[xmca] meaning potential and cultural artifacts

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

I am changing the header because the activity/practice thread was clogging
my computer. I will respond to that separately.

Here I want to comment on David K's discussion of meaning potential and
cultural artifacts. David is putting into technical language an idea I did
not have technical terms for, and have not used in print before, but often
use when teaching. My way of discussing meaning potential was to like an
artifact to one of our local desert flowers. It contained the dormant seeds
of a beautiful flower that cast off many seeds, but most of the year, or
years if need be, it was a tiny, shriveled, obscure
bit of the local ecology. But when picked up and put to use by a human
being, it came to life, and swelled, and, perhaps, cast of seeds, depending
upon what awaited it.

I previously thought of this in connection with Jame's Gibson's ideas of
affordance. With rare exceptions, Gibson was concerned with natural/physical
constraints and affordances, but I was seeking a way to understand the role
of
cultural constraints, not biological ones. I think that meaning potential
and cultural affordances might be connected concepts.

Does that resonate, DavidKe, or am I on the wrong path?
mike
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