Talk:Structuralism/Archive 1

Archive 1

Question

How about psychology? I have not found a word about Wilhelm Wundt who is called the father of structuralism in psychology which can be noticed in most main psychological textbooks. I am asking as I do not feel competent enough to edit the article myself. Maybe there would be someone willing to do that? Similar thing follows psychoanalysis and what Freud did basing on structuralism. E.G. Following 2nd European Edition of "Psychology" ( Carlson, Buskist, Martin ), Pearson publishing house, 2006, p.26 in short we find there that : Wundt defined psychology as the 'science of immediate experience', his approach was called structuralism and it was the first proper school of thought to emerge in the history of psychology. The subject matter was the structure of the mind, built from the elements of consciousness, such as ideas and sensations. (...) Structuralism's raw material was supplied by trained observers who described their own experiences engaging in introspection. This is just a little piece of information. Shortly about Freud, same source, p. 29 : Freudian structuralism was different from Wundt's, although his theory of the mind included structures. He built the concepts of ego, superego, id, and other mental structures through talking with his patients. He did no laboratory experiments. His hypotheses dealt with unconscious and thus it was not possible to use the introspection method. Also, unlike Wundt, Freud's mental structures served biological drives and instincts, reflecting the animal nature of humans.

Moscikowa (talk) 05:53, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Comment

If someone could fill in the missing that wouldbe great. It's been a while since I've taken it, but someone should add something about economic structuralism here. I would myself, but I'm not fully confident in my grasp of the various terminology (esp the differences in the endnote below the Balaam quote). If someone could elucidate this in the article that would be great. I'm looking at a text on International Political Economy at the moment (Introduction to International Political Economy by Balaam and Veseth) and it mentions economic structuralism.

"...Marx's analysis finds a home under the general heading of structuralism (or perhaps economic structuralism) because he views the economic structure to be the strongest single influence on society. Marx focused on the production structure inherent in capitalism, seeing in it a dynamic that produces classes, leads to class struggle, and generates crises that lead to revolution and the next stage in history. For marx it is the structure that dominates events, more so than ideas, nature, or military generals. Marx saw people trapped in a production structure that shaped them and that they could change only by acting collectively and heroically. ..."[Balaam 73].

The preceeding quote has an endnote which reads:

"We have used the term structuralism in a general sense here. At a more advanced level "economic structuralism" is differentiated from "political structuralism." In economic structuralism, it is the structure of economic relations that influences society most. In political structuralism, it is the structure of political power that is most influential."

Silentelkofyesterday

It would be nice if the origins of structuralism were elaborated on, maybe even in a seperate article, since the history section talks about structuralism first emerging in the 19th century. i've seen it said in a couple of places, namely Terrence Hawke's Structuralism and Semiotics, that the structuralist view can be traced back to Giambattista Vico and his book The New Science, although how robust, self-conscious, and contiguous the lineage of structuralism actually is would have to be analyzed.

It would be useful to elaborate on the nuanced and tacit relationship between structuralism and semiotics, one which is often stated but seldom analyzed systematically. i think it has to do a lot with a common base in the sign (and the formal structure of the sign as the associative total of the signifier-signified), but it would be good to deliniate them and track how they feed and have fed onto each other.

structural linguistics deserves its own page (as structural anthropology has), and the Russian formalists, which Roman Jakobson was also a part of and whose theoris were taken up by different sectors of structuralism, needs to be mentioned in the structural linguistics section in the same brief way that the Prague school is

Structuralism in psychology: What about Georges Lacan? --HJH

You mean Jacques Lacan? 68.88.233.134 23:32, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

"So, implicitly, languages are not translatable into each other. This is a possibility taken up by deconstructionism."

I'm not sure from what point of view this is written, but, in my opinion, it's complete nonsense. What seems to me to be lacking, is the notion that spoken and written languages are only an intermediate stage - they try to represent the thought process that takes place within ones brain. As humans have much in common, it's possible to replace (or translate) one intermediate level of expression (a language) with another. I hope someone understand this! Dduck 19:17, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Weasel words

While the following section may well contain some valid points, its use of weasel words makes its style non-encyclopedic. I've copied it here in the event that someone wants to either cite sources (ie, "Joe Smith suggests that... Erwin Brown, on the other hand, says...") or rephrase it to avoid the use of weasel words. Also, beyond the first use of the word in the article, 'structuralist'/'structuralism' doesn't need to be bolded.

Some feel that a structuralist analysis helps pierce through the confusing veil of life to reveal the hidden, underlying, logically complete structure. Others would argue that structuralism simply reads too much into 'texts' (in the widest sense) and allows clever professors to invent meanings that aren't actually there. There is a variety of positions in between these two extremes, and many of the debates around structuralism focus on trying to clarify issues of this sort.

-Seth Mahoney 15:33, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

Possible non sequitor

I suspect there is a problem with the text:

A secondary use of structuralism has recently been seen in the philosophy of mathematics. According to structural theory, meaning within a culture is produced and reproduced through various practices, phenomena and activities which serve as systems of signification. A structuralist studies activities as diverse as food preparation and serving rituals, religious rites, games, literary and non-literary texts, and other forms of entertainment to discover the deep structures by which meaning is produced and reproduced within a culture.

As far as I can tell there is no connection between this text and anything to do with the philosophy of mathematics.

I am an innocent when it comes to Structuralism, so I'm reluctant to jump in and remove the bold text. Innocent or not, I can tell that it is in need of urgent medical attention (elaboration, or else surgical removal). Who can help? --Philopedia 7 July 2005 19:27 (UTC)

In addition to being a non-sequitor, the (bolded) statement is incorrect. Structuralism in the form of structural analysis evolved relatively early, and if my meagre knowledge of the history of math and engineering is accurate, it evolved in the early to mid 1800's. If it had not been changed already, I will do so. Vonkje 14:51, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Math has been evolving since ancient times and nothing special happened in the early or mid-1800s to permanently codify it. It continues to evolve.

I am currently trying to understand Piaget's Le structuralisme and I note that his first few chapters concern structuralism in mathematics, physics and biology. (Since he was a biologist, I trust he knew what he was talking about.) But this Wikipedia article insists that structuralism only concerns the social sciences. Can someone throw some light on this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Seberle (talk • contribs) 17:28, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Structuralism in anthropology

I don't know how one can broach this topic without mentioning the paleontologist Andre Leroi-Gourhan, who wrote 'Geste et Parole' (Gesture and Speech) in the 1960s. AS the MIT Press website says "Combines in one volume 'Technics and Language' and 'Memory and Rhythms', the cornerstones of Leroi-Gourhan's comprehensive theory of human behavior and cultural development", it's a highly structuralist work which directly informed later thinkers like Derrida, little known in the Anglosphere because it was not translated into English until the 1990s.

Copple's abstract from Gesture, Vol 3 No 1 2003 sums it up quite nicely;

(Contrary to) Chomsky’s contemporary mentalist view ... that espoused Cartesian rationalism ... Leroi-Gourhan takes an integrated approach to human evolution: gesture (conceived of as ‘material action’) and speech are seen as twin products of an embodied mind that engendered our technical and social achievements. His explanation of the evolutionary association between the hand and the face provides a biological basis for cognitive as well as communicational aspects of gesture, with culture emerging as an extension of our zoological foundation. He asserts that the liberating of the hand from locomotion led to the liberating of the face from prehension, thus creating the duality of instrument and symbol whereby human beings physically and mentally grasp the world in which they live.

Structuralism in linguistics

This treatment is somewhat incomplete, and quite foreign to what goes on in the current practice of linguistics. In particular, saying that structuralism has been primarily supplanted by post-structuralism and deconstruction is not really true, at least in Anglosphere linguistics---Chomsky's views have long been much more dominant, and are primarily challenged for primacy by other views vaguely from the same tradition, not from the structuralist/post-structuralist/deconstruction tradition. --Delirium 03:01, 8 December 2005 (UTC) -Contrarily to Chomsky, structuralism has the main defect of not being formal enough. Maybe that's why so many well-known structuralists were caught by Sokal inserting calculus (Lacan, Deleuze, ...) or topology (Lacan) without justification and without clarity into their theories... Plwase, make my day, and read Fashionable Nonsense.

I am going to remove the existing first paragraph from this section, as it is poorly written (especially compared to the paragraphs that immediately follow it), lacks formatting and wikilinks, and covers material explained better elsewhere in the article. Here is the paragraph, in case anyone would like to rewrite and reinsert any of its content into the article:

Structuralism states that human culture is to be understood as a system of signs. Robert Scholes defined structuralism as a reaction to modernist alienation and despair. Structuralists attempted to develop a semiology (system of signs). Structuralism was highly influenced by Saussure and his study of linguistics. Saussure used the term phoneme to represent the smallest basic speech sound. Parole means a specific word, while langue is a language which a parole belongs to[citation needed]. A word is assigned a definiton when all people of one langue agree upon what the word represents. Structuralists look more at the langue than the parole.

If anyone thinks this is a mistake, please discuss! Sjb0926 (talk) 15:21, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Course in general linguistics is not a book by Saussure

It's rather a transcript his students made in his lectures. It was published only after Saussure's death. Since I'm not a native speaker I don't want to spoil this article with my english, but someone should do a little research to be 100% correct and edit the article...

for what it's worth, some of his own writings were discovered in Geneva in 1996 and have been recently published as "Writings in General Linguistics," and apparently deviate from the Cours and clarify some central and long-staining ambiguities within the latter.

Kinds of the same structuralism, or just different things called "structuralism"?

Though I don't know a lot about structuralism other than in philosophy of mathematics, the various kinds of structuralism in this article seem to be very different from each other (certainly different from the mathematical kind). Both the linguistic and mathematical kinds of structualism focus on relationships rather than individual compontents, but does this vague similarity make these actually the same? Furthermore, the 19th century pscyhological kind seems to be exactly opposite; it is apparently about reduction of a whole to individual components. It seems that some kinds of structuralism in this article are variations on the same idea (e.g. linguistic and anthropological), but others are entirely separate—maybe they should be split into their own articles. (I could move the "structuralism in philosphy of mathematics" section to philosophy of mathematics which lacks a section on structuralism.)

-- I agree COMPLETELY. The psychological structuralism has absolutely nothing to do with the rest, and even the linguistic and mathematic structuralism are two different stories. Why not make two or several different articles? The way things look here, it's like an article on APPLE with sections about a fruit, about a city and about a computer company... It's ridiculous! Golioder 09:30, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

The Logical positivists: Canap, Schlick, and Neurath

There needs to be a new section on structuralism devoted to the logical positivists, particularly Carnap, Schlick, and Neurath. The structuralism of the logical positivists is spelled out in Philosophical History and the Problem of Consciousness by Paul Livingston. The connection between the structuralism of the logical positivists and the literary critics was suggested by Paul de Man. De Man mentions a convergence between I.A. Richards and logical positivism in his essay "The Dead-End of Formalist Criticism" which is in Blindness and Insight. Specifically de Man says, "The promise held out in Richard's work, of a convergence between logical positivism and literary criticism, has failed to materialize." It failed to materialize according to de Man because of Empson's questioning of the core assumptions of the structuralist (or formalist) critics.

I might be willing to write the section if people were in favor of adding it and no one else wanted to write it.

Question from comments page

It would be nice if someone could explain the connection between structuralism and analytical philosophy of language. Aren't they addressing the same central problems? Uidog 15:20, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Definition of subject

It would be nice if someone could define structuralism. The opening paragraph seems to assume that the reader already knows what it is.

Eliotistic 05:38, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

structuralists and post structuralists

The article defines certain people as structuralists, and then says that they very strongly denied being structuralists. The post-structuralist page lists many of those same people as post-structuralists. I think this needs to be resolved. Or at least, there has to be an argument for how they could be structuralists when they them selves did not think so, and if some people categorize them as post structuralists. Novium 11:05, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Structuralism is such a complex& confusing scientific literary theory. Can it be further dymistified here before the end of today? —Preceding unsigned comment added by DSKING (talk • contribs) 11:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

See my delineation of the definitions of structuralism, poststructuralism, postmodernity, and postmodernism, over at poststructuralism's talk page to get a basic gist of why the term is so problematic. --Le vin blanc (talk) 12:27, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

A new introduction and 19th century structuralism

I added a more informative introduction, and removed the information on 19th century psychology, since it has nothing to do with the movement commonly considered structuralism, except for the name (the same goes for mathematics). --Le vin blanc (talk) 18:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

CAN the sign signified& signifier be related to Clade LEVI-STRAUSS's myth theories?```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by DSKING (talk • contribs) 11:08, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Lévi-Strauss's work on totemism and the activity of human taxonomy in The Savage Mind and Totemism is certainly dependent on the lexicon of Saussure. Lévi-Strauss argues that there are an infinite number of ways of interpreting what a symbol stands for, in other words, what it the signifier signifies. And that therefore we mustn't interpret each symbol of a society in isolation, but study them in relation to one another, so that through the similarities and contrasts, what the signifiers stand for comes into view. This is nothing other than Saussure's idea that a sign is determined by all the other signs in a system. For this reason, and this reason alone, Lévi-Strauss can be considered a structuralist.

In what I have read of his popular work on mythology, The Structural Analysis of Myth, though, he makes use again of Saussure in a similar manner, which is all the more reason to consider him a structuralist. For he argues that myths can be divided into units, and that the meaning of these units is determined by the other units in the system. So although he may not make use of the terms sign, signifier, and signified, he certainly makes use of the ideas of synchrony and value.

--Le vin blanc (talk) 12:12, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I think an argument for including--and relating--Wundt and Titchener's structuralism can be made, and in fact I recall at least one author viewing 20th c structuralism as a revivification of 19th c structuralism, adapted to linguistics.

At any rate, if Titchener is not referenced here, we need disambiguation.

(--Mr. Stein (talk) 19:48, 24 June 2009 (UTC))

Structural linguistics

Hey structural linguistics needs a page of its own. Why should it be redirected here? Structuralism and structural linguistics are two different things. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Supriyya (talk • contribs) 08:28, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I have been wanting to make a page on structural-linguistics for awhile now. I may make one in the future, if I have time. If you want, you can always start the page yourself to get things underway. --Le vin blanc (talk) 00:57, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I've made a very basic start here. --Le vin blanc (talk) 23:41, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Domains of structuralism?

I am currently trying to understand Piaget's Le structuralisme and I note that his first few chapters concern structuralism in mathematics, physics and biology. But this Wikipedia article insists that structuralism only concerns the social sciences. Can someone throw some light on this? seberle (talk) 20:59, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

As I continue to read about structuralism, it is becoming clear that this article is severely limited in its view of structuralism. According to some authors (e.g. Amir D. Aczel), structuralism was originally a mathematical idea that had an impact on all sciences (not just social sciences) in the 20th century, especially in France, but also elsewhere. I am placing a tag on this article indicating a need for an expert to paint a larger picture of exactly what structuralism is, its origins and influence on all domains of human thought. The opening sentence is clearly wrong -- even if structuralism is best known today for its impact in the social sciences, this is not how it was understood by 20th century French philosophers, nor college professors I have talked with in the U.S.--seberle (talk) 16:00, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

actually it originated in europe in maths and sciences and migrated through semiotics and wa appropriated for other things in the u.s. you can read about the history of structuralism in francois dosse, but he really only talks about humanities and social sciences, and really it started earlier than he explains, which serres explains to latour in the book where latour interviews serres. --Buridan (talk) 18:09, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Ok, great. This information needs to be integrated into the introduction of this article, instead of just saying that "Structuralism is an approach to the human sciences", which is misleading.--seberle (talk) 18:21, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Merge discussion

I propose that Structuralism (philosophy of science) be merged into this article to remove unnecessary duplication. Jezhotwells (talk) 18:02, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

The structuralism in philosophy of science goes back to Joseph D. Sneed and has nothing to do with the structuralism in the tradition of Ferdinand de Saussure. --Emp3 (talk) 00:59, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Right, that's two different things. This structuralism does not investigate symbol systems but is an approach to formal reconstruction of theories. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.185.53.217 (talk) 17:16, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

both have absolutely no overlap. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.178.156.63 (talk) 16:15, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

dialectic is funn cuz

dear whoever put {{fact}} in where I just removed it,

you can go back and put in something that asserts that "the movement (described herein) exists" and put your tag behind that (if you want). but that seems weird and overly dialectical, eh?

that the thinkers named didn't consider themselves part of anything called a movement is not really what you want to challenge, right? I'm just saying. k, later. Skakkle (talk) 22:50, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Edits to the introduction

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)

Edits to the Overview

In the paragraph labeled "3." the writer states, "in language, there are only differences 'without positive terms.'". While this might have great significance in its original context, or to students steeped in structural philosophy, it is indecipherable to the uninitiated. To me, the statement conveys as much meaning as if you had written, "in baseball, there is 'right' and 'left.". Please explicate.

Also, the first sentence of the section appears to be a fragment left over from earlier edits. There is no antecedent for the "related" term. It should be rewritten from:

The term "structuralism" is a related term that describes a particular philosophical/literary movement or moment. The term appeared in the works of French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss...

To read: The term "structuralism" describes a particular philosophical/literary movement or moment that appeared in the works of French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss ...

I would make the edit myself but from the talk history it appears that some editors feel passionately about the text, so I will leave it them to make the fix. Tpkaplan (talk)

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)

There's a number of articles on structuralism-related topics in Wikipedia, and they all seem to be written by people who have a strange view of structuralism and also seem to dislike it. What I read here does not match up with structuralism as it was taught to me in school some decades back. (Viz, structuralism seemed to be alive and well and actively taught in at least one American Ivy-League university in the 1980's, so I am stumped as to why this article claims it had fallen out of favor a decade earlier...) I am not an expert, though, and cannot fix everything here that seems to be just-plain wrong. Where are the experts? 88.119.194.62 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:30, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

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)

'Structuralism', its outside scope of definition, can also involve relative thinking skills which people have applied to recognize societal phenomena and fine arts' innovations (compositions), rather than only for mathematics and science. Yes, they also can be quantified; but really for people's aesthetics, it's rather than this... Take an example, in musicology and education, Sonata form's basic elements and influential inspirations from root, for the thinking training of piano learners and music appreciators, have been carrying basic factors of 'structuralism' in classical era. Based on their analogical similarities, 'Sonata form' thinking skill would be possibly attributed to under the category of 'Structuralism'. Thanks! Jason M. C., Han (talk) 07:26, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Structuralism Controversy

Further to the previous comment by Robertwharvey I have amended the overview. However, it's still the case that the term "structuralism" is not only not properly explained; it is also misinformed when referring to "structuralist" authors. Louis Althusser is perhaps the best example of how a broadly and badly defined term ended up confusing both an alleged philosophy (structuralism) and the work of the author being labelled (Althusser). I would suggest a separate section to incorporate the structuralism controversy around Althusser as a first step to overhauling this page.Proudhonjunior (talk) 15:21, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Origination

I just started my Psychology class, but is says here that Edward Bradford Titchener, a student of Wilhelm Wundt, started to study structuralism. No clear time frame is mentioned here, but it should be after Wundt opened the first Psychology laboratory in 1879.

David G. Meyers, Psychology 10th Edition in Modules

24.255.213.207 (talk) 21:39, 27 August 2013 (UTC)Student

Structural Linguistics

The talk page Talk:Structural Linguistics contains a number of critiques of that article, which seem to also apply to the section on structural linguistics here. The article here seems to be biased against structuralism, without adequately explaining what structuralism (in linguistics) is in the first place. From what I know about linguistics, that just seems wrong, but I am not an expert. 88.119.194.62 (talk) 18:16, 17 November 2015 (UTC)