7. Structural Perspective

What does it mean to say "the mind works through form?"

Our minds learn things and experience things in a structured form, in a physical form of some kind, and thus our minds work through that.

Claude Levi-Strauss believes the way the mind works hasn't changed over history. What do you think?

I think the way the mind works has changed over history. First and foremost the mind still strives for survival, however priorities have changed, new things have come into the picture that we must account for. Bargaining and moral has come into question. While the basic instinct of survival still lives, we can now deny the instinct and go against. Gruesome it may be, suicide is not in our instinct but it is something some yearn for.

What is the role of paired opposites in the ideas of Levi-strauss?

The idea is similar to the Chinese philosphy of Yin and Yang. That without one there cannot be the other. It is not a relation of good vs. bad, more as a a good vs. not good.

Why do "separate units" have no meaning in language?

Separate units are only separate units because they become so from the ways they are assembled. Seperate units in themselves have no meaning on their own unlike the combined units. For example, "A" in itself has no meaning. "A ball" however means there is one type of ball involved somewhere in anything, even if only in a sentance.

It is the way that myths are ssembled that is crucial, Douglas asserts. Why?

Because myths belong to a different level of mental activity. Myths must reach beyond the plane of basic reality and reach into an imaginary world where anything can happen. We must not only find a way to stretch our minds to see what wouldn't not originally be seen in real life and thus in order to make the myth reach a certain level, it must be assembled in a semi-logical way. You cannot have Icarus one day walking along the path and finding a pair of wax wings and falling to his doom the next. There must be reason and logic to understand how such a thing happened.

Define structuralism and explain its significance.

Structuralism: a way to analyze different works of literature, linguistics, or other written/spoken language.
It allows us to delve deeper into the realm of writing and language and to understand how different ways of speech are started, understood and discontinued. Structuralism also begins other theories in psychology and anthropology.