1 From Symbolic Cognition to Digital Environments – A Long Term Perspective Luis Moreno-Armella University of MassachusettsMassachusetts, DartmouthKaput Center KKaput kaput Massachusetts, Dartmouth

The human brain has traveled a long way to become symbolic. Basic animal awareness intuits the mysteries of the world directly, allowing the universe to carve out its own image in the mind. “WIRED”

Wired intentionality

Somewhere in evolution, the evolving nervous system must have acquired the mechanisms needed for symbolic thinking… while retaining its original, implicit/analog base. This is the story of our own evolutionary adventure. How did it begin?

conscious control of body movements Skills: cutting, throwing, manufacturing TOOLS… level zero of symbolic culture

Technology of memory Our deepest cultural roots lie in collective action and mimetic thought.

With symbols, we crossed our cognitive Rubicon: culture became our new environment. What is a symbol? SignifierReference field

The first level of symbolization results from crystallizing the intentionality and the actions IN THE SYMBOL.

Signifier “without” reference field…

The study of human cognition has been too often carried on as though humans had no culture, no variability and no history. Cognition Culture Baldwin effect

125,000 Orality Symbolic technology ` Externalization of memory… 40,000

Ancient Counting Technologies Evidence of the construction of one-to-one correspondences between arbitrary collections of concrete objects and a model set (a template) can already be found in between 40,000 and 10,000 B.C. Hunter-gatherers used bones with marks (tallies) as reckoning devices.

The new symbolic capacity: - Cuneiform writing

In Mesopotamia, between B.C. and 8000, B.C., People used sets of clay bits as modeling sets. However, this technique had severe limitations. larger model sets: problems of manipulation and maintenance.

The idea that emerged was to replace the elements of the model set with clay pieces of diverse shapes and sizes, whose numerical value were conventional.

The shape of the counter was impressed on the outer side of the envelope. The mark on the surface indicates the counter inside.

Later, instead of impressing the counters against the clay, due perhaps to the increasing complexity of the shapes involved, scribes began to draw on the clay the shapes of former counters. But drawing a shape and impressing a shape from a material object are different activities. Drawing involves a gesture-structure that goes deeper into the intentionality that crystallize the social co-action involved.

The contextual constraints of the diverse numerical systems, constituted an obstacle to the mathematical evolution of number Context-free numerical system What was needed?

There is still a problem to solve: zero, (of primordial importance in a positional system to eliminate representational ambiguities).

Alphabetic writing --- Greece Phaedrus(impact of writing in Greek society) At the same time: invention and evolution of writing Pictographsideograms 1) 2)

…for this discovery of yours will create forget- fulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. Plato, Phaedrus

Writing became infrastructural…

Today: Digital technologies…

New status of symbol… … EXECUTABLE SYMBOL

The nature of mathematical symbols have evolved in recent years from static, inert inscriptions that users have little personal identification with, to dynamic objects or diagrams that are constructible, interactive. examples Malleability

In a digital ecology, our semiotic becomes digital. Executability is intrinsic to the new symbols and representations: We are externalizing memory AND cognition! Person, society Digital environment Co-action

New cognitive societies:

We shall, never cease from exploration and…

I dedicate this presentation to my friend Jim Kaput Thanks for being here with us. October, 26th, 2007, Kaput Center