I understand Indigenous perspectives in N. America, the rocks have a spirit of their own and don't need people to construct their social futures for them. p
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of mike cole
>>> Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2010 11:17 AM
>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: Dogs
>>>
>>> I posted this scholarly account of humans and rocks a while back. Seems to
>>> suggest an answer to the co-evolution issue, Martin, although the gender
>>> ascription and individualism are a little unsettling.
>>> :-)
>>> mike
>>> ----------
>>> *A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates
>>> it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.*
>>> Antoine de Saint-Exupery<http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/antoinedes161736.html>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 6:58 AM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I turned on the radio this morning to catch the end of a news story about
>>>> the co-evolution of humans and rocks! Does anyone know what they were
>>>> talking about?
>>>>
>>>> Martin
>>>>
>>>> On Nov 10, 2010, at 10:33 PM, mike cole wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> When one steps back
>>>>>> and thinks of the quantity and scope of plants and animals that humans
>>>> have
>>>>>> domesticated
>>>>
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