Talk:Structuralism

What is Structuralism?

The first paragraph of the introduction should attempt to describe what Structuralism is. What is it, in a nutshell? Why should I continue reading? These are the questions you should be answering in the introduction. The current introduction seems to more properly belong in the body of the article, not in the introduction. Alas, I don't have the background to do it properly; could someone please edit the introduction so that it reads (in two or three sentences): "Structuralism is ____________". The current paragraphs should be incorporated into the "History" portion of the article.

Thank you.

Robertwharvey (talk) 22:09, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Edits to the introdution

I've cleaned up the introduction slightly. I added the citations of Deleuze's 1967 essay "How Do We Recognize Structuralism?" I removed the merge proposal, as it was rather old and consensus seemed to indicate that the philosophy of science approach is a distinct tradition (which is my understanding as well). In the edit history, I said I was going to remove the last paragraph to the disambiguation page, but when I tried to do that, I realised that the approaches referred to don't actually have their own page; rather, they were pointing to general terms (such as social structure). These terms are quite distinct from the sense of structure in the tradition that this article describes. I've removed the psychology wikiproject banner too, as that referred to an earlier, more general version of the article. As it stands, it describes the tradition arising from semiotic analysis. If the other, older traditions mentioned in the talk archive develop into articles, they should be disambiguated from this topic, since there isn't, to my knowledge, any direct connection. DionysosProteus (talk) 00:23, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

The article was unclear on dates of origin. In fact two different times were proposed for structuralism origin. The introduction heavily relied on only 1 scholar (Giles Deleuze) for detailing its early history. I think this a risky move. He has excellent motives for obscuring the history and his writing style is difficult to comprehend and even harder to explain it would be best to ground this history in other scholars work. Qualitynotquantity (talk) 15:02, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I've undone the changes that you made, for several reasons--none of which, I hasten to add, have to do with a sense of ownership, since the article could do with some serious attention. Your edits removed important material about its origins. Something has only one origin, you think? Clearly not. Neither does it offer dates of origin, since this would be an highly speculative claim. It doesn't "rely heavily" on Deleuze. The intro had no citations, and I added one. Your suggestion that his essay expresses hidden, unscrupulous motives, while amusing, is of course nonsense. There's nothing in his description that anyone would want to contest, I would suggest, and his work at that stage is only a hair's breadth away from structuralism itself. His work is no harder to understand than any other major philosopher--open a page of Hegel, Kant, or Spinoza at random and have a go. The only reason I used Deleuze's essay was that I happened to be reading it at the time (without any difficulties with its style), and saw what a state this article was in. But your suggestion that other scholars' work is needed as supporting evidence is sound. It certainly is needed. So, if it is "quality, not quantity", then why not grab a reputable source and add to the article, citing where appropriate? Your edits also introduced claims that Deleze doesn't make in the cited source--he says "structuralism" not "structrualist linguistics"; he say "ideas and imagination" not simply "imagination". DionysosProteus (talk) 17:45, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Cyberbully, and not a very honest one. You said in your bio page quote" "I also dabble in the philosophical terminology of Deleuze and Guattari, which seems to me to be ideal for an encyclopedia, as it's often quite dense." The article is misleading and I now understand why. You need an outlet to bully people. Qualitynotquantity (talk) 20:26, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I think you can go fuck yourself, twat. When your edits misrepresent the source given in the citation, when you remove valuable and sourced information, when you posit absurd motives about an article you clearly haven't read, you should expect your unconstructive and unhelpful edits to be reversed. Try reading the article--it's in no way dense. My user page refers to the collaborations with Guattari, but you'd have to know what you were talking about to understand that. Which you clearly don't. DionysosProteus (talk) 22:28, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

History

Kuhn's title is derived from Ernst Nagel's Structure of Science, not anything to do with structuralism, so far as I can see. Maybe Nagel was influenced by structuralism, but since that book was published in 1961, I doubt it. John Wilkins (talk) 09:57, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Signifier/Signified

As I understand it, the sign does indeed consist of signifier and signified, but the signified is by no means the meaning of the word insofar as meaning is understood as the referent. It is rather the word as such, its ideal form. To be clearer, a signifier may appear different in multiple instances (for example, the same character in different fonts, different people's handwriting, and also slight variations in an individual's own handwriting from one usage to the next), but the signified, or the form which guarantees the identity of each individual signifier with the next, remains in each case the same.

I'm not an expert in structuralism, however, and I only got this impression from Derrida's comparison of the signifier/signified distinction with Husserl's noetico-noematic distinction in Of Grammatology. Therefore, I would appreciate it if someone more knowledgable than me could confirm or refute this, and edit accordingly.

82.24.14.147 (talk) 09:44, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Piaget

I continue to be confused by a comparison of Piaget's Le structuralisme (1968) and this article. There is one reference to Piaget's work in this article:

"Jean Piaget applied structuralism to the study of psychology. But Jean Piaget, who would better define himself as constructivist, considers structuralism as "a method and not a doctrine" because for him "there exists no structure without a construction, abstract or genetic".

Piaget's book begins with structuralism in mathematics, which grounds the whole idea of structuralism. He then moves in the following chapter into the physical sciences and biology. Subsequent chapters cover psychology, linguistics, social sciences, and finally philosophy. The Wikipedia quote above implies that the book is about psychology, but that is only one of seven chapters. This article seems to be saying that structuralism is all about the social sciences, but Piaget sees it as a way of organizing or understanding knowledge, not especially about the social sciences. Not being a specialist in this area, I remain confused by the apparent contradiction between Piaget's presentation of structuralism and this article. (I also note that the quote above is misleading in saying Piaget "would better define himself ..." as if the first part of the sentence had explained he was a psychologist. But of course Piaget was not a psychologist; he was a biologist, though his life work was closely tied to psychology. But then again, even the Wikipedia article on Piaget seems to ignore this.)

The only reference to mathematics in the article (which seems to agree with Piaget's understanding) is:

Lévi-Strauss was inspired by information theory and mathematics.

Piaget thoroughly grounds the understanding of structuralism in mathematical structures, particularly group theory, which he applies to the structures of all the other disciplines. It is not a question of being merely "inspired" by mathematics. These mathematical structures are the entire basis for structuralism.

In this Wikipedia article, there seem to be no references to structuralism as applied to chemistry, physics, or biology, other than Kuhn's analysis of how science works, which has nothing to do with Piaget's understanding of how the natural sciences themselves are structured. In short, I am confused by the very different understanding Piaget seems to have of structuralism as a way of organizing any kind of knowledge. Why is this not clear from the article? How is this contradiction resolved? Is structuralism today considered purely a concern of the social sciences? Why did Piaget present it differently and what has happened to his understanding of this subject? Piaget does warn at the beginning of his book that structuralism had taken on many meanings by 1968, but he seems to be presenting a common understanding of the term (for 1968), not one that he came up with himself. How did we get from there to the current Wikipedia definition that structuralism is how "human culture is analysed semiotically"? --seberle (talk) 03:19, 28 March 2011 (UTC)