The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
Harry Hillman Chartrand
April 2002
Jean Piaget
MAIN TRENDS IN INTER-DISCIPLINARY
RESEARCH - Part IV Meaning and Their
Systems
Section
Index
Page
IV - MEANINGS AND THEIR SYSTEMS
52
15.
Biological signalling and semeiotic
function
53
16.
Linguistic structures and logical structures
18. Diachronic and synchronic problems in relation to
meanings
IV. MEANINGS AND THEIR
SYSTEMS
Every structure or rule and every value has meanings,
just as every system of signs has a structure and values. Nevertheless, the relationship of
signifiant to
52
signifié differs in kind from that of desirability (value) or the
structural (or normative) subordination of one element to the whole to which it
belongs. And this relationship of
meaning is again extremely general in scope, so that interdisciplinary problems
are as important in this sphere as in the previous ones.
15.
Biological signalling and semeiotic
function
Reactions triggered by indices or signals are to be
found at almost all levels of animal behaviour, ranging all the way from the
simple sense-reaction of protoplasm in the unicellulars to the sense-reaction of
the nervous system or its responses to meaningful messages. Moreover this type of meaning, linked to
signals or indices, is the only observable one in children until around 12
to 16 months (sensori-motor levels) and it remains at work in regard to
perceptions and motor-conditioning throughout life. It was therefore necessary to begin by
recalling the role of this initial system of signalling.
35
Index is the name given to a signifiant which is
not differentiated from its signifié (except by its signalling function),
in that it constitutes a part, an aspect or a causal result of that signifié:
a branch protruding over a wall is an index of the presence of a tree, and
the tracks of a hare are the index of its recent passage. A signal (like the sound of the bell
which triggers the salivary reflex in Pavlov’s dog) is only an index, unless
there is attached to it a conventional or social significance (telephone
ringing, etc.), in which case it is a ‘sign’.
In some higher primates and in man (from the second
year) there appears a set of signifiants which are differentiated from
their signifiés in that they no longer simply belong to the designated
object or event, but are produced by the subject (individual or collective) with
a view to evoking or representing those signifies, even in the absence of
any immediate perceptive stimulus on their part: such are symbols and signs, and
semeiotic (or often, symbolic) function is the term given to that capacity of
evocation by differentiated signifiants which then makes possible the
construction of the image or thought. But there are two levels still to be
distinguished in these semeiotic instruments, although in the normal child they
all appear more or less at the same time (except as a rule in
drawing).
The first level is that of symbols, as the term is used
by de Saussure in contradistinction to signs: these are the signifiants
‘motivated’ by a resemblance or some analogy with their signifies. They appear in the child in
completely spontaneous fashion with symbolic (or fictional) play, deferred
imitation, the mental image (or interiorized imitation) and the graphic image.
The initial feature of these
symbols is that the individual subject can construct them by himself, although
their structuration usually coincides with language (except among the deaf and
dumb who add a new term - gesture language - to the preceding series). Their common source is imitation, which
begins as early as the sensori-motor level, where it already constitutes a kind
of representation, though only in actions, and then goes on to deferred or
interiorized imitations, whence the preceding symbols.
53
The second level characteristic of the semeiotic
function (a level which, until we know more about it, would seem to be peculiar
to the human species) is that of articulated language, of which the two new
features as compared with the previous level are, firstly, that it implies
social or educational transmission and thus depends upon the whole of society
and no longer on individual reactions; and secondly that the verbal
signifiants consist of ‘signs’ and no longer of symbols, the sign being
conventional or ‘arbitrary’ as required by its collective
nature.
The first major interdisciplinary questions which such a
picture raises then are, firstly, to determine the common mechanisms and the
antagonisms in and between various manifestations of the semeiotic function,-
but going right back to the level of the significant indices and the currently
known forms of animal language; and, secondly, to determine their connexion with
the development of representation or thought in general, regardless of any
possible or more particular relations between articulated language and
logic.
The first of these demands collaboration between
zoopsychology or ethology, genetic psychology, the psychopathology of aphasia,
deaf-mutes, the blind, etc., and linguistics. Ethology has already built up a fairly
substantial body of material on the innate releasing mechanisms (IRM) which come into play at
the instinctual level and on the releasing mechanisms acquired through learning.
Von Frisch’s well-known studies on
the language of bees have evoked many reactions from psychologists and linguists
(Benveniste), while Revesz has undertaken some systematic comparisons of the
‘languages’ of vertebrates and of man. The general tendency is to regard animal
language as being based not on systems of signs but on a ‘code of signals’
(Benveniste). For one thing, there
is neither dialogue nor the free composition of elements; for another, the
signals used are essentially imitative or mimetic (though it has not yet been
established whether there is already deferred imitation). Such imitative mechanisms thus fall
within the sensori-motor pattern, innate or acquired, and do not yet correspond
to a conceptualization; whereas in human language not only does every word
connote a concept, but the syntactical arrangement of the words itself conveys
information.
It is therefore tempting to look for the source of
thought itself in sign language, as indeed many psychologists and linguists
believe. But although the system of
signs has undoubtedly one exceptional advantage on account of its constructive
mobility and of the considerable number of meanings which it is capable of
conveying, considerations of two kinds regarding the limits of its powers must
be remembered.
The first is that although language is a necessary
auxiliary to the fulfilment of thought insofar as the latter constitutes
interiorized intelligence, it is nonetheless activated by intelligence, which
precedes it in its sensori-motor form; this is a problem which we will consider
again shortly in connexion with the relations between logic and language. But it must be remembered that, however
collective language may be (in its structures, findings, penalties, etc.), it is
bound up in its functioning with individual intelligences outside of which its
signifiants would have no signifies, and whose sensori-motor
pattern itself creates a multi-
54
tude of meanings (space-time patterns, permanent
objects, causality, etc.) which provide the sub-structure of verbal
semantics.
Furthermore, the interiorization of the sensori-motor
intelligence in image or thought is a matter not just of language but of the
entire semeiotic function. In this
respect psycho-pathological data are of great interest and much is still awaited
from co-operation between linguists, psychologists and neurologists. Without going into the highly complex
problem of aphasia, on which much work is still being done but which has so many
neurological incidences that the language and thought factors cannot easily be
isolated, it is interesting merely to note the case of children deaf-and-dumb,
or blind, from birth, but otherwise normal. Among the former there is, of course,
some delay in the development of the intellectual operations as compared with
children capable of speech, but the fundamental operations of classification,
seriation, correspondence, etc., are not missing at all up to a certain level of
complexity, which testifies to a pre-speech organization of those actions.
36 Among blind children,
on the other hand, the delay appears to be greater because of the lack of a
sensori-motor control during the formation of the action patterns, and although
language makes good that lack to some extent, it is not enough to replace
general co-ordinations and depend upon the latter while their build-up is
necessarily retarded.
16.
Linguistic structures and logical structures
The links between linguistics and logic are of
unquestioned importance and are still in process of full development,
particularly as they impact upon longstanding arguments between psychologists
and sociologists.
This, it should first be noted, is no accident. The convergence between the basic ideas
of a linguistic doctrine like F. de Saussure’s and a sociological theory like
Durkheim’s is quite remarkable: language is a collective ‘institution’
transmitted from the outside and imposing itself upon individuals; any
innovations made by the latter must accord with common rules established before
them, and their initiatives are subject to the approval of the linguistic group,
which may reject or accept them, but in the latter case only because of needs
related to the overall equilibrium of the system, etc. Now Durkheim drew from his ideas on the
social totality the conclusion that the rules of logic are imposed by the group
upon the individual, in particular through language, the shaper of intelligences
and the holder of structures which are imposed from childhood through
education.
Current trends in social and cultural anthropology are
moving in the same direction, and we all know how much the structuralism of
Levi-Strauss has been influenced by Saussurian linguistics and by phonology
(Troubetskoy and Jakobson), in that the system of meanings seems to him to throw
light both on the economic exchanges of tribal societies and on the relations of
kinship, the latter comprising a logic that is at one and the same time
collective and a source of individual manipulations (hence his opposition to
Lévy-Bruhl’s pre-logic which Durkheim also contested for similar
reasons).
55
But these trends in linguistic sociology have come up
against a completely different tendency. The vast logical positivism movement
(developed by the ‘
These concepts have been applauded by a number of
linguists and in the Encyclopedia of Unified Sciences Bloomfield
vigorously applauds the disappearance of the naïve idea that concepts must still
be sought beneath the logical or mathematical liaisons: nothing exists except
the observable, perceived fact and the system of signs, whether natural (current
languages) or scientific, used to describe or connote it.
Yet this dual sociological and linguistic movement
(whose unity through convergence is, however, still remarkable, despite the wide
gap between the normative realism of Durkheim and the more or less conventional
nominalism of the ‘logical empiricists’) is in fact being contested, and in
senses that are again convergent but opposed to the previous ones, by a great
deal of research now being conducted by psychologists, linguists and
logicians.
On the psychological plane the author for years has been
trying (and these studies are in full swing with the co-operation of linguists)
to show that the sources of the logico-mathematical structures are to be sought
at a deeper level than language, i.e. at the level of the general co-ordination
of actions. At the level of
sensori-motor intelligence one finds indeed, in the make-up of the patterns of
action and in the co-ordination of those patterns, structures of interlocking
elements, of order correspondence, etc., which are already of a logical nature
and which lie at the start of future thought operations. Moreover, the operations themselves are
more closely connected with the interiorization and regulating mechanisms than
with the purely verbal influences. It is not until we reach the higher
levels that a logic of ‘propositions’ becomes possible in liaison with the
handling of hypotheses enunciated verbally; whereas a whole period of ‘concrete’
operations, i.e. operations bearing directly upon the object, points to the
lasting liaison between those operations and material
action.
From the linguistic point of view it then becomes
possible to carry out precise experiments on the correlations between the
linguistic structure of the verbal expressions used by the child and the
latter’s operational level; the results of those experiments tend to prove that
the language employed is subordinate to the operational structures rather than
vice-versa. 37
As regards that interminable ‘dialogue of the deaf’
between sociologists and
56
psychologists as to whether ‘universal’ logic, meaning
applicable to all individuals, is superimposed on society or is only a product
of it, the two opposing contentions are in fact out of date, in that although
logic is concerned with the general co-ordination of action, that co-ordination
is as much inter-individual as intra-individual: and indeed, the operations
occurring in cognitive exchanges are found upon analysis to be the same as in
individual constructions, so that the former are as much a source of the latter
as vice versa, the two remaining inseparable by reason of their common
biological roots.
On the other hand the linguists, while continuing their
structuralist analyses and in particular while attempting to formalize them as
precisely as possible in order to express the structural liaisons in a language
based on algebraic and sometimes even on physical methods, were far from ending
up with a simple logic, but discovered instead a series of structures sui
generis and peculiar to sign
systems as such. This result is of
two-fold interest, firstly because it shows how a system of signs differs from a
system of intellectual norms of truths, and secondly because it brings up the
problem of the relationship between the two. And that relationship certainly exists,
for while signs have their own laws, it is also their function, within the
active range of the subjects of the language, to express meanings which are of a
logical nature in varying degrees. It was in this way that Hjelmslev, the
linguist, came to propound the theory of a ‘sub-logical’ level where connexions
are formed between logical and linguistic coordinations. It would seem very likely that analysis
of that sub-logic would bring us back to questions of co-ordination of
action.
It must however be remembered, in particular, that
linguistic structuralism, which was essentially static with F. de Saussure, has
become dynamic since Z. Harris stressed the ‘creative’ aspect of language and
since N. Chomsky discovered his ‘transformational grammar’, which makes it
possible to derive from a ‘fixed kernel’, which he regards as innate, an
indefinite number of terms in accordance with precise rules of transformation
(and in conformity with a ‘monoïde’ ordinal and associative structure). Now Chomsky attributes his ‘innate fixed
kernel’ to reason itself, which is the complete reverse of the positivist
position of the linguists (Bloomfield, etc.). One can, of course, without in any way
changing the purely linguistic aspects of Chomsky’s doctrine, query his
innateness of reason, since the sensori-motor intelligence which precedes
language is the end-product of a long structuration in which the hereditary
factors (which play a part everywhere) are far from being the only ones
involved; and H. Sinclair is currently trying to demonstrate that the
constitution of the ‘monoide’ could be explained as the co-ordination of the
sensori-motor patterns. It is
nonetheless true that, in the very sphere of linguistics, we have here a
reversal of the subordination of logical structures to language, thus opening up
a very broad field of experimental research to interdisciplinary collaboration
(psycholinguistics, etc.) in the study of questions which have hitherto mainly
been dealt with in a speculative fashion.
Furthermore, those logicians who, venturing beyond the
problems of pure formalization, look into the question of the relations between
logical structures and the activities of the subject, steer naturally in the
direction of self-regulating
57
systems capable of taking account of the self-correction
proper to logical mechanisms. Now
cybernetics, which can supply such models, is a synthesis of the information or
communication theories and of the guiding or regulatory theories. It is thus on this two-fold plane that a
more natural relationship than a simple and straightforward assimilation can be
established between linguistics and logic. On the one hand language is information,
and various relationships are conceivable between the praxeological aspects of
the codes and their logical structure. It was along these lines that L. Apostel
studied language as a system for the pre-correction of errors. Again, logical operations constitute the
extreme case of thought regulation, and there can be many intermediate stages,
capable of influencing the language, between the weakest forms of such
regulation and the strictest or operational forms. It can thus be seen how interdisciplinary
research, in this field also, is both necessary and
promising.
The general semeiology advocated by F. de Saussure
provides, as we saw in section 15,
for systematic comparisons between the sign systems and various
symbolisms or signallings inferior in nature to articulated language. But it also presupposes comparisons with
what could be called symbolisms to the second power, or of a nature superior to
language, that is to say using language but constituting ‘signifiants’
whose collective meanings are ideological and situated on a different scale
from verbal semantics: such, for example, are the myths, folklore stories, etc.,
which are conveyed through language but each of which is itself a symbol with a
religious or affective meaning conforming to very general semantic laws, as
their surprising and frequently intercontinental dissemination
shows.
However, the problem is not an easy one to master or
even to set. In a nominalistic
conception of logic and mathematics, it could be said that any concept or
particular structure is still a sign which symbolizes, together with but in
addition to the words designating it, the objects to which it applies: thus the
notion of a mathematical ‘group’ would merely be a higher symbol whose meaning
would be reduced to the different displacements, physical states, etc., which
can be described by it. In the
operative sense, on the other hand, the ‘group’ or any other logical or
mathematical concept constitutes a system of actions impacting on the real,
which are true actions even though interiorized and which would therefore have
nothing symbolic in themselves, the symbolism coming in the arbitrary signs
designating the operations but not in the operations as
such.
If this latter interpretation is accepted, not all
thought is necessarily symbolic, but symbolism reappears in all forms of thought
whose value is linked not to its operative structure but to its affective
content, conscious or unconscious: in such an interpretation there is
nonetheless an immense field of human productions, with the more or less
individual ‘symbolic thought’ studied by the psychoanalysts of different
schools, the mythological and folklore symbols, the art
58
symbols and lastly perhaps certain forms of ideologies
as they express momentary collective values and not rational structures (each of
these manifestations, of course, being capable of ‘rationalization’ to some
degree). It can be seen that at
these levels there is a substantial field of comparison open to a general
semeiology and that the latter, inspired by linguistic methods, would be no less
essentially interdisciplinary.
Freudian psychoanalysis, helped in this instance by
Bleuler’s work on ‘autistic’ thought and followed by Jung’s dissident school,
brought to light the existence of an individual ‘symbolic thought’ visible in
dreams, in childrens’ play and in various pathological manifestations. Its criterion is that whereas rational
thought seeks adequation with the real, the function of symbolic thought is the
direct satisfaction of desires through the subordination of representations to
affectivity. Freud began by
explaining this unconscious symbolism as camouflage mechanisms due to
repression, but later came round to the broader conception of Blueler who, with
his ‘autism’, explained symbolism as a centring on the ego, and he pursued his
research in the direction of art symbols. Jung, on the other hand, quickly saw that
this symbolism constituted a sort of affective language and, as a result of
large-scale comparisons with mythologies, came to demonstrate the fairly
universal nature of a great many symbols or ‘archetypes’ which he considered,
without giving proof, as being hereditary, but which are very widespread - which
is quite another thing.
The link thus established between the more or less
subconscious symbolism which the psychoanalysts find in individuals and the
mythological artistic symbolism (one recalls the typical example of the Oedipus
myth and ‘complex’) is evidence that the laws of such a symbolism concern
collective as much as psychological realities. It therefore goes without saying that in
the field of social and cultural anthropology the direct study of mythical
representations provides a contribution of vital importance to this general
semeiology at the level above language; and when Levi-Strauss, for example,
conceives of it in Saussurian terms he thereby introduces into this vast and
difficult field an indispensable methodology which was only too lacking in the
analyses of Jung and Freud.
Nevertheless that is merely the beginning of the work,
for obviously laws which are general at a certain scale of civilization must
have some applications in societies which are familiar with scientific thought.
When K. Marx raised the problem of
the opposition between economic and technical infrastructures and ideological
superstructures, he brought up in doing so a considerable number of questions
regarding the nature and functioning of the various possible types of
ideological productions. To show
how necessary it is to raise these questions, it is worth recalling that one of
the most determined adversaries of the Marxist doctrines, V. Pareto, brought
into his sociology a distinction which was visibly based on them: for it was
Pareto’s view that social behaviour patterns are governed by certain needs or
affective invariants which he calls the ‘residues’; but these - and this is the
only point which interests us - are in fact manifested not in naked or direct
form but wrapped up in all manner of concepts, doctrines, etc., which Pareto
calls ‘derivations’. It is thus
immediately apparent that these ‘derivations’ constitute an ideological
superstructure, but one of an essentially
59
symbolic nature since it comprises essential and
constant affective meanings beneath a variable and secondary conceptual
mechanism.
In this chapter, whose purpose is to seek out the common
mechanisms and to stress the interdisciplinary problems from a methodological
and, particularly, from a prospective point of view, mention must be made,
because of its highly significant implications, of the research bearing upon the
symbolic meaning of doctrines of intellectual form and affective content, since
such research constitutes a striking meeting-point between the possible
extensions of a general semeiology bearing upon higher-level symbolic systems
and the sociological and even economic analysis of Marxian inspiration. One remarkable example of such
meeting-points has been supplied by L. Goldmann in his studies on Jansenism, and
our reason for choosing this example is that it forms one of those somewhat rare
cases in sociology where through theoretical research the existence of a
hitherto unknown fact - in this particular case the discovery of an historical
person but one overlooked by history - has been predicated. Goldmann explained Jansenism by the
social and economic difficulties of the noblesse de robe under Louis XIV: the
complete withdrawal from the world preached by the doctrine was thus the
symbolic manifestation of an affective and collective situation. But pure Jansenism, as reconstituted
through this analysis in terms of social symbolism, was not fully realised in
any of the individuals known to history (Arnauld, etc.), and it was therefore
necessary to build up the complete hypothetical Jansenist - unknown precisely
because completely consistent - who had directed the movement without being seen
outside. Having thus ‘calculated’,
so to speak, the existence of such a leader, Goldmann went on to find him in the
person of the Abbé Barcos and proceeded to demonstrate his effective and until
then unsuspected role in history.
One can thus see the number of literary, artistic and
metaphysical productions which could emerge from such analyses, the syntactic
and semantic aspects of which remain essential even though the most difficult to
distinguish, and whose sociological and even economic aspects are
obvious.
18. Diachronic and synchronic problems in relation to
meanings
Comte’s sociology drew a distinction between static
problems (‘order’) and dynamic ones (‘progress’), but the Saussurian linguistic
system was probably the first to give a positive status to the relative
opposition of synchronic and diachronic considerations in the human sciences.
The history of language and the
etymology of words do not explain everything, since the meanings of words
change, just as the function of biological organs may change, to meet the needs
created by the balance of the language as it is at a particular point of
time.
Now, systems of meanings as relations between the
signifiant and the signifié occupy a special position in regard to
the connexion between synchronic balance and diachronic transformations. As we have seen (paragraph 9), the
maximum dependence between these two aspects is to be found in the sphere
of normative structures, because the evolution of norms - the
operational
60
structures of the intelligence, for example - is a
process of gradual equilibration: this being so, the nearer the structure under
consideration is to its state of final closure (which, it should be added, in no
wise excludes the possibility of its being subsequently integrated into new
structures) the more closely, of course, does the synchronic balance depend upon
this same self-regulating process. We have seen an intermediate situation
(section 14) in the case
of values, whose dependence upon their history increases the more closely they
are linked with structures (normative values) and the less nearly they
correspond to the needs of a changing function. As for the ‘signifiants’ that
operate in systems of meaning, it is obvious that the more conventional or
‘arbitrary’ they are, the more subordinate to the needs of the moment and the
more independent of the previous history they will be. It is therefore in these situations that
we find the minimum of relationship between present balance and
diachrony. This can be seen, for
instance, in a system of artificial, technical signs such as mathematical
language. Fundamentally, the choice
of signs such as A x B, A∙B
or AB
to express multiplication, or of any particular sign for other
operations, depends only on the conventions of the time, and not on the history
of symbols, which in any case comprises series of transformations that are
explicable, but usually linked to the very overall balance of the system at each
period under consideration; fidelity to the past may even be a disturbing factor
rather than a useful one, if it hinders the reorganization of perspectives,
which would on the contrary be facilitated by a new
symbolism.
It is true that ‘signifiants’ can be divided, as
F. de Saussure pointed out (and Peirce earlier, although his method of
classification does not seem so logical) into motivated ‘symbols’ and arbitrary
‘signs’, and that there are transition series between the two. The very notion of the arbitrary nature
of the sign has given rise to discussion, by Jespersen in the past and by
Jakobson today. De Saussure,
however, appears to have answered these objections before they were raised, by
himself distinguishing between the ‘relatively arbitrary’ and the ‘radically
arbitrary’. Broadly speaking, it
does seem to be true that the word used to designate a concept has not as close
a relationship to it (relationship between the phonic subject and the meaning of
the idea) as the concept has with its meaning and its content. Even if the verbal signs are sometimes
accompanied by symbolism (in the Saussunian sense of a relationship of
resemblance or motivation between that which symbolizes and that which is
symbolized) and even if, as far as the speaker is aware, there is nothing
arbitrary about the word (as Benveniste has pointed out), it seems obvious that
the multiplicity of languages bears witness to this conventional nature of the
verbal sign. Signs, moreover, are
always social (explicit or implicit conventions originating in usage), whereas
the symbol may have an individual origin, as in the symbolic games of children,
or in dreams.
The problem raised by linguists of the relationship
between synchronic and diachronic factors in the sphere of relations between
structures and meanings is very broad in scope, and to study it may help us to
understand various interdisciplinary questions, such as those of the
interpretation - which may be linguistic or, on the other hand, operative and
constructive - of logical and mathe-
61
matical structures. If we accept the nominalist hypothesis,
according to which these structures are a mere language used to express
experiential data, the relations between their syntax and their semantic should
obey the general laws that govern their synchronic and diachronic relations.
And at first sight, this indeed
appears to be the case: syntactical rules are continuous in time, while meanings
vary. The theorems of Euclidian
geometry are true today, even though they have changed in meaning, mainly for
two reasons: first, they do not seem to us today to be the expression of a
unique, necessary form of space, as Kant still thought; we see them as one of
several systems of measurement, and this undoubtedly alters their meaning,
enriching it, moreover, with all the possible transitions between Euclidian and
non-Euclidian structures; the other reason, which is still more general, is that
spatial forms do not appear to us today as static figures, but as the results-
of transformations, so that each form of geometry is subordinated to a basic
‘group’ of transformations, and that these groups give birth to each other in
the same way as sub-groups can be differentiated within a main group. But although these meanings depend, at
every point in history, on the synchronic system of knowledge under
consideration at that moment, they do not succeed each other at random, as if
they were the result of accidents or exogenous factors; proceeding by reflective
abstraction from previous states of construction, new inventions which alter
meanings are in line with a progressive equilibration in which the synchronic
balance is at once the result and the starting-point of new constructive
processes. In this respect,
therefore, the situation is considerably different from that of the ‘natural’
languages, in which synchronic balance is a question of re-equilibrations that
are governed by a great many external and internal
factors.
This problem of the relationship between synchronic
balance and diachronic evolution gives rise to another closely-allied problem -
that of the nature of the innovations which change human behaviour in the course
of history and necessitate re-equilibrations. Here we may identify three possible types
of innovation, which play a very different role in the relations of approximate
continuity or discontinuity between present equilibrium and previous
equilibration processes. The first
of these types of innovation is that of ‘discoveries’, which bring to light what
was already in existence, independently of the subject, but which was not known
or perceived before (for instance, the discovery of America). Obviously, in such a case, the necessary
re-equilibrations are not determined solely by the previous states of the
system. Secondly, we speak of
‘inventions’, when new combinations emerge as a result of the actions of the
human subject (without going back to what some biologists have called organic
‘inventions’ in relation to highly differentiated organs that are specially
adapted to a new situation). It is
the property of an invention that, however well the components that are combined
may have been known (so that the innovation is only a matter of making the
actual combination for the first time), yet the invention could have been a
different one; to invent a new symbolism, for instance, does not imply that
others could not have been invented instead. It is obvious that in such cases also
present re-equilibrations and past history are relatively independent. There is, however, a third type of
innovation in human
63
behaviour, which can have considerable social significance; it is sometimes called ‘invention’ and sometimes ‘discovery’ in relation to logico-mathematical structures or the structures of intelligence in general. Mathematical ‘invention’, however, is not a ‘discovery’ (unless one is a Platonist), since it is a new combination; the imaginary number √
-I, for example, is the result of a combination, made by Cardan, of the negative number and the extraction of the root. Nor is it simply an invention, since once it is accomplished one must admit that it could not have been different, and that it therefore arose of necessity from within its own laws. It is in this third case (many examples of which are to be found in the sphere of mental development, in the spontaneous formation of logical structures) that synchronic re-equilibration depends closely upon previous evolution, because diachronic constructions, even at that stage, were based on progressive equilibration, and because the present balance is the (provisional) termination of such a process..NOTES
35. It should even be remembered that biologists speak
of the transmission of information as early as the genome level, the
significant then depending on the order of the sequences in the DNA code (Watson and
Crick).
36. And collectively as well as individually pre-speech,
for among themselves the young deaf-mutes build up a language of
gestures.
37.See H. SINCLAIR, Acquisition du
language et développement de la pensie, Dunod, 1967.
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