This post relates to a discussion of Shaffer and Clinton (2007) on the eXtended Mind, Culture and Activity discussion list (XMCA) in June and July of 2007.
1. Bruner and tools for thought
In the toolforthoughts article, computer technology is the focus of discussion about tools in relation to thought. Noting Levi-Strauss’ observation “that totems (e.g., animals and other natural objects) were not chosen because they were good to eat, but because they were good to think with,” Paul Dillon implicitly raised a question of tools for thought as something more general than computers in the world we live in.
Other examples are suggested in Peter Dow’s account of a curriculum development project headed by Jerome Bruner (circa 1965):
Concern with teaching about technology had been a persistent [p. 87] theme from the beginning at ESI Social Studies. …. Bruner linked technology to the development of man’s conceptual powers. “What is most characteristic of any kind of tool-using,” he wrote, “is not the tools themselves, but rather the program that guides their use. It is in this broader sense that tools take on their proper meaning as amplifiers of human capacities and implementers of human activity.” ….
Early efforts to define the technology unit and translate these general notions into effective classroom materials bogged down in debates over how broadly to define the term tool. Should the discussion of tools be restricted to physical objects, or is a logarithm a tool? Is the Magna Carta a tool? Is E = mc2 a tool? Should the technology materials include perspectives from disciplines as diverse as mathematics and history? One of the difficulties in trying to construct a unit on this topic was the lack of a clear conceptual structure for defining what technology is and for considering its social implications. Here, as with the other topics, some of the most interesting issues and questions fell outside of the framework of established academic categories. … (Dow, 1991, pp. 86-7)
2. Peirce, thought, & signs
Schaffer and Clinton draw from Latour’s strategy for correcting what Latour sees as the problem of treating the human and the non-human asymmetrically. It seems to me, though, that what Latour sees as a problem arises from an assumed Cartesian dualism. The problem does not arise, in the first place, within a Peircean perspective that does not presume that kind of dualism between the human and the natural, or the human and the artificial.
Peirce recognized the world as constituted semiosically, with humans ourselves emerging within our participation in the semiosis that was well underway before we got here. Peirce understood the entire universe as “perfused with signs”:
It seems a strange thing, when one comes to ponder over it, that a sign should leave its interpreter to supply a part of its meaning; but the explanation of the phenomenon lies in the fact that the entire universe — not merely the universe of existents, but all that wider universe, embracing the universe of existents as a part, … that all this universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs (Peirce, CP 5.448; cf. Whitson, 2007, p. 322 ).
Peirce says “all thought is in signs,” understanding “thought” as as an activity of the world (not just humans), and “signs” also in a sense that’s not limited to human communication. From Whitson (2007, pp. 296-7):
As distinguished from semiology [i.e., in the tradition of Saussure -- including Greimas and Latour], as well as earlier historic forms of semiotics [e.g., with the Stoics], semiotics following the work of C. S. Peirce is today, first and foremost, the study of semiosis, or the activity of triadic sign-relations, recognizing that
the whole of nature, not just our experience of it, but the whole of nature considered in itself and on the side of its own and proper being is the subject of semiosis — the process and product, that is, of an action of signs coextensive with and constructive of the actual world as well as the world of experience and imagination. (Deely 1994: 187-188)
As Peirce observed, ‘To say … that thought cannot happen in an instant, but requires a time, is but another way of saying that every thought must be interpreted in another, or that all thought is in signs’ (CP 5.253). Once the semiosic character of thought is recognized, thought itself is understood in a more general sense, such that
Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in the work of bees, of crystals, and throughout the purely physical world; and one can no more deny that it is really there, than that the colors, the shapes, etc., of objects are really there. … Not only is thought in the organic world, but it develops there. (CP 4.551)
What exactly is it that Peirce says is ‘really there’ in the physical world, as undeniably as the colors and the shapes of objects? What Peirce is referring to is the semiosic action of triadic sign-relations:
It is important to understand what I mean by semiosis. All dynamical action, or action of brute force … either takes place between two subjects … or at any rate is a resultant of such actions between pairs. But by ‘semiosis’ I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a coöperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs. (CP 5.484; original emphasis)
What, then, are tools, or toolforthoughts? Are they different from signs, species of signs, or what?
3. Newton, signs, and tools
Among the problems tackled by Isaac Newton, over the course of his varied career, was the problem of preserving England’s currency against counterfeiting and “clipping” (filing off precious metal from the edges of coins). As head of the Royal Mint, Newton oversaw torture to induce confessions, capital punishment, and even having offenders drawn and quartered to protect the value of the royal currency.
Newton’s mint began the practice of making coins with ridges around the edge so that clipping could be easily detected; and also, at that time, actually engraving the edge with the words “DECUS ET TUTAMEN” — a phrase that might be literally translated as “an ornament and a safeguard,” but which we might also recognize as an engraving that is announcing itself as “both a sign and a tool.”
4. Of tools and signs (umbrella example)
Let’s try this example: Suppose I know that you always check the weather on your computer on your new iPhone before you go out for lunch. Today I notice you picked up your umbrella on your way out the door. Without checking the weather for myself, I take my own umbrella with me when I go out. From a Peircean perspective, my action of taking my umbrella is one of the three terms in a triadic sign-relation: My action is an interpretant determined by your action (the representamen), interpreted as a sign of possible rain (the object-term in this triad). Here the umbrella participates in the activity of triadic sign-relations.
When we get outside, either of us might be preoccupied with holding our umbrella in the right position so it doesn’t get blown inside-out by the wind. Now our concern is with the umbrella in its tool-relations — or simply its instrumental use as a tool for keeping dry.
And, as they say, maybe “sometimes an umbrella is just an umbrella.”
There seems no reason for trying to sort things into categories, as being either “tools” or “signs” — the question, rather, would be whether we are presently concerned with something as it participates in the activity of sign-relations, or as it functions within tool-relations.
What do you think?
Deely, John N. New Beginnings: Early Modern Philosophy and Postmodern Thought, Toronto Studies in Semiotics;. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994.
Dow, Peter B. Schoolhouse Politics: Lessons from the Sputnik Era. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Peirce, Charles S. Collected Papers. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1866-1913/1931-1958.
Shaffer, David Williamson, and Katherine A. Clinton. “Toolforthoughts: Reexamining Thinking in the Digital Age.” Mind, Culture, And Activity 13, no. 4 (2007): 283-300.
Whitson, James Anthony. “Education à la Silhouette: The Need for Semiotically-Informed Curriculum Consciousness.” Semiotica 164, no. 1/4 (2007): 235-329.
