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These files are maintained strictly for historical reference, research, and recordkeeping purposes,
and the content has not been altered or updated since archiving.
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I am not sure David--children can count by imitation in a most impressive way long before they have any concept of number. Carol On 22 September 2011 13:39, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> wrote: > > > > > > I'm translating Chapter Three of Tool and Sign, and I find it quite > unnerving. On the one hand, it appears, to be little more than a restatement > of the end of the previous chapter, sometimes word for word (e.g. "We stand > before a conclusion of enormous theoretical importance"). And on the other > hand, we really DO stand before a conclusion of enormous theoretical > importance, > > This is, I think, the very first explicit formulation of the genetic law, > to the effect that each and every psychological function appears in the > process of cultural development twice: once as an inter-psychological (that > is, interpersonal. And therefore social, and therefore cultural-historical) > category and then again as an intra-psychological (that is, an > inter-functional, and therefore internal, So it seems entirely appropriate > to tell each leg and each foot separately exactly:where we stand. > > In fact, when we read it more closely, we see that what appears to be > redundancy is really just generalization and abstraction: Vygotsky and Luria > arrive at the genetic law by: > > a) generalizing their previous observation that what appears to be > speechless thinking at the beginning of development and at the end of > development can nevertheless be shown to be brought about, in its mature > form, through speech. > > b) generalizing their previous finding the symbolic activity such as speech > cannot be explained either through invention or through habit formation, or > indeed through any purely individually based function, either purely > biological or purely psychological, but only through the interpersonal, > social, and therefore historico-cultural formation of the personality. > > c) generalizing their previous finding that the basic finding that lower > forms of perception empirically investigated in the previous chapter (viz. > perception, attention, and memory) are not really connected, either to each > other or to the corresponding higher forms. But paradoxically, the higher > forms ARE connected, both to each other and to the lower forms, > which continue to participate in a kind of segmentary, subordinate manner > in their operation. > > And the way they generalize is by using counting and calculation as an > example, because that's really as far as they can get form speech. In fact > the stuff on counting is the ONLY new empirical material in this WHOLE > chapter. So right in the middle of Chapter Three, the eighteenth of 26 > paragraphs, Vygotsky and Luria start talking about counting. And they say: > > Мы приходим к выводу, что развитие счета сводится к участию в нем основных > психических функций, переход от дошкольной арифметики к школьной не есть > простой, непрерывный процесс, но процесс преодоления первичных элементарных > закономерностей и замены их новыми, более сложными. Покажем это на > конкретном примере. > > Now, I take this to mean: > > "We come to the conclusion that the development of counting can (NOT--DK?) > be reduced to the participation in it of basic psychological functions, and > the transition from pre-school arithmetic to school arithmetic is not a > simple, continuous process, but one of overcoming primary elementary > patterns and replacing them with new and more complex ones. Let us show this > with a concrete example." > > I know, I know. There isn't a "not" there. But there should be, shouldn't > there? > > David Kellogg > Hankuk University of Foreign Studies > > > __________________________________________ > _____ > xmca mailing list > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca > -- *"All labour that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence."* *- Martin Luther King, Jr.* ** *Visiting Lecturer Wits School of Education Research Fellow* *Linguistics Dept: Unisa * __________________________________________ _____ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca