86 SOCIAL SCIENTIST given area of phenomena, the laws according to which they change, their qualitative and quantitative characteristics, their causes. It is necessary to formulate the categories and concepts that are specifically relevant to them—in other words to create one's own Capital.' It is ironical that from 1936 to 1956, Vygotsky was in disfavour in the Soviet Union. The innovativeness of Vygotsky's ideas based on the philosophy of Marxism and their suppression in the USSR for decades is as much reflective of the potency of the world view of Marxism of its flawed practice. Vygotsky's was a remarkable career. In a span of 37 years, cut short by tuberculosis, he wrote extensively on issues of philosophy semiotics, psychology, aesthetic theory, pedagogy, the rehabilitation and the pedagogy of the handicapped, and literature, all in pursuit of developing a socio-cultural theory of mind. He has been described as a 'polyphonic* thinker 'who wove a subtle tapestry of ideas carefully chosen from the intellectual fabric of his times'. (Benjamin Lee) All in all, Vygotsky wrote 200 scientific works. In his later years, when he got interested in the medical aspects of his psychological investigations, he a full Professor, joined the Medical Institute as an undergraduate, first in Moscow and then in Kharkov. Vygotsky was not a psychologist by training. His interest centred on language and aesthetics which led him to study and understand consciousness. Vygotsky began his analysis by a critique of psychological theories of his day—vulgar behaviourism and subjective idealism. The former reduces consciousness to an attribute of the physical aspects of behaviour whereas the latter reifies it into some form of mental substance. He maintained, in contrast to these theories, that consciousness is an attribute of the organisation of practical activity. In the course of its encounter with the surrounding reality, mankind with the use of tools modifies it and copes with it. This provides Vygotsky with his central idea: the essence of human behaviour resides in its mediation by tools and signs. Tools are oriented outward, toward the transformation of the physical and social reality. Signs are oriented inward toward self-regulation. The key point in the work and ideas of Vygotsky is to have put the sign in the forefront. His starting point is that man's world is full of signs, and or actions are not determined by objects per se but by the signs that have been attached to them. Man introduces an object, invests it with meaning and then acts according to that meaning. He maintained that signs as instrument is directed not towards external objects but towards man. The sign is a means of restructuring the consciousness of other man. Vygotsky arrived at the idea of signs as 'psychological tools' by his consideration of the relationship between consciousness and practical activity. 'The tool mediates activity linking man not only to the world of objects but also