Didn't you propose that potty-training was the "drosophillia" (a fruit fly,
right?) whose--I'm assuming--evolutionary history could tell us (something?)
about evolution [in an objective way, I assume]? If you have been following
this thread, might'nt "sewing" as I've defined it also work to reveal this
drosophile effect?
Questions: What is "drosophilia"? What facet of evolution were we
proposing to study? What aspect of potty-training was supposed to show
this? Am I using "sewing" as you were using "potty-training"? Which
drosophilia is better for showing an aspect of evolution, sewing or
potty-training? Why?
I think that sewing as an "idea" has undergone steady, ordered changes in
quick succession. I think that sewing is longitudinal and cross-cultural
(can address evolution accross time and accross groups...time and groups
being the control variables such that sewing would manifest as a constant
were it not for "development"--the dependent variable). I think that
theoretically "sewing" as a motor-skill applies to both mental and physical
development if physical development is varied constantly (evolution is taken
for granted as it applies to the physical) then "mental" evolution becomes
the focus. Therefore, I am proposing that the history of sewing be studied
to reveal mental development.
My theory is that: The physical pattern of sewing is a concrete example of
the mental state (being a motor-skill), it entails the quallities of
consistency, efficiency, linearity, repetition, patterns ( concrete
manifestations of mental processes--the consistency of willful
"didacticism", the efficiency of pragmatism, the linearity of deductive
reasoning, the repetition of inductive logic, the pattern-like
transcendence*). I would expect to find a progression from concrete to
abstract...from simple to complex from the earliest evolutionary state
through the present and consistent across all cultures.
I would study this through our living legacy, language using the sewing
metaphor as it applies to all other language patterns (suggesting that
sewing words were the earliest form of language and that all other patterns
will relate to this metaphor to lesser degrees as the metaphorical
significance of language evolves through different groupings--sexual,
mechanical, food, etc.-- such that associations which involve more sewing
metaphors are more ancient. This would further group metaphors according to
primacy...through which more evolutionary mechanisms might make themselves
known (if food preceeded sex, does civilization evolve higher levels of food
associations than sexual associations--do we have more eating disorders than
sexual disorders, for example).
Get my point? Does it follow your original line of thinking about
potty-training?
Brett
*categories to be refined when I understand some of the terminology better;
for example, what is "inductive reasoning", thinking using "patterns", or
thinking using "repetition"?
At 07:09 PM 9/15/97 -0700, you wrote:
>On Mon, 15 Sep 1997, Tim Rhodes wrote:
>> On Sun, 14 Sep 1997, Brett Lane Robertson wrote:
>> > My reasoning is that there was a more
>> > "material" nature to ancient life (less leasure to "wool-gather"--more
>> > sewing and less weaving).
>> This isn't a coment on the rest of the post, just this one small point:
>> In order to sew someone has to have wolven a fabric for you to sew
>> together, no?
>> Which came first, the chicken or his stylin' new duds?
>Actually, no. Sewing works on furs and leathers too, though it's damn
>hard work.
>Both weaving and sewing were probably invented before chickens, however.
>Eva,
>without a good encyclopedia handy
Returning,
rBERTS%n
Rabble Sonnet Retort
Boy, n.:
A noise with dirt on it.