Tool and Sign in the Development of the Child

This section reproduces the first four chapters of Vygotsky's famous work on Tool and Sign (in other places, translated as Tool and Symbol). There are an infinite number of ways to understand and interpret a scholarly text. However, it is absolutely indispensable to keep one thing in mind when seeking to make sense of an author's ideas: a text, just like any other meaningful creation of the human mind, must be considered to be alive. It is alive because it is born out of the author's attempt to make sense of the world and to bring something new to the world, transforming that world and, in the process, simultaneously transforming oneself. A text is alive in another way in that it is always born out of collective, not solitary, efforts of many people who are involved in the process of knowledge creation in multiple roles: as immediate and distant partners in dialogues of ideas, as opponents whose views are critiqued, and more often than not, as colleagues who collaborate shoulder to shoulder in carrying out the scholarly project. A scholarly text is alive in yet another sense: it always needs to be read by someone anew, to be made into a meaningful part of the reader's own life and work, thus continuing that text's existence within the continuously unfolding and creative human pursuits in the world.