[lbo-talk] Philip Mirowski - Social Physicist

[Vincent Clarke]

>
> ^^^^^
> CB: Well, I hope it's your last time saying it.  I'll explain it to
> you one more time. '
>
> The binary opposition is the binary opposition.  The structure is the
> relationship or identification of two ore more binary oppositions. In
> my example, male/female is _not_ the structure.  Get it ?
>
>
I want to leave it alone - I really do. But I just hate knowing I'm right
about something which isn't really open to interpretation. Male/femlae is
not the structure - x/y is the structure or a/b, the structure generates out
of the opposition itself.

So, I'm going to try a different tack. I'm going to switch my brain off and
allow others to explicate this idea.


>From the Wiki page on Structural Anthropology:

*"Structural anthropology* is based on Claude Lévi-Strauss' idea that people
think about the world in terms of binary opposites—such as high and low,
inside and outside, person and animal, life and death—and that every culture
can be understood in terms of these opposites. "From the very start," he
wrote, "the process of visual perception makes use of binary oppositions." [
*Structuralism and Ecology*, 1972]"

Lévi-Strauss' approach arose, fundamentally, from the philosophy of Hegel
who explains that in every situation there can be found two opposing things
and their resolution; he called these "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis."
Lévi-Strauss argued that, in fact, cultures have this structure. He showed,
for example, how opposing ideas would fight and also be resolved in the
rules of marriage, in mythology, and in ritual. This approach, he felt, made
for fresh new ideas.

Allow me to highlight this: "explains that in every situation there can be
found two opposing things and their resolution; he called these "thesis,
antithesis, and synthesis." Lévi-Strauss argued that, in fact, cultures have
this structure."

"Lévi-Strauss took many of his ideas from structural linguistics (Ferdinand
de Saussure--who saw in the structure of language a series of oppositions or
opposites--and Roman Jakobson)"

Lets try that again, to be clear: "Ferdinand de Saussure--who saw in the
structure of language a series of oppositions or opposites--and Roman
Jakobson"

"Lévi-Strauss applied this distinction in his search for the mental
structures that underlie all acts of human behavior: Just as we are unaware
of the grammar of our language while we speak, he argues, we are unaware of
the workings of social structures in our daily lives. The structures that
form the "deep grammar" of society originate in the mind and operate in us
unconsciously (albeit not in a Freudian sense)."

Sorry, what did you say about structure? "The structures that form the "deep
grammar" of society".

F+ for you my friend - the + is for being so goddamn persistent!