STRUCTURALISM and HISTORICISM
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 3229 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Epistemology, ontology or semantics |
BLAUBERG, SADOVSKY and YUDIN point out: “In the literature on the question, structuralism is not infrequently presented as antithetic to historicism. It is stated that any structural research rejects the historical approach in principle” (1977, p.31). The authors do no accept this viewpoint.
This observation is concurrent to others by different authors and corresponds to a tendency to formalism noted in the works of some structuralists (in linguistics and cultural anthropology for example).
On the other hand an a-historical stand is only part of a non-dynamical one and serves as a basis for an artificial opposition between structure and function.
Obviously, however structure is a historic remainder or memory of a probably more or less cyclic process and it can persist on a long term basis in the future only if the process remains functional.
Furthermore, behavior is incited by structures, which are traces of older behavior (cf. the concept of stigmergy).