>>Of course , other species learn and imitate. Learning and imitation are not sufficient to constitute human tradition or culture. The distinctive characteristic of culture, as I've said dozens of times, is symboling and learning from symboling, and _not_ learning by imitating. Humans do learn by imitating, but that is not their cultural learning. The cultural learning is through symbols, and symbols do not "imitate" what they represent. Thus, with symbols and culture, humans can learn from dead generations , from dead people who are not present to imitate.<<
I think you are over-estimating 'symboling'. What seems to be important in the evolution and development of human culture is three generations interacting with each other. This then complicates when humans develop complex written language and a means to transmit more through texts, but that is, relatively speaking, a rather modern phenomenon--and what did it transmit? The gospels of Christ? The adventures of Robinson Crusoe? How much of what was transmitted was core technology or transformative know-how? For the most part, it still isn't. Want to learn to be a java programmer? Hang with current java programmers, if only to learn how to learn what they know and add to it. >>If my parent tells me a story about how my now dead great-great grandfather learned to swim, the words don't imitate the act of swimming. They convey it through words which don't directly imitate the act of swimming. My great great grand father doesn't have to be physically present to demonstrate for me to imitate. Of course, I do learn somethings by their being demonstrated by someone in my physical presence, but humans learn that way _and_ in the symbolic way. Humans learn both ways. Other species only learn through imitation of direct demonstration, not through symbols.<< Son, I want you to learn to swim. So I'm going to tell you a story about your great great great granpappy and how he learned to swim? Does that make sense to you? So let me go back to the point about how we seemed to have developed one aspect we share with wolves--we nurture and care for not only our direct young, but clan young, and almost as importantly, clan elders. So yes we are in touch with what previous generations knew through symbolic language, but it only gets passed on through living bodies--indeed, it only has a reality through living bodies. And having at least three generations working at it cooperatively means we can do tasks of greater complexity. I wish though somebody's great great granpappy had passed on how to stop a leak a mile down in the Gulf to those non-imitating humans of BP and Halliburton. The problem with symboling and other such abstract approaches to language, speech and communication is it becomes an 'organ' without a body, to borrow a metaphor from Deleuze and Guattari. CJ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
