Valsiner - A Guided Science - History of Psychology in The Mirror of Its Making PDF

Copyright © 2012 by Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New
Jersey.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright

Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,
without prior permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries
should be addressed to Transaction Publishers, Rutgers—The State
University of New Jersey, 35 Berrue Circle, Piscataway, New Jersey
08854-8042. www.transactionpub.com
This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American

National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2011020483

ISBN: 978-1-4128-4290-7
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Valsiner, Jaan.
A guided science : history of psychology in the mirror of its
making / Jaan Valsiner.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-4128-4290-7
1. Psychology—History. 2. Science—History. I. Title.
BF81.V35 2011
150.9—dc23
2011020483
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction: What Kind of Knowledge—And

for Whom? xi
Part I. Societies and Sciences: Presentations

and Histories 1
1. The Eternal Freedom Movement of Ideas 5
2. Axiomatic Bases for Experiential (Empirical)

Knowledge Construction 13
3. Objectivity and Social Forgetfulness 29
4. Pathways to Evidence: Negotiation

of Knowledge between Its Producers
and Consumers 53
Part II. The Mirror in the Making: Psychology

as a Liminal Science 75
5. From Enlightenment to Struggle: Psychology

and Philosophy in the Search of Wissenschaft 79
6. The Birth of a Troubled Wissenschaft:

Emerging Psychology in Its German Context 109
7. Between Poetry and Science:
Locating Geisteswissenschaft on
the Map of Knowledge 135
8. Psychology in a Perpetual Crisis 153
Part III. Facing the Future—Transcending the Past 171
9. Learning from the Fate of Psychology 175
10. Pathways to Methodologies: Semiotics of

Knowledge Construction 195
11. Globalization and Its Role in Science 229
General Conclusion: Science under the Influence:

Guided Exploration of the Horizons of Knowledge 261
Bibliography 283
Index (Compiled by Maaris Raudsepp) 317

Preface
This book represents my thinking about the development of

psychology among other sciences since our previous effort to make
sense of how social sciences create knowledge (The Social Mind,
2000). The writing of it was triggered by various interactions with col-
leagues all over the world, among whom the network of my “K-Group”
(“kitchen seminar” network—www.kitchenseminar.org) deserves my
greatest gratitude for feedback upon various drafts of the chapters
of this book, and for creating a lively intellectually open atmosphere
where play with interesting ideas is the way to advance them, where
creative arrogance is the established group norm. Such arrogance is
needed to set the “normal science” of psychology under the intellectual
microscope of looking for places where innovation might be possible.
The need for breakthroughs in ideas first—and data after that—is long
overdue in that field.
History of science has its peculiarities. Knowledge construction in
many sciences these days has been turned into a competitive enter-
prise where ideas are not to be played with. Rather, any valuable idea
becomes shut in a patenting office. In contrast, our frivolous play—that
on each Wednesday morning on the third floor of Jonas Clark build-
ing on Clark University campus is transmitted to participating groups
internationally over videoconference—carries with it the feeling of
freedom of being serious while seeming silly, and differing from one
another’ s perspectives while respecting the differences. Discussions
with Hroar Klempe, Kenny Cabell, Carla Cunha, Kirill Maslov, Nikita
Kharlamov, Rainer Diriwächter, João Salgado, Tatsuya Sato, Roger
Bibace, Lee Rudolph, Mariela Orozco, René van der Veer, Zachary
Beckstead, Meike Watzlawik, Aaro Toomela, and others has been the
intellectual food every thinker would need. Over years, sharing ideas
with Robert B. Cairns, Dietmar Görlitz, Alberto Rosa, Gerard Duveen
and Kurt Kreppner have provided me with understanding that learn-
ing history never stops. Particularly helpful were comments by Brady
vii
A Guided Science: History of Psychology in the Mirror of Its Making
Wagoner and Nandita Chaudhary on various drafts of the chapters.

They helped me to reduce my tendency toward concentrated abstract-
ness in my writing. Colleagues at Universidade de São Paulo—Cesar
Ades, Livia Simão, Danilo Silva Guimarães—were at one of the starting
points of the development of the ideas in this book (preserved here
in chapter 3) in May 2005, and have challenged my thinking over
many years.
The book started from a naïve query—why have psychologists so
often talked about their science “being in crisis”? (see chapter 8 in this
book). Had I understood that to answer that question I had to dig into
the history of psychology over the previous two centuries—and as a re-
sult suggesting a major readjustment of its historical focus—I may have
perhaps delayed this large task until my knowledge base could be fuller.
Yet I did not—and new chapters emerged both in the front (1 . . . 7)
and back (9 . . . 11) of the startup issue of “why are we in crisis”—forever,
as it seems. The opportunity to work with colleagues at the CSAT at
University of Bath in the summer of 2010 further facilitated my un-
derstanding of the social construction of educational and research
contexts. Discussions with Harry Daniels, Kyoko Murakami, David
Eddy Spicer, Ben Zabinski, and the participants in my “living-room
seminars” provided crucial insights for this book—even if where these
threads of relevant recognition are hidden here remains the task for
an intellectual detective to figure it out.
The result is a complex maze of threads of thought about psychol-
ogy as a science to be woven together into one whole. First, obviously,
there is the theme of history of psychology per se: how its social
presentation has practically cut out a century of active—even if not
empirical—efforts to understand the psyche. By exposing the “myth
of Leipzig 1879” as the usual story of “psychology’s becoming science”
I allude the reader to the second thread—the wider issue of the social
canalization of sciences as a whole. Psychology is only one of them—
which, however, is caught in the crossfire of ideologies that claim to be
“the” science. Social guidance of any science includes the meta-level
specification of “this is [or is not] science”—pretending that such
disputes belong to the sciences themselves. In fact they do not—they
are meta-scientific reflections upon what the given science does. As
such, they are instruments of clandestine guidance.
The third thread woven into the whole of this book is that of
the ways in which we deal with categories. The contrast between
categories as fixed entities on the one hand, and bases for further
viii
Preface
epistemological work, on the other, permeate through the whole book.

My clear preference is for the latter—the making of a sign, a category—
is a tool for the person to face the future and construct a further line
of personal experience as the future is becoming the present—only
to flow into the past. Psychology deals with phenomena of maximum
uniqueness—they occur each only once, at the miniscule border of
the future and the past we construct as “the present.” Yet from such
ephemeral phenomena we construct data that allow us to live in rela-
tively stable personal worlds. In the human case that construction
of relative stability is mediated by signs—hence the preference here
given to semiotic cultural psychology as it is on the ascent, while its
cognitive counterpart finds its rationalistic computer analogies close
to (yet another) “crisis.”
Finally, the fourth thread in this book is an effort to build up quali-
tative structural—yet dynamic—perspective for analysis of complex
phenomena based on the general notion of unity of opposites and their
dialectical transformation into a new form of opposition. This effort—
located in chapter 10—builds on the history of dialectical thinking
(described in chapter 5) which indicates the premature abandonment
of the basic idea of dialectical transformation. The ideological “black-
listing” of Hegel in the nineteenth century, forgetting of Fichte and Mai-
mon together with him, and the dislike for twentieth century “Marxist
psychologies” have all guided psychology away from efforts to solve the
problem of structural transformation of multilevel dynamic structures.
Interestingly, chemistry—which deals with analogical structures—has
managed to find ways how to do it. Why has psychology failed even to
try? It is here that the “quantitative imperative” psychology has loyally
accepted from the social institutions in power of its funding—which
were neither mathematicians nor “hard scientists.” A return to try to
make sense of dialectical synthesis is one of the relevant suggestions
encoded into the complex story told in this book.
Usually authors look around for appropriate publishers for the best
conditions, but this was not the case for this book. I wrote it, from
the outset, having only one publisher—Transaction Publishers—in
mind. It was clear to me that Transaction is the most fitting home
for my efforts to provide a frame for understanding the cultural
psychology of sciences—and to bring to light some new ideas about
the history of psychology. Over the years I have grown to deeply
appreciate Transaction’s publishing program of truly interdisciplin-
ary kind—which this year reaches its fiftieth anniversary. Doing
ix
interdisciplinary scholarship means precisely that—doing it in

practice—and the record of Transaction has been consistently on
the forefront of this. I have learned much from the incisive wisdom
of the mastermind of Transaction—Irving Horowitz—who has been
ahead of the movements in the publishing field while upholding the
high standards of scholarship for the social sciences. Ever since Irving
discovered my humble efforts in psychology—and I got to understand
his seemingly anarchistic efforts that systematically push forward
the interdisciplinary work toward relevant horizons of knowledge,
crushing disciplinary boundaries on the way—I have been continu-
ously impressed by what an academic can do for general knowledge
through organizing a successful publishing house.
Jaan Valsiner
Worcester, MA
April 2011
x
Introduction
What Kind of Knowledge—
And for Whom?
This book got its impetus from a talk I gave in May 2005 at the
Institute of Advanced Studies of the Universidade de São Paulo to an
interdisciplinary audience. Appropriately titled Psychology as a factory:
Changing traditions and new epistemological challenges, it covered a
number of changes in our contemporary sciences—collective author-
ship, fragmentation of knowledge into small quickly published (and
equally quickly retractable) journal articles, the counting of numbers
of such articles by institutions as if that was a measure of “scientific
productivity.” I pointed out that these changes are inherently ambiva-
lent for the actual development of knowledge, while they are indeed
social presentations of the escalating enterprises of science. Even as
I was asked to, and I promised, to write up the talk as a publication,
somehow I failed to do so until now.1 Yet the themes of that talk kept
reverberating in my mind and coming up in encounters with scientists
all over the world. So, finally, I undertook a more extensive coverage
of the issues—with this book being the result, for better or worse.
The general theme—how science is guided by explicit and im-
plicit ties to its surrounding social world—is not new. It builds on
the wide background of scholarship on history of science (Ludwik
Fleck, Thomas Kuhn), the recent focus on social construction of sci-
ences (Bruno Latour), and on the cultural and cognitive analyses of
knowledge making (Karin Knorr Cetina, Lorraine Daston). The theo-
retical scheme carried over onto the phenomena of social guidance
of science comes from my thinking about processes of development
in psychology (Valsiner, 1987) and on the relations of human beings
with their culturally organized environments (Valsiner, 2007a,b). The
underlying notions of zones—those of Freedom of Movement (ZFM),
Promoted Action (ZPA), and Proximal Development (ZPD) that
were used to make sense of the advancement of children and adults
xi
(Valsiner, 1997)—were present somewhere in the back of my mind

when looking at a completely different phenomenon—the cumber-
some advancement of ideas in psychology over decades.
Looking carefully into the history of ideas leads one to appreciate the
hard work thinkers have to do to develop our general ideas of under-
standing ourselves and our worlds. Almost certainly these ideas have
not “progressed” in any linear fashion. Most of them have reached a
stalemate and are abandoned when a new fashion of other ideas takes
over. In psychology, the focus on thinking has been eradicated by that
on behavior, the latter by inventing the notion of cognition (rather
than develop the ideas of thinking). Labels have changed—creating
an illusion of progress—but our understanding of the processes that
are captured by these labels remains obscure. Some ideas are sup-
pressed and kept in their forgotten state (such as dialectics). Others
are promoted socially towards becoming popular but theoretically
useless (such as intelligence turned into emotional intelligence, etc.).
Still others emerge at some time in a tentative—but promising—form,
only to be abandoned before they could come to fruition. History of
psychology seems to be highly productive in its capacity to overlook
and forget once promising theoretical upstarts.
Why is advancement of ideas in a science slow and uneven in its
temporal unfolding? Why is advancement of ideas inherently para-
doxical and episodically productive in different countries at different
times? This question continues to perplex me—answers of traditional
kinds that build on the images of irresistible progress in science and
its value for “the society” remain deeply unconvincing. Such answers
are self-serving ideological blinders for social presenting of science
that can confuse us rather than improve our understanding of human
experience. As such, scientific knowledge is an extension of any other
knowledge, which is cultural in its core.
Cultural in my terms means semiotically mediated (Valsiner,
2007a,b). All human thinking is cultural in this respect. We—as
persons within our social contexts—create signs and use them to
regulate ourselves and others. We are not “members of a culture”
(read social group or nation as is assumed in cross-cultural psychol-
ogy), but culture in terms of semiosis is part of our psyche. Cultural
psychology is a part of general psychology with the focus on signs—in
minds and societies—as these regulate human conduct. In a similar
vein, the processes of semiotic mediation regulate the invention of
new ideas, their development and proliferation, and their forgetting.
xii
What Kind of Knowledge—And for Whom?
Scientists form social groups—“schools” or clubs or “laboratories”—

that organize their collective actions about all features of the construc-
tion of knowledge. If Newton was a single author of his work (the
proverbial apple would not count as a coauthor, or even as an assistant),
then today’s breakthroughs in the physical sciences are often coau-
thored by 500 or more persons. How is knowledge produced by such
crowds? Crowds can create disorder—initiate revolutions or clashes
between soccer fans—but how can a 500+ sized research organization
arrive at basic breakthroughs? Such coordination of collective actions is
a fertile topic for future social psychology of scientific institutions.
This book continues the tradition of cultural psychology of science
we have introduced before in a narrower version (Valsiner and van der
Veer, 2000; van der Veer and Valsiner, 1991). Here I attempt a general-
ized extension to science in society in general, yet in ways that take
the Wanderjahre of one discipline—psychology—as the core example.
Psychology is in some sense a troubled child of European Enlighten-
ment that propelled personal subjectivity to the center of attention.
Yet, when the psyche arrived in the role of the object of investigation,
everything has been done ever since to deny its reality and its status
as the appropriate subject matter of psychology. Psychology is a sci-
ence that has, quite successfully, denied its own existence. It has tried
to get rid of itself by offering itself to physiology, sociology, computer
science, and currently to neurosciences. Psychology is a science that
is afraid of itself as a science!
This paradoxical situation is not surprising. Psychology is in a
liminal position, caught between the separation of natural and so-
cial sciences (Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften—see
chapter 7). It gives us a picture of a science that cannot establish its
identity. Internally, psychologists have become masters of destroy-
ing their own discipline, by detecting their science to be “in crisis,”
or undertaking many efforts of its deconstruction, usually without
a reconstructive counterpart. Yet the phenomena of psychology are
central in human lives—from clicking a mouse to pushing a button
releasing a nuclear war.
Knowledge and Non-Knowledge
History of knowledge—in general or in any particular discipline—
is a constant negotiation of the boundary between what is known
at the given time and what is not known. The unity of knowledge
and its opposite—non-knowledge2—is an inevitable and always
xiii
ambivalent relation both in history of societies, and of persons.

A scientist operates on the border of the known and the (desired)
not-yet-known. A government censor operates on the border of the
(desired) known and the (undesired) not-yet-known attempting to
make the latter socially impossible. A mystic operates in the domain
of the transcendental (desirable) unknowable somewhere “out there,”
gaining one’s social role in the mundane everyday life through enact-
ing the role of the esoteric-yet-appealing domain of the nonknowable.
Social institutions promote the development of new forms of the
knowledge–non-knowledge relationships in ways where new com-
petence goes hand in hand with new ignorance. Our readiness and
sophistication of “making choices” between variously presented objects
of consumption in parallel direct us away from developing the know-
how to create new choices that are not pregiven to us. The historical
development of “consumer society” entails the parallel construction
of “society of ignorance” and its corollaries.3
Science and Society
Society is one of the imprecise general terms we use all the time.
We often attribute agency to it, which of course is a generalizing
misattribution. There is no “society” that acts as if it were a unified
agent—similarly to a person. Yet the role of this anonymous agent—a
result of multiple coordinated social institutions that set the stage for
human lives—is ever-present, and inherently ambiguous. It has direct
impact upon the possibility of the scientists—and the sciences—to
survive or flourish. It sets up the conditions for using, or hiding, the
results of the sciences. It also specifies the communication channels
through which the sciences relate with both the powerful (by serving
them) and the powerless (by joining the powerful in providing “expert
advice”). Sciences are inherently tied to the society. Bensaude-Vincent
has outlined the sociological realities of the widely promoted impera-
tive of “the (tax-paying) public has the right to know”:
It is taken for granted that the rapid advances of scientific research,

coupled with increasing specialization and more technical language,
deepen the gulf between the scientists and the lay public. There-
fore, the need for public communication of science is a side effect
of scientific creativity. It is a political duty in democratic societies
to inform the citizens. It seems equally obvious that science com-
munication is a distinct activity from science production. Whereas
the latter is aimed at the advancement of knowledge, the former is
xiv
aimed at the bridging the distance between science and public. The
public communication of science is a secondary activity based on
pre-existing, well-established scientific results. It is often described
as a translation of scientific language into ordinary language. In all
cases it is conceived of as one-way flux of information, stemming
from scientists and flowing down to the receptive public through the
channels of modern media (Bensaude-Vincent, 2001, p. 99, added
emphasis)
The duty of informing those who have “the right to know” brings
to our focus the unity of duties and rights (Moghaddam et al., 2000)
as well as highlights the “blind spots” in such imperative for inform-
ing “the public.” First, it is not clear what “being informed” means.
All knowledge from a science becomes selected for understanding
on the basis of previous social representations. So it is the public who
“informs” itself through what is known already and leads to new social
representations (Farr, 1993). Yet the social representations of a particu-
lar field of knowledge are not equal to that field of knowledge.
Furthermore, it is not known who “the public” are, and what kind
of responsivity (if any) to the act of “being informed” it might be allot-
ted. Bensaude-Vincent points to the historical transformation of the
“lay public” between the nineteenth and twentieth (not to speak of
twenty-first) centuries. In the former the science-interested laypersons
were “amateur scientists”—not immediately the makers of knowledge,
but, when informed, capable of understanding and supporting the
knowledge-making. In our time, the “lay public” has become a mass
consumer. Similarly to paper napkins, disposable bottles and photo
cameras, messages about science become consumables. As such,
promoted by the mass media, scientific popular knowledge becomes
designated to the rapidly increasing activity sphere of entertainment.
Science—its findings or stories about “hero scientists” as these are
popularized (or vulgarized4) by science traffickers5—become socially
useful for the mass public in ways analogous to soap operas or drug
scandals in professional sports (see chapter 4).
The interesting result of the widening of the democratic duty to
inform the lay (“ignorant consumer”) public is the institutional con-
trol over what is to be communicated, how, and with what possible
outcomes for the (consuming) public. The patenting system hides
some of the scientific knowledge from the pool of possible material
of science trafficking. Moral imperatives and their derivates (“secu-
rity concerns”) add further constraints, limiting the pool.6 On the
xv
other hand, within the pool of potential consumables, some results of

science are more easy or appealing to turn into highly promoted com-
modities. Epidemiological findings in medicine—inconclusive as to
their value as imperatives for taking action—are discovered, polished,
and taken to the public with high “street value.” Yet the dominance of
epidemiological—inductively generalizing samples-based strategy of
arriving at generalized knowledge—propelled itself to the dominant
position in medicine only starting in the 1970s. The nice label of
“evidence-based medicine” symbolically masks the alienation of the
“evidence” from the physicians’ direct experiences in their practical
work. Yet all samples-based “evidence” becomes transformed into
concrete practical applications. The never-ending flow of dietary
suggestions—all based on some scientific findings interpreted and
extended into a packaged product that reach the weight-conscious
lay public through the mass media as if those were the final solutions
for living—is the most visible example.
Psychology Among Other Sciences
Psychologists’ “crisis talk” in psychology that has been prominent in
the course of the twentieth century occupies a key place in this book
(chapter 8). It is notable how much self-reflexivity of lament—finding
and emphazing the crisis in the discipline—there has been. The talk
about crisis has implications for the current possibilities in the disci-
pline in the twenty-first century.
Interestingly, the roots of the “crisis talk” about psychol-
ogy go back another century and are found in the transforma-
tion of ideas that a social turmoil—the French Revolution of
1789—brought with it to the arts and sciences since then (chap-
ter 5). Psychology in this sense can be viewed as a bastard of
the French Revolution, being born and developing in lands that were
affected by that major transformation of the French society—the dis-
united German states that promoted philosophy to be advanced in
their universities. Its roots are in the eighteenth century, yet its devel-
opment coincides with the negotiations of customs laws and develop-
ment of railways in the first half of the nineteenth century. Branching
off from the varied traditions of philosophy in the German-speaking
lands, by the end of nineteenth century, psychology becomes an ar-
ticle for intellectual export. It became imported to the vast landscape
expanding westwards from the Statue of Liberty, and in other direc-
tions (chapter 11). For all the people ready to embrace it as a secular
xvi
salvation, psychology promised (and still promises) cure of many ills

for persons in societies.
Yet both the ills and the cure are created by the very same persons
who create “the society”—and its ills! Hence psychology is kept—as
a good servant—off from treating the problems of “the society” (as
kings, parliaments, generals, bankers, and revolutionaries keep that
Herculean task to themselves). Psychology is socially directed to “work
on”—understand or explain, help or conquer—the persons and their
social contexts. Yet it is caught in an eternal ambivalence—while
“working on” the persons, it does it within a directed social context.
The latter gives metalevel value to the basic notions psychologists
use—“trauma” (or “loyalty test”), “help” (or “capture”), etc. A disci-
pline like psychology is necessarily caught in this ambivalence. It is a
toolkit to both inhibit (“predict” and “control”) and excite (“reward,”
“motivate,” “teach creativity”) human beings on the implicit guidance
of the “self-preserving society.” It is not guided to work on issues of
self-enhancing societies, nor is it supposed to lead to our promotion
of the psychological bases of social revolutions.
Why the Glimpse Into History of Psychology is Important?
Psychology is obviously not one of the “core” sciences—such as
physics or astronomy, or biology—the history of which seems to bring
us to the guaranteed domain of “generalized knowledge” that stands
aloof from the sociopolitical and moral discourses in a society. Yet it
is precisely the marginal position of psychology—between what in
English has become called “the sciences,” and the others that are labeled
“the humanities”—that makes an investigation into how its know-how
has been socially guided a good general example of a socially guided
science. It is quite interesting to find out that similar marginal status
that psychology faces in the twentieth century was there for another
science in the eighteenth to nineteenth century—chemistry. Yet it
managed to exit that marginal role (chapter 9) through the widening
of its abstractive generalization capabilities. Such breakthrough has
not yet happened in psychology.
Social guidance of a science is of course everywhere in any science—
as the latter is inevitably embedded within a society at the given time. It
follows from the non-neutral nature of the knowledge that the particular
social domain—that we have differentiated as science—produces, or
might produce. Science is “the other7” for “the society”—the needed
yet largely suspicious “outsider” that might turn out to be useful under
xvii
some circumstances. Yet it can also lead to ideas—and practices—that

may be dangerous for the current regime of thinking and administrative
control. Both of these opposite scenarios are possible, even if in its usual
form the third option—science is largely irrelevant for the here-and-now
social life—may prevail. This third option is actually a lifeline for the
development of any science. It may be socially guided (and guarded),
rather than executed on the spot. Sciences have thus escaped the fate
of other freethinkers in human history, although the fate of Giordano
Bruno8 may haunt us as a reminder of the alternative.
How can we take a metaperspective and study the social guidance
of a science? This requires a process orientation in looking at its
structure. These knowledge domains that are located in-between the
object of investigation and the social interests of institutions reveal
the otherwise hidden and consensually operating canalization pro-
cesses in their microgenesis.9 This can be observed in ethnographies
of laboratory practices that differ between different sciences (Knorr
Cetina, 1999), as well as in ways in which psychology institutions insist
upon labeling the kind (or nominally paid) persons who participate
in their research (Bibace, Clegg and Valsiner, 2009). It also determine
what kinds of questions could be addressed to them (Ceci, Peters and
Plotkin, 1985). One can observe that guidance in the methodological
imperatives of how to analyze the collected data, by drowning the
richness of a person in the anonymity of “the sample” (Valsiner and
Sato, 2006), and how to write up a “scientific paper” (in contrast to
one of popularizing functions; see chapter 4). All these parts of the
whole of scientific inquiry are embedded in the social processes of
macrogenesis—specifying the general direction towards what kinds of
knowledge the given area of science is socially expected to generate. As
will be shown in chapters 5–8, psychology has been macrogenetically
guided as a science towards mechanical—rather than poetic—solutions
to the questions of how our minds work. Social promotion of the
construction of the barriers between “sciences” and “humanities” in
the English language world (Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissen-
schaften in the German language room), over the past two centuries,
have narrowed psychology’s focus.
What can one learn from the wanderings of psychology on the
ideological minefields of (mostly Occidental) societies? First, not that
it has been socially guided, but how that has happened. The reality
of social processes of such guidance is expected to be generalizable
to other scientific disciplines in their making. Whether such hope is
xviii
realistic will be judged first by the readers of this book—at its first
approximation—and eventually by the course of histories of these areas
by themselves. Secondly, the story of psychology lost in the middle of
warring sides, both ideological and at times physical (the two world
wars of the twentieth century were crucial for psychology), tells us
about what kinds of knowledge are valued by what kinds of societies
at which historical time periods. Psychology, as a single “research
participant” in this study of the construction of general knowledge
about sciences in their development, could emerge in a more reflex-
ive state than mere reiterating of the slogans “we are in crisis!” There
are good—mostly extra-scientific—reasons for such crises. Yet there
is a chance for a universal culture-inclusive (see chapter 11) general
psychology that might even satisfy even deep skeptics, like Immanuel
Kant was, about its scientific status.
Notes
1. See chapter 3 in this book, which constitutes the sequel to the talk in Brazil.
2. This follows from my theoretical look at meanings as including a definite (A)
and indefinite (non-A) subfields that are mutually intertwined and through
relationships of which new meanings can emerge (Josephs, Valsiner and
Surgan, 1999; Valsiner, 2007a,b). The relevant opposing field of knowledge
(A), which I term non-knowledge (non-A), is an undifferentiated field from
which various definable opposites to A can emerge: “ignorance,” “something
we need to know” (but do not know yet), “something we should never know,”
etc.—see also Daston (1998) (also elaborated in chapter 3) on how notions
of objectivity are embedded in a wider context of what could, should, or
must not be knowable.
3. Such as the notion of “risk society” (Beck, 1992) and—linked with it, “panic
society”—social communication frameworks where the uncertainty of the
future is turned into a commodity that seems to substitute the uncertainty
by its opposite—certainty in terms of “risk assessment” (for e.g., “you
have a 50% chance of X in the next year” versus “X might, or might not,
happen to you next year”). The promotion of panic in the social domain
guarantees the turn to such commoditization of the risk—fears of “swine
flu” promoted through the predictions of pandemics, etc.—that feed into
risk assessments and commercial production of countermeasures in terms
of vaccines, quarantine schedules, etc.
4. The notion of “le vulgarization scientifique” has prevailed in the French
language discourses (Bensaude-Vincent, 1995, p. 133, also Farr, 1993,
p. 190) in contrast to the English popularizing of science. The affective
marking of the words used represents the regressive or progressive nar-
ratives used in the two language communities. Further coverage of this
issue is in chapter 4.
5. “trafiquants de science” as Auguste Comte disparagingly called them already
in 1844. The relation of scientists to the social presentation of their craft
to the noninitiated has always been ambivalent.
xix
6. An interesting retrospect of the symbolic realities of a young scientist living

in the Soviet Union (until 1980) is a good illustration. Every time I wanted
to publish an article on scientific issues in the Soviet Union I had to sign a
form that declared “there is nothing new or valuable” in this publication.
The reasons for such symbolic act are of course understandable—by the
fear of the authorities about the “stealing” of knowledge by malevolent
others—yet for the scientist himself to repeatedly declare on paper that
one’s work includes nothing valuable was an amusing contradiction in
terms of how science and society relate.
7. See Simão and Valsiner (2007) on the different ways in which “otherness”
is treated in the social sciences.
8. The Italian Dominican monk who was burned at the stake on February, 17,
1600, for “heresy,” that consisted of accepting the idea of the infinity of the
universe together with the heliocentric model of our planetary system. His
twentieth and twenty-first century peers who stand out for rigor of science
in social practices can be observed to have a less gloomy fate—only lawsuits,
death threats, and administrative assignments to “take an ethics course,”
and a need to change jobs. Elizabeth Loftus who challenged the use of
reconstructed sexual abuse memories in U.S. courtrooms since the 1970s
was the recipient of that avalanche of various forms of smear campaign—
including death threats—by vox populi, which fortunately ended by her
being awarded the 2010 AAAS Scientific Freedom and Responsibility
Award [www.eurekaalert.org/pub_releases/2011-02/aaft-mi012811.php
and http://reason.com/blog/2004/08/24/repressing-elizabeth-loftus]. Also
see Loftus and Fries (1979) and Loftus and Frenda (2010).
9. In the history of a science, the time scale of microgenesis is of course wider
than the usual use of that notion in developmental science—from microsec-
onds to seconds. In the historical domain we could consider microgenetic
processes to take decades.
xx
Part I
Societies and Sciences:
Presentations and Histories
What society is, and what traditional metaphysics is inclined to
hypostatize as its “being,” is precisely what propels it forward, whether
for better or for worse. That a society is thus, in particular, and not
otherwise contradicts what the society is, no less than the special
interests which go to make up what it is. The eternal and immutable
aspect of a society defines the nature of the dynamic forces in it.
Theodor W. Adorno (1961, p. 40)
We start here with a seeming paradox—what a society is is actu-

ally what it is not. The notion of society-as-it-is is a static abstraction
made out of the myriad of social processes which—while not being
the abstraction society themselves—make such abstraction possible. It
grew historically out of treating a purposeful group of people (“society
of engineers,” “society of physicians,” the “British Royal Society” of
scientists, started in 1660, etc.) into a generalized abstract notion by
mid-nineteenth century (Wagner, 2000). After becoming a scientific
object, “the society” became an agentive subject to which personified
characteristics of wishes, demands, and needs could be attributed.
Abstracting “the society” as a generic term out of the myriad of par-
ticular organizations of people is an abstraction-in-the making any
time it occurs. So if one hears claims “the society needs X,” it is the
fuzziness of “the society” that covers the uncertainty of this attribution
of agency. Any discourse about society (as if it is) is part of a dynamic
process of the making of that particular abstraction. These processes
may vanish—and recur in new forms and constellations—feeding into
the abstraction of what society is.
The notion of scientific knowledge is a similar abstraction. It presumes
something we have—rather than something we are constantly creat-
ing. Knowledge as entity is suggested to be closed to innovation—yet
1
it was produced through an open inquiry. The making of knowledge

never ends—yet how it proceeds depends upon the organization of
the social system within which it takes place. Like persons, social
institutions are constantly in some state of movement—transformation
into new forms (Valsiner, 2007a,b). Similarly to the study of human
development we can think of the “life course” of social organizations:
they “are born,” sometimes by evolution, other time by revolution; they
develop (or “mature”); and they become extinct; or transform into a
new form. Revolutions over time share features of destruction that
lead to some construction; tensions within institutions may lead to
reorganization. The institutions can be seen as collective intentional
agents—for their self-protection they build massive courthouses and
military fortifications, fund the construction of nuclear bombs and
local sanitary rules. As part of such preemptive self-defense they spon-
sor sciences, being at the same time fearful of new knowledge, and
ready to make the most of it for their own purposes.
Furthermore, institutions as social agents—undergoing
transformation—present themselves in public through socially
desirable static identities. They are there to stay, even if they might fall
in the next war or revolution. They do not let ideas that could under-
mine their well-being proliferate. Among the rhetoric steps to main-
tain themselves, they may pay public respect to science, helping the
different sciences to create various glorifications and hero myths that,
in their turn, protect the sciences and create the discursive freedom
spaces for their existence. Likewise, they can blacklist different direc-
tions in the construction of general knowledge or beliefs, suppressing
some directions of thought over long historical periods. How else can
we get recurrent heated disputes about “creationism” or “evolution”—
these different hypotheses of the development of the biological world
are not parts of independent and value-neutral science, but complexes
of ideas very close for comfort for the institutions involved.
Scientists—those people who, like monks and stamp collectors,
devote their lives to esoteric causes—join in with the institutional
discourses. They create their own societies—institutions—which
start to relate with other similar ones, and make allegiances with
macrosocietal institutions or ideologies. Thus, notions of “French
chemistry” or “German philosophy” or “Soviet psychology” presume
a linkage between the social organization of the given disciplines
and their macrosocial contexts. They join in the evaluations of “the
other,” in terms of putting labels “this is good science” or “this is
2
Societies and Sciences: Presentations and Histories
anecdotal evidence” on the work of their colleagues. Such clashes

become amplified by popularizing journalism that stands between
the science and its “other.”
My goal in this book is to trace the connections between institu-
tional orientation of the actions of scientists, which are usually not
emphasized, looking carefully at the construction (and reconstruction)
of psychology. I start from the assumption that evaluative statements
about different sides of science are of no truth value in themselves.
Thus, claims that “this is good science” or “this is no science” cannot
be attributed a truth value independent of the rhetoric position of the
evaluating agent. These agents are purposeful actors within the matrix
of their social relations.
Not surprisingly, such evaluative statements are rampant. They
make use of social representations so that the evaluative agents can
participate in the metascientific discourses, the aim of which is guid-
ance of the science in some future direction. Their use of social repre-
sentations provides their goals with halo effects of legitimacy. So, any
claim “this is bad science” or “this is a real breakthrough” are metalevel
statements that—even if they are just affective outbursts of a scientist
in any here-and-now setting—are discursive tools for social guidance
of science. Any new emerging discipline creates its own presentation
agendas for the others—the imaginary “out groups”—who may be
labeled vaguely as “the society” or “laypersons,” or “the taxpayers.”
This of course is our contemporary construction of these “significant
others”; at the time when scholarship depended on the kings, queens,
and other local aristocrats, it was their otherness that mattered.
Some of the created “social others” are in power position, others
not. And, of course, these social power constellations change in the
course of history. While in our contemporary negotiations of the role
of sciences in a society the talk about their use of “taxpayers’ money1”
is a rhetoric move that is considered seriously, although it would be
of no relevance in the history of sciences at times—those of Newton,
Galileo or Darwin—whose work economically depended on the
“affluent others.” The latter may have become rich by levying taxes
on the citizens, but the actual source of the money was of no conse-
quence. No seventeenth or eighteenth century scientist would worry
about how the actual “bread-givers” to them—the peasants—evaluate
their painstaking work. The creation of knowledge was that of the
community of the selected—educated—people, not of the “society as
a whole.” By the twenty-first century that has changed to almost the
3
opposite—the prism of valuations by “laypersons” is being made into

social capital in the society. The practices of popularization of science
are a new genre in the translation of knowledge-in-the-making into
the “existing knowledge” of the laypersons.
Note
1. More precisely, funding of science by government programs is not using
“taxpayers’ money” at all. By the time that funding becomes available, the
money has been “tax-takers’ money” already for some time. Only in the
case of direct donations (which may give the donors some tax advantage)
would the money source be that of tax payers.
4
1
The Eternal Freedom
Movement of Ideas
Science is totally opposed to opinions, not just in principle but equally
in its need to come to full fruition. If it happens to justify opinion on
a particular point, it is for reason other than those that are the basis
of opinion: opinion’s right is therefore always to be wrong. Opinion
thinks badly; it does not think but instead translates needs into
knowledge. By referring to objects in terms of their use, it prevents
itself from knowing them.
Gaston Bachelard (2002/1938, p. 25, added emphasis)
There is a big difference between ideas and opinions. Ideas are the
ground for other ideas, while opinions put a full stop on the process
of inquiry. The mechanism of such end of inquiry is simple. It operates
by the economic feature of the common sense. When one creates a
label—a nominal cause—the focus of the discourse is removed from
how we can discover the ways in which complex process work into
the processes work by way of X that causes them. The attribution of
a category membership becomes a declared cause—or at least one
that becomes interpreted as if it were a cause. As the attributions are
often generic and operate at the level of general perspectives, such
discourse becomes precisely the arena of expressions of opinions
that Gaston Bachelard so vehemently dismissed back in 1938. Such
opinions neither open a new field for inquiry, nor contribute to solu-
tions to old problems.
Social sciences are in a sensitive position at the intersection
of opinions and ideas. Opinions have the common sense mental
economy—they explain something in our everyday life terms and let
us live further, never leading to the question about what is beyond
them. Opinions create the illusion of certainty. Politicians state these
in their speeches, opponents to them in their critiques, and it is usual
5
in everyday life to ask another person “what is your opinion of X?” as

a part of keeping up the flow of mundane conversation. Opinions are
objects that we “have” (or “not have”). In navigating the seas of everyday
diplomacy at home or at work we learn to express “politically correct”
opinions—or catch the attention of others by displaying their “incor-
rect” counterparts. Last—but not least—social sciences operate by
way of accumulating data through “opinion polls” and ratings of various
kinds that become interpreted as “hard” scientific evidence.1 The first
performance of Rossini’s Barber of Seville in Rome in 1816 was met
with devastatingly negative flow of opinions from the audience—who
were guided by defending the work of a rival composer. The opera has
since then turned into a “classic work,” by the opinions of many music
lovers since 1816. Opinions feed into “evidence based” science, in con-
trast to knowledge that is based on generalized human experience.
Fixing the flow: the false conscience of the common sense
Opinions of course are category statements, with strict borders. As
such, they can be treated as objects—compared, counted (e.g., how
many people in a group “have” opinion X?), changed (from opinion
X to opinion Y). Our contemporary world is filled with social demands
to express one’s opinions on almost anything under the sun, in verbal
or quantitative form. The extent of demands to mark down our “cus-
tomer satisfaction” on scales that may include “good . . . very good . . .
excellent” range is frequent in our encounters with social practices of
use of opinion polls. Opinions triggered by such social demand pres-
sures become themselves functional as social guidance devices—after
a customer has politely told the waiter that his or her tolerably edible
steak is “excellent” when the waiter triggers it (“is everything fine?”),
the rating enters as a meaning-guidance device for the person who has
just uttered it. Demands for public statements of one’s opinions create
the direction within which the utterer is to feel further.2 Presenting the
mediocre reality in the positive light can be a solution to many social
problems—by avoiding focus on them.
Once the opinions have been produced, they can easily be turned
into social capital. They can be accumulated—to present some group
or crowd opinion—and this enter into the democratic negotiations
of power. As such, opinions—and opinion polls—play an important
social role within our societies. Yet that role does not fit the goals
of scientific inquiry—fixing of opinions as a tool for social nego-
tiations fixes the flow of thought from where innovation in science
6
The Eternal Freedom Movement of Ideas
comes. Opinions—without becoming ideas—cannot generate new

knowledge. An opinion needs to become open for it to lead to new
understanding:
Fixed opinion:
“My opinion is X” and “that is the end our discussion. Period!”
Nonfixed opinion:
“My opinion is X” and “given that, I can think further in
direction Y.”
The difference between these two kinds of opinions is that between

orthodoxy and axiomatic thinking. It is the nonfixed opinion—explicitly
stated axiom that nevertheless is not immutable—that makes new
knowledge acquisition possible.
It is the strictness, or permeability, of the borders of the opinion that
makes it into an idea, or not. Figure 1.1 illustrates the contrast between
a category that is the end point for inquiry, and the case where it is a
stepping stone for further inquiry (see further elaboration in chapter 5,
especially Figure 5.1). Endless construction of “opinion polls” in society
A. Usual class membership determination B. Abductive class membership
determination
Non-A Non-A
A A
“this is A and
nothing but A” “this is A, but it leads
to non-A... so it is no
longer A but not yet
anything else... but it is
about to become
something else”
Figure 1.1 Classical category formation (A) that supports opinions,

and abductive category use (that releases ideas)
7
says nothing about the future breakthroughs of ideas, but temporarily

fixates the “balance of opinions” on a matter.
The key in category formation is not that a particular fluid phe-
nomenon becomes fixed as category A, but whether that fixation is
open to further investigation beyond the category (from A to non-A
as in Figure 1.1.B). Fixed opinions end up as A without such extension,
while categories arrived at when nonfixed constitute the framework
for further inquiry.
Scientific ideas as directed toward horizons of knowledge

Scientific activity is always on the border of the known (and trust-
able) and the unknown, which at least is suspect, and at worst seductive
as it most likely is ephemeral. A scientist’s effort
. . . reveals new knowledge, but the new vision that accompanies it
is not knowledge. It is less than knowledge, for it is a guess; but it is
more than knowledge, for it is a foreknowledge of things yet unknown
and at present perhaps inconceivable. Our vision of the general
nature of things is our guide for the interpretation of all future
experience. Such guidance is indispensable. Theories of the scientific
method which try to explain the establishment of scientific truth
by any purely objective formal procedure are doomed to failure.
Any process of enquiry unguided by intellectual passions would
inevitably spread out into a desert of trivialities. (Polanyi, 1962,
p. 135, added emphasis)
So the dialogical nature of knowing and not-yet-knowing makes the

scientist work under deficit of knowledge. Much of scientific thinking
can be characterized as educated guessing—knowing the existing evi-
dence, feeling into the phenomena, and guessing how the world may
be organized. Once fixed opinions interfere and take over the role of
guessing, the argument becomes dogmatic.
So ideas are needed to arrive at opinions, and opinions can, under
permeability of their borders, become ideas. That latter process is
emphasized by scientific inquiry, being a potent playing field of ideas,
while the everyday life practices expect scientists’ “expert opinions” on
practical matters. Despite the expertise—opinions, even of “experts”—
is not knowledge. Ideas are, or at least they can lead to, the road to
create new knowledge. It is often the case that scientists play with ideas,
often getting their delight from such play like little children would.
They generate ideas playfully, knowing all too well that most of these
turn out to be inadequate. Yet some may lead to new understanding,
8
and for the sake of chasing these few the scientists keep producing
very many. Scientific creativity is not about economics of ideas but of
their hyper-production.
In contrast, it is the academic administrators who sternly watch
the actual “production” of the scientists counting the numbers of
their publications, evaluating the “impact factors,” and weighing
if all that “warrants” institutional tenure and promotion. The con-
tradiction between idea-makers and idea-controllers is negotiated
within the framework of social canalization of the meanings of “the
academy,” legitimacy of institutionally awarded scientific degrees and
honors.
It becomes clear that scientists operate between opinions and ideas,
providing the first to the lay public (see chapter 4) and using the lat-
ter for making sense of phenomena that so far have been unknown.
Ethnographic analyses of the conduct of scientists in their laboratories
(Knorr Cetina, 1997) and even in theoretical areas (Gale and Pinnick,
1997, Merz and Knorr Cetina, 1997) have revealed highly subjective
social discourse patterns all of which are oriented to the solving of
problems in an objective way (see chapter 3 on the history of objectiv-
ity and subjectivity). In fact, all notions of “objectivity” depend upon
the meaning makers about that quality and are thus the products of
human semiosis. Subjectivity—human desire to know for the sake of
knowing—is in the center of scientific methodology (see chapter 10,
especially Figure 10.1).
The centrality of subjectivity is demonstrated most clearly in
cases where there exists a need to take an “objective”—personally
distanced—perspective on the phenomena under study, while
the very nature of the phenomena by way of analogy with hu-
man worlds renders such stand difficult to assume. Comparative
psychology—study of psychological characteristics of various
animal species—has been struggling with the ambivalences of
anthropomorphizing the animals one studies in ways that
for occidental sciences undermine its “objectivity.” The paradoxical
situation is particularly interesting in contemporary primatological
research (see chapter 11). The value of the studies of nonhuman pri-
mates is often viewed as an activity capable of telling us something
about the human species. Yet, at the same time, it was emphasized that
the animal behaviors observed are not the same as those of humans.
Nevertheless, being similar to human species triggers easy identifica-
tion with the animal species. Hence
9
. . . students of primate societies had a rather complex path to negoti-

ate: they examined animal behavior in the hope of gaining insights
into the origins and functions of human communities, but at the
same time it was necessary to police the species boundary in order
to avoid anthropomorphism. Analogy was not homology, although it
could be a metaphor. (Rees, 2007, p. 882, added emphasis)
The easy move in human thinking between analogy and homology is

based on our metaphoric meaning-making propensities. This includes
the construction of similes, as well as metaphors (Johansen, 2010).
Most importantly, we can observe the movement of the language use
from the literary uses through creating similes, with potential arrival
at full metaphors.3 Thus, a simile can be a boundary zone within which
new understanding is being negotiated:
A woman in love is never satisfied if her lover remembers with only

one part of his body. She wishes to grow like cancer within him, to
fill him with awareness and pain. This is the special cruelty of love.
(Das, 1993, p. 79, added emphasis)
This simile, by a Kerala woman writer, specifies a field of meanings

about the growth of close relationship, bringing into it ambivalence in
relation to a very undesirable disease. It is precisely through similes, in
between literary meanings and metaphors, that new ideas are expand-
ing beyond the obvious, and “freeing themselves” from the metaphors.
A categorical statement of metaphoric kind “X is P{metaphoric}” (e.g.,
“Sam is a pig” or “Quaddafi is a devil”) is an extension of the category-
making process that expands the set of objects that are literally what
they are (“this animal is a pig” . . . “this other animal is also a pig”) to
add the metaphoric members of the set (“Sam is a pig”—Figure 1.1.A).
In contrast, the simile “Sam is like a pig” keeps the inquiry into other
characteristics of the assumed person (Sam) open. Further inquiry
may lead to an emphatic escalation (“Sam is a pig!”) or neutralizing
extension of the simile (“Sam is like a pig . . . what can you expect
from those beasts . . .”). It is the back-and-forth movement of the
literary → simile → metaphor states (and back) that fixes and unfixes
opinions, and sets the emerged sign up in its state of an idea or of an
opinion.
The strength of the metaphoric categorizations in the closing of the
search for meaning is particularly visible in ideological disputes that
transcend the life experiences of generations, being reconstructed
10
socially. So, metaphors “Stalin (or Hitler) was a devil” in the political
domain would place these political leaders into a fixed categorical state
of negative and fearful connotations so that opinions about them can
only fluctuate between the fixed opposites (“Stalin was a devil” can be
reconstructed by strictly opposite statement “Stalin was not a devil”
by a new generation of neo-Stalinists). Such possibility of flip-flopping
between fixed opposites (A or non-A) fits the classical (Boolean) logi-
cal scheme as well as the needs for social construction of crisp sets
of opposites. It blocks the possibility for further inquiry.4 In that, it
has high value of sociopolitical cognitive economy within a society,
yet its role for scientific innovation of perspectives is that of blocking
further development. Enabling of scientific innovation entails breaking
of dogmas that have been set—rather than reifying those.
Notes
1. The analysis of what happens in the case where opinions are solicited
through the use of rating scales is presented in Wagoner and Valsiner
(2005) and Rosenbaum and Valsiner (2011). The process of arrival at an
opinion—where to put a mark on a scale—is the evidence for science, not
the resulting mark itself.
2. As a contrast, consider hypothetical interaction:
Waiter: “How is your steak?”
Customer: “Thanks for asking—it is horrible!”
3. Interestingly, as Glucksberg (2008) has pointed out that cognitive psy-
chology of metaphoric thinking has emphasized the categorical nature
of metaphors, overlooking the centrality of similes. From the perspec-
tive espoused here—that of developmental cultural construction—it is
the liminal nature of the similes that is the core of any meaning recon-
struction: A is B {literally} → A is like X {simile} → A is X {category}. The
prevailing cognitive paradigm considers the literary meaning to be the
central “truthful” state of affairs of semiotic mediation, and its metaphoric
extension as a substitution. Here I set this relationship up precisely in the
reverse—the meaning-making process on the border of what we know
already and what we are trying to understand operates within the field
of potential similes (non-A in Figure 1.1.B), between the fields of literary
meanings (category A in Figure 1.1.B) and not yet constructed metaphor
B (“A is B”).
4. Consider an example closer to scientific discourse: “Valsiner is an alchemist”
(metaphor) in contrast to “Valsiner is like an alchemist”. As the notion of
alchemy itself belongs to the long overcome past of the science of chem-
istry, the first statement should denigrate the credentials of the author
of this book so that the reader would immediately put it aside and resell it
on the Internet (or, in a worse case, publicly burn it). The second statement
triggers a suspense: how can the author of this book, operating by mixing
various kinds of intellectual “elixirs,” arrive at any general statement about
science as a socially guided enterprise?
11
2
Axiomatic Bases for
Experiential (Empirical)
Knowledge Construction
The common people are now thoroughly well-informed . . . about the
pathetic tale of apple falling before Newton’s eyes. The people prefer
security to heaven, forgetting that an apple was there at the origin of
the misfortune of the entire human race . . ..
Hegel (1801/1998, p. 246)1
All new is embedded in the context of the old. Sciences are embed-
ded in their social textures of sociomoral kind that operate through
the meanings attributed to their activities by the common sense. First
of all there is their own common sense—an inevitable tool of encoun-
ter with novelty. Yet the scientists can, slowly but surely, transcend
their common sense and find ways to encode knowledge in specially
established sign systems—their scientific languages. Furthermore,
the results of the sciences become scrutinized by their public—kings,
granting agencies, and grandmothers—as to what kind of knowledge
the esoteric activities may carry. As a result, different creative ideas
may be suppressed, others—maintained as fashion (see chapter 4).
Science does not move by way of linear “progress,” instead, it operates
through multiple systems of constraints that make breakthroughs in
ideas an episodic and occasional event.
How are Axioms Made?
Axioms are dogmas, yet necessary and nonpermanent ones. If
an axiomatic system of a science becomes in principle unchange-
able, it becomes an orthodoxy of beliefs that stops being useful for
knowledge construction. A system of forever fixed axioms guaran-
tees the end of knowledge. Ideas become opinions—and if fixed for
13
eternity—orthodoxies. In contrast, an axiomatic system that allows for

its own reconstruction is an abstract and general tool for creating new
knowledge. Yet that knowledge is relative due to the generic nature of
the axioms themselves.
Axioms are made by generalization that becomes temporarily stable.
That process involves epistemological synthesis, based both on some
general premises and particular experiences. Axioms are the starting
point for deductive guidance of knowledge construction, yet they are
based on some kind of inductive generalization that “goes beyond the
information given.”
How does a person, as scientist, handle the forest of axioms. The
scientist, in normal case is
. . . a puzzle-solver, like the chess player. The paradigm he has acquired
through prior training provides him with the rules of the game, de-
scribes the pieces with which it must be played, and indicates the
nature of the required outcome. His task is to manipulate those
pieces within the rules in such a way that the required outcome is
produced. If he fails, as most scientists do in at least their first attacks
upon any given problem, that failure speaks only to his lack of skill.
It cannot call into question the rules which his paradigm has supplied,
for without those rules there would have been no puzzle with which
to wrestle in the first place. (Kuhn, 1976, p. 61, added emphasis)
Kuhn here, self-admittedly, speaks of scientists within his “normal

science” predicament. Yet the crucial feature in science is to move
into the “revolutionary” mindset where precisely the rules of the
game are being challenged—and modified. Yet the dogmas play a
positive role—they create the barriers that the scientist attempts to
remove in the search for new approaches:
. . . nature is vastly too complex to be explored even approximately
at random. Something must tell the scientist where to look and what
to look for, and that something, though it may not last beyond his
generation, is the paradigm with which his education as a scientist
has supplied him. Given that paradigm and the requisite confidence
in it, the scientist largely ceases to be an explorer at all, or at least to
be an explorer of the unknown. Instead, he struggles to articulate
and concretize the known, designing much special-purpose appa-
ratus and many special-purpose adaptations of theory for the task.
(Kuhn, 1976, p. 61)
The “normal scientist” a la Kuhn is an obedient member (Milgram,

1974) of the scientific community dominated by laboratory heads,
14
Axiomatic Bases for Experiential (Empirical) Knowledge Construction
famous “guru” figures, and myths about science as prestigious nonrisky

enterprise in which one succeeds “doing things right.” It is a description
of science in the context of North American societies, even if Kuhn’s
historical evidence comes from other continents and times.
Dogmas as Social Norms
A dogma is a crystallized idea that has been turned into a social
norm. As any social norms (Sherif, 1936) it has its own history—from
its birth to “adulthood” to demise. Contrary to the idea of exchange
of an accepted axiom into a new, more fitting, one, dogmas die slowly
and not necessarily by their own “natural causes.” They can be socially
maintained within a discipline over decades, rendering the given field
of knowledge for long periods of time infertile for further growth. Rapid
exchange of axioms can be brought in by social-institutional admin-
istration, as the history of psychology in Russia in the 1920s amply
demonstrates (Valsiner, 1988). By administratively introducing the
“Marxist axiomatic base” for all sciences in the 1920s, the new Soviet
regime opened the door for a number of new ideas to flourish from
that basis. Yet their fixing of that axiomatic base as the sociopolitical
orthodoxy by the 1930s closed the very same doors for intellectual
innovation that the introduction of Marxist thought orientation had
opened a decade before.
Dogmatizing Axioms: A Pathway to Futile Science
Science can—for some period in its history—produce socially
accepted yet futile results. This is rooted in the tendency to treat
axioms—generalized tools for knowledge constructions—as if these
are fixed and forever immutable “truths.” Productivity of general ideas
is in their openness to change. Efforts toward social regulation of ideas
entail fixating axioms as dogmas of undoubtable kind in their role.
Dogmas are made as leading ideas by persons through social institu-
tions and defended by both cognitive and social resistance strategies.
This is the locus for an institution to appropriate a functional dogma
and turn it into an absolute belief—an orthodoxy.
Psychology’s Orthodoxy: The Quantification Imperative
The case of the axiom of quantifiability of psychological phenom-
ena and its resultant focus of psychology on the measurement act
is a good example of how axioms that have turned into dogmas are
socially defended (Boring, 1961). It is often argued—without any
shades of doubt—that measurement in psychology entails “assigning
15
numbers” to psychological phenomena. Such activity, substantiated by

the inductive model of science, is not an application of mathematics
into the discipline. Mathematical argumentation is thoroughly
deductive, and is built on the internal consistency of proof.2 Most
of mathematics does not deal with numbers—and less so their
“assignment”—at all.
The dispute between qualitative and quantitative perspectives in
psychology is an artifact of the discipline’s moving away from the
phenomena it attempts to study (Cairns, 1986), as well as of turn-
ing existing methods into de facto theories (Gigerenzer, 1991). If
these phenomena become restored in the discipline, it becomes
obvious that the forms of the phenomena have spatial and temporal
spread that cannot be represented by numerical signs in most of the
cases. This axiomatic premise resolves the opposition between numeri-
cal and interpretational data derivation as it views different kinds of
data as differently fitting to represent different phenomena. Psychol-
ogy’s epistemological perspective becomes phrased increasingly in
terms of consensually established methods and operations with the
data. For instance, a major presentation on qualitative methodology ex-
plains the focus of qualitative psychology through such operations:
Qualitative and quantitative approaches are clearly different in the

principal forms of data employed in analysis. Quantitative research
depends on the ability to reduce phenomena to numerical values in
order to carry out statistical analyses. Thus while much quantitative
research begins with verbal data (e.g., in the form of questionnaire
responses), this verbal material must be transformed into numbers
for a quantitative analysis to be performed. By contrast qualitative
research involves collecting data in the form of verbal reports—
e.g. written accounts, interview transcripts—and the analysis then
conducted on these is linguistic and textual. Thus the concern is
with interpreting what a piece of text means rather than finding a
way of capturing it numerically. (Smith and Dunworth, 2003, p. 603,
added emphases)
This very realistic account of the research practices of contempo-

rary psychology is symptomatic in its immediate acceptance of the
operationalist mindset—what matters are what kinds of operations
are performed with “the data”, rather than what are the data and why
are they produced? No theoretical goals are mentioned. The phe-
nomena are either “captured numerically” or interpreted as to “what
they mean.”
16
The quantification imperative in psychology grew out of the

traditions of psychophysics (Boring, 1961, yet a more comprehensive
account can be found in Michell (1997) with the transition of the reali-
ties of just noticeable differences (of tactile touches, or tones) to the
realm of crude unitizing of phenomena of higher psychological kinds.
The latter took the form of “mental testing” (and later personality
testing) at the turn of the twentieth century. The crucial moment at
which the quantification imperative creates the distance of the data
from the original phenomena is in the assumption of formal sum-
mativity of responses. Thus, consider a sequence of two items (that
could be parts of an N-item personality inventory), both answered in
the affirmative:
“Do you often feel you do not want to see anybody?” YES
“Do you think you are not good for anything?” YES
A clinical, or experimental, psychologist who could use this

sequence of questions—with a hypothesis “this person is depressive”—
would consider item 2 to be an independent qualitative probe for
depression to item 1. A test constructor, however, would attribute to
each answers a number (1) thus resulting in a “score,” in this case a
“depression score” (of a test of 2 items—the maximum score, 2). The
assumption that the number attributed to the answer represents the
“depression” that underlies the answers and does it with precisely com-
parable units (code 1 for item 1 is same as code 1 to item 2). The “score”
of summed up artifactual assigned numbers replaces the phenomena
that each of these two (or any other on N items in personality tests)
actually represent. This is not only a case of “misplaced precision” but
rather the opposite—the “precise imprecision.”3 The “depression score”
has no connections left with the phenomena of depression that were
there in the person’s answers.
Reasons for such acceptance of precise imprecision in psychology
are those of social convention, rather than of proof of their adequacy.
As a result of the social acceptance of the quantificational operation
over the twentieth century,
. . . systemic structures within psychology prevent the vast majority

of quantitative psychologists from seeing the true nature of scien-
tific measurement, in particular the empirical conditions necessary
for measurement. As a consequence, number-generating proce-
dures are constantly thought of as measurement procedures in the
17
absence of any evidence that the relevant psychological attributes

are quantitative. Hence, within modern psychology a situation exists
which is accurately described as systemically sustained methodologi-
cal thought disorder. (Michell, 1997, p. 376, added emphasis)
Michell’s “diagnosis”—systemically sustained methodological

thought disorder—fits the situation in contemporary psychology per-
fectly. The problem of knowledge construction in psychology is not
its empirical nature, but its pseudo-empirical practices (Smedslund,
1995). The empirical conditions necessary for measurement are set by
the axiomatic basis of a science. In psychology, such basis is rarely—if
ever—made explicit when a researcher rushes to develop a “standard-
ized measure” for “precise measurement” of quality X. The “quantifi-
cation imperative” in psychology has become a socially constructed
norm that has taken on a dogmatic role in regulating what kind of
knowledge does this science habitually produce.
In science, each axiom can be replaced by another—unless it has
become a social norm as an orthodoxy. The latter—as I argue here—
has been the case in psychology. Yet, it is precisely an analysis of the
history of the discipline (see also chapters 5–7) that a fitting alternative
to the mindless quantification axiom exists. It stems from the line of
thought of the holistically oriented traditions in nineteenth century
German philosophy and psychology, with the focus on living-through-
the ongoing experience.
The Counter-Axiom: The Psyche Consists of Qualitative Wholes
The experiential roots of psychology were embedded in human full
body experiences, among which music could be seen as the one present
or evoked any time. Musical forms have been the core phenomenon for
developing psychology at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of
twentieth century (Ash, 1995). They served as the basis phenomenon
for the development of the idea of transposable wholes—configurations
of various orders of generality (Ehrenfels, 1988/1890). Such configura-
tions may miss some parts, yet the whole would complement these.
They are structured adaptations to the immediate relations with the
environment.
A melody is possible only if it becomes unified across the irrevers-
ible time, thus requiring configurational memory:
. . . in order to apprehend a melody, it is not sufficient to have in one’s

consciousness at each stage the impression of the note that is then
18
sounding. Rather—leaving aside the initial tone—the impression of

at least some of the preceding tones must also be given in memory.
Otherwise the concluding impression of all melodies having an
identical final note would be the same. (Ehrenfels, 1988, p. 84)
That configurational temporal memory is a generalizing one,

allowing for “filling in” missing notes and transposing the melody
across keys. Thus human psychological functioning takes place at
the level of generalized Gestalt qualities—flexible configurations of
intermediate abstractness that may change their location, exchange
particular elements within the whole, and be only partially available
in perception.
As patterns of generalized kind, Gestalt qualities are the basis for
innovation. The process of completion of the Gestalt is always open-
ended (as the person faces the uncertainty of the impending future) and
hence calls for “free generation by the creative activity of imagination”
(Ehrenfels, 1988, p. 109).4 The result of such creativity was the recogni-
tion of emergence of Gestalt qualities of “higher order”—new qualities
that may defy description in verbal terms, yet operate precisely in our
relations with our environments. Human striving toward art, from
representational to abstract, is an example of the open-endedness of
our desire for Gestalts.
The contemporary dispute about “qualitative”, “quantitative”, or
“mixed” methods overlooks the issue that it is the axiomatic basis of
the discipline that is actually in question. Psychology has been caught
in between two oppositions that are presented as mutually exclusive.
Quantification—the turn of qualities into numbers and the tension
between the “processability” of numbers and loss of phenomena—is
one of these. The other is the no-doubt preference given to the induc-
tive generalization. Its tension with the deductive orientation maintains
the tension between “empirical science” and “theoretical speculation”
(as the latter is often pejoratively called). Yet there are solutions, syn-
thetic ones, for both. Move beyond induction and deduction to the
abductive frame of mind is one of those.
Beyond Induction and Deduction—Clarifying Abduction
Doing science involves both intra- and extra-scientific sets of con-
straints. The former—coordination of top-to-bottom and bottom-to-
top cognitive processes—leads to the need to view how knowledge
becomes synthesized in the artistic act of scientific discovery. Neither
purely inductive nor purely deductive inferential rules cover that
19
process adequately. There is a “third way”—that unites science with

the world of artists—that involves a “leap in logic”—yet one that can
be declared to belong to that logic itself. Charles Sanders Peirce has
labeled this abduction (or retroduction), which entails
. . . the hypothesis cannot be admitted, even as a hypothesis, unless

it be supposed that it would account for the facts or some of them.
The form of inference . . . is this:
The surprising fact, C, is observed
But if A were true, C would be a matter of course
Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true.
(Peirce, 1903, Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism—CP 5.188–189,
added emphases)
The process of abduction involves a cognitive “leap” from the con-

clusion (C) to an explanation (A) that would be accepted as a given
(“matter of course”). Peirce’s lifelong insistence on the primacy of
formal logic (Pizarroso and Valsiner, 2009) led him to reject the ob-
vious aspect of irreversibility of time in the course of arriving at the
A → C conclusion. The discovery (C)—as a “surprise”—is a unique
event in the ongoing knowledge construction of the person who is
thusly surprised. The inference—backward over time—is of general-
ized nature (“matter of course”) of retrospective kind. It is a unique act
of assertion of general knowledge, constructed “on-line” by the active
knowledge-maker. Yet the resulting knowledge remains uncertain
(“suspect”). Peirce explained further:
Abduction . . . is merely preparatory. It is the first step of scientific

reasoning, as induction is the concluding step. [...] they are the op-
posite poles of reason, the one the most ineffective, the other the
most effective of arguments. The method of either is the very reverse
of the other’s. Abduction makes its start from the facts, without,
at the outset, having any particular theory in view, though it is
motived by the feeling that a theory is needed to explain the surpris-
ing facts. Induction makes its start from a hypothesis which seems
to recommend itself, without at the outset having any particular
facts in view, though it feels the need of facts to support the theory.
Abduction seeks a theory. Induction seeks for facts. In abduction
the consideration of the facts suggests the hypothesis. In induc-
tion the study of the hypothesis suggests the experiments which
bring to light the very facts to which the hypothesis had pointed.
The mode of suggestion by which, in abduction, the facts suggest the
hypothesis is by resemblance—the resemblance of the facts to the
consequences of the hypothesis. The mode of suggestion by which in
20
induction the hypothesis suggests the facts is by contiguity—familiar

knowledge that the conditions of the hypothesis can be realized in
certain experimental ways.” (Peirce, 1901 On the Logic of drawing
History from Ancient Documents especially from Testimonies, CP
7.218, added emphasis)
Even in Peirce’s presentation the inductive inference retains its

primacy over generalization.
Demonstrative Induction as a Form of Abduction
It is clear that sciences make knowledge in-between the general
beliefs and empirical—experiential—evidence. The latter is always
singular, as the knowledge-maker encounters it always in a new form.
The need for, and difficulties of, abduction exemplify the constraints
the lived-through experience sets upon science. It is always singularly
unique, hence time-located, while the scientific knowledge is general
and abstracted out of time and space:
. . . empirical support for a theory is measured by the combination

of empirical and theoretical adequacy it achieves as the conclusion
of a demonstrative induction. In other words, the empirical evidence
supporting one theory rather than another includes a wide array
of experimental evidence involved in the phenomenal as well as in
the major premises of the demonstrative induction from which the
theory at issue is derived. (Massimi, 2004, p. 271)
The notion of demonstrative induction—introduced by George

Peacock in 1830 (Cajori, 1918, p. 200)—is in our contemporary ren-
dering
. . . a mixed hypothetical syllogism of the form Modus Ponendo

Ponens (i.e., if p then q, But p, Therefore q), in which the premises
are of a certain form. The major premise must be either of the form
(a) If this S is P then all S is P, or (b) If at least one S is P then all S
is P. In the first case the minor premise must be of the form This
(same) S is P. In the second case the minor premise must be either of
the form This S is P, or of the form At least one S is P. (It is of course
obvious that the former implies the latter, whilst the latter does not
imply the former). The conclusion is always of the form All S is P.
(Broad, 1930, p. 302)
Demonstrative induction entails “deduction from the phenomena,” a

direct leap to deduction based on the given specimen. Such leap is bring-
ing a moment of deduction into the process of inductive generalization,
21
that proceeds from evidence of a single case, under the assumption

that all specimens of similar kind (“natural kinds”) can be assumed to
be similar in respect to the characteristics under consideration. That
assumption can be tenable in case of classes of phenomena that are
fixed on their nature, and which could, in principle, be enumerated
and analytically described (Kyburg, 1960). It is untenable if any of the
specimens within the category (“natural kind”) can be assumed to be
synthetic (transforming, or open to transformation—like all biologi-
cal systems).
Generalization and Hyper-Generalization

Generalization is the process of abstraction from the concrete,
here-and-now experienced, sensori-motor-semiotic processes of the
person toward abstraction that conditionally frees the experiences
from the confines of the given context and temporal duration.5 That
process—abstracting away from some selected specifics—makes the
presentation of similar experiences possible. The process of generaliza-
tion entails its reversal—specification. Thus, in order to move beyond
the immediate experiencing of duration (in Henri Bergson’s terms),
different distinguishable “time segments” of the flow of experiencing
need to be perceived—across irreversible time—as similar (T1 . . . T2
event is similar to what is happening now at T3 . . . T4 Figure 2.1.). The
distinction made about that similarity is itself located in irreversible
time. The person facing the immediate possible future reflects back
upon the extension to the immediate past (T3 . . . T4 where T4 belongs
to the immediate present) and links that with memory reconstruction
of further past (T1 . . . T2).
The first aspect of the here-and-now immediate state of affairs
that is abstracted from—left behind—is the irreversibility of the
time in the unfolding of both durations (T1 . . . T2 and T3 . . . T4).
Instead of the flows of experiences within these time frames we
mentally arrive at the abstraction of similarity of qualities of T1 . . .
T2 and T3 . . . T4. As Sovran (1992) has demonstrated, such abstrac-
tion of similarities becomes further re-constructed as sameness as
the particular category (A) that includes both (and any other similar
durations) is constructed (see Figure 1.1 above). The inevitability of the
irreversible time creates a situation where human abstraction processes
make static similarity constructs in the middle of the unstoppable move-
ment to the future. The differences between T1 . . . T2 and T3 . . . T4
are eliminated.
22
POSSIBLE
FUTURES
T1 T2

T3 T4
FLOW OF IRREVERSIBLE TIME

Figure 2.1 Abstracting similarity out of the flow of duration
Figure 2.1 points to the ecological necessity of abstraction—the act

of abstracting takes place while facing the uncertainty of the future.
Within the inevitable movement onward in our irreversible course
of duration we operate under the anticipation of the future. The con-
struction of the signs—meanings that present a static picture of our
life world (while we actually face its dynamic indeterminacy)—is the
guiding force for the processes of abstraction and construction of a
generalized static presentation of the dynamic reality. Our constructed
illusion of stability is necessary for our efforts to attempt to stabilize
the flow of duration in the immediate future.
Figure 2.1 also can be viewed as an example—on the temporal
plane—of the notion of bounded indeterminacy (or “dependent
independence”—Valsiner, 1997). The living human being is depen-
dent upon the constraints of the reconstructed past (by creating
time-free abstractions) and upon the experienced constraints of the
present. Yet the uncertainty of the future indicates the freedom of
creating novelty—albeit on the basis of the constraints of the past.
Every moment of human thinking—making categories that link the
present moment’s experience with the past—constrains the range of
possibilities for the immediate future that is turning into the pres-
ent. Human freedom of construction of the new—independence—is
bounded upon the dependence of the semiotically reconstructed past.
We are free through being bound to—constrained by—our reconstruc-
tions of the past.
A fitting example of how innovation emerges from the structured
context of the past, combined with an unexpected happening of the
present, is the act of improvisation in music (Klemp et al., 2008).
23
A musician is playing a known composition, determined by the musical

script, and suddenly realizes he has made a mistake—relative to the
script, which is also known to (and expected by) the audience. Instead of
treating it as a “mistake,” which it objectively is, the musician enters into
a flow of other “mis-takes” in the continuing play that results in a new
version of the tune—recognized as an innovative improvisation, rather
than a “continuing flow of mistakes.” In contrast, if the musical cogni-
tive system were to work simply in evaluating a new feature (T3 . . . T4
in Figure 2.1) in comparison to the previous one (T1 . . . T2), the play
should stop (because the musician “made a mistake”) and resume, to
end up in mistakes-free repetition of “the same.” This of course happens
often in the preparation for the performance by the musician—who
balances innovation (similar-but-slightly-different way of performing)
with the category of “mistakes.”
The emergence of a new tune—an improvisation—in the process
of overcoming a “mistake” by the act of improvising is an example of
moving beyond a generalized category establishment. The musician
playing “this concerto of Mozart” is not merely performing that as it
is (on the script) or was (in the original performance—which is lost in
history as it was not sound-recorded), but is cocreating a fresh version
of the music. It remains “Mozart” but becomes “Mozart performed
by X.” In science, such moving beyond the established past requires
generalization. Yet it can be of two kinds—accumulative (exemplified
by Figure 1.1.A and various techniques of inductive “meta-analyses)
or generative—leading beyond the established abstracted category (A)
as given in Figure 1.1.B.
Generalization beyond (already established) generalization involves
further abstraction, which can lead to qualitative escalation of the
abstraction to cover the whole experience—all duration, including the
past (reconstruction) and the future (still to be lived-through). Such
forms of generalization are hyper-generalizations (Valsiner, 2007—see
also Beckstead, 2010; Del Rio and Molina, 2009; Märtsin, 2010). The
famous line from William Shakespeare6
“All the World is a stage . . ..”
leads to a hyper-generalization that starts from an actor stating

that on a particular stage to a particular audience at a given time.
Yet it entails the abstraction of “stage” in general (“stage” in contrast
with “audience” in any theatre where plays are performed), and the
24
hyper-generalized extension of that abstraction to “all World”—a

notion the borders of which are infinite.7
We find examples of hyper-generalization in human affective life
(Vygotsky, 1971—analysis of Ivan Bunin’s Gentle Breath). Examples
of aesthetic feelings—catharsis experienced during a theatre perfor-
mance, reading deeply moving poems or prose, or in an interpersonal
situation of extreme beauty indicate that human affective field can
become undifferentiated as a result of extensive abstraction of the
emotions involved, and their overgeneralization to the person’s general
feelings about oneself or about the world. Theoretically, that process
entails internalization and abbreviation.
It becomes important to emphasize that contrary to Werner’s and
Kaplan’s “orthogenetic principle” or Lev Vygotsky’s emphasis on use
of concepts, the highest levels of hierarchical integration do not entail
increased articulation of the parts of the affective system, but just to
the contrary. The highest level of hierarchical integration is that of an
hyper-generalized (“nebulous”) semiotically mediated feeling (“higher
feeling”) subordinating all rational discourse about emotions to its
ever-present (inarticulate) guidance. Figure 2.2 depicts the process
of hyper-generalization.
Hyper-generalization is the most central process in human regula-
tion of conduct. It reflects the “fuzzy aboutness” of human reasoning.
The main focus on human reasoning has been on the crisp, rather than
fuzzy, logic that is applicable to the levels from recognized events to
a generalized sign.
The example of the difficulty that psychology has had with the
treatment of some higher-order affective phenomena—such as val-
ues (Valsiner, Branco, and Melo Dantas, 1997)—is indicative of this
process. Values are basic human affective guidance means that are
ontogenetically internalized, but their externalization can be observed
in any aspect of human conduct. Yet as they have reached such hyper-
generalized way of being, they are no longer easily accessible through
verbally mediated processes. We can decisively act as directed by
our values but are ill at ease telling others what these values are. For
example, I may say “I feel totally dedicated to science.” That may refer
to the direction of the values, but that statement cannot capture them
in their entirety. Values are not entities but dynamic semiotic fields,
while superimposition of language onto such nebulous-but-real fields
makes them into an entity.
25
Figure 2.2â•… Hyper-generalization and the emergence of hyper-signs
In human life, affective fields of higher kind regulate experience in

its totality. Affective fields can be hyper-generalized meanings that
have left their original context of emergence and flavor new experi-
ences. Thus, a person may develop the notion “life is unfair” from a
series of life events of being mistreated. Once hyper-generalized, the
field sign of affective tone begins to color many—sometimes each and
every—new experience. The person can look at the rising (or setting)
sun and consider this to carry the flavor of “unfairness of life.” A per-
son’s depressive feelings can give coloring to each and every encounter
with the world, even if it is impossible for her or him to describe those
verbally. A flow of a general feeling just takes over the intra-personal
world of the person, begins to control one’s concrete actions, and
debilitate any efforts to counteract it. A person proceeding through
a flow of depressive feelings cannot do anything to overcome those;
26
a person overcome by a field of maniacal desires cannot stop oneself

from hyper-action. Statements about science (“this is good science”)
also reflect the affective hyper-generalized domain of the person. So-
cial guidance of science, by all participants in that guidance process,
is largely operating through such affective “gut feelings” about science,
whether it is actually informed about what scientists do, or not.
Notes
1. “. . . quem quia a vi vulgari, ut lapides in terra projici it corpora coelestia
in orbes revolvi praesertim per tritissimam illam pomi coram Newtonem
delapsi historiam, edocta securitatem adversus coelum hausit, oblita sci-
licet, universae generis humani, deinde Trojae miseriae principiis pomum
adfuisse, malum etiam scientiis philosophicis omen.”
2. The mathematical proof is “. . . by logic, and, once established, is irrefut-
able. The scientific proof is by experiment to check hypothesis, and always
open to later refutation if someone does a subtler experiment or proposes
a subtler hypothesis.” (Zeeman, 1966, p. 349)
3. It could be added that such “measurement” also blocks the potential for
prediction. Thus, the answer to item 2 that corroborates that to item 1 could
be a sign for potential suicide, as an extension of the depressive feeling from
the social to intrapersonal domain. Escalation into a suicide would not be
available from any interpretation of the “high score” of 2. The contents-
freed nature of assigning numbers eliminates pertinent psychological
evidence.
4. Aside from leading to different holistic perspectives in psychology of the
twentieth century, Ehrenfels’ notion of Gestalt quality set the stage for
considering the processes of development in the psychological domain:
“Psychic combinations never repeat themselves with complete exactness.

Every temporal instant of every one of the numberless unities of con-
sciousness therefore possesses its own peculiar quality, its individuality,
which sinks, unrepeatable and irreplaceable, into the bosom of the past,
while at the same time the new creations of the present step in to take
its place.” (Ehrenfels, 1988a, p. 116)
5. “. . . to generalize is to recognize likeness which had been previously masked

by differences; to recognize the likeness is also therefore to recognize these
differences as irrelevant, and to disregard them from the point of view of
the general conception. Such recognition is abstraction.” (Dictionary of
Philosophy and Psychology, 1901, p. 408, added emphasis)
6. From As you like it:
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances . . ..”
7. Hence we can talk about SWIB: Sign with Infinite Borders—Valsiner
(2009a–d, 2010a,b).
27
3
Objectivity and Social
Forgetfulness1
Though successful research demands a deep commitment to the status
quo, innovation remains at the heart of the enterprise. Scientists are
trained to operate as puzzle-solvers from established rules, but they
are also taught to regard themselves as explorers and inventors who
know no rules except those dictated by nature itself. The result is an
acquired tension, partly within the individual and partly within the
community, between professional skills on the one hand and profes-
sional ideology on the other.
Kuhn (1976, p. 66)
Science is subjectively objective. Its goal is construction of knowl-

edge that stands by itself—objectively—yet it is created by passionate
persons and their subjective insights into the objects of investigation.
Furthermore, the social roles of knowledge constructors are carefully—
and ideologically—scrutinized by others who may have some stake in
the kind of knowledge that science might produce. The social world of
scientists, and their societies, is inherently moralistic, yet the knowledge
producers themselves are expected to stand beyond their subjectivity
and drive the opinions of the public toward accepting the objective
messages from the science. This is a deeply ambiguous social act—no
surprise that the question of objectivity in science has been an object
of contestation in its history. As Theodore Porter has pointed out,
Claims of objectivity . . . are also claims for a greater role in demo-

cratic political life. The social sciences depend on this role as detached
and independent experts, and cherish the myths that support it. So-
cial scientists are now found in many agencies of government, in all
areas of business life, in foundations, charities, schools, militaries,
and prisons. University researchers work as consultants, or at the
very least, train students who will do so. These forms of involvement,
29
and not only specialist publications by university faculty, define the

place of social science in the world, not merely as a by-product but
as an intrinsic outcome of two centuries of history. (Porter, 2003,
Thus, while the pools of evidence are accumulating at a great speed,

the takeover of social control over the roles of scientists as they are
parts of ideologically oriented institutions is on the increase in parallel
(see chapter 4).
Science proceeds from facts given by observation. Those facts are

objective in the sense that they are interpersonal: they are . . . acces-
sible to and indubitable for all normally equipped human observers.
They had to be discovered, of course, before they could become
data for science, and their discovery often required the invention
of elaborate new instruments. But the need to search out the facts
of observation was not seen as a threat to their authority once they
were found. Their status as the objective starting point, above all,
remained secure. (Kuhn, 1992, pp. 4–5, added emphasis)
Kuhn’s perspective on facts pertains to, by his own admission, “older

science,” in contrast to our contemporary world. Yet even in that “older”
versus “younger” juxtaposition is hidden an act of partitioning—
“science is” becomes the dominant perspective over “science-is-being-
made.” Historical categorizations hide the flow of continuity and the
process of fact-making (Yurevich, 2009). Our focus on the seemingly
neutral characteristic of knowledge construction—the objective nature
of “the fact”—largely camouflages the social canalization of knowledge
at its moments of rupture.
Objectivity in Science—The Matter of the Fact
Science is semiotically organized by abstract, ill-defined, and all-
encompassing semiotic fields that act as meta-semiotic organizers. The
very idea—science is about “objective knowledge” that is created by
dedicated humble intellectuals—is a social representation that oper-
ates as such meta-semiotic organizer. There are others—the notions
of objectivity and fact are two of the major meanings in that role. A
perspective that aims at calling itself science cannot deny that it is
objective, and that the facts it operates with are similarly so. A science
of nonobjective domain where facts are considered fictions seems a
contradiction in terms (at best) and witchcraft (at worst). Or maybe
it becomes accepted as literature.
30
Objectivity and Social Forgetfulness
However, the story of facts and objectivity is not simple when seen
through a historical and social lens. Objectivity in our time
. . . refers at once to metaphysics, to methods, and to morals. We

slide effortlessly from statements about the ‘objective truth’ of a
scientific claim, to those about the ‘objective procedures’ that guar-
antee a finding, to those about the ‘objective manner’ that qualifies a
researcher. Current usage allows us to apply the word as an approxi-
mate synonym for the empirical (or, more narrowly, the factual); for
the scientific, in the sense of public, empirically reliable knowledge;
for impartiality-unto-self-effacement and the cold-blooded restraint
of the emotions; for the rational, in the sense of compelling assent
from all rational minds, be they lodged in human, Marian, or angelic
bodies; and for the ‘really real’, that is to say, objects in themselves
independent of all minds . . .. (Daston, 1992, pp. 597–98)
Thus, discourse about objectivity belongs to the realm of moral dis-

courses in the given social setting. It is therefore not surprising that the
moral character of a scientist—the maker of objective knowledge—is
constantly under scrutiny. Scientific fraud is the ultimate sin in science
that has led to dismissal of, and even suicide by, the sinners. In our
contemporary conditions of increasingly patented knowledge, that
moral discourse has turned into legal negotiations that may involve
apologies rather than self-elimination.
Scientists work in the realm of possible knowledge, finding ways
of actualizing it. Most of the time they fail; their hypotheses end up
inadequate. Yet the search for the one time when they fail to fail keeps
them going. At the same time, the public presentation of their work
includes strong social prescriptions for success and the making of “hero
myths” of the scientists, together with their science. The planning of
press conferences about new discoveries in our time often antedates
the actual public sources that would make the new evidence available
for public scrutiny.
The Fact: A Cultural Construction
The notion of fact in this social context is increasingly under the
pressure of social reconstruction. A look at the cultural history of
what has been considered a fact reveals an interesting story of vari-
ous cognitive and discursive strategies being employed at different
historical periods. Thus, in the medieval period, the matters of fact
(questio facti) were distinguished from those created by law (questio
iuris). The latter were directly linked with the positions of the persons
31
involved in the negotiation process, rather than constructed directly

between the observer and the object of observation (Vallerani, 2001).
Even graphic representations of reality, such as cartographic maps,
have had their history of being disputed by political interests (Raggio,
2001). The tendency to separate theory and practice from each other
enters in the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries (Crisciani, 2001) and has
proceeded until our time. While separating the two, the issue of how
they remain selectively connected is what is at stake for science.
Facts are abbreviated events—“short” as Lorraine Daston (2001)
describes them. The “birth” of a fact is always a result of a relation-
ship between the knowledge-maker and the object from which the
knowledge is made. But after that has ended, the relationship becomes
invisible (“drops out”) and the fact stands on its own, seemingly devoid
of its original context. Facts are abbreviated social discourses that have
lost connection with their creators and are projected to the outward
reality as if they exist on their own. Yet for any interpretation of such
fact a new context is constructed by the interpreter.
Facts are communicative events. They may be about something
(signs that represent some phenomenon), they may be collected in
holding places—abandoned storehouses or computer disks—of no
social nature. Yet for the functioning of these signs as facts there has
to be an interpreter—somebody who uses their sign value, and who
has either discovered or established the referential role of the signs
that makes them into facts.
In the history of science—in its separation from alchemy—the veri-
fication of the experimental evidence by witnesses to the experiments2
that were carried out was crucial:
An experience, even of an experimental performance, that was wit-

nessed by one person alone was not a matter of fact. If that witness
could be extended to many, and in principle to all people, then the
result could be constituted as matter of fact. In this way, the matter
of fact was at once an epistemological and a social category. The
foundational category of the experimental philosophy, and of what
counted as properly grounded knowledge generally, was an artifact of
communication and of whatever social forms were deemed necessary
to sustain and enhance communication. (Shapin, 2010, p. 91)
Three technologies were combined in the making of knowledge:

the material technology of the experimental apparatus and the objects
involved, a literary technology by which the results of the experiment
32
were made known to those who could not directly witness it, and
social technology through which the participating knowledge-makers
negotiated their understanding of the matter of the fact. Independent
of whether we look at Robert Boyle’s air pump in the seventeenth
century (Shapin and Schaffer, 1985) or the presentation of every meter
of movement of the Mars Lander in the twenty-first century, these
three technologies outlined by Shapin constitute the central axes for
knowledge construction in the relationship of the authors (scientists)
and their audiences. The relative role of the three technologies varies
in particular sciences—the CERN-triggered microparticles cannot
be witnessed immediately by any group of people, while a comet that
appears in the sky every evening for some weeks triggers curiosity in
all, independent of their education.3 The public visibility (or invisibil-
ity) of the technologically mediated event set constraints upon liter-
ary technologies to explain the event to different social strata of the
public. For that latter function, the public disputes about whether the
Earth moves or whether the species are created by an act or creation
or war of all against others acquires social relevance. Scientists have
been forced to repent or retract their knowledge for the sake of the
social control over the literary technology that makes their technical
knowledge usable—or dangerous—for the social order of the given
society. The social technology of scientists’ life organization—their
honors, promotions, funding, etc.—depend on the other two technolo-
gies. For a field completely dependent upon the material technology
for its knowledge construction—astrophysics or microparticle
physics—the use of literary technologies is deeply strategic to gain
the conditions needed for their work. For a mathematician, such use
of literary technology may be irrelevant, yet its use for creating social
technology of the discipline (e.g., “glory myths” of the “genius math-
ematicians”) may abound. Scientific knowledge is socially negotiated
and normatively stabilized. The semiotic organizer of objectivity plays
a key role in that stabilization process.
Objectivity in Its Transformation and Institutional Appropriation
The understanding of objectivity can be thought of as a comple-
mentary project to the understanding of wonder (Gallison—in Daston,
1998, p. 36). While objectivity indicates the true reality—be it in the
mind or in the world—the notion of wonder is explicitly that of objects
that are related to through affective flavoring of incredible kind that
draws curiosity. Yet the objects of wonder are not supernatural (which
33
would be fearful). They occupy the place between what is understood

(objective and solid) and what is feared (the supernatural). The won-
ders of the world are the next step targets for becoming objectively
understood, while supernatural objects are excluded from science.
The history of objectivity entails an interesting meaning reversal.
Since the early uses of the word in fourteenth century scholastic dis-
course (objectivus) it was always paired with subjectivus, yet in ways
diametrically opposite to the meanings of these terms in our time:
“Objective” referred to things as they are presented to consciousness,

whereas “subjective” referred to things in themselves . . .. Eighteenth-
century dictionaries still preserved echoes of this medieval usage,
which rings so bizarre in our ears: “Hence a thing is said to exist
OBJECTIVELY, objective, when it exists no otherwise than in being
known; or in being an Object of the Mind.” (Daston, 2000, p. 32)
The use of the objective–subjective contrast declined in the eigh-

teenth century and was renovated by Immanuel Kant in the direction
we use it nowadays. Yet it was only by 1850s that the notion of objec-
tivity as the property of the object “out there” became established in
most European languages (Daston, 2000, p. 33). The individuality of
the researcher—and the role of perspectival flexibility in establishing
the objective state of affairs4—gave way to the consensual aperspectival
notion of objectivity by mid-nineteenth century:
Aperspectival objectivity was the ethos of the interchangeable and

therefore featureless observer—unmarked by nationality, by sensory
dullness or acuity, by training or tradition; by quirky apparatus,
by colorful writing style, or by any other idiosyncrasy that might
interfere with the communication, comparison and accumulation
of results . . .. Subjectivity became synonymous with the individual
and solitude; objectivity, with collective and convivability. (Daston,
1992, p. 609)
The groups of researchers—around a given leader or in a

laboratory—operated by way of locally emerged social rules. Such
social rule systems—when coordinated between research teams—
become the possible basis for institutional appropriation and become
the basis for corporational objectivity. The latter is a move of meaning
where a particular evidence is considered “objective” because it is
produced by a “brand-name” source. Thus, all research coming out of
University X is “objective” because it comes from that highly reputable
34
“University X.” The corporation to which researchers belong becomes

the semiotic vehicle to establish the “objective nature” of their work!
The newly introduced (Cambrosio et al., 2006) notion of regulatory
objectivity is an interesting extension of the notion of corporational
objectivity to the social power decisions of social institutions. It is
described as
. . . a new form of objectivity in biomedicine that generates conven-
tions and norms through concerted programs of action based on the
use of a variety of systems for the collective production of evidence.
While, for instance, a mundane medical task such as taking a patient’s
blood pressure relies on the use of standardized equipment, to make
clinical sense of the measurement and to act upon it requires more
than the availability of standard equipment. For instance, physicians
need guidelines on what should count as normal, pathological, or ‘pre-
pathological’ (a new construct) blood pressure. These evolving thresholds
are the product of organized forms of clinical research such as multi-
center clinical trials that are regulated by complex protocols and subject
to quality and performance controls, audits, and so on. The (sometimes
diverging) results of trials are then filtered through other regulatory
layers (consensus conferences, and so on) that often involve an intricate
choreography between local, national, and international regulatory
instances. (Cambrosio et al., 2009, p. 654, added emphasis)
It becomes obvious that the use of the term objectivity is of high

social value, and different social power holders are eager to appropri-
ate it for the benefits of the use of its connotations. The description
of regulatory objectivity indicates the appropriation of the term by the
anonymity of social institutions that use it to legitimize its practices.
The institutionalized consensus about a particular medical practice
gains halo effect when presented through the lens of regulatory objec-
tivity. The actual use of knowledge in the very same medical context
may require direct renegotiation of meanings involved.5 Thus, the
notion of objectivity is appropriated by a social power—a bureaucratic
system of governmental and professional institutions—for ideological
self-defense, promotion of products (e.g., the label “FDA approved” on
foods or medicines—Hogle, 2009; Moreira, May, and Bond, 2009), and
most importantly, for guiding the given practice toward its future.
Social Frameworks for Knowledge Making: A Historical
Perspective
The different social representations of objectivity described above
are coordinated with the different social contexts within which
35
scientific knowledge emerges. The perspectival objectivity fitted

the social context of monistic meaning-making—monks and nuns
in monasteries could carefully think about objects beyond their
religious devotion, and create their objective (i.e., in our terms
of twenty-first century—personal-subjective) knowledge. The
late example of such monastic model of knowledge construc-
tion would be found in the work of Gregor Mendel (1822–84)
who arrived at the basic genetic rules in the monastery garden in
Brno in 1856–66.
The gradual exit from the monastic—and religion-dominated—
world of science increases in the eighteenth century and leads to
the relocation of the places of knowledge construction to universi-
ties and tutors’ quarters of aristocratic families. The centrality of
perspectival objectivity was still in place. With the penetration
of the manufacture and factory production models into sciences,
and the move into laboratory as the place for knowledge con-
struction, the aperspectival version of objectivity found its way to
become the norm. Sciences in general have gone through a social
transition from being primarily an individual epistemological enter-
prise (for e.g., the creativity of Mendeleev, Einstein) to that of large
research collectives. Such social organisms can take different forms:
transposing from “church” to unified peer-group—“team,” “family,” or
“factory” (Kvale, 2003).
Each of these organizational forms has its consequences for knowl-
edge construction process and outcomes. Historical changes in psy-
chology indicate a change over the twentieth century toward a factory
model of scientific productivity and its administrative evaluation. This
change leads to major challenges in areas where the theoretical system
of a science is not fully developed (such as psychology). The result
may be extensive proliferation of empirical data without obligatory
corresponding theoretical advancements. The collective nature of
“empirical science” can create large databases, yet the interpretation of
the data through a collective effort remains unspecified. Factories can
produce high volumes of production, but the kinds of products the fac-
tories produce are preset by limited number of designers. If scientific
epistemological work moves not merely toward increased collectivity
(research teams) but also toward its hierarchical (corporational) social
organization, then the dominance of the social-ideological functions
of communicative messages in “the literature” over their substantive
counterparts is likely.
36
Such ideological dominance divides and governs the knowledge base

of the given discipline. It specifies the preferred nature of the prod-
uct—an “article” (or “article in a peer-reviewed journal”), a “chapter,”
a “book,” a “technical report,” a “blog entry,” or “material for popular
press release.” The personal authorship of ideas vanishes behind the
collectivity of many-authored publications. Different conceptual “black
box” explanations become socially accepted—guiding the “factory
of normal science” into the primacy of data production rather than
conceptualization. The social organization of the field borrows from
the wider social systems of governance. For example, psychology in its
reflection upon itself is self-dividing into “schools” and “systems” (de
facto applying a political multiparty social representation to itself ). As
a result, in the beginning of the twenty-first century, psychology finds
itself fragmented, involved in fights between different “schools” (“isms”:
behaviorism, cognitivism, socioculturalism, etc.). All these perspectives
use the rhetoric stance of science in their argumentation for their own
relevance. They are surrounded by wider, social-ideological “-isms”
popular in societies—Marxism, feminism, etc.—which all guide the
rewriting of psychology’s history from different, currently accepted,
social positions in dominant societies.
To summarize, objectivity has become appropriated by social
institutions—both of science and of society—in their forms of gov-
ernance. The perspectival objectivity as described above could fit the
feudalistic-master dominated society. The issue of knowledge in the
context of a particular German land before the unification of Germany
in 1870s was up to the political desires of the local ruler. Thus, if the
ruler of House of Württemberg disliked the thinking of a particular
philosopher, the latter could move to the lands of the King of Prussia
to continue his work. Since the nineteenth-century transformations
in Europe toward political democratic governance the demand for
objectivity became linked with the use of numbers in political meaning-
making. Yet behind any elected politician is one or another kind of a
civil servant who remains anonymous and exercises decision power.
Bureaucratic Roots of the Belief in Numbers: Why the Quantification
Imperative Persists?
Social sciences are especially vulnerable to the control of these
anonymous-but-powerful decision makers as they set up their demand
for what kind of evidence they need. Psychology has set the quantifica-
tion imperative up as a dogma (see chapter 2). The dogmatization of
37
the quantitative perspective in the social sciences at large has its roots
in the sociopolitical organization of society:
The appeal of numbers is especially compelling to bureaucratic

officials who lack the mandate of popular election, or divine right.
Arbitrariness and bias are the most usual grounds upon which such
officials are criticized. A decision made by the numbers (or by ex-
plicit rules of some other sort) has at least the appearance of being
fair and impersonal. Scientific objectivity thus provides an answer
to a moral demand for impartiality and fairness. Quantification is a
way of making decisions without seeming to decide. Objectivity lends
authority to officials who have very little of their own. (Porter, 1995,
The overwhelming and compulsive adherence to the quantitative

data—and to the “Law of Large Numbers”—in the social sciences
which is the backbone of statistical inference—has thus extra-scientific
basis (Donnelly, 1998). The move toward the normative acceptance of
the aperspectival form of objectivity in the nineteenth century comes
under the pressure of social-institutional demands, rather than by any
inherent miraculous power of quantification. The bureaucratic social
order has promoted the accounting ideal of quantification for science
(Porter, 1992)—with the expected results of defocusing from the single
case and from the processes involved behind the normal distributions
expected from the accumulation of numbers. The largeness of the
numbers allows for the smallness of bureaucratic minds to govern the
society with glory and confidence.
Taking the Facts to the Trading Place: The Epistemic Market
Metaphors we use are by and large results of our socially guided
fashions. The development of economy is attributed to the function-
ing of markets—from the farmers’ market in a village to that of stock
markets. In the world increasingly dependent on ownership of know-
how rather than that of mere means of production of goods (Evers,
2005), it becomes seductive to apply the metaphor or markets to the
collective processes that determine the fate of knowledge, or of aes-
thetic values (Plattner, 1998). The ways of handling knowledge indeed
resemble markets, as
There are stringent rules of conduct, but no undue regulation of val-

ues or prices; there is competition but no open conflict, and there is a
high degree of autonomy in decision-making. (Evers, 2005, p. 12)
38
Historically, the market was one of the three bases for development
of a society—the other two being the temple (religious ideology) and
the palace (political ideology—Couch, 1986). This tri-part power
structure can be seen if we apply the market metaphor to our scientific
discourses—behind the seemingly free flow of knowledge between the
academics is the iron hand of a ministry of some kind (that admin-
istratively regulates what the academics do) and the social organiza-
tions of scientists themselves. Yet on the foreground we can see the
marketplace of ideas—the epistemic market.
The epistemic market (Rosa, 1994) operates in analogy with the
financial market—yet with symbolic6 rather than financial currency
values:
Value in the epistemic market is the relevance and truth attributed

to the epistemic product. But this is not a question of all or nothing,
nor is it an inherent property of an utterance, it is the result of an at-
tribution of value in reference to an intention and it is also dependent
on the style of reasoning used . . .. A non-negotiable part of the truth
value of an epistemic product in the market depends on the social
authority attributed to its producer, to the “credit” given to his/her
products. Certainly epistemic products receive an attribution of truth
when they have an empirical or pragmatic validation, when they are
capable of generating replicable experiences in people different of
those who produced them, or when they generate desirable results
for consumers. (Rosa, 1994, p. 157, added emphases)
As we can see—epistemic markets, like any other, are a form of

theatrical value construction where the rhetoric devices used may
lead to increase or decrease of the attributed truth value. The inher-
ent value in the “product”—its fit with the phenomena (Branco and
Valsiner, 1997 on the methodology cycle—also here in chapter 11)—is
only a miniscule starting point for entrance onto the market (as they
are “generating replicable experiences in people different of those who
produced them”). Once on the market, the social construction of the
value—through attributions—takes over.
A particular common sense idea (e.g., “evolutionary psychology,”
“heuristic,” “bias,” “emotional intelligence,” etc.) can become attributed
“true” status because of the authority of the producers (e.g., Nobel
laureates making trivial comments on social issues far outside of their
scientific expertise, but gaining the value on the market). Socially nor-
mative use of methods (e.g., statistical data analyses) may be attributed
the “truth value” on the basis of conforming with the norms, even if the
39
particular ways of such conforming make no sense for understanding

of the phenomena, and may be erroneous from the substantive side of
the given norm system.7 Such violations can be rhetorically overrid-
den by the pragmatic value of the given product for the consumers—if
they buy it (e.g., books on “emotional intelligence” or on “how to make
friends”) then these products must have truth value. Finally, the “desir-
ability” of results is determined by social institutions that may enforce
a “stop in trading” on an epistemic market for sociopolitical reasons8 or
by way of changes in the fashions in the attribution of “truth.” Clearly
the metaphor of markets as applied to the handling of knowledge in
psychology (or any other area of knowledge in our globalizing “knowl-
edge society”) capture only one aspect of knowledge—its fate after it
has been produced. From the perspective of epistemogenesis, it is the
studio (atelier) metaphor of an artist that may fit better than those of
market, factory, or church. A psychologist trying to create new science
is like an artist changing the prevailing—marketable—style of paint-
ing into something scandalous, not yet experienced, and misfitting
with the common sense reality. Picasso’s decision to depict a female
model in a cubist way was far out of the market value of his time—
quite differently from now. Epistemic markets follow—not lead—the
epistemogenetic processes—as the markets are incapable of novelty
construction. Markets select, for consumption, and then manipulate
the value of what is selected by letting these results to be traded. Before
a farmer—or a psychologist—takes one’s product to the market, that
product has to be cultivated.
How Knowledge is Traded: The Importance of Pre-Market Events
The usual stories told about economic markets—by the proponents
of the “free market decides” perspective—is that the value of a com-
modity is being determined by the free trading on the market. Yet the
realities of the very same economic markets are different—the values of
stocks are set for the given trading day by premarket trading—before
the trading on the main floor opens in the morning. Drastic changes
in stock prices are set up before than the opening bell at 9.30 am EST
at the Wall Street starts the day. Furthermore, even if the stock prices
rise and fall over the trading day—as the “market believers” rightly
emphasize—the fixed ending value of the given stock for that day is
what its latest reported price was by the end of the trading day. These
final prices appear in stock charts of the following day’s newspapers
as if these were the prices for these stocks. A similar situation is the
40
case on epistemic markets. The values of the ideas that the scientists
decide to bring to the market is determined long before the “market
forces” have a chance to act upon them. This is particularly evident
in the twenty-first century when science institutions take the public
presentation of their new results so seriously that at times these are
announced on press conferences or leaked into popular press before the
evidence becomes published in scientific sources (see chapter 4).
The epistemogenesis—the birth of new knowledge—happens prior
to the knowledge product enters the epistemic market. Sure, the
conceivers of such new knowledge in the intimacy of their minds are
making it under the influence of the current “market forces,” yet their
act of creation is to antedate the market, rather than follow it. If it
were to follow the market, we would get the dominance of the knowl-
edge (or Thomas Kuhn’s “normal science”) that is characterized by
the loss of the heterotopic domain—its in-between status between the
known and the not-yet-known. Epistemogenesis is like a boat sailing
to unknown destinations—rather than a barge making its daily routine
trip between well-known tourists spots9 some of which have higher
ratings than others in some tourist guide. The tourist can decide which
value s/he prefers, while the explorer has no idea of the value of the
destination one is about to reach. A navigator may encounter a land
after a long ocean journey, deeply believing to have found the ultimate
source of all treasures of India. Yet the subsequent history shows that
the “market value” of that dream equals that of a hamburger. The value
may emerge in the exploration process—or fail to do so.
History of psychology demonstrates to us how the expeditions to
explore new territories of the human mind—first faint efforts to study
the unconscious, the imageless, or the observable (behavior)—turn
into the colonization of mindscapes, charting out protectorates under
the control of one or another company (“behaviorism,” “cognitivism,”
etc.), and begin trading on the epistemic markets. These companies
may employ their armies to fight one another—as on the pages of many
books on history of psychology we can read of combat narratives of
how “progressive” new trend successfully fought (and won) the fight
with an “outdated” one. The market is a battleground—not of ideas,
but of their uniformed presentations. The “winners” often take over
from the “losers”; for example, the “winning” forces of “cognitivism”
maintained the “behaviorist” credo in their core while denying any link
with their predecessor.10 Likewise, selective appearance on the markets
of long-forgotten “giants” whose value is being enhanced in the course
41
of “trading”11 is a major part of the game—the “discovery” that “the

giant” had an idea worth considering now creates the “market value”
of the “giant” for today. The history of reliance on the work of Lev
Vygotsky (van der Veer & Valsiner, 1991) is an example of the latter.
The locations where the battlefields—or markets—exist may move
from immediate (clashes of varied “fan clubs” at scientific conferences)
to the semi-privacy of the research labs (“our cognitive approach is
of course better than their behavioral one”). This parallels the change
in the form of economic markets from the trading floor to the com-
puter screen (Knorr Cetina, 2005).Such meta-scientific value addition
becomes a tacit catalyst for actual generation of ideas—the “market”
can take over the minds of the scientists. Yet there is a danger—a
market trader does not produce new tradable objects, but merely
renegotiates the value of already produced ones.
Last, but not least, a market can “blow the bubble,” or be captivated
by a social power; trading on a market can be stopped by an administra-
tive command. Markets, even “free” ones, are subservient to political
powers. We now live in the lost hopes of the economic markets that
seem to have broken down—after their “bubble.” So it may be the time
to remind ourselves that for psychology the market metaphor is but
one that fits the history of the field. There have been others—those of
church and factory (Kvale, 2003) have been used most appropriately.
Our contemporary production line of psychology’s empirical results
seems to resemble that of mass production of cheap brands of goods,
with the assumption that the quality of these goods will be valued as
these are taken to the market. Yet science is to find new solutions, new
explanations, and the image of a mass production lines is antithetical
to that goal.
The Secret of Selection—Symbolic Value Redistribution

Free markets are not free. Their self-proliferating propaganda of “we
are free” is a mask to hide the constrained and constructed nature of the
value. The “initial public offering” of an idea on the epistemic market
is a carefully scripted social power game—similarly to that of IPOs on
the stock market. As was pointed out above, the “regular trading” on
markets have to start from the value arrived at, through small-scale
trading, before the actual opening hours. Such “market making” sets
the stage for the dynamics of a stock for the given day. When the
market opens, some of the market makers have collectively set up the
new starting price for the given stock. From that moment onward,
42
the value might fluctuate by the dynamic supply/demand processes,

but the “head start” for it is given before. For example, the external to
psychology technological invention—fMRI technique—may be seen
as giving such “head start” for some sub-area of psychology. Yet any
new technologies, no matter how highly valued by markets, do not
generate new knowledge unless there is an idea for which their use
is relevant. An affluent research center may afford a fMRI machine—
and be in need to keep it working—yet how can it find minds who
make that machine work beyond repeating the ideas of the past12 is
the critical question for a science.
Social institutional—thus extra-scientific—interests are the “market
makers” on the epistemic markets. Consider the development in most
countries of the world over the last decade of academic evaluation
systems based on the symbolic “peer review” status of journals, and—
even more prominently—of a particular journal’s “impact factor” for
the evaluation of individual academics and/or research groups.13 Such
administrative interference into the epistemic markets is changing the
nature of what kinds of “products” are to be “traded” at initially highly
set “prices.” The impact of such market-making would be devastat-
ing for the discipline in the long run. We see proliferation of small
fragmented “pieces” of knowledge, high redundancy between these,
and a focus on publishing for the sake of publication—not commu-
nication with other scientists. Suggesting the valuation of quantita-
tive approaches (“evidence-based medicine”) over their qualitative
counterparts sets the epistemic markets up to artificially demand
presentation of knowledge in accordance with social norms rather
than methodological fit (Branco and Valsiner, 1997). The development
of psychology since the 1930s has been shown to see such “market
guidance” that involves alienation of the data from the phenomena
from which they are derived (Cairns, 1986; Toomela, 2007, Toomela
and Valsiner, 2010).
How does history writing in psychology operate in such market-
making process? The usual role histories of science are given by the
makers of the epistemic markets is that of a “junk bond”—it is given
a place on the market, but its value is declared to be that of next to
nothing. Science finds its history a story of errors—that undermines
the “bright spots” of events declared to be “breakthroughs.” The latter
segregate the history of a science from its present and future state.
History of the discipline is mostly that of wrong ideas, or of past
right solutions. In either case, it is disconnected from what happens
43
in the science now. The practice of social guidance of psychology has

proceeded by narrative exclusion of selected ideas by rewriting the
history of a discipline—in our case here, that of psychology—from
an ideological perspective.
However, when we see history of science as a reservoir of ideas—
tried but for varied reasons abandoned—we can see the role of such
history as a premarket value maker. Many of the abandoned ideas were
left behind not because they did not work, but for reasons of change in
the dominant ideologies, or simply premature death of the inventors
of the ideas. A return to have a careful look at their potentials is what
gives history of science a powerful role in the making of the future—
and it can take on the role of a premarket value maker. Yet for such
change history of science needs to become self-reflexive—what kind
of knowledge about history has what kinds of function in the current
development of the discipline? Some kind of knowledge blocks the
possibility to innovate science, other—may enable it. For example,
the usual way of dividing the discourse in history of psychology into
the narrative of “opposing camps” (“mentalism” versus “behaviorism”
versus “cognitivism” versus “socioculturalism”) guarantees that none
of these isms as they get much attention in the storytelling about
psychology’s history, would have any function in the innovation of
psychology at the present time. These are epics of the past, carefully
segregated from the present, yet not forgotten. Just the opposite—one
can claim that knowledge of these “schools” is very valuable (like in
any society the myths of one’s folklore are held in esteem). This is the
knowledge of no functional relevance—by public exposure to it the
very knowledge is rendered useless. We know, maybe even feel we
know very well, and pass by.
Strategies of Implicit and Explicit Forgetting—And Selective
Resurrection
We can discern a number of strategies of value construction, some of
which are disconnected from feeding into the future of the discipline—
others, do it in direct or indirect ways (see Table 3.1).
The strategy of categorical organization and segregation (CAS, de-
scribed above) guarantees functional ignoring of the ideas of the past
through active acquisition of historical knowledge of the past. We get
to know—in order not to know. For example, the often retold story of
how the cultural-historical school (Vygotsky and Luria) became vic-
tims to the Stalinist transformations in the Soviet society provide us
44
Table 3.1â•… Strategies of sciences relating to their histories-in-the-making

Strategy How it functions
CAS: Categorical Organization and Knowledge about a person or event
Segregation in the history of the discipline is
acknowledged and classified (X was
“Y-ist”) or signified (“X was a martyr
for science”)
DRC: Disciplinary Reclassification Knowledge about a person or event
in the history of the discipline is
reassigned to have belonged to
another—neighboring or opposing—
discipline (“X was not a Y-ologist but
a Z-ologist”)
SPC: Symbolic Power Cleaning Eradication of an event or a person
from the “official history” of the
discipline
ND: Natural Decay Natural forgetting of a direction in
the discipline once its proponents “die
out”
SM: Selective Maintaining Highlighting some part of the event
or scientist’s contribution while being
silent of adjacent parts
with a kind of “martyr role” given to the scientists who went through
these days, but is useless as to further development of the ideas of
either Vygotsky or Luria. And of course we hear of the “martyr story”
of Giordano Bruno who was burned on the stake—but not of the
specific ideas of his that led to that fatal drama. We create the social
role for “famous scientist” so that the particular persons are put into
the pantheon of such fame—but their actual ideas and contributions
may become known to very few who decide to study these. The ideas
are segregated from the “famous” persons or “martyrs” as persons.
A similar result in blocking the use of the old ideas in our time is
achieved by the strategy of disciplinary reclassification (DRC). Some-
body whose work initially was seen that of category X becomes—in
post-factum writing of history of the discipline—a very well-honored
representative of category Y. Thus, Franz Brentano’s contributions to
psychology—that occurred in parallel with these of Wilhelm Wundt,
who has been seen as “the father” of experimental psychology—have
45
in the subsequent century become reclassified into philosophy—and

hence that “famous philosopher” is segregated out of psychology’s
current foci of interest. George Herbert Mead, who was a physiological
psychologist turned into a social psychologist, became reclassified in
his own institution from being a psychologist to being a philosopher
and reenters into psychology in the second half of the twentieth century
via sociology. Alexius Meinong and his colleagues at Graz working on
basic thinking processes were, like Brentano, segregated to philoso-
phy. Hans Driesch’s philosophical interests in psychology were left
in biology. These moves to “behind the boundary” can be explained
by the differentiation of the disciplines involved toward separating
themselves from philosophy.
The DRC also works in the opposite direction, bringing historical
ideas from behind an artificial frontier into psychology. Thus, our
current fascination with Mikhail Bakhtin overlooks the belonging of
his basic ideas to literary scholarship and philosophy; Ilya Prigogine’s
physical chemistry (which borrowed from the philosophy of Henri
Bergson and through him from James Mark Baldwin) becomes fitted
into psychology as a new umbrella of “chaos theory.”
There are more drastic strategies such as symbolic power cleaning
(SPC). SPC entails eradication of a particular tradition from the history
of the discipline by social power assertions. The 1936 decree against
paedology in USSR was an act of PC—resulting in eradication of the
name and replacement of the term by “psychology” in republishing
paedological texts.14 The famous Ivan Pavlov instituted penalties to
his laboratory workers when they were caught using “mentalistic
language”—while he himself had no difficulty talking about “the reflex
for freedom” that a dog strangled in a laboratory stand uses in the ef-
forts to break itself free. American Psychological Association’s fight
against “sexism” by introducing the standard ways of writing about
research participants (colloquially called “subjects,” and historically
“observers”—Bibace, Clegg, and Valsiner, 2009) in terms of “he or
she” is an effort of SPC.
Of course among the pathways to forgetting there is the process of
natural decay (ND)—the traditions of a given kind are slowly moving
to their oblivion, with historians of psychology idly looking on. The
disappearance of the traditions of Ganzheitspsychologie from the public
view of psychology in Germany and elsewhere after World War II can
be seen as a case of ND (Diriwächter and Valsiner, 2008). Many of the
Hegelian traditions in nineteenth century German psychology—the
46
work of Karl Rosenkrantz as a prominent thinker—have gone into

oblivion in a similar way.
Finally, there is the strategy of selective maintaining (SM)—a way of
writing an account of history of the discipline that highlights some part
of the past for linkages with the present—while keeping other parts of
the whole away from that highlighting. Jacob Moreno’s psychodrama—
the basis for his sociometry (Moreno, 1947)—has been forgotten in the
study of social networks,15 while his sociometric techniques that were
the outcome of the psychodrama emphasis have been maintained as
“the root” for contemporary social networks studies (Borgatti et al.,
2009). A similar example can be found in the selective maintenance of
Lev Vygotsky’s ideas. It is from his person-centered cultural-historical
perspective that our contemporary sociocultural followers of Vygotsky
selectively prioritize the role of the “social other”—social environment,
“more knowledgeable” peer or parent/teacher of the child—and prefer
to overlook the centrality of the person oneself. They hail Vygotsky
for focusing on the primacy of the social in the ontogenetic process—
overlooking the role of the active person who constructs one’s own
self within that social context. In that glorification of the social focus,
Vygotsky’s main idea of the hierarchical order (“higher” and “lower”
psychological functions) is left in the periphery of the coverage,16 and
the focus on the individual play and fantasy barely mentioned at all.17
At the same time we can encounter endless renarrations of how “the
Vygotskian perspective” entails the relevance of “the social” through
the “help” to the learner by the “more knowledgeable other person”
who is also assumed to be infinitely altruistic to help the learner to
develop to the best of one’s abilities.
Why Postmodernism Fails

It is a relief that the postmodernist empiricism, masking itself in
philosophically sophisticated formulations, is on its way to loss of value
on the “epistemic market” of contemporary social sciences (Valsiner,
2009a). Knowledge, precisely because of its context-dependency, is
general in its nature. Even if it is constructed from “bottom upward”
as the Action-Network-Theory proponents (Latour, 2007) claim, and
in its qualitative empiricism avoids generalizations, it cannot remain
hailed as “local knowledge.” “Local knowledge” is valuable for science
if it provides a new pathway to generalization. Otherwise it remains
a part of the local collective self-reflection, useful perhaps in practice,
but of no consequence for knowledge at large. Without a possibility
47
for generalization, the discursive practices of any social science are of

no knowledge value. Generalization of a scientific idea—tested on the
epistemic market—is subsequently withdrawn from that market to be a
tool usable in further epistemogenesis. The epistemic market is merely
a part in the chain—and even not an obligatory part18—of knowledge
construction processes, rather than the sole determiner of the value of
scientific production. Markets only redistribute value, by the actions
of consumers of knowledge who pretend to be producers.
Pretend play is crucial in human development—we pretend to be
what we are not (yet), act as if we were, and end up being different.
Yet pretense can also remain a nonconstructive game, a form of en-
tertainment. We pretend that yet one more discovered statistically
significant ANOVA or linear regression result may solve the problems.
The data are created as linear representations—by factory rules—of
the phenomena that can be safely assumed to be nonlinear in nature.
Yet our “market demands” require the pretend play of linearity to
proceed with no consideration for the phenomena. A self-entertaining
discipline stops being a Wissenschaft (Valsiner, 2009a). To avoid that
fate, a scientist’s pretend actions need constant correction by the direct
relation with the phenomena, through intuitive understanding where
to look for solutions (Branco and Valsiner, 1997) as well as efforts of
intervention in the phenomena to test the preset assumptions. This
is especially relevant if the scientist operates with a well-developed
standpoint of some kind, rather than accepts the complexity of the
world (Bastos and Rabinovich, 2009). Science is an adventure—not
a tourist trip.
Conclusion: Structures of Assembled—Not
Accumulated—Knowledge
Development of a science is a bricolage. Innovation happens in ways
that assemble its elements from varied sources—social demands, avail-
able technologies, personal experiences of the scientists, availability
(or lack of ) research literature, occasional meetings with scientists
from other fields, and other myriad of features that cannot be con-
trolled or predicted. That multitude of features of constructing the
given discipline’s future may—but need not automatically—include
borrowing from the history of the given discipline, or of the sciences
as a whole.
What would be the forward-oriented role of history of psychology
as a tool for development of the discipline? It is a tool of reflexivity
48
focused on the past but oriented to the future. A careful analysis of a

theme important in the past—yet abandoned by the epistemic markets
due to their fluctuations—is to inform the future reconstruction of
the discipline. For example, at our present time we face the need for
reconstructing the introspective method as the core of human psy-
chological research methodology. Having been eradicated from the
epistemic markets of psychology under the attack of ideologies (the
“behaviorist avalanche”), limits of the method itself (how to deal with
the “imageless thought”) and social macro-processes (World War I and
its corresponding refocusing of the social sciences on socially massive
phenomena—crowds in revolutions and wars, evaluation of persons
within “mass ornaments” of armies, job candidates, or employees,
etc.), the method is currently on its way back. We can observe that in
the increasing use of focus groups, narrative techniques, new focus on
the individual case (Molenaar, 2007; Salvatore et al., 2009; Salvatore
and Valsiner, 2010; Valsiner, 1986a,b). A careful investigation into
the history of the introspective method—of its rise and fall—would
contribute constructively to our understanding of how the forgetting
mechanisms work.
So, to summarize, evidence in any discipline becomes constructed
through a sieve of methodological guidance promoters which include
both future-oriented (“objectivity”-making) and past-oriented (“his-
tory-remaking”) components. What constitutes scientific evidence
emerges from a negotiation process between participating interest
groups—not only scientists but many others. These different groups
divide themselves into two general categories—producers of knowl-
edge, and its consumers. How does their negotiation take place?
Notes
1. The general issues discussed in this chapter were first discussed in May
2005 at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the Universidade de São
Paulo—then titled Psychology as a factory: Changing traditions and new
epistemological challenges. Parts of this chapter were presented as invited
presentation at the 22nd Symposium of the Spanish Society for the History
of Psychology—Oviedo, Asturias—May 9, 2009.
2. Who could be selected by their desired role in the given science or society
at the given time—“. . .Oxford professors were accounted to be more reli-
able than Oxfordshire peasants” (Shapin, 2010, p, 96)
3. Or, witnessing the event may be undertaken without recognition of the
dangers such as the enjoyment of the hot cloud of radioactivity in the early
observations of nuclear bomb explosions.
4. As Daston (1992, pp. 603–07) pointed out, scientists before nineteenth
century could take very different perspectives upon their object of
49
investigation, and change their perspective over their (life) course of study.
Such flexibility would not be an example of inconsistency of their positions
but openness to finding out something new about their objects of investiga-
tion. Inter-observed differences between scientists were not sufficient to
invalidate the perspective of each of their views. Discrepancy supported,
rather than undermined, the epistemological project.
5. For example, the negotiation of the implications of the routine “medical
fact”—like blood pressure—in the context of brain surgery (Moreira, 2006).
The numerical measurements of blood pressure—standardized in medical
measurement practices and consensually accepted—need to be renegotiated
as to their particular meaning in the course of the proceeding of a concrete
brain surgery.
6. Rosa (personal communication, April 21, 2009) created the notion of
epistemic market by analogy with Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of ‘symbolic
market’—“. . . that he relates to symbolic capital, symbolic violence, etc.,
something he takes to be a real market and not a metaphor.” The market
notion in Bourdieu is used as a playground for the habitus—as a specific
structured place where people interact. The nature of such interaction is
dependent upon different kinds of capital—cultural, symbolic, economic—
which actors try to maintain, or gain (Goke-Pariola, 1993). Construction
of power relations takes place on these markets.
7. The best example is psychology’s blatant misuse of statistical inference—
much to the horror of statisticians themselves who call for purity of the
use of their methods (Ziliak and McCloskey, 2008).
8. Eradication of psychology in the Soviet Union in 1936 (Valsiner, 1988).
9. As Michel Foucault has put it poetically—“. . . for civilization, from the
sixteenth century up to our time, the ship has been at the same time not
only the greatest instrument of economic development . . . but the greatest
reservoir of imagination. The sailing vessels are heterotopias par excellence.
In civilizations without ships the dreams dry up, espionage takes the place
of adventure, and the police that of corsairs” (Foucault, 1998, p. 185, my
emphasis).
10. As a test case, consider the “cognitivist” credo of using the term cognitions
(plural) rather than thoughts in order to avoid the subjectivism of the “loser”
(to the “behaviorist conquest”)—that of “introspectionism”
11. Consider Vincent van Gogh, who would have never imagined the mega-
prices paid for his Sunflowers decades later, the reemerging high value of the
ideas of Vygotsky, Bakhtin, or Levinas in our contemporary social sciences
would have been surprising to these modest thinkers.
12. Many of the fMRI uses are set to answer questions that were asked in the
nineteenth century phrenology—what function is localized where?—only
now inside the brain, rather than on the cranium.
13. Such reversal of valuation—on the basis of the outcome (publication in place
X rather than Y) it is the value of the process that is being created—allows
for social control by institutions. The pragmatist stance—value created by
utility (social opinion encoded in outcome evaluation) supports administra-
tive control here. The use of journals’ “impact factors” to evaluate authors’
“impact” in the field has been proven to be unwarranted (Simons, 2008;
Valsiner, 2009b).
50
14. For example, all references to paedology in Vygotsky’s 1934 Russian edition
of Thinking and Speech were changed to “psychology.”
15. For a full history of the Moreno tradition, see Freeman (2004).
16. As our contemporary social sciences block the notion of “nondemocratic,”
i.e., hierarchical orders.
17. The central tenet of ZPD (“zone of proximal development”) for Vygotsky is
child’s play (and later, adolescent’s imagination) within which the child rises
above the present level of development. That individual core of ZPD is not
mentioned when researchers look at the “effects” of the teaching/learning
in the context with “more experienced others.” Yet it is the child—alone or
in social surroundings—who develops.
18. For example, Gregor Mendel’s knowledge construction proceeded—and
succeeded—without any value construction on the epistemic markets dur-
ing his lifetime. Historical unearthing of his ideas did put them onto the
market—where they survived—but long after they were created.
51
4
Pathways to Evidence:
Negotiation of Knowledge
between Its Producers and
Consumers
The social character inherent in the very nature of scientific activity is
not without its substantive consequences. Words which formerly were
simple terms become slogans; sentences which once were simple state-
ments become calls to battle. This completely alters their sociocogni-
tive value. They no longer influence the mind through their logical
meaning—indeed, they often act against it—but rather they acquire a
magical power and exert a mental influence simply by being used.
Ludwik Fleck (1979, p. 43)
In the wider world of social living, knowledge created within a sci-

ence enters onto the battlefield of survival. All through the history of
science the extra-scientific meanings of labels such as “materialism”
or “idealism,” or “science” and “pseudo-science,” have been social rep-
resentations that guide the negotiation of knowledge between their
creators and their recipients. The role of the latter changes over the
history of our societies—from pleasing kings and their courts to the
anonymous collectivity of the “lay public”—with fitting changes in
the forms of the communicative messages. Furthermore, the verdict
of social evaluation of the results of science depends on the success
of such communication effort. Whether it is the powerful fascination
by a power holder with a scientific “miracle” produced in a chemical
demonstration, or a potentially threatening display of the power of
posthypnotic suggestion in a Parisian hospital, or the dependence of fu-
ture funding of science on how many media messages a given research
program generates—all these “outcomes” of science feed further into
53
the production of future evidence. Social guidance of the knowledge

construction process of the future operates under the influence of
the publicly demonstrated and administratively evaluated outcomes
of the activities of the knowledge-makers in the present.
As we saw in chapter 3, objectivity in any science is not a starting
datum, given by facts, but an end result of a complex social construc-
tion process of signs. Facts are signs—not givens, not objective enti-
ties. They emerge in the process of scientific investigation thanks to
goal-oriented relating of the knowledge-maker (the scientist) to the
object of investigation. The conglomeration of socially constructed
facts is evidence. In our contemporary discourse we hear glorifica-
tion of the role of evidence in different areas (e.g., “evidence-based
medicine”1), together with denigration of other kinds of evidence
(“anecdotal evidence”). Interestingly, this opposition happens to map
onto the opposition of population-based versus individual case based
perspectives.
No single human being can know everything. Hence persons
within any society have limits to their knowledge—first, by what they
do (in contrast to what they do not do), and also by what is socially
allowed for them. For example, the segregation of knowledge along
gender or age lines in different societies creates the socially desired
competence–ignorance contrast. “Secret society” of men is not open
to women, and the men are not let to be competent in women’s affairs.
The elders keep some symbolic secrets of the tribe from its youngsters,
who gradually are allowed to the knowledge that comes with age. They
are “stakeholders of evidence”—agents for public display and careful
patenting. They create the relations with others using the social cur-
rency of evidence as a cultural tool.
Sciences—as both conglomerates of existing knowledge and social
institutions within a given society—navigate in-between the various
“stakeholders,” constantly positioning and repositioning their social
functions. The form of the given society—from feudalistic past through
flirtations with socialist and communist utopias to the capitalist
present—determines the terrain on which such navigation happens.
The eighteenth and nineteenth century thinkers had to appease their
little aristocratic employers in the highly fragmented German states
(see chapters 5 and 6) or within the French kingdom, the democracy of
the times of the guillotine, and Napoleonic Empire. Through the twen-
tieth century the centrality of the “public domain” as the navigation
field for the sciences became prominent, and our twenty-first century
54
Pathways to Evidence
faces the turn of that terrain into the vast field of mass-media-made
fashions and dismissals of, and within, sciences.
Scientific Knowledge as It is Socially Made
Knowledge is useful—for some—and dangerous. Hence it is careful-
ly guarded while being made into a socially declared positive goal. The
guarding of evidence happens through making the knowledge-makers
alienate their work from themselves. This socially guided alienation
is practiced at each phase of knowledge construction. First, it is part
of the implementation of the “factory model” of scientific production
(as described in chapter 3)—instead of promoting individual gen-
eral competence the focus is on fragmented specialization (collective
actualization—Moghaddam, 1997, p. 3) where individual expertise in
narrowly defined segments of knowledge-making have to be coordi-
nated within a research collective. Such coordination task prioritizes
the power of the managers of the social unit, rather than that of the
collective. Secondly, guided alienation is encoded in the publication
rules for reporting the evidence—what is to be included (and left out),
how referencing is to be made (“democracy of the literature”—Valsiner,
2000b, 2007a,b), and in the process of publication. In the latter,
In recent times, peer review has achieved an almost mythical status

as a mark of scientific respectability. It rivals statistical inference as
the preeminent mechanism for certifying a finding as impersonal
and, in that important sense, objective. It is by no means sufficient
in itself to establish the validity and importance of a claim, however.
Indeed, it is a mistake to speak as if the validity of truth claims were
the principal outcome of experimental researches. Experimental
success is reflected in the instruments and methods as well as the
factual assumptions of other laboratories. Day-to-day science is
at least as much about the transmission of skills and practices as
about the establishment of theoretical doctrines. (Porter, 1995,
The evidence is socially constructed as collective and impersonal

(and declared thus “objective”), distancing the evidence from the
personal knowing efforts of the knowledge-maker. It is an act of insti-
tutional appropriation of knowledge, guiding what kind of knowledge
becomes socially prioritized. This guidance is embedded in the regular
communication process—that of the act of sharing the knowledge that
science produces with other members of the society. Yet such sharing
is complicated. Sciences operate in their own languages that may be
55
difficult to translate into a form that would fit with the expectations

of the recipients.
What Does Sharing the Knowledge Mean?

The nature of scientific knowledge includes the imperative of being
publicly shared knowledge. However, the very notion of sharing is a
complex meaning that is deeply overloaded with values. Sharing with
your friend is a good act—of objects that one can easily transfer to others.
There are other objects—one’s spouses, children, underwear, etc.—the
sharing of which is not only inappropriate, but deeply offensive, even as
a thought experiment. The very notion of sharing entails that of initial
ownership (“if I own X, I can share it with you, but if you own that X, I
cannot share your object X with me unless you act sharing it”—or—“I
take X of yours to share it with me, and you call it theft or robbery”).
Sharing of scientific ideas seems a simpler issue—after all, ideas are
not one’s property (unless patented). Yet the sharing process entails
the need of coordination of very different perspectives, already by the
basic nature of communication (Figure 4.1).
GENERALISED AND
ABSTRACTED MESSAGE
TIME
“OBJECT”
“expression” “appeal”
“SENDER” “RECEIVER”
Figure 4.1 Organon model (Karl Bühler), modified to include generalization
56
The model—introduced in its basic form (straight lines) by Karl

Bühler in early 1930s (the Organon Model)—illustrates the inherent
ambiguity in all communication processes between people and be-
tween social institutions. Two key features are here reflected—one is
the difference in the message (depicted by the circle and triangle in the
middle) between the sender and the recipient of the message (while
the object, about which the message is, remains objectively the same);
and the other is the generalization of abstracted message over time.
Thus, over a number of communicative messages between the given
science, a particular generalized image of that science emerges in the
given society. These social representations of what the given science
is, how it creates its knowledge, and how its findings could be applied
begin to act as a promoter sign guiding its popular image. For instance,
the technical reports from contemporary genetic science promising to
“cure” illnesses by serving as the basis for developing “new drugs” is
such generalized image for laypersons legitimizing what contemporary
genetics does. Such generalization is based on the common sense of
the laypersons that may operate by a logic of causality very different
from that of the scientists.
Example: Laypersons’ Logic and Scientists’ Logic Passing by Each Other
The case I selected here is the fish killer (Pfiesteria piscicida)—It is a
single-cell microorganism (dinoflagellate) that has been causing the “red
tides” in late 1990s at North Carolina coast, killing fish and other sea
animals that the humans used as food. For the layperson’s mind, the story
of the killing of the fish could be narrated by simple linear causal logic:
the proliferation of the population of the algae caused the death of the
fish. Laypersons’ causal claims allow for no doubt. We can observe that
emphasis on strong beliefs every time yet another “dieting program”
becomes announced in the mass media.
However, the fish-killing algae provided a tough challenge to the
ordinary logic of making causal attributions. A regular algae (Pfiesteria)
turns into “fish killer” only when the fish are in the environment, and if
they have chemically stored information of past “raids” on the fish. The
act of killing the fish takes the form of episodic mobilization. Pfiesteria
spend most of their life as dormant cysts in the sediments of the brack-
ish waters of the mid-Atlantic estuaries. Under certain environmental
conditions the cysts become attracted by a large number of fish. They
emerge from the sediments and metamorphize into free-swimming
zoospores. These toxic zoospores gather together and move collectively
57
toward the targeted fish. The latter may first be immobilized with the
help of a neurotoxin the zoospores make, which is followed by their
eating of the fish. Eating leads to rapid reproduction of the spores and
hence the increase of the “red tide” as noted by humans. Yet, once
having eaten and reproduced, the zoospores transform into amoebae
and hide in the bottom sediments where they hide away as dormant
and nondangerous cysts (Schrader, 2010, p. 281).
This episodic transformation of the biological microorganism is by
far more complex than the laypersons’ causal attributions allow us to
understand. It is an example of Systemic Transformational Causality
(Figure 4.2—from Valsiner, 2007a,b, Figure 8.5). All parts of the causal
system are separate from one another. They come together as a system
temporarily and, after having their impact, move to a further disso
ciated state. The unique addition to the scheme that the Pfiesteria
case adds to the scheme is that one part of the causal system itself—the
fish—is precisely the target of action by the causal system.2 In the case
of Pfiesteria, it is not clear where the zoospore ends and its environ-
ment (including fish) begins (Schrader, 2010, p. 281). Furthermore,
given the temporary nature of the consolidation of the causal system,
the traditional laboratory research traditions can simply not imitate
the real field contexts where the “fish killers” do their job.
Scientific thinking and laypersons’ thinking diverge here cardinally.
On the one hand we have the commonsense expectation to explain
the “red tide” by simple causal attribution for calming down the lay
public who needs to know the culprit. On the other hand, the particu-
larities of the biological adaptations trick the traditions of scientific
analyses by making access to the phenomena possible within a very
small “window of opportunity.”
In the biological sciences, thinking by scientists transcends the lay-
persons’ reliance on linear causal attributions (A causes B). Instead, the
processes of biological kind are viewed by cycles of regulation, where
any “effect” is the result of overcoming of a block upon the ready-to-
proceed a process. Thus, in biological systems,
. . . activation consists of inhibiting the inhibitor; suppression is the

inhibition of the inhibitor of the inhibitor. (Gilbert, 2000, p. 187)
To produce an act of activation, the inhibitor that blocks the acti-

vation needs to be blocked itself (inhibiting the inhibitor). In order
to suppress the activated process, another inhibitor is needed that
58
PARTS
T OF
I CAUSAL
M SYSTEM NO
E X Y
(CO-PRESENT) RESULT
THE
GENERAL
CONTEXT
CHANGES
O
WELL U
INTEGRATED T
CAUSAL C
X Y
SYSTEM) O
M
Z E
THE
GENERAL
CONTEXT
CHANGES
AGAIN
PARTS
OF
CAUSAL
SYSTEM NO
X Y
(CO-PRESENT) RESULT
Figure 4.2 Systemic transformational causality

would stop the blocking by the first inhibitor. So the laypersons’ “A
causes B” scheme is transformed into “A triggers X that inhibits Y that
suppresses B from emerging” hence one can observe B. A is not the
cause for B, but a trigger of the causal system to take a form (X→Y)
that makes B possible. To make B impossible again there needs to
emerge an inhibitor of X. The laypersons’ causal attribution is cogni-
tively economical—provides simple (yet inadequate) explanations. In
contrast, scientific reasoning is cumbersome yet has the potential of
covering the whole set of conditions.
Who Needs Evidence—And What Kind, for What Purposes?
Evidence is knowledge that legitimizes action, and action is always
goals oriented. Goal orientations of persons are themselves guided by
social institutions, ranging from convergence between different actors
to their complete divergence. While we encounter movement toward
convergence in positive interpersonal relations, in societal discourses
59
of politics, law, and bargaining the negotiations of states of divergence

are the rule rather than the exception. In other terms—returning to
Figure 4.1—the discrepancy in the form of the communicative mes-
sages is often purposefully enhanced, depending on the action contexts
within which the communication takes place. Social conflicts trigger
messages where the same person may be labeled “a freedom fighter”
or a “thug,” or a “protester” in contrast to a “criminal.” The process of
communication between any agents entails the meta-communicative
coordination of goal-orientations (Branco and Valsiner, 2004) that pro-
vide the specific relation between convergence and divergence for each
communicative episode. Since the convergence/divergence conditions
can vary flexibly over time, the notion of sharing of knowledge acquires
asset of new questions that need an answer: sharing what, with whom,
for what purposes, and with what kinds of expected outcomes?
The same person may generate communicative messages of opposite
kinds, depending upon their immediate action goals. The following
example from an early (1975) “manslaughter” trial in Massachusetts
of a gynecologist who was accused (and convicted) for performing an
abortion illustrates the purposeful selection of the semiotic devices
that construct “the evidence”:
Question: So that you make the distinction, Doctor, that if it is go-
ing to be delivered by a Caesarian while it is in the mother, it’s
a ‘baby’ and if it is in there and is going to be delivered as the
result of an abortion it’s just a fetus or products of conception, is
that correct?
Answer: When I talk to my patients I don’t even—when I talk to a
woman who is going to keep her pregnancy, and she wants me
to deliver it, when I see her I talk about ‘baby’. If a woman com-
ments to me requesting an abortion I do not: I doubt whether I
even talk—I probably talk in terms of ‘products of conception’ to
her . . .. (Danet, 1980, p. 199)
This example shows double discrepancy in goal orientations. The

immediate context of courtroom questioning by a lawyer is oriented
toward bringing out the doctor’s inconsistency of meaning construc-
tion, while suggesting such discrepancy is inappropriate (“delivered
as a result of abortion”). In defense, the gynecologist emphasizes his
convergence in meaning construction with the understood goals of a
particular woman patient—who wants an abortion or delivery—and
matching the meanings used to these future objectives. Since the mean-
ings of created evidence are part of such evidence—and one can even
60
claim they constitute the regulatory part of that evidence—it would be

a contradiction in terms to talk about “objectivity” of “the evidence.”3
Instead, all “evidence” is directed toward the future goals of its users,
yet masking that orientation by the construction of its “ontological
solidity” (“the evidence shows that . . ..”).
The ways in which scientific evidence enters into public discourses
is similarly bound to institutional interests. Scientific knowledge is
descriptive in its nature, while the interests of extra-scientific institu-
tions look for evaluative knowledge (Mollaret, 2009, p. 324). Already
this difference in goal orientations creates an initial divide, both for
communication about what kind of knowledge science generates (the
issue of “popularization”) and how that knowledge is usable (the issue
of “application”). The regulation of the borders of these two channels
of movement of knowledge from the scientific to the public domains
is a delicate communication process where scientists (and scientific in-
stitutions) constantly modulate their convergence–divergence of goals
with those of the extra-scientific institutions. Thus, on the one hand
they promote the public image of their work through public displays
(since 1660s, the demonstration of the “vacuum pump”—Shapin and
Schaffer, 1985). The media for such displays have changed dramatically
over the centuries, from live shows to television animations. While
such public presentational work is happening, the scientific institu-
tions negotiate their social niche in the discourse of the domain of
“application.” If an astrophysical study of galaxies can generate beautiful
animations of the celestial images and negotiate the role of such images
as “applicable,” the economic support for the field can be guaranteed.
In contrast, psychologists who may dramatize a problem—“school
dropout” for instance—in the public domain may be expected to find
applications that would “solve the problem” (which is assumed to be
that of keeping the children in schools, rather than escalating the
dropout so that the school system ends in its demise).
The functions of communication between sciences and their
extra-scientific institutional hosts can explain why some misfitting
(for science) but appreciated (by the extra-scientific institutions)
epistemological practices survive in a given science for long periods
of time (Toomela and Valsiner, 2010). Quantification of psychological
functions—in the form of mental testing—has proliferated in psychol-
ogy since the institutional application of massive intelligence tests in
the U.S. Army in the years of World War I. Together with the move of
the center of psychological knowhow from Europe to North America
61
after 1933 (see chapter 11), combined with both the pragmatist general
ethos of North America and the postmodernist refusal of generalized
knowledge, quantification without borders has taken over most of psy-
chology. Such takeover fits the interest of those social institutions that
evaluate the outcomes4 of various performances (and make selections
based on such outcomes). Psychology over the twentieth century is not
simply socially guided (as it was before, and will be), but institutionally
appropriated. The constant primacy of the “applied needs” of different
social powers—from governments down to local communities—keeps
psychology’s knowledge construction efficiently away from solving
general human problems. Thus, in a society, there is no place
. . . for the humble remarks of true scientists who assure us that the
laws discovered are hypothetical and relative to the method chosen
and the system of symbols used. Vulgarized knowledge characteristi-
cally gives birth to a feeling that everything is understandable and
explained. (Milosz, 1951, p. 200)
Given the opposite needs of the practitioners (needing clear answers

to questions) and the scientists (always ready to give hypothetical
answers), the relationship of the two includes substantial strategic
positioning so as to guarantee the satisfaction of the former while
maintaining the autonomy of the latter.
Mechanisms of Autonomy Maintenance by the Sciences

All social organization of human life is set up by partitions—specific
barriers that create conditional access to what happens on either
side of such divides. Many of such boundaries are institutional—
certificates of expertise publicly displayed in doctors’ offices, uni-
versity degrees as conditions for entrance into “real science,” and
social norms for preserving the anonymity of “the data.” Yet others
are intrinsic to the process of knowledge construction itself. Math-
ematization of a science is one of the major ways to separate science
from other public discourses. It has been hailed—by Immanuel Kant
(see chapter 6)—as the criterion by which a knowledge area can be
a science. For Kant, psychology, together with chemistry, seemed
doomed and had no chance for becoming sciences. Psychology in
the present time continues to struggle with this gloomy prediction,
showing as a collective organism all of the neurotic features that it
projects into human beings, while chemistry has left Kant’s skepti-
cism far behind.
62
Effects of mathematization of a science are interesting. Bringing

mathematics into a science has a number of social consequences.
First, it creates a border between the “initiated” (who have learned
the mathematical language) and the others. Thus, mathematization
of physics in the eighteenth century, set up
. . . a very strong social separation between professionals and ama-

teurs, insiders and outsiders. Mastery of mathematics (acquired in
the training period) became the price of entry and reduced not only
the number of potential readers but also potential producers . . ..
Separation implies closure, which produces censorship. Each re-
searcher engaged in the field is subjected to monitoring by all the
others, and in particular by his most competent competitors, the
result being a control much more powerful than that of mere indi-
vidual virtues or any deontology. (Bourdieu, 2004, p. 48)
Secondly, mathematization transforms the notion of explanation.

The specific calculable formulas replace verbal accounts. Thus, the ex-
pression B=f(p & e) seems intuitively more precise than the equivalent
verbal claim “behavior is the function of the person and the environ-
ment.” The function of formularization as a boundary maintenance tool
involves a translation of the verbal account into a formula, without the
latter providing any abstractly generalized starting point for new ways
of understanding the phenomena. This is in direct contrast with the
ways in which multiple abstract languages have enhanced the ways
chemistry addresses its subject matters (Mounin, 1981).
Thirdly, mathematization leads to desubstantialization—functional
relations that are expressed by mathematical formulae start to replace
structures. The material reality becomes substituted by abstract for-
mula. For example,
The evolution of the notion of the field is an illustration of desub-

stantialization, where at the beginning, the focus was on electrostatic
or gravitational fields (where identities of the particles are still pres-
ent, yet subordinated to the field). That was followed by examples
of electromagnetic field—where the field has existence of its own
(the particles are no longer in view). Finally, in the case of quantum
fields the abstraction reaches its highest form—the system of charges
becomes “field operator.” (Bourdieu, 2004, p. 49)
While the knowledge in the sciences moves toward abstractive

generalization (see Figure 4.1), it becomes increasingly complicated
to explain the results of such abstraction to the laypersons. The gap
63
between the self-defending science and its social guidance by others

widens, yet there is an effort on both sides of the divide to pretend that
such widening is not the case. The result of this pretense is the creation
of communicative messages that “popularize” the given science.
Informing the Public: Popularization5 and Its Social Functions
First of all, it means the distinction of the population into the ones
who know (and bring what they know to others) and those who are
supposed not to know. This implied social differentiation in and by
itself is not unusual—the “knowledge gap” about “the other” is there
between different social strata (the “poor” do not know how “the rich”
live, and vice versa) or social groups (men are not knowledgeable of
“women’s worlds” in many societies, and vice versa). What is special
in the case of popularization of science is the intention to make the
unknowing “others” know what the “knowers” know.
The activity of popularization of what happens in science was a
nineteenth century affair. It was
. . . a wide-ranging operation that mobilized all the existing means of

distributing information: lectures, conferences, magazines, books,
encyclopedias, exhibitions, museums, observatories, botanical and
zoological gardens . . .. Mass consumption of science was encouraged
at home—in private life—by the commercial success of popular sci-
ence literature. From the small, cheap booklets to the large expensive
dictionaries, a wide range of books and serial publications was sold
to all tastes, classes, and economic conditions. The mass consump-
tion of science in the 19th century was part of the global process of
mass consumerism. (Bensaude-Vincent, 2001, p. 103)
The involvement of science in being presented as a consumer

product continued in the twentieth century. The focus on consump-
tion of knowledge by the wider public was not only an educational
exercise. Its function for securing the social and economic support
for the given science became negotiable through the specific powers
and fears that the given science provided for the wider society. Dif-
ferent epistemic positions of the laypersons (utilizing the simulation
heuristic, in terms of Tversky and Kahnemann) and scientists (using
the quantitative weighing of risks) lead to divergence between the
policy recommendations (institutional level) and personal actions.
The results of the public controversy in Britain about the possible
impact of MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccination upon develop-
ment of autism (Mikulak, 2011, Myers, 2003) show how the publicly
64
communicated experience by a layperson can lead the reduction of

the value of the summary epidemiological evidence. As a result the
originally published empirical report was retracted—twelve years
after the initial publication (cf. Mikulak, 2011, p. 205 because of the
incompataibility of the scientific and lay discourses. The results in the
retracted study were not “erroneous,” but they led to a panic wave that
put the social agenda of the vaccination program into jeopardy. Once
scientific evidence starts to undermine social-institutional goals, it is
the evidence that becomes put aside, rather than the goals.6
How is a Popularizing Message Constructed?
From the original paper titled Sex differences in mathematical
activity: fact or artifact (by Benbow and Stanley in 1980, analyzed in
Fahnestock, 1998) the popularizing transformation ended with Do
men have a math gene? The search for “the gene” for almost anything
is a prevailing social representation that guides the presentation of
biological and psychological sciences to the public, despite the scien-
tific absurdity of the question. Thus, the original interpretation of the
data by the authors of the study charted out a field of uncertainty in
efforts to explain the results:
We favor the hypothesis that sex differences in achievement and at-
titude toward mathematics result from superior male mathematical
ability, which may in turn be related to greater male mathematical
ability in spatial tasks. This male superiority is probably an expres-
sion of a combination of both endogenous and exogenous variables.
We recognize, however, that our data are consistent with numerous
alternative hypotheses. Nonetheless, the hypothesis of differential
course-taking was not supported. It seems likely that putting one’s
faith in boy-versus-girl socialization processes as the only permis-
sible explanation of the sex difference in mathematics is premature.
(Fahnestock, 1998, p. 341)
This message, a rather usual nontheoretical (yet clearly positioned

in favor of “ability in” person rather than “socialization”) text from
the end of a psychological study, became turned into a determin-
istic statement (yet modified by use of “?”) in the Newsweek under
the title Do men have a math gene? The message was made pure and
simple:
The authors’ conclusion: “Sex differences in achievement and atti-
tude towards mathematics result from superior male mathematical
ability” (Fahnestock, 1998, p, 342)
65
Note that the journalistic presentation remains adequate to the

authors’ rambling text about possible linkages in the system (while still
prioritizing the claim to “ability”). What, however, goes beyond the sci-
entific text is the insertion of the suspense of linking that “ability” with
a “gene.” It is through the narrowing of focus and insertion of dramatiz-
ing popular themes that popularization both enhances and vulgarizes
science. The boundary of the scientific and public domains of accessing
the knowledge is not merely that of a “boundary object”—the shared
referent that is being interpreted differently. But that object becomes
transformed by boundary managers—journalists, practitioners com-
municating their take on science, administrators, and some scientists
who decide to work on that boundary. There is convergence between
two events of purely journalistic genre—“press release” (still involving
scientists and journalists) and (subsequent) “news coverage” (totally
created by journalists). In both cases the complexity of the scientific
object becomes expressed in deterministic language (Brechman, Lee
and Capella, 2009). The recipients’ way of thinking is fed materials
ready to be assimilated to the existing cognitive schemata—without
corresponding accommodation of the latter.
Bidirectional Culture Transfer of Evidence: Goals-Oriented
Co-Construction of Knowledge
All tools of suggesting how to create the meaning of the “hard to imagine”
are used in the science communication efforts. Such techniques
. . . are imbued with the authority of science itself, a situation that is
enhanced by the traditional unidirectional model of science com-
munication to the public. This authority is reinforced by the black-
boxing of the scientific process from the public—the more inscrutable
the process by which a formula or image is produced, the less likely a
member of the public is to engage critically with it. (Greenberg, 2004,
The images that are created for impressing the public can be selected
to be dramatic (e.g., the “pillars of creation” observed in 1995 known
as “Eagle nebula”—Greenberg, 2004, p. 85) or reconstructed as if to
represent the real object (e.g., the brain structure superimposed onto
fMRI images—Chelnokova, 2009; McCabe and Castel, 2008; Miller,
2008), or introducing color to regular images. The ways of populariza-
tion build on the mysticism that the lay public looks for, in everyday
life and in whatever becomes understood from science (Restivo, 1978).
66
Popularizations of science through film become carefully staged

spectacular reenactments (van Dijck, 2006) where scientists’ images
are made to occur as key actors in strategic places. Popular presenta-
tion of scientists creates them in the role of heroes.
Popularization . . . personalizes knowledge by attributing it to its

inventors, then objectivizes the new notions or concepts by reducing
them to a specific medium (a mouse, a Petri dish, a metallic chip . . .).
(Jacobi and Schiele, 1989, p. 751)
This double process—personalizing and depersonalizing—has

been absent in scientific literature. The inclusion of photographs of
the authors of an article meant for other scientists has, up to recent
proliferation of computer technologies, not been a part of publication.
In contrast, in popularizing texts such photographs are included in
places where the knowledge depicted needs a support of a hero figure,
who nevertheless defers to the symbolic context presentation in terms
of laboratory gadgets or classroom blackboards.
A more profound transformation of science in the process of
being transferred to the lay public takes the form of elimination of
doubt. Scientific thinking is necessarily filled with doubts—about
the adequacy of the obtained results, and about their implications.
In contrast, popularization eliminates the doubts—the eternal dia-
logicality of scientific thinking becomes replaced by the monological
presentation of the “facts” and discoveries that the “heroes” of science
have just made.
Negotiation at the Boundaries: How Social Guidance
Works in Two Ways
Sciences necessarily are on the outskirts of any society—both in
their kinds of activities, and the kind of ways of thinking they entail.
Sciences transcend the intrasocietal focus of most public action—to
be oriented toward the interests of some ingroup, while the sciences
work toward generalized knowledge that does not recognize societal
boundaries. Secondly—as the contrast between laypersons’ linear
causality attributions and the systemic causality use in the sciences
show—there is a cognitive divide between the sciences and the so-
cieties that they inhabit. That cognitive divide is similar to a “social
membrane” that allows two-way transition of messages—often am-
plifying or attenuating them, as well as leading the through-boundary
67
transition into new transformed versions of both new knowledge and

renewed (and at times expanded) ignorance (Figure 4.3). Ignorance
in society is not merely lack of knowledge, but socially guided disin-
terest in particular domains of knowledge.7 The processes of relating
scientific knowledge with that of lay public entail a sophisticated set
of conditions of “membrane crossing” (Valsiner, 2007a,b).
Figure 4.3 includes four hypothetical scenarios of how different scien-
tific objects (Obj 1 . . . Obj 4) can be dealt with in the boundary domain
between the science and “the society.” The latter is set to include three
social agents—the laypersons (L1 . . . L4), the persons in administrative
roles (A1 . . . A4), and persons working on the relationship between
science and society (“journalists”—J1 . . . J4). The added “ign” entails
SCIENCE “border zone” where

“SOCIETY”
“popularization” happens
J1 A1 L1(ign)
Obj 1
J2
A2 L2(ign)
Obj 2
S1
L3
ESCALATED
J3
S2 A3 Obj 3
Obj 3
S3
J4
A4
L4
Obj 4 ?
S4
Figure 4.3 Boundary work at the border zone of science and its
context of society
68
the status of current (and often maintained) ignorance. The numbers

after each of the roles—S J A L—indicate the particular scenario.
Scenario 1 (Object 1—S1J1A1L1) entails a case where both the
scientists and the administrators actively protect some scientific
knowledge (Obj1, in science domain) from becoming available to the
lay public. For example, chemists who participate in the manufactur-
ing of nonlethal weapons, and the administrators who order such
weapons to be manufactured, share the interest in blocking journalists
(and the lay public) from having any information about their scientific
breakthroughs. In contrast, Scenario 3 (S3 and J3 and A3→Object 3)
where all three goals-oriented agents act upon the object in a similar
direction results in the escalation of the laypersons’ concerns with the
escalated object. Here the social construction of HIV/AIDS in North
America and Europe as a gross exaggeration of the disease into social
panic domain serves as an example to the opposite of Scenario 1 (see
Preda, 2005), for a careful analysis of the construction of sociomorally
exaggerated knowledge. In a less dramatic case, the emergence among
lay public of the interest in one’s blood cholesterol measurement over
the recent thirty years is an example of how the joint effort of the
agents lead to the escalation of the issue—with some borrowing of
knowledge—by the lay public.
Scenarios 2 and 4 are similar as the particular objects (2 and 4) are
suggested by S to be transportable to the public domain. In one case
(Scenario 2), the joint efforts of S and J are blocked by A (and through
that neutralizing the ignorant L). For instance, the long-time policy
in South Africa to deny the relevance of HIV/AIDS in the society
by administrative suppression of the interests of journalists is a case
of hiding an area of science from the public. This involves “silence”
about the object so that the public “is protected” from its influences.
Yet in Scenario 4 the L joins in, with the outcome of the move of Obj
4 remaining uncertain.
“Boundary Work” Between Science and Society
Thomas Gieryn (1983) introduced the notion of boundary work
into the sociological view of relations between science and society.
Purposeful actors who look at knowledge to be qualified as “scientific,”
in contrast to “non-science” or even “pseudo-science,” create rhetori-
cal acts about different ideas as if these belong to one or the other
category. This belongs to the discourse about science—and as such, it
does not belong to the science it is a discourse about. Thus, talk about
69
“crises in psychology” (chapter 9) is not part of psychology as science

but belongs to the meta-scientific reflexivity about psychology the
function of which is further social guidance of the discipline.
As Gieryn (1999) points out, the zone of “boundary work” entails
both converging and diverging interests of the “boundary workers”—
legislators concerned with funding (or nonfunding) of science, corporate
chefs interested in expropriating and patenting the newest ideas from
science, journalist who would turn the realm of scientific laboratories
to be presented as battlefield accounts from the “war for knowledge.” At
the same time, scientists working in this boundary zone can strategically
emphasize some part of their work and conceal other, or create purpose-
ful panic or fear scenarios in the hope of improving their role in the soci-
ety. While efforts are made to reduce the boundary between science and
society for the benefit of social sharing of knowledge (Mikulak, 2011),
other efforts are focused precisely to the fortification of the boundary
zone to create relative autonomy for the work of scientists in the field.
The latter result can be achieved by presenting the public with an arena
of “heroic advance” in the given field—the “zone of talkability” in terms
of the Semiotic Demand Setting (Figure 4.4) while keeping the actual
work activities away from the public eye (“taboo zones”)
OPPOSITION
SOCIAL MARKING OF THE

Opinion
HIGHLIGHTED ZONE Opinion
A
non-A
1
2
Promoted Zone of possible

talking talking
“Taboo” of talking
Figure 4.4 The semiotic demand setting (Valsiner, 2000a,b)
70
The public exposure of the Mars Rover to the wide public illustrates
the “display and govern” function of popular access to frontier science
well. The remarkable technological success of having set up robotic
explorers on the surface of Mars creates the situation where the wide
public emphatically resonates with the computer images of the sur-
face of the other planet, and watches with awe the heroic successes of
the engineers to get the Mars Rover unstuck from “the mud.”8 The sci-
entific contents are provided in terms of shared “boundary object”—“is
there water on Mars.” That fits well with the concerns of the lay public
on Earth (“is there water in my bathroom?”) as well as with some
side of the scientific concerns about Mars. However, while the Mars
Rover—the topic “water on Mars”—are set up as hyper-talk-enabling
themes, their corresponding scientific work on the geological probes
analyzed by the Lander remain outside of focus. In similar vein, Höijer
(2010) demonstrated how the discourses of climate change in Swed-
ish newspapers emotionally anchored the issue into public interest
domain here and now (“zone of promoted talking”) while rationally
the issue becomes distanced through such intense worries about cli-
mate change. “We are very concerned” is the immediate message, yet
“we can do little” notion goes along with it.
The Functions of Boundary Objects
Boundary objects create a shared general meaning for different
communities, where the object may gain different interpretations in
each. As in the example above, “water on Mars” is a “boundary object”
at the intersection of interests of common sense of the lay public, and
that of scientists. In a general sense, a boundary object is
. . . a road map may point the way to a campground for one group,
a place for recreation. For another group, this “same” map may
follow a series of geological sites of importance, or animal habi-
tats, for scientists. Such maps may resemble each other, overlap,
and even seem indistinguishable to an outsider’s eye. Their differ-
ence depends on the use and interpretation of the object. (Star,
2010, p. 602)
All domains where the communities of sciences relate with

those of nonsciences are marked by such boundary objects. No-
tably the notion of boundary object has been expanding very
widely since its introduction in 1989 by Susan Leigh Star and
James Griesemer (Fox, 2011; Star and Griesemer, 1989). In a
71
sense, the notion of “boundary object” has become a boundary

object at the intersection of science and nonscience negotiation of
their overlapping terrain.
From Ontology to Persuasion: Dramatizing the Social

Guidance of Science
Contemporary popularizations of science—the postmodern sci-
ence documentaries—negate the representation and meaning of
knowledge and instead promote fascinating spectacles (van Dijck,
2006). The emergence of such duality of functions goes back to
the seventeenth century demonstrations of the air pump (Shapin
and Schaffer, 1985). The nineteenth century demonstrations of
posthypnotic suggestion effects in the Salpetriere clinic in Paris by
J. M. Charcot constituted a demonstration of showing the power of psy-
chiatrists in the control of the psyche (Charcot, 1889—see description
in Micale, 1985). If the higher classes of the Parisian public are invited
to a public demonstration of the powers of posthypnotic suggestion—
“when I wake you up you take the knife and hit that dummy in the
corner”—the implication is that not only of how suggestion works,
but how its masters—psychiatrists—can use its powers.
The very genre of public demonstrations of scientific results are
partial fabrications (Smith and Dunworth, 2003), as these constitute
theatrical enactment of the processes that have been discovered already
and can be reproduced in the public theatrical setting. The experi-
ments for such demonstration need to work—rather than be subject
to uncertainty. Yet the whole scientific discovery happens under the
conditions of such uncertainty.
By the twenty-first century, the move of popularization in psychol-
ogy is not about specific discoveries but about promotion of a specific
research direction that fits the social representations of the recipients.
Hence the themes of “competent infant” or “human-like chimpanzee”
or “gene for intelligence” keep capturing the space of communication
messages. Furthermore, the goal orientations of the journalists begin
to distinguish how science gets communicated to the public—the
popularization route promotes the positive role of science for hu-
man lives, while the “science-as-news” focus builds on the display
of controversies and focus on harm science can bring (Bucchi and
Mazzolini, 2003).
Of course sciences, and scientists, may at different times themselves
seek out opportunities for popularization—often so as to establish
72
priority claims to some idea (Paul, 2004). They may align themselves
with social processes currently in vogue in the society, such as the panic
about the impending collision of the Earth with an asteroid (Mellor,
2007), or the chaos of clocks at arrival of the new millennium (Year 2K
panic). The picture of “sharing of the knowledge” becomes modified
by the competition of common sense and institutionally ideologized
beliefs. Yet beliefs—expressed as opinions—are the enemies of knowl-
edge (Bachelard, 2002). Here is perhaps the most difficult problem that
scientific evidence encounters—it is constantly being renegotiated by
opinion-bearing “stakeholders” while at the same time trying to move
toward creation of new evidence in ways that are liberated from the
demands of the “stakeholders.”
The realities of relating with what happens in science–society re-
lationships are complex. The goal-orientations of scientists are often
frustrated, since
There is no one ‘public’ after all. Thus there are specialists in differ-
ent disciplines who want to keep up across the board. They may be
supportive of colleagues, or may feel that some sciences are grossly
and unfairly overfunded compared to theirs. Then there are other
highly educated people, in humanities, languages, law or social sci-
ence, ‘erudite nonspecialists’ they have been called, who are again
thrilled, intrigued or horrified at what they perceive going on in sci-
ence. These may be policy-makers, journalists, legislators and others
whose opinions are directly important for scientists, and affect their
lives. Distinct from these are ordinary people, busy, more or less curi-
ous about new ideas or enthusiastic about technical developments,
probably suspicious about what supposed experts tell them, and wary
of change. There are consumers to be stimulated by scientific-looking
advertisements to buy beauty products or pep pills—or to avoid
‘chemicals’ in the name of nature and the organic. Finally, there are
children, the rising generation, whose inquisitive enthusiasm must
be maintained if science is to go on. (Knight, 2006, pp. 2–3)
It is within this polyphonic, or cacophonic, social field that science

leaves its traces for the public, at times to the detriment to its own
development. This relationship is the main reason why science can-
not progress in a linear fashion but goes through periods of growth,
stability, and decline. History of psychology over the past three cen-
turies provides a fascinating story about how the discipline has been
guided socially, often through the hands—or ego needs—of emerging
psychologists themselves.
73
Notes
1. “Evidence-based medicine” (EBM) is an invention of epidemiologists in
1970s–1990s (Chelmow, 2005) that has been aimed at setting medical
practices up to be based on statistically aggregated data. It has attempted
to colonize the individual-oriented medical practices by insisting upon
particular decisions being made on the basis of “scientific evidence” as
available in peer-reviewed journals. The misfit of the epidemiological
(sample to population) generalizations with individual decisions in medi-
cine becomes particularly evident in nursing (Baumann, 2010). In nursing
practice all actions are performed upon an individual, concrete person (a
“patient”) who may follow the generally expected results of the treatment—
or idiosyncratically defy all of them. Nurses—rather than medical doctors
or epidemiologists—are on the “front line” of taking generalized medical
knowledge to practice.
2. Possibly a term to use here is systemic temporarily autophagous
causality.
3. From this perspective, the proliferation of “evidence-based medicine” in
the U.S. medical system is a communication tool for the goals of various
medical insurance companies to provide or deny payments for different
kinds of medical services. The interests of both the doctors and the patients
are delegated to a secondary role.
4. This institutional need explains the blatant abuse of the meanings attrib-
uted to averages—under conditions of considerable heterogeneity in the
data—in different evaluative comparisons. The institutions need to show
that the compared samples represent the whole—the average is set up to
that sign status, and variability forgotten.
5. Or in French—“vulgarization”—with all the social connotations that are
absent in English “popularization” or “science communication”—see Gen-
eral Introduction, above.
6. Unless, of course, the evidence against the goals is overwhelming—which
was not so in the case of MMR. The retraction of a published paper was a
move to redirect the public discourse, rather than “clean up” the doubtable
evidence.
7. For example, limited focus on world geography within the formal educa-
tion system of the United States can be viewed as a socially guided example
of promoting disinterest in the world at large, supporting the ideology of
“American exceptionalism.”
8. See the history of Mars Rovers in http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/
overview/.
74
Part II
The Mirror in the Making:
Psychology as a Liminal
Science
Knowledge is one—human understanding of the world—yet sci-

ences have become many. Our contemporary differentiation of the
knowledge domains leads to increasing discourses about the need to
transcend the discipline boundaries under the appealing but vague
notion of interdisciplinary scholarship. Almost the opposite problem
was confronting knowledge-makers in late eighteenth century—how
to overcome the fusion of ideas from poetry, literature, and theology
to newly emerging disciplines. From this historical bird’s-eye view, the
discourses about knowledge seem to be about the tension between
distinction and separation on the one hand and unification, on the
other. All these discourses are vehement—ideologically charged and
personally discharged. The passions on all sides of the imaginary bar-
ricades have been flourishing over the centuries.
What has been at stake is not a nomenclature of different sciences—
and their links with theological, philosophical, or societal values—but
the basic reflection of the human being to one’s world. Is the latter
stable? If it is, it is both comforting and disturbing, as the lures of the
not yet known sides of ways of living beyond the borders of my na-
tive village create the desires for exploration. Human ways of living
are constantly set by the tension of Heimweh and Fernweh (Boesch,
1997)—the desire to feel at home within the known while wanting to
experience the unknown. We are all cautious wanderers in our own
life-worlds—cautious and eager at the same time when moving
ahead.
Any new way of knowing feeds further into that tension. Science is
a passionate affair, of how the knowledge-makers relate to what they
have made. Scientific discovery
75
. . . reveals new knowledge, but the new vision that accompanies it is

not knowledge. It is less than knowledge, for it is a guess; but it is more
than knowledge, for it is a foreknowledge of things yet unknown and
at present perhaps inconceivable. Our vision of the general nature
of things is our guide for the interpretation of all future experience.
Such guidance is indispensable. Theories of the scientific method
which try to explain the establishment of scientific truth by any purely
objective formal procedure are doomed to failure. Any process of
enquiry unguided by intellectual passions would inevitably spread
out into a desert of trivialities. (Polanyi, 1962, p. 135)
Knowledge creation is thus deeply affective and always ambiguous

(Abbey, 2007). The boundary of art, poetry, and science is ephemeral.
At times it is created as a seemingly insurmountable wall to keep the
rational and irrational sides of the human psyche in neatly segregated
compartments. But as any wall such separation triggers actions against
the boundary, with the result that the wall is demolished, only to be
recreated somewhere else. Thomas Kuhn’s analysis of the historical
movement between “normal” and “revolutionary” phases within a sci-
ence is a way of looking at the building, demolishing, and rebuilding
of such walls within the human minds.
In the history of human knowledge, the partitions have been created
in many ways—first, in emancipation of secular knowledge from its
mythological original form, then in separation of science from litera-
ture and poetry, and finally, in the separation of philosophy from “the
empirical science.” In the case of each of these partitions, the opposite
tendency is cocreated with the new “pure” state of knowledge. With
the fight against religion in knowledge—the contemporary North
American social war between evolution and creationism is a good
example—there emerges a tendency to present the “liberated” science
in ways that curiously emulate the style of its successfully eliminated
opposite. Thus, the belief in evolution is what, in the final analysis,
“wins” over the creationism in the minds of people who believe in
evolution. Likewise, in the social sciences, the belief in the “objec-
tivity” involved in quantification of the data maintains the barrier
against letting the qualitative data have its share (chapter 3). The “will
to believe” combined with the goal of advancing “true science” easily
creates new domains of quasi-religious orthodoxies in our knowledge
construction.
History of science can be a tool of reflectivity upon those, and hence
it is a kind of (meta)knowledge that is potentially dangerous for any
76
The Mirror in the Making: Psychology as a Liminal Science
growing orthodoxy in any science. Likewise, the historical sociology

of a science—tracing the root knowledge in a science to the social
representations that surrounded the creation of that science—can be
discomforting for the scientists hard at work on their set problems.
How many users of statistical methods of today would like to think of
the eugenic ideologies that surrounded the creation of many of these
methods?
Knowledge-making entails purposeful creation of ruptures
(Zittoun, 2006), and ruptures are not easy to bear. As Abraham Maslow
pointed out,
More than any other kind of knowledge we fear knowledge of our-

selves, knowledge that might transform our self-esteem and our
self-image. A cat finds it easy to be a cat, as nearly as we can tell.
It isn’t afraid to be a cat. But being a full human being is difficult,
frightening, problematical. While human beings love knowledge and
seek it—they are curious—they also fear it. The closer to the personal
it is, the more they fear it. (Maslow, 1966, p. 16)
Creating knowledge about the psychological, social, and moral sides

of human beings is the closest one can get to the core of our under-
standing ourselves, and the more difficult it becomes as we face the fear
of the very discovery we desire. The slow growth of knowledge about
human beings—in psychology, sociology, history—has slowly moved
out of its religious and philosophical greenhouses. The development
of ideas about human beings and nature since the Enlightenment gives
us a good glimpse into the uneven, nonmonotonic, development of
knowledge.
77
5
From Enlightenment
to Struggle: Psychology
and Philosophy in the Search
of Wissenschaft
The French Revolution restructured previously authoritative struc-
tures of temporality by redrawing the horizon of historical possibility.
What made the revolution radical was the very idea of positing a
moral community justified in terms of virtue rather than legitimated
by custom, tradition, or religion.
Fritzsche (2004, p. 18)
The emergence of German Naturphilosophie around the turn of the

nineteenth century was a birth of a poetic world view that, for limited
time, managed to dominate the development of all sciences in the
German lands. It was the adventure of the young. A number of condi-
tions made this youthful revolt—against dogmatism in the sciences
on the one hand and overcoming religious orthodoxies on the other—
fitting in the context of the history of the area we now know as Germany
by the second half of the eighteenth century:
Germany was not a nation like England or France, but a conglom-

erate of large and small states, duchies and principalities, each of
which with its own identity and autocratic ruler. One source speaks
of 300 monarchs and 1,500 demi-monarchs at the beginning of the
nineteenth century. Ever-changing alliances and wars were the order
of the day and had continued throughout the eighteenth century,
during which Prussia had emerged as the foremost military power.
The Holy Roman Emperor of the German Nation was in Vienna,
where he ruled the Kingdom of Austria, but exercised no real con-
trol over Germany. Indeed he, in turn, was encumbered by selective
79
alliances and waged war with other German states. Industrializa-

tion and urbanization came late and did not gather momentum
until the second half of the nineteenth century. People lived in vil-
lages and towns. The merchants and craftsmen who constituted the
middle class were relatively poor, conservative, and pious, and had
little political power. But Germany was rich in learning and in its
universities the spirit of the enlightenment flourished. (Marx, 1990,
p. 352, added emphases)
In some sense, German territories were, despite their geographically

central location in Europe, liminal in their sociopolitical organiza-
tion. Centralization of the state power arrived only with Bismarck
by the 1870s, while all the political units surrounding the German
lands—France, England, Austria, and Russia—were centralized in
their political systems.
The division among the German lands between the Protestant
and Catholic dominances created an ideological constraint system
where different small kingdoms could create a heterogeneous field
for development of new ideas. Being persecuted for their ideas in
one duchy a German thinker of the time would be forced to find a
refuge in a neighboring one. Thus, when Fichte was fired from the
University of Jena, he moved to Prussia and established himself at
the new University in Berlin. A decade later, Beneke was forced to
leave University of Berlin for local-political reasons—to move to
Göttingen until he could return to Berlin in late 1820s. The social-
political and religious faiths of academics in German universities were
constantly under surveillance by the local small dukes and counts—
freethinking in any society at any time is something not much liked
by the power holders.
The movement from the dominance of religious and political power
of a local land to the prominence of secular reason within a nation-state
came slowly and was relatively peaceful in terms of internal violent
revolts.1 Interestingly, the construction of national identity of the
Germans came to fruition before Germany became a nation-state,
. . . the idea of German identity took the form of the idealistic concept
of Volk. The concrete substance of this Volk was the economically,
socially and politically divided population of the diverse regions of
Germany that differed also in their cultural and religious traditions.
German culture, however, as embodied in philosophy, literature
and music, had developed in a unique and significant way. (Yahil,
1991, p. 468)
80
From Enlightenment to Struggle
The heterogeneity of the German lands led to the establishment

of—and support for—universities by the eighteenth century (Evans,
1977). In the context of political and religious diversity, the mission
of the universities was to promote unification—through language and
knowledge. As a result, in the German lands, science and philosophy
belonged to the activity domain of universities. Germany—in contrast
to England or France2—was not a breeding ground for “gentlemen
scientists” like Charles Darwin or Alfred Russell Wallace who could
dedicate themselves to science without linking with one or another
university.3 The scholars who were involved in creating secular knowl-
edge were either linked with universities or worked as councilors to
the aristocratic rulers.4 As a result, philosophy and empirical sciences
separated themselves jointly from their religious contexts. The devel-
opment of teacher education frameworks—seminars—added to the
context of universities by the second half of the eighteenth century
(Kruse, 2006).
It is only in the beginning of the twentieth century where the sci-
ences were separated from philosophy in the context of German
universities. Furthermore, secularization of scientific knowledge in
the nineteenth century was deeply intertwined with poetry, prose,
and drama (Smith, 1997). The development of Wissenschaft had
no boundaries between literary and rational discourses. Hence the
easy possibility to use literary genre descriptions for the developing
science—“the romantic science.” Probably it would be more adequate
to consider the scientists—rather than science they created—romantic.
As they wrote poems aside from observing nature—or being involved
in amorous life events (see Richards, 2002 chapter 10—on the “erotic
authority” of nature)—they undoubtedly deserve that label. They were,
after all, philosophers who struggled with the heritage of Aristotle, St.
Thomas Aquinas, and Kant. The result was a passionate understanding
of the nature—and of human beings as parts of it. As David Leary has
described, the general starting point of the early nineteenth century
ideas, knowledge
. . . does not result from the a posteriori experience of things-

in-themselves; rather “things” are themselves manifestations of
will (Fichte), imagination (Schelling), or reason (Hegel). There
are no two spheres of knowledge, the rational and the empirical.
Rather all knowledge or “science” (Wissenschaft) is one; all knowl-
edge can be reached by the same method; all knowledge can form
a system. In fact, since reality is ultimately unitary . . . knowledge
81
must form a system if it is to be complete and whole. (Leary, 1980c,

pp. 299–300)
Passion is central for pursuing knowledge. It is the central mover

of any human striving, including that for scientific knowledge, and
all science is “romantic” in the sense of entertaining previously un-
known hypotheses. The privilege of poets in the sciences in Europe
in the eighteenth century was probably based on the general focus
of well-educated people to start from music and poetry in their
inquiry into the world. At the same time such frivolous urges were
kept in check by the religious control—of self and others—that
guided human lives. In the context of German lands it entailed
the tension of not only the two major religious systems—Catholic
and Protestant—that had divided the politically fragmented terri-
tory between themselves in the Reformation-Counterreformation
of the sixteenth century, but also sub-versions of Protestantism.
That tradition gave the rise to the well-ordered philosophical sys-
tem of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) whose massive and thorough
productivity served as a Gegenstand5 for his contemporaries and has
been both organizing and haunting the sciences over the past two
centuries (Malter, 1981, Sturm, 2009). Kant has proven to be a per-
petual interlocutor for the Wissenschaften. Efforts to penetrate “the
other side”—Ding-am-Sich—of the human mind have been going on
in philosophy and psychology.
Transcendental Meditations in Amidst Strict Moral Order

Kant—the frail and famous citizen of Königsberg and a loyal subject
of the King of Prussia—came from a Pietist6 cultural-religious back-
ground. It has been pointed out that
. . . there is an inner relationship between Kant’s ethics and the Prus-

sian nature. The conception of life as service, a disposition to order
everything according to rule, a certain disbelief in human nature,
and the kind of lack of the natural fullness of life, and traits common
to both. It is a highly estimable type of human character which here
meets us, but not a lovable one. (Paulsen, 1902, p. 54)
Kant—while disparagingly considering scholars of single disciplin-

ary perspectives “cyclops”—nevertheless demanded a similar look
through the eye of his philosophical system from his own students.
The apriorism of his philosophy was given a priori—by an authoritative
82
person—Kant himself. The noumenal self—self that in principle

could not be known—was for Kant the starting point for inquiry. Re-
flexivity upon oneself was viewed as not having access to the core of
understanding—yet it was central for understanding of the world. The
striving for order in thinking was crucial and gave systematic results
that have oriented philosophy ever since.
Kant’s main credo was succinctly summarized by Ernst Cassirer:
. . . he seeks nature in order to find man in it. (Cassirer, 1981, p. 50)
The man Kant was looking for was a deeply moral and well-
organized cultured beast who recognizes the presence of the self is
“artifact of knowing faculty” (Tauber, 2005, p. 52). He critiqued that
very background, yet in ways that borrowed from it. The critiques of
reason—pure and practical—and the ordering of sciences are crucial.
Kant’s major lecturing style—working through the treatises of others7
to arrive at his own substantive syntheses—makes him the core thinker
of the eighteenth century, the reverberations of whose thoughts can
be felt at our time.
The centrality of mathematics for science—in Kant’s mind—ren-
dered psychology as science an impossible construction.8 Fortunately,
for the development of ideas, Kant’s efforts to strictly order universe did
not capture all of the German minds, but rather provided a stimulus
for dissent by the affectively frivolous experiencing of the nature and
the lascivious beauty of the full richness of living.9 The critical nature
of critiques—filled with the revolt against the very order one is de-
pendent upon—set up Germans as poets, revolutionaries, explorers,
and watchers of the nature. It is from this tension between the order
and nonorder that Naturphilosophie was born.
The Birth of Naturphilosophie

The roots of the ambiguous status of psychology go back to the
eighteenth century—to the German Naturphilosophie—and to the
turmoils of the French Revolution—1789 and beyond. Three young
men got together in the small South German town of Tübingen—
two of them aged twenty (Georg Hegel and Friedrich Hölderlin),
the third merely fifteen (Friedrich Schelling)—in 1790. The Tübin-
ger Stift—a Protestant higher education framework10—created the
system of constraints of a quasi-monastery within which the young
men created their counter-philosophy that was already a decade later
83
to change drastically the philosophy scene in the German lands

and all over the Occidental world. The poetic flow of ideas in what
became labeled—and chastised—as “German Idealism” grew out of
the social atmosphere of European social changes and German com-
plexities of the soul.
The atmosphere at the Tübinger Stift by early 1790s was charac-
teristic of its time:11 rigid theology curriculum supervised carefully,
together with the cohort of young students who resisted—and at
times revolted—against the monastic conservative order. The unity
of external limits (Verbindung von äusserer Regel) and inner freedom
(innerliche Freiheit) in the monastery-like establishment created a
fertile ground for the development of scientific spirit among the young
(Dilthey, 1905, p. 9). Among the students,
One admired the French Revolution, the triumph of the reason,

and the decisive victory of philosophy . . .. There was no longer any
discussion of theology. That was empty twaddle . . .. The overriding
interest of reason lay in science [Wissenschaft], which taught men
to be free and equal, and to chuck all intellectual and worldly des-
potism into the coals. (memories of Ulrich Höllriegel—quoted via
Richards, 2002, p. 119)
The three years of sharing of their joint studies—and resisting the

orders—in Tübinger Stift (1790–93) by the three youngsters gave rise
to the combination of philosophy and literary activities with knowledge
about nature that became “German Romanticism” in literature, and
Naturphilosphie in the sciences. As the context of the Stift fitted the
general notion of working against a barrier of theological dogmatism
through bringing into the education new philosophical ideas that
undermined that very dogmatism, the notion of dynamic and inter-
dependent role of nature and its explorers was in the air.
The three youngsters arrived in the Tübinger Stift also at the right
time, when the work of Immanuel Kant’s work had been published
during the preceding decades and was already a prominent force in
the German-speaking intellectual world. It was the Gegenstand—both
the tool to think with, and the opponent to critique and overcome—for
young thinkers of the time. Kant’s ideas continued to provoke all sides
of the disputes about Wissenschaft in the German language room all
through the nineteenth century, and their importance resurfaces at
our time. The issues of how to deal with oppositions (antinomies), the
prescriptive nature of moral imperatives, and the uncertain status of
84
psychology as science are issues for thinkers in the twenty-first cen-

tury as much as those flared the imagination of the young students
in Tübingen Stift.
Kant’s philosophy provided a path for the ways psychology devel-
oped over the nineteenth century. Yet it was a complicated one:
Although he provided the field with a clear identity, separate from

philosophy, he also awarded this field a rather low status. At best, it
would be a little more than a collection of contingent rules, a kind
of natural history of the mind, lacking both the fundamental im-
portance of philosophy and the rational consistency of science. To
become a science, its special method of introspection would have
to yield to mathematical treatment in the way that the visual data
of astronomy, for example, yielded to mathematical treatment. But
this would not happen, and so the subject had no future as a science.
(Danziger, 1990, p. 21)
Of course psychology was not (yet) the main concern for the Ger-
man discourses about the nature, spirit, and knowledge in the 1790s.
All of it was a part of philosophy, yet the ambivalently inferior status
of psychology as a science was already encoded in the discourse.
That ambivalence had—and continues to have even in our days—a
peculiar structure. First, it is considered to be inferior to the “parent”
framework of thought; in Kant’s time that was obviously philosophy,
in ours—“hard sciences” or neurosciences. Yet immediately that power
assertion—ascribing psychology the status of a subordinate—becomes
declared as the arena for the future development of knowledge. Such
structural displacement serves a concrete function in the social
framing of the field. With all of its declared inferiority—in access to
phenomena, uses of ever-“wrong” methods, etc.—it is still part of the
socially constructed future utopia of people living happily ever after in
a society of no conflicts and no personal problems, due to the progress
and success of psychology.
The Nature in Question
The key issue for the 1790s was how to look at nature. The Tübingen
trio of young men made a clear axiomatic shift: nature was not “out
there”—constituting “an environment”—but intricately linked with
organisms who live through nature. Secondly, nature was not passive
and static, but active and dynamic. Working with these ideas was
easy for romantic poets but not for the emerging scientists. Both of
these axioms have remained difficult—over the past two centuries—to
85
be accepted as the core of biological and social sciences. What has

changed since the 1790s is the dominant position of philosophy for the
sciences. By the twenty-first century, it has been carefully segregated
and distanced from the “normal science” enterprise of psychology and
other sciences. Yet the axiomatic problems remain—one can search for
empirical work in early twenty-first century on topics like “influence on
[or of ] environment” (in contrast to “living through the environment,”
which would follow the Naturphilosophie’s axiomatic stand).
Naturphilosophie came onto the scene in a context of the German
lands where philosophy—linked with theology—was in the dominant
position in German universities. In the many courts of small aristo-
crats—as Germany was not united until 1870s—poets and composers
played important roles. Johann Wolfgang Goethe was the best known
example of the many. The German context may have been particularly
well suited for the advancement of such ideas, as an American com-
mentator some decades later remarked,
Hylozoistic doctrines have always been more or less popular in
Germany . . .. The German has a tender love for nature which the
Anglo-Saxon mind can only with difficulty understand and appreci-
ate. The flowers, the trees, the streams, the valleys, and the mountains
are his friends, and he almost unconsciously invests them with life.
(Gooding, 1881, p. 321)
With Naturphilosophie becoming vastly popular in the first decades

of the nineteenth century as the “mainstream” in philosophy, it trig-
gered a counter-movement—and much of nineteenth century German
academic discourse was filled with it. Creating a revered opponent
and then fighting it with absolute determination may be a part of the
romantic ideal of the “German spirit.” It was around, among the three
young men, most notably in Hölderlin:
What lived in Hölderlin was a German craving for antithesis—for
the opposite of the existent and more especially for the opposite of
every ideal of accomplishment—although his poetic imagination
experienced this craving in an immediate and almost contempora-
neous manner. Hölderlin strikes me as the finest manifestation of
this dialectic of the German spirit, inasmuch as his love for things
German and for things he saw as their complete opposite rested in a
marvelous balance. (Simmel, 2007 [1916], p. 62, added emphasis)
The invention of Naturphilosophie and the dialectical philosophy—

of Hegel’s kind—that emerged from this treatment of unity and tension
86
of opposites was a result of German cultural history,12 paired with the

Enlightenment ideologies spreading over Europe, and the toppling of
the old regime in France. The emerging mixture of romantic idealism
could not last for a long time in a cultural context that would gener-
ate its opposite, especially as German territories were occupied by
French troops and the fascination with the revolutionary turmoils
became tempered. The social rupture of the 1790s—first in France
and then through all of Europe—was a threat to the ordinary ways of
thinking and living, albeit very attractive in terms of ideals of liberty
and equality.
Most of German intellectuals lived through the revolutionary events
from distance, through written word from Paris (Morgan, 1992). Direct
experience with occupation brought the realities of the social ruptures
close home, and the positive look at the events in Paris started to shift
to its opposite around 1793 when the all-European war broke up. The
French occupation of the German lands in the following decade was
a catalyst for both the endorsement of and rejecting of the impending
social change. Yet all the social upheavals gave birth to the systemic
and developmental perspectives in science, as well as triggering the
still continuing debate of what science—Wissenschaft—is, two cen-
turies later.
Living Through the Nature: Philosophy in a Natural Key
The genius of Friedrich Schelling was in his capacity for intellectual
synthesis. This feature was visible in the fifteen-year-old youngster
when he arrived in Tübingen (Dilthey, 1905, p. 13) and continued all
through his academic life career during which he provided the founda-
tions for Hegel’s dialectical philosophy as well as became its opponent,
and a convert to Catholicism.
Schelling’s Naturphilosophie was an effort to synthesize knowledge,
uniting biological and physical (chemical) knowing on the one hand
with that of the “free sprit” based knowing of artists and poets.13 Its
focus was to overcome the emerging schism between the material
and the ideal, by a focus on their mutuality. Interdisciplinarity would
be the word we would use—two centuries later—for such efforts.
Of course moving across disciplines was easier for the poetic and
observing minds of the early nineteenth century—the boundaries
between disciplines were not yet rigidly established. Such rigid-
ity was established over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, so
that the task of breaking the discipline boundaries would become
87
crucial in our time. Our efforts toward “breaking the boundaries”

of established disciplines to become cross-fertilized by the magic
of interdisciplinarity are predicated upon the construction of such
boundaries in our social history.
In contrast, there were no strict boundaries two centuries ago. By the
end of the eighteenth century, all knowing was still united under the
general notion of philosophy. Hence these were the times where poets
could do science—Goethe is of course the most prominent example—
and empirical scientists write poems—or, at the least, philosophical
treatises. Inside philosophy, the dialogue between secularizing and
theological streams of thought was proceeding, using the advance-
ments in philosophical thought in both sides of the dialogue.
The crucial philosophical role in these dialogues was played by
the productivity of Immanuel Kant whose ideas served as a new
framework for all. Schelling described the avalanche of Kantian ideas
in the context of the Tübinger Stift in a letter in January 1795 to his
(then) friend Georg Hegel (who had finished his studies two years
before):
We expected everything from philosophy and believed that the shock

it imparted even to minds in Tübingen would not fade so soon. But
unfortunately it is so! . . . It is true that there are now hordes of Kan-
tians . . . but after much trouble our philosophers have now found a
spot . . . and have built huts [there], where it is nice to live . . .. And
who will drive them out in this century?... to put it bluntly; they have
extracted some ingredients of the Kantian system (from the surface, it
goes without saying) and prepared from it . . . such strong theological
concoctions . . . that theology, which was already going frantic, will
soon rise up healthier and stronger than ever. Every possible dogma
is now stamped as a postulate of practical reason. (Heinrich, 1997,
pp. 48–49, added emphases)
Twenty-year-old Schelling here of course describes a phenomenon

in the social guidance of science that recurs profoundly. His own
Naturphilosophie—as it became popular in the first decades of the
nineteenth century—suffered from such debilitating effects of its own
success. Its growth of influence in German universities, together with
the popularity of its offspring—Hegel’s dialectic idealism—led to its
own demise in the hands of medical scientists, physiologists in the
lead, who turned to the legacy of Kant to come to power positions in
academia (Benetka, 2002). German Idealism gave way to its materialist
opponent by mid-nineteenth century (Leary, 1980c).
88
Such reversals in key ideas, linked with social politics, recur. For
example, the fate of Marxist avalanche—politically inserted into 1920s
newly emerged Soviet Union (Valsiner, 1988)—led to similar rendering
of specific ideas closed to their further uses in science (see Vygotsky’s
disenchantment with Marxism in social practice—van der Veer and
Valsiner, 1991). Yet it is doubtful if psychology were to retain any re-
membrance of dialectical and dialogical perspectives had these not been
made prominent by ideological means in Soviet Union.14 Similar fate is
there if a particular general perspective becomes fashionable through
democratic means, inside a discipline (e.g., behaviorism, cognitivism,
socioculturalism) or in the negotiation of the new ideas’ social relevance.
Every possible dogma in contemporary psychology seems to require
empirical data obtained through the use of fMRI—all under the socially
promoted and consensually accepted value of the neurosciences.
It is precisely the use of Kantian ideas by Schelling as valuable
opponents worth serious—constructive—critique that led him to
create new ideas which became the foundation for Naturphilosophie.
The brilliant youngster15 developed the philosophical grounds for all
science of development—in nature or of the psyche. His philosophy
enabled the whole tradition of thought we later label organismic. He
also could be credited with having advanced the first theory of the
environment. His method was
. . . to take apparently contradictory terms and ideas and to show that
they could be distinguished and differentiated without being viewed
as conflicting. His passion for making distinctions was equaled, or
perhaps exceeded, by the passion to reconcile them, to find unity
amidst diversity. (Gutmann, 1936, p. xxix)
Such passion for unity in diversity set the stage for the elaboration
by his (then) friend Hegel to move further and see the unity within
the diversity in transforming mutual contradictions.
The Simple Foundational Postulate
While Schelling’s writings have been considered complex, vague,
and anything else that a “Romantic” label may entail, his basic pos-
tulate that sets the stage for Naturphilosophie is found in one brief
sentence:
Every external effect on the organism is an indirect effect (Schelling,
[1799] 2004, p. 63). [Iede äussre Wirkung auf den Organismus ist
indirect Wirkung—Schelling, 2001, p, 128]
89
This statement eliminates the possibility of construing nature

in terms of multitudes of either external or internal “direct” causal
“influences.” Psychology two centuries later—caught in the futile
controversies between the Gibsonian “direct perception” perspective
and the constructionist cognitive science (of indirect perception)—
could have been on a productive ground. The organism is a system
that constructively reacts—and through that pro-acts—to environ-
mental inputs.
Schelling could arrive at this foundational statement by way of ac-
cepting the need to make sense how the “free spirit” of the knowledge-
maker (the Geist) can be related with the environment “out there”—the
nature. The latter is seen in dynamic terms:
The whole Nature, not just a part of it, should be equivalent to an

ever-becoming product. Nature as a whole must be conceived in
constant formation, and everything must engage in that universal
process of formation. (Schelling, [1799] 2004, p. 28)16
So, we have a “free-thinking” knowledge constructor relating with

the ever-in-formation nature. The result is mutuality in the dynamic
relation—the organism’s internal coaction with the incoming envi-
ronmental influence. Only through such internal counterpart can
external agents have any effect. Schelling’s example is from the realm
of everyday life of the time:
A poison acts upon the animal body. To what extent is it a poison,

and why is it a poison? Is it a poison in itself? Hardly. For example,
smallpox is a poison only once for each person; snake venom is not
poisonous for the snake. Poison is not poison at all except to the
extent that the body makes it so. For poison as poison the body has
no receptivity, except to the degree that it is active against it. Poison
does not attack the body, but the body attacks the poison. (Schelling,
[1799] 2004, p. 56)
Thus, even biologically, the organism as it enters into a relationship

with an external “influence,” actively constructs what fate that “influ-
ence” has. Of course all the history of immunology over the twentieth
century is built upon that basic idea. In psychology, both the cognitive
(Piaget’s assimilation/accommodation theory) and cultural–historical
perspectives (Vygotsky’s semiotic mediation idea) are examples of put-
ting that idea into concrete research contexts. The notion of mediation
requires assuming a systemic perspective where the agent-in-movement
90
encounters limits (“external influences”) in relation with which it re-

organizes the present relation. Schelling and Hegel shared this basic
focus on Subject-Object relation,17 which later for Hegel turned into
his dialectical scheme.
Hegel’s Dialectics: The Well-Known

and Unused Resource for Science
Friendships can end. So did the friendship between Schelling and
Hegel in the early 1800s, with Hegel moving into the development of
his dialectical scheme, beyond Schelling, and in reaction to Kant. As
Alfred Tauber points out,
The dialectical synthesis, and more specifically the evolution of Geist,

directed itself precisely at this seeming defect [self-consciousness
empty if seen outside of historical community] of Kant’s philosophi-
cal program. In short, whereas Kant’s transcendental idealism is in-
terpreted as embodying irreducible dualisms, Hegel sought synthesis
through Reason. (Tauber, 2005, p. 53)
The dialectical scheme was introduced to the German philosophical

discourse, reinventing the Ancient Greek ideas by Salomon Maimon
in 1790 (Maimon, 2010) and Johann Gottlieb Fichte in 1794. Fichte’s
interest in the unity of Self (Ich) and non-Self (nicht-Ich) led to the
positing of the latter as antithesis to the former (Fichte, 1794, part 1).
Antithesis made it possible to reflect upon the thesis—to understand
the Self one needs to distance oneself to an outer position (non-Self ) to
look at the Self. Such reflexivity upon a contrast of parts of a system (A
and non-A) takes multiple forms, including a tension (contradiction)
between the opposing-yet-united parts of the system. Synthesis comes
together with antithesis—through abstraction (Fichte, 1794, p. 35).
The dialectic system that Hegel created—even if informed by Fichte’s
philosophy—took its start from a different object. His dissertation
on planetary orbits (1801—Hegel, 1998) charted out the inevitability
of movement of heavenly bodies in ways that avoid collapsing into
each other. His look at astronomy was followed by his efforts to de-
velop a theory of history, spirit, and logic. Until his death in 1831, his
prominence in German academic circles grew quickly, especially in
Berlin.18 The growth of the fascination by the young students with his
philosophy set the stage for its downfall after his death. The popularity
of the dialectical thought came under attack in the 1830s and especially
in the 1840s by the united front of materialist scientists, theological
91
defenders of religious orthodoxies, and political figures who recog-

nized the potential danger of the dialectical thinking to their power.
Hegel’s opposing intellectual interlocutor—his philosophical
Gegenstand—was Kant. Relating to the fixed categories of Kant, he
turned Kant’s ontological “what is” and “what is not” antinomies into
a duality of “what is” and “what is not yet”:
Anything which appears to be static when we look for its defining

characteristics, begins to teem with life, like a drop of water, when
we examine it as if under a microscope. In the same way, the cat-
egorical assertion that something is thus and not otherwise, becomes
dynamic when we give a minute description of its logical structure.
To examine “is,” which discursive logic accepts at its face value, is to
see that being is becoming in a disguise, in the sense which “being”
and “becoming” have initially in dialectical logic. (Adorno, 1961,
Hegel’s reformulation of categories—from {A or non-A} to {A and

(tension-filled relation with) non-A} was a major breakthrough in the
understanding of the world. It overcame dualism in favor of inter-
relatedness within—and (by way of synthesis) beyond—duality. The
tension within the dual structure leads to overcoming of the previous
quality and the emergence of new one. Perfection could emerge from
imperfection, under conditions of reflexivity. For Hegel,
. . . there is no process of life, however practical, however complex,

however passionate, which has not its precise equivalent, on a
higher level, in an explicit thinking process; the difference being
merely that, while the life process, in the confusedness of pass-
ing feeling, may be to any extent unaware of its own content and
meaning, the corresponding process on the level of thought when
this thought is rational, is clearly conscious of its own meaning.
(Royce, 1897, p. 75)
The key is the rationality of knowing—of qualities that change—

through self-reflexivity. Quantities are also qualities—qualities of
superordinate quality. Following this philosophical claim, all sciences
operate in their basic concepts in the qualitative domain. Quantifica-
tion is merely a tool—applicable when the nature of the phenomena
and the assumptions of the researchers deem it appropriate—in the
service of making qualitative generalizations within our basic knowl-
edge base.
92
Quality and Quantity

I emphasize here that Hegel’s thinking about the relations between
quality and quantity is the crucial feature in the development of the
sciences in their European contexts since the beginning of the nine-
teenth century. Like most of Hegel’s contributions, this facet of his
philosophy has become sacrificed to ideological warfare among his
contemporaries (the mutiny between “idealists” and “materialists” in
German sciences). Later, in the twentieth century, it became appropri-
ated by the Marxist ideologies in Soviet bloc societies, with the result
of its unnecessary ideologization (and respective forgetting through
dismissal). Good ideas die both by forgetting and by becoming alien-
ated clichés.
Quality for Hegel becomes determined through its opposite—
“something is” becomes known in contrast to its opposite (something
is not). The something-that-is thus makes up a quality, in contrast
to its opposite (which, relating to the former, may make up another
quality—the opposite quality). Yet the something-that-is-not {this}
need not automatically be of determinate nature ({that}); it can be an
undifferentiated field of the Other. For Hegel, being (Seyn or Sein) and
being-out-there (Dasein) operate together:
If I say “I have being for myself,” I mean that I do not depend on any
other human being. I negate this being out there that would negate
me. The finite is being for an other, the infinite is being for itself. That
is the sphere of quality. (Hegel, 2008, p. 86)19
This example illustrates the unity of the self and the other in the
negation of such unity—on both sides. It is precisely through such ne-
gation of the relationship that the reality of such relation is confirmed.
Quality becomes determined by setting up a border (limit, Grenze)
between itself and the other. Within this limit, the opposition to the
other is endless (to maintain the quality of itself—fürsichselbstsein),
while the act of negation is finite. Maintaining the meaning of “our na-
tional identity” as a constructed quality as long as it can be maintained
requires a recurrent flow of finite contrasts with others—neighbors,
enemies on battlefields or spies and witches next door, or germs invad-
ing through the ports of entry.
In this dialogue of Sein and Dasein, we can observe the emergence of
quantity. Quantity is not a given entity but a construct that emerges on
the basis of the quality. It belongs to the quality—it makes sense to talk
93
of “454 grams of potatoes” (quality different from apples or bananas),

but it makes no sense to talk of “five units of nothing.” Or—if the latter
were to become meaningful—the “nothing” would need to acquire the
character of something—“something we call nothing.”20
Quantity is the quality of magnitude. It can be discrete (100 men
is a conglomerate of 100 individual discrete objects) or continuous
(2.54 centimeters equals one inch). Treatment of one type as if it were
another creates anomalies—such as “the average number of children
is 2.5” is an impossible quantification (as the discreteness of number
of children entails answers two or three, half-a-child is not a child).
Yet there are alternative qualities involved in the same quantity—100
can include one hundred of discrete entities of one, as well as one
quality of “one hundreds” as such—independent of the kinds of units.
Different qualities can be linked with the same quantity; quantity is a
subservient partner in the unity with quality. This idea was explained
by one of Hegel’s followers—Karl Rosenkranz:
The idea of a point, e.g., is always the same; but in so far as the point
moves it begets another, the other of itself, in which it sublates itself
as the true. The line again, by moving in different ways, produces
the difference of straight and crooked. The point makes itself ana-
lytically a line, but synthetically it remains contained in it; the line
makes itself analytically a straight or a crooked line, but synthetically
it is posited as a line in the one as well as in the other. (Rosenkranz,
1872, p. 114)
The quantity—the point moving and by that making a line—is a

quantitative extension that can take different qualitative forms. On
these forms it is possible to create divisions—borders.
Quantity with a border (Grenze) is Quantum—it is the Other for the
quantity.21 The quantum is determined by the number (Zahl). Quan-
tum plays a key role in the relations between quality and quantity. It
defines the unity of quality and quantity—the “one of one hundreds”
and “one hundred of ones” (both designated by numerical “100”) are
examples of quantum; they share the same border (Grenze), between
100 and 101 as well as between 99 and 100. If that border is moved in
either direction, the quantum of “one hundred” is qualitatively changed
into either “one of ninety nines” or “one of one hundred and ones,”
while the constituents (ones) have not changed (any “one” in 99 or in
101 remains one of the ones, that change comes dramatically if you
move from one to zero). This contrast plays an important role in the
94
case of unfolding of time—the appearance of an infinite row of ones

(1-1-1- . . . to infinity) gives us the unity of “bad infinity” (repetition
of the quantum “1” ad infinitum) and of the “good infinity” (arrival
of each new “1” changes the border of the quantum “collection of
ones”). The latter is the whole in which the former are parts—there
is a dialectical unity of the determinacy of the elements (“ones”) and
the indeterminacy of the whole.22
The Finite Nature of Infinity
The question of infinity emerges only when a philosophical scheme
frees itself from a set of static ontological axioms and starts to treat the
variability (“flux”) of the world—ranging from the physical processes
of the universe to the subjective desires of the mind. Hegel’s dialecti-
cal turning away from Kant revitalized ancient Heracleitan ways of
thinking in nineteenth century science, paving the way to a system-
atic process orientation in the sciences, and to bringing the notion of
development to the core of sciences. As we know in our twenty-first
century, development is everywhere: viruses, babies, and galaxies all
develop, albeit in different time frames and in different forms.
Human thinking—as a process—guarantees infinity of all reflexiv-
ity. That infinity is given by the inevitable difference of what-is, what-
could-be, what-should-be, and, finally—what-will-be (the outcome).
Hegel’s example of the relevance of planning might explain it:
I have a plan for a house as soon as I record whatever I wish to do, but
this plan is fully contained only in the house itself by which the plan
is carried out. Infinity lies in such a correspondence between the plan
and its execution. The concept [Begriff ]] in this correspondence lies
beyond itself, it is no longer merely for itself but finds itself within
the other, in diverse appearances. And yet even in this beyond the
concept [Begriff ] is at home with itself and as thus returned within
itself.23 If I relate myself to something other than myself, I am finite.
My sight comes to an end in the object [Gegenstand] seen, and in
visual sight I thus comport myself as a finite being. But in thinking
I comport myself as an infinite being, since I remain throughout by
myself in my object. If what is real corresponds to its concept it is
infinite, and that is affirmative infinity. Insofar as thought determi-
nations are finite they do not conform to truth, which is infinite.
(Hegel, 2008, p. 18; Hegel, 2001, p. 22)
The dynamics of mutual interpenetration of the plan (leading

to action) and the results of the actions (specifying the plan in
reality) is the key by which Hegel overcomes Kant’s fixed world of
95
A. B.
The other The other

A A
(non-A) (non-A)
Figure 5.1 Kantian (A) in contrast with Fichtean and Hegelian (B) notion
of concept (Begriff)
being-in-itself. Schematically, the difference might be depicted in

Figure 5.1. The Begriff (A) can stand as exclusively separated from
the Other (Figure 5.1.A), or—as in Hegel’s case—it exists through the
Other (yet standing on its own24) and becomes innovated as a result
of such relating with the Other (Figure 5.1.B). This contrast can be
mapped onto the distinction of exclusive (Figure 5.1.A) and inclusive
(Figure 5.1.B) forms of separation (Valsiner, 1997).
The good (affirmative) infinity in reflection corresponds to the infin-
ity in the environmental conditions under which organisms survive.
In an analogy with geometry in motion—a point extended in space/
time, becoming a line—Hegel already in 1801 specified the ways in
which change takes place:
Change is thus nothing other than the eternal restoration of identity
out of difference and the production of new difference: contraction
and expansion [in the physical world]. The other potential, spirit/
mind (Geist/mens) as perpetually generating itself after complete
abstraction from space, is time, which, when it relates its own
production back to space, generates the line. The line is spirit as it
generates itself—albeit in subjective form—and reveals itself in itself
assuming complete and natural form by transiting into its opposite,
space, generating the plane. (Hegel, 2006, original 1801)25
Thus, in the three decades (1801–31) in the context of lecturing on

logic, Hegel developed the basis of systemic dialectic thinking that starts
off from the astronomical knowledge base but becomes extended to the
world of the meaning-making persons—or spirits (Geist), in his terms.
The key concept that makes the move into novelty possible in Hegel’s
system is the power of abstraction that human minds have. Without
abstraction, the subjective affirmative infinity would be reduced to eter-
nal repetition of the objects, even if through their other (Figure 5.1.B).
The Hegelian notion fills Schelling’s axiom of mediated response with
96
a generic mechanism of how such mediation occurs, going beyond

Schelling in positing the constant construction of new forms.
Furthermore, the Kantian version of the concept fits under the Hege-
lian scheme (as a special case of no relating of A to the Other (non-A)
in classical logic is in itself an example of “null relation”—exclusive
separation of the two. This is similar to how the Eucleidian space fits
into Riemann-Lobachevsky space as a special case—to treat a line as a
shortest path between two points fits the more general picture of seeing
the two points meet as parts of an infinitely large circle. Hegel’s efforts
went in another direction—his scheme is phenomenon-centered (the A
relates to itself through the other in contrast to the environmental deter-
minist idea where A would be impacted upon by the other, non-A, in a
unilinear simple causality scheme X <causes>→ Y). The affirmative
infinity is the framework within the processes of synthesis operate.
Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis
This trio of concepts grows out of the quality and quantity relations,
yet has been elaborated by Rosenkrantz and Chalybäus and empha-
sized by Karl Marx in his appropriation of Hegel’s dialectics. The focus
on antithesis became the root metaphor for the emergence of social
psychology (Cattaneo, 1864, p. 264). In general, it is the Hegel-Fichte
tradition in German idealist philosophy that was a fruitful intellectual
ground for the emergence of both ideas of development and the social
nature of the psyche over the nineteenth century.26 Even as Hegel him-
self put no explicit emphasis on the triad of thesis-antithesis-synthesis
(Mueller, 1958), all of his presentation is organized by this scheme.27
The move from positive presentation—thesis—to its negation
(antithesis) and to the second negation (of the negation) leading to
synthesis is structurally built into his system of logic since the first
(Jena, 1804–05—Hegel, 1986) version. Overcoming the previous
relation of the Sein with Dasein sets the stage. Hegel’s example is as
close to everyday life as is his effort to make philosophy use common
language. In the case of changing water temperature,
The mere rise and fall on the heat scale lets cold take the place of heat,
its direct opposite. With the temperature of water, though, the whole
quantitative distinction becomes a quite superficial one that of itself
in no way indicates what has changed in the Thing itself. A decrease
in temperature of 30 degrees from 80 Fahrenheit exhibits a change
in the volume of the water, namely a decrease; but a further decrease
in the temperature does not diminish the volume of the water; the
97
temperature being lowered to 32 degrees, the volume increases and

the water passes from the liquid, fluid state into solid one; and snow,
changed by pouring water of very high temperature on it, maintains
the same degree of temperature . . .. The qualitative interrupts the
quantitative scale altogether . . .. (Hegel, 1986, pp. 24–25)
It is the measure (Maass)—qualitative quantity—that organizes the

transformation of form through the process of negation of the negation
(aufhebung, also sublation in English translations). When the quantity
reaches its limits—of the measure—the quality to which it belongs be-
comes transformed into a new form. This is the process of synthesis.
Hegel’s Spirit After His Death

The Hegelian frame of thinking dialectically branched off—after
Hegel’s death in 1831—into “right” (conservative and religious) and
“left” (socialist, including Karl Marx) directions. The politics of Ger-
man—especially Prussian—academic fights at Hegel’s lifetime added
to the gradual vanishing of the dialectical perspective from psychology.
The original dominance of Hegel over his opponents (Fries, Herbart,
Beneke) was reversed by the non-Hegelian appointments to profes-
sorships in Berlin. Yet all of the Hegelians—“right” or “left,”
. . . clung to the supremacy of the dialectical method. Also influential

was the definition . . . of psychology as the study of mental processes
qua mental—that is, excluding, on the one hand purely physiological
sensation, and on the other, the specific contents of consciousness.
(Leary, 1980c, p. 310)
The presence of Hegelian thought in Germany came under at-

tack by its opponents and state authorities in the 1830s–40s, yet it
lingered on until 1870s–1880s. Different trajectories of dialectical
kind were charted out by neo-Hegelians, yet none of these survived
their authors.28 Elsewhere they did not gain momentum. International
proliferation of Hegel’s ideas was slow. As these ideas were difficult to
translate, they reached neighboring countries with substantial delays
(after 1840s both in France—Kelly, 1981 and England—Muirhead,
1927, McTaggart, 1896, 1897a,b, 1902), after they had basically van-
ished from dominance inside Germany. It was natural for it to vane,
as its public popularity was a result of the social conditions of German
land liberated from Napoleonic occupation. As a young American
traveler to Germany remarked,
98
. . . we have overheard Hegelism coarsely and vulgarly dubbed in

Germany the “puberty-philosophy,” not perhaps primarily because
it was assumed to meet a physiological need so much as because the
pleasing, dizzy sense of liberty inspired by the perpetual recurrence
of vast dialectic alternatives, when every thing is an open question.
(Hall, 1881a, p. 156)
The North American continent became enamored by Hegel’s

thought through the philosophy group of William Harris in Saint Louis
centered around the Journal of Speculative Philosophy in the 1870s.
Viewing the popularity of Hegelian thought in German lands as
an act akin to conversion—that lead to counter-actions by Prussian
authorities29—might be part of the explanation of its demise. It became
a casualty to the avalanche of materialist philosophy that was sup-
ported by the dominance of industrialization and physical sciences.
The excessive flow of ideas of Naturphilosophie—breaking the bound-
aries of the physical, natural, and spiritual worlds—was replaced by a
well-ordered (a la Kant) segregated world of each domain of experi-
ence developing their own tools for inquiry. Even the appropriation
of dialectics by the Marxist ideology in the twentieth century did not
advance Hegelian conceptual schemes further, despite the claims of
the success of the “dialectical method.” The proponents of “Marxist
dialectics” turned it quickly into an ideological orthodoxy, while the
opponents dismissed it because of that orthodoxy. The result of such
fate is the fame of the dialectical ideas of Hegel without knowledge
of them—and without their elaboration. Crucial questions that cur-
rently face sciences—biological and social—such as the mechanisms
of synthesis of novelty, have remained unanswered as a result of such
state of the well-known unknown.
Naturphilosophie—with its synthetic focus—quickly moved from
being a counter-discourse to that of the dominant discourse in Ger-
man academia in the first decades of the nineteenth century. The first
decades of the nineteenth century,
. . . it was in the lecture-rooms of our Universities that metaphysical
systems first saw the light, and they gained enthusiastic adherents
among students before they sought a larger public in the printed
form. (Wundt, 1877, p. 494)
The popularity of Hegel grew in the first decades of the nineteenth

century—and as the dialectical scheme would predict—created its
own opposition The dominance of Naturphilosophie, together with
99
focus on philosophy of history, in the first decades of the nineteenth

century German lands led to the growth of its opponent—materialist
and nonsystemic—empirical science focus. The opposition was the
establishment of strict ingroup (“real science”) versus outgroup (the
power-holding history-philosophy-Naturphilosophie) perspectives
led German intellectuals to intense fights about “idealism” versus
“materialism” over the nineteenth century. The opposition to Hegel’s
philosophy—in the context of the social transformations within the
German lands—was particularly vicious.30 Somehow the efforts to
deal with the floating and transitory phenomena of dialectics did not
fit with the social demands of the day.
The making of such exclusive categorization was not a case for
clear taxonomy (as Naturphilosophie was precisely built on the link
between the objective and subjective knowledge domains—including
both sides), but for creating different social “camps of perspectives”
and to make the fight for takeover of the academic powerhouse pos-
sible. This was first linked to the political oppositions that the French
revolution and its aftermaths brought with it to Europe, together with
developing capitalism and industrialization of the German lands. An
outside Russian observer of the German scene described it in 1843:
Science in Germany these days is a very curious phenomenon. Having

moved, up to now, almost completely within a theoretical, alienated
direction—it now turns to the practical domain with some kind of
urge. It now tries to achieve practical results. (Botkin, 2001, p. 179)
In the context of the “practical turn,” natural sciences could claim

their priority. The road to success of the “Newtonian science”—which
in the German context over the nineteenth century was heavily framed
by Kantian ideas—can be characterized as a slow avalanche of the
“underdog” (Veit-Brause, 2001). Moving “back to Kant” satisfied the
developing natural sciences of the progressing nineteenth century,
until by the end of the century this slogan was replaced by a new look
at Goethe (Bleicher, 2007). The battlefields of early nineteenth century
science in Germany occurred within the social transformation of the
whole society—the friction between the feudal remnants of the past
and emergence of middle class. Literary efforts in German reflected
such tumultuous friction, as
Poetry, novels, reviews, the drama, every literary production teemed

with what was called “tendency,” that is with more or less timed
100
exhibitions of an anti-governmental spirit. In order to complete

the confusion of ideas reigning after 1830 in Germany, with these
elements of political opposition there were mixed up ill-digested
university-recollections of German philosophy, and misunderstood
gleanings from French Socialism, particularly Saint-Simonism.
(Engels, 1967, p. 134 [original 1851])
In contrast, Hegel’s social philosophy had set up its little kingdom

within the University of Berlin within the wider context of Prussian
monarchy. The latter did not trust academics—especially if there
was any chance of philosophical ideas emerging from them that
could undermine the state. So, the dominant Hegelian orthodoxy
was prominent as a social ideology that was politically curbed after
Hegel’s death in 1831, all through the 1830s. The young Hegelian
intellectuals and materialist scientists were involved in acting against
the ideology of increasing social control, in unison with the devel-
oping needs of the bourgeoisie. Thus, in some sense of the irony of
the history of science, the adequacy of Schelling’s general idea of
“acting against limits” was proven by the fate of Naturphilosophie
through the nineteenth century. After the first decade of the nineteenth
century, the opposition to the overwhelmingly deductive mindset of
the Naturphilosophie on behalf of observers of nature in different
fields was on the ascent.
Conclusion: How Ideological Wars Kill New Ideas

It was, and is, easy to dismiss the intellectual contributions of Natur-
philosophie and its aftermath—the Hegelian dialectical avalanche. It
was a movement that was vicious in its move to power—and its oppo-
nents were no less so. It was vague in many of the philosophical ideas. It
was indeed—as its opponents have always labeled it—“speculative.”
By the 1840s the fight against the “speculative effort to establish the
facts and laws of nature by deduction” (Richards, 2002, p. 128) was
mounting a powerful attack on the idealism born at the crossroads
of the French Revolution and German efforts to transcend Kant. The
“thinking collectives”—to use Ludwik Fleck’s (1979) term—were
fighting for who would set up the intellectual landscape of science.
The terror of revolution began to be matched by terror within fights
about ideas:
Where Robespierre and the Terror overthrew all past forms of politi-
cal authority and abolished the monarchy, Kant criticized all previous
101
epistemological authority and did away with deism. Napoleon, the

conqueror of Europe, found a German alter-ego in Fichte’s world-
creating Ich. Schelling’s nature philosophy, and his ultimate turn to
Catholicism and absolutism mirrored restoration in France. The
overthrow of the restoration and the resulting political situation in
France found its equivalent in the defeat of conservative Naturphil-
osophie and his followers. (Mah, 1990, p. 11)
The amazing issue of the history of the Naturphilosophie and Hege-

lian heritage of ideas is their move to the underground. Socially these
ideas went out of fashion, yet the conceptual problems that Schelling
and Hegel tried to solve remained without further development.
Yet the main gain of ideas from the Kant–Fichte–Maimon–
Schelling–Hegel dialogues—the idea of unity of opposites that exist
through one another and may transform into a new form—was a casu-
alty of the social processes that guided sciences in the German lands.
Even two centuries later we have no clear axiomatic base for addressing
issues of organism–environment relationships—not to speak of the
emergence of novelty through some process of synthesis. The question
of generalization through abstraction is likewise thrown aside, in favor
of the themes of action and participation in society. Yet at the same
time the nature of “the society” remains obscure—amidst shopping
centers, their parking lots, and fragmentation of knowledge for easy
consumption. As Herbert Marcuse remarked half a century ago,
Today, this dialectical mode of thought is alien to the whole
established universe of discourse and action. It appears to belong
to the past and to be rebutted by the achievements of techno-
logical civilization. The established reality seems promising and
productive enough to repel or absorb all alternatives. Thus accep-
tance—and even affirmation—of this reality appears to be the only
reasonable methodological principle. Moreover, it precludes neither
criticism nor change; on the contrary, insistence on the dynamic
character of status quo on its constant “revolutions,” is one of the
strongest props for this attitude. Yet this dynamic seems to operate
endlessly within the same framework of life: streamlining rather than
abolishing the domination of man, both by man and by the products
of his labor. Progress becomes quantitative and tends to delay in-
definitely the turn from quantity to quality—that is, the emergence
of new modes of existence with new forms of reason and freedom.
(Marcuse, 1960, p. 81)
Knowledge can be dangerous—yet necessary—as it sometimes is

useful. It needs to be streamlined in ways that maintain the potential
102
usefulness while limiting the potency for social ruptures. The social
guidance of science operates at two levels to neutralize and block the
potential threats to the social system it protects. First, it guides the
sciences toward empirical proficiency supported by local theoretical
frames that are of limited generalizability and low immediate social
appeal—beyond the entertainment value. At the same time, it dis-
connects generalized thought—of philosophy—from the sciences,
and either circumscribes it to its own segregated field (“ivory tower”
philosophy), or makes it subservient to the current social policies
(“action research”). If this analysis is of some value, it is not surprising
that the basic ideas of developmental kind from Naturphilosophie and
dialectics have not found their way back to the sciences. The guidance
of how knowledge is to be made, and what kind it is to be, is in the
hands of the makers of identity cards and fashions of any kind. Some
ideas disappear for long periods of time, before reinvented in a field
of knowledge very far from the original one.
Notes
1. The first uprising of German work force was the 1844 Silesian miners’ revolt,
followed by the 1848 March revolution—in contrast to the French Revolu-
tion and its Napoleonic aftermaths half a century before in France.
2. Sciences in France and England were coordinated by learned societies
(Academie Francaise from 1635, Royal Society in 1660) to which individual
researchers were attached.
3. The very German concept of Privatdozent—a scholar linked with a univer-
sity but not salaried, yet teaching—indicates the centrality of universities
in knowledge creation in German history. This is in dramatic contrast with
the twenty-first century where academics who have the unluck not to be
hired by universities become called independent scholars.
4. An intermediate stage in their “career development” (or—more fittingly—
“die Misere der künftigen Geistlichen und Schulmänner”—Dilthey, 1905,
p. 17) was being hired as a tutor (Hauslehrer) for children of aristocratic
families. Most of the relevant philosophers (Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel)
went through that phase on their road to university careers.
5. Kant’s work was—and is—indeed an object for study for any thinker. It
both created order and its opposite—efforts to transcend the very order
it created. Schelling, Hegel, Marx, and others after them have been both
encouraged and titillated by Kant’s ordering of the universe of our thinking.
Hence the term Gegenstand (an object standing against—and being stood
against—or to be dealt with in terms of understanding of its otherness)
fits the function of Kant’s contributions. In the German discourses on
psychological issues after Kant, talk about Gegenstand implies the Psyche
that is oriented toward—that is, standing “against,” yet in an act of relating
with—the object implicated by the term (Höfler, 1905, p. 327).
103
6. A Lutheran reformed religious movement from the second half of seven-

teenth century in Elsass and later Halle with a focus on deep internalization
of religious sentiment. It is a form of devotional religious streams within
Protestantism (Stoeffler, 1973) which played an important role in German
cultural unification around the German language and music. Kant’s mother
was deeply religious within the Pietist credo (Jung, 1840).
7. For example, his look at David Hume (Kuehn, 2005), and his countering
the ideas of Christian Wolff.
8. More precisely, Kant rejected empirical (experience-based) psychology—
Christian Wolff ’s psychologia empirica and concentrated on the side of the
psyche that Wolff had covered under psychologia rationalis in the 1730s
(see Richards, 1980, 1992, pp. 293–297). The experience cannot be sub-
jected to mathematical lawfulness, hence it has no place in the pantheon
of metaphysics (philosophy) as Kant was creating it. As its practical value
could not be denied, Kant designated it as “applied philosophy” to be a part
of anthropology—the general empirical natural study of the human being
(Kant, 1790, pp. 876–877, Kant, 1922, p. 680, also Sturm, 2001 and Sturm
and Wunderlich, 2010). A similar fate of no hope for “real science” faced
chemistry in Kant’s deliberations (Carrier, 2001). The dialectical nature of
human reasoning was for him an obstacle of fitting psychology into the
categorical nature of metaphysics.
9. Paulsen (1902, pp. 54–55): “The German people may well regard themselves
as fortunate that there is room as well for other type of character in their
nation; that is, the richer, warmer, more joyous type of the South, such as
simultaneously found its embodiment and expression in the life and ideals
of Goethe and Schiller.”
10. Established in 1536 in Tübingen by Duke Ulrich for the purposes of pre-
paring evangelical pastors for Protestant churches. Aside from Schelling,
Hegel, and Hölderlin it served as a study place for Johannes Kepler and
Hans Vaihinger, among many others.
11. A full description of the school environment is given in Harris (1972,
chapter 2) in the context of analyzing Hegel’s development. We learn that
the young students—destined to become gymnasium teachers in the Duchy
of Württemberg—were disobeying the local disciplinary regulations, or-
ganizing a Jacobine club, singing the Marseillaise, and drank wine while
being overwhelmed by feelings of love—for Ancient Greek philosophy and
local women (Dilthey, 1905, pp. 13–15).
12. As well as encoded in the language—the notion for object (Gegenstand).
That version of an object always relates to a subject—the Subject–Object
relation in Gegenstand entails active yet united opposition and is the basis
(but no guarantee) of the transformation of the Gegenstand into a new
form.
13. As Royce has described: “Schelling was himself, always, even as philosopher,
a creature of the moment. His monuments were often very great ones and
might need each a whole volume to express itself . . .. His kaleidoscopic
philosophy, which changed form with each new essay that he published,
was like the whole scheme of life and art” (Royce, 1983, p. 173).
14. The notion of dialectics—little of it that there is—is present in contem-
porary psychology mostly through the catalytic condition of the Soviet
104
ideology having institutionalized the ideas of Karl Marx, and with him,
Friedrich Engels (even if with some delay—see Valsiner, 1988, chapters 2
and 3). Had that institutional prominence—a side-effect of Soviet Union
playing political power role—not happened, we would probably know little
about dialectics. After all, Hegel’s dialectical thoughts were buried in the
war cemetery of ideas as the nineteenth century intra-German fights for
Naturwissenschaften went on. As a result, sciences capturing developmen-
tal processes have been in stagnation over the last two centuries, with the
conceptual issues far from being resolved even now.
15. Schelling was twenty-four years old when his Erster Entwurf eines Systemes
der Naturphilosophie was published in 1799 (see Schelling, 2004). He gained
professorship of philosophy at University of Jena a year earlier—at the age
of twenty-three.
16. “Die ganze Natur, nicht etwa nur ein Theil derselben soll einem immer
werdenden Producte gleich seyn. Die gesammte Natur also muss in jeden
allgemeinen Bildungsprocess eingreifen” (Schelling, 2001, p. 93).
17. Here the German term—Gegenstand—encodes that inner–outer tension
(“standing against” something) in language—as was pointed out above
(footnote 5).
18. Hegel was revered by students in Berlin beyond terrestrial acceptance.
At his unexpected death, his students likened his demise “. . . to Christ’s
leaving the terrestrial kingdom in order to return to the ethereal heights of
the spiritual kingdom” (Avineri, 1968, p. 135)—a rather curious cult this
created around the dynamic teacher. The fame that was flamed by such
devotion led to its counter-reaction by equally strong and affective flows
of damnation in Berlin, and elsewhere.
19. In the original:
“Wenn ich sage: Ich bin für mich, so liegt darin, ich bin nicht abhänging
von [einem] Anderen, ich negierte diesen negative Dasein, das Endliche
ist Sein für ein Anderes. Das Unendliche is Fürsichselbstsein. Das ist
[die] Sphäre der Qualität” (Hegel, 2001, pp. 95–96).
20. Hegel treats that explicitly:
“if one says that nothing is nothing, nothing is posited as independent.

But the truth of nothing is that it is being. We make a distinction within
becoming so that we start from [mere indeterminate] being [viewed
positively as total presence and then pass into nothing [namely, the same
indeterminate being viewed negatively as total absence] and then from
nothing pass into being again” (Hegel, 2008, p. 94).
21. In collections like 100 objects, “The one is the principle of the quantum,
of the border of its being for itself, but within a quantum this one passes
over into a manyness of discrete ones. One hundred is a quantum which
[as one] at first excludes manyness, but which is already within itself this
very manyfold of one hundred” (Hegel, 2001, p. 127; 2008, p. 119).
22. A contemporary example that creates an epistemological difficulty for
our science in the twenty-first century is the understanding of the work
105
of the genetic code—especially after its sequence of all elements (A,T,

G, C) in the DNA chain has been fully decoded. All elements in that
sequence are precisely known, their sequence becomes established,
yet the units of the sequence that function for resulting of different out-
comes are not obvious from the full certainty of the described sequence
of the elements.
“Ich habe einen Plan von einem Hause, wenn ich herausbringe, was
ich will, so ist in diesem Ausgeführten ganz dieser Plan; in diesem
Entsprechen liegt non die Unendlichkeit, der Begriff ist darin hinaus,
er is nicht mehr für sich, er findent sich in dem Anderen, verschieden
Scheinenden, in diesem Hinaus ist er doch bei sich selbst, er ist also
darin zurückgekehrt” (Hegel, 2001, p. 22).
24. This was elaborated by Fichte before Hegel (1794, pp. 21–22 see also Fichte,
1868, pp. 81–84 on mutual limiting).
“. . . nihil enim est mutation aliud, quam aeterna identitatis ex differ-

entia restitution et nova differentiae productio, contractio et expansio.
Potentiarum autem altera, mens, quae se ipsam producens, facta
spatii abstractione, tempu est, quantum hanc sui productionem ad
spatium refert, lineam constituit : et linea mens quidem se ipsam sed
in forma subjectiva producens, et in se reclusa est : perfectam autem
et naturalem formam sibi sumit in contrarium, sive spatium transiens
et planum constituens, quod, quia nullam aliam quam ipsam mentis
et extensionis differentiam posuimus, omni alia differentia caret. . ..”
(Hegel, 1998, p. 249).
26. As Leary (1980c, p. 314) points out, the idealists’ opposition to categoriza-
tion of the mind into “faculties” and their emphasis on historicity made
both developmental and social science possible.
27. The origin of the thesis-antithesis-synthesis triad is in Fichte (1794,
pp. 35–37 ff, also Fichte, 1868, pp. 87–89 and 179ff ) and in Salomon
Maimon (2010).
28. The role of nineteenth century psychologists, who followed Hegel, rejected
the upcoming physiologization of psychology as a “natural science”. They
attempted to develop accounts of the psyche as it stands by itself. Given
the dominance of the natural-scientific ethos in psychology by the second
half of the nineteenth century, their heritage has fallen out of the radar
screens of our contemporary psychology. However, the efforts of scholars
such as Karl Friedrich Rosenkranz, Carl Ludwig Michelet, Johann Georg
Mussmann, Johann Eduard Erdmann, Leopold George, Franz Vorländer,
etc.—have yet to be analyzed in a new history of psychology. Such history
should not be socially guided by the silence about the contributions of the
“nonsurvivors” of the mechanistic takeover of psychology. Hints in that
direction exist (Leary, 1980c), but have so far not been followed.
106
29. While in the 1830s, the Prussian king (Friedrich Wilhelm III) and his
government continued to support the Hegelian ideas, appointing Hegel’s
chosen successor Gabler to his chair in Berlin in 1833; then the death of the
king and coming to power of his son Friedrich Wilhelm IV reversed that
attitude. Friedrich Schelling—by now a starch opponent of Hegel, a friend
at his youth—was invited to take Hegel’s professorship in Berlin in 1841.
Young Hegelians were refused university jobs in Prussia (Brezell, 1970,
pp. 84–87). The “left” wing of them was viewed as political opponents of
the German states and implicated in the 1848 waves of revolutions.
30. For an example, consider how Schopenhauer described the state of German
philosophy (in a letter to Francis Haywood, from December, 21, 1829):
“. . . we now see a mere swaggerer and charlatan, without a shadow of

merit, I mean Hegel, with a compound of bombastical nonsense and
positions bordering on madness, humbug about a part of German public,
though by the more silly and untaught part, to be sure, yet by personal
means and connexions he contrieved to get a philosopher’s name and
fame. The more enlightened part of the learned public certainly takes
him what he is, while this holds no other philosopher in esteem but
Kant . . ..” (Nicolin, 1970, p. 408).
Verbal fights and possible jealousies shine through the flowery language
use to which Hegel, on his side, was no newcomer either. Schopenhauer’s
anger can be viewed in the context of Hegelians’ elimination of their op-
ponents by way of administrative acts. German intellectuals were far from
benevolent considerers of others’ opinion to enrich their own (e.g., see the
life history of Beneke in Hegel-dominated Berlin University—Friedrich,
1898, p, 3).
107
6
The Birth of a Troubled
Wissenschaft: Emerging
Psychology in Its German
Context
Psychology as a science is a German invention. Germany in the first

half of the nineteenth century was a developing and politically frag-
mented land, within which various forms of philosophical, aesthetic,
literary, and knowledge-constructing discourses were bubbling. The
developing Wissenschaften after the end of the French occupation
of the German speaking lands remained embedded within a slowly
developing—in economic and administrative terms—heterogeneous
society that was united only by the language, music, and the readi-
ness to collect customs duty at each possible crossing of borders of
the many politically separate units. The fragmentation of the area
made traffic and transport of goods difficult—hence the gradual move
toward unification of customs systems (started in 1818), culminating
in the political unity by the 1870s. The German federal administrative
system that exists today is a descendant from the times of political-
administrative fragmentation.
The German situation was unique in Europe of the time.1 The intel-
lectual life in the German lands was not oriented toward changing the
political system, but was flourishing in the direction of philosophical
and literary creativity. As a passing visitor, Madame de Staël noted
in 1813—“the love of liberty has not developed among the Germans”
(Gildea, 2008, p. 204). The German-speaking lands at the time were
unified by their disunity—except for sharing the language, they had
little in common.
109
Geographic Distinctions—Of Cultural Relevance

A fragmented country with two basic power centers—Prussia and
Austria—was a developing society within which the emerging sciences
had their social cradle. The main contrast within the German speaking
lands was—and still is—the North–South division. It largely follows the
borders of Protestant- and Catholic-dominated influence zones that
maintained their political independence, until Bismarck’s unification
in the 1870s of the Northern German lands. The North–South split
served as a meta-level ideological guidance of the intellectual enter-
prise. Historically the North and the South of the German speaking
areas was also under the influences of different aesthetic encodings
of the environments.
The North–South distinction in the cultural history of German
language area supported the difference of the “Southern” (Austrian,
Catholic dominated) and “Northern” (German, Protestant dominated)
psychological “schools” that emerged in late nineteenth century and
differed in their approaches (see chapter 7). Of course the wider society
where the emerging psychologists were in was also in active tensions
as to its political order and social contexts. Rapid industrialization
over the second half of the nineteenth century prioritized the “ma-
terialistic” and “objective” side of the sciences. The fight to get rid of
philosophy—metaphysics—went on in a society where political parties
started to involve, and fight one another for unity, liberty, and prog-
ress. In that context, the dramatic events in the European revolutions
of 1848–49 created an impetus for the developing Wissenschaften.
The crush of the revolutions led to exile of many intellectuals, as well
as inevitable changes in the political climate that two decades later
resulted in the emergence of Germany as a unified country through
the politics of Otto Bismarck. Some emerging psychologists—notably
Wilhelm Wundt—were deeply impressed in their youth observing
the atrocities of crushing the young revolution2 of the middle of the
nineteenth century.
The Revolution of 1848–49 and Its Impact on Wissenschaften
Revolutions are ruptures in the social textures of societies, bringing
with themselves transformations in the intellectual life. The revolu-
tionary fervent of 1789 France and 1917 Russia led to exclusion of
large segments of population from political life, from their property,
and—often—from their heads. Or—if they are lucky—they may suc-
ceed in emigrating. The value of the defeat in the 1848 revolutions in
110
The Birth of a Troubled Wissenschaft
Europe for the development of sciences in other countries requires a

separate study.
All Europe went through a revolutionary turmoil in 1848—well
described in retrospect by Friedrich Engels (1967). The spring of that
year was enthusiastically seen as
“springtime of nations,” where God smiled with flavor upon every

parliamentary subcommittee and the liberal millennium was just
around the corner. Barricades were mushrooming in the capitals of
Europe from the Seine to the Danube; angry mobs were stoning royal
palaces; unpopular ministers were hastily signing resignations and
hurrying into exile; exiled revolutionaries were hurrying home to a
hero’s welcome. To liberals witnessing these events it appeared as if
a new world were about to be born, as if a new reign of liberty and
justice were beginning. The sense of participation in the creation of a
better society seemed to intoxicate them. (Hamerow, 1954, p. 27)
The crushing of the revolutions led to rapid emigration of the op-

ponents of the regimes that restored their powers, as well as to the
need to modify the winners as well. In Germany it led to the Prussian
military takeover of the whole land, in the process of conflict with
France, by 1870s.
The revolutionary turmoils of the society in late 1840s were paral-
leled by the final elimination of the traces of Naturphilosophie from
the German academic discourses, and the replacement of unity
of the Wissenschaften by creating—by the end of the nineteenth
century—parallel trajectories in the science of the nature, and of the
soul. The move of the German “mainstream” of knowledge toward the
“Newtonian science” was inherently heterogeneous, yet centered on
the “return to Kant” call.3 Even as writers and poets had been in the
center of intellectual endeavors in the German-speaking lands, after
the dramas of the 1848 the situation changed:
The debacle of the Revolution of 1848, when even Liberals showed

themselves attached to class interests and national ambitions, en-
sured the survival of the authoritarian state in Germany. The 1850s
saw an upsurge of modern capitalist institutions and a wave of eco-
nomic speculation. In intellectual circles there was a rehabilitation
of empirical science, although the prestige of the Erfahrungswissen-
schaften could never match that of genuine Geisteswissenschaften
which were considered to hold the key to the ultimate mysteries of
Life and Nature. The philosophers remained at the centre of aca-
demic life, while the emergent natural or social sciences eked out a
111
peripheral existence in the sense that their achievements were left

to be limited to the mundane business of practical living. (Williams,
1976, p. 88)
The fight between camps of scientists continued—on the one side

focusing along the lines of materialism focusing on the concrete, while
the tradition of examining the Innerlichkeit continued in philosophy.
Efforts toward synthesizing the “objectivist” and “subjective” perspec-
tives existed, yet they were swept aside as the movement of sciences
toward the factory-type objectivity (as outlined in chapter 3) persisted.
Very few scholars in such environment could consider working in-
between of these polarizing “camps” of “schools of thought.” The few
who did prevailed—even if they were forgotten. Hermann Lotze was
one of them.
Looking for a Third Way: Hermann Lotze’s Ideal-Realismus
Rudolph4 Hermann Lotze (May 21, 1817–July 1, 1881) was in his
lifetime considered the most popular philosopher in Germany whose
influence reached other countries in Europe and the United States.5 He
belonged to those scholars who had a widespread influence on many
thinkers yet who never established a “school” of ardent followers who
would bring the ideas of the originator to their premature demise either
by glorifying or criticizing them. In the words of Otto Kraushaar,
There is something akin to an intellectual tragedy revealed between

the lines of Lotze’s philosophy. Every page thereof testifies to the
author’s versatility, sensitiveness, intellectual penetration, dialecti-
cal dexterity, and deep moral earnestness—the stuff of which great
philosophical immortals are made. But even these powers fell short of
enabling him to direct the turbulent intellectual currents of the mid-
nineteenth century to a center about which the scattered spiritual
energies of that time could be rallied. (Kraushaar, 1939, p, 455)
Lotze defied classification into warring “schools.”6 He tried to cre-

ate a synthetic system, and he succeeded in terms of being a major
resource in late nineteenth century Germany and in American intel-
lectual world dominated by William James. James was—from his age
twenty-five when he first encountered Lotze’s Medicinische Psychologie
oder Physiologie der Seele—a direct intellectual descendant of Lotze’s—
his Principles of Psychology were largely modeled after Lotze’s work
(Hookway, 2009; Kraushaar, 1936, 1938, 1939, 1940; Lamberth, 2009).
Lotze’s ideas fed into the work of Oswald Külpe, Hans Cornelius,
112
Alexius Meinong and Christian Ehrenfels, thus creating links with

the “Brentano Traditition” in South German lands (Albertazzi, 2006,
pp. 87–90).
Lotze was educated at the University of Leipzig. His Metaphysik
(Lotze, 1841) was published when he was twenty-four, and a year
later he was appointed as extraordinarious at University of Leipzig.
From 1844 he became a professor at University of Göttingen, to be
called to Berlin in 1881 where he died soon after arrival. His 1852
book Medicinische Psychologie oder Physiologie der Seele (Lotze, 1852)
was a milestone in the integration of ideas from both sides of the bar-
ricades of the “objectivity wars”—it integrated both the study of the
soul (Seele) as psychology with its physiological roots. The notion of
“medical” added to this idea complex is to be seen in the generalized
value of medicine in the European societies at the time—and Lotze’s
own family history in particular. His university education included
both philosophy and medicine in both of which he received his doc-
toral degree at University of Leipzig in 1838. Medicine was—based
on the family tradition (Lotze’s father was a medical doctor)—to be
his Lebensberuf (life profession that provides support), while art and
philosophy were his muses (Falckenberg, 1901, p. 18).
Lotze’s magnum opus was undoubtedly his general anthropology—
human studies in all their foci—monograph that he called Mikrokos-
mus. The title was an explicit dialogue with Alexander von Humboldt’s
Kosmos, with the subtitle that would retain the human history focus
(Ideen zur Geschichte und Naturgeschichte der Menscheit—Ideas for
the History and Natural History of Humankind7—Falckenberg, 1901,
p, 146). The Mikrokosmus was published in three volumes—in 1856,
1858, and 1864, respectively—and it became the best known of his work
in mid-nineteenth century. His ideas were the starting point for many
of the German thinkers who came after him—Carl Stumpf and Georg
Elias Müller among them. His notion of “local signs” (Lokalzeichen)—
traces in the nervous system that unify various bodily experiences
through a focus on direction (Turner, 1993, pp. 178–179)—may have
been rejected by physiologists, yet for semiotics of the twenty-first
century, it provides possibly interesting leads.
Psychology in Focus
Lotze’s (1852) book on medical psychology or physiology of the soul
can be considered his main theoretical contribution to knowledge.
Lotze’s further work touched upon aesthetics, and logic—the center of
113
which all were his philosophical contributions (Lotze, 1888). Building

on the opposition to Hegel on the one side, and Herbart on the other,8
and borrowing from the monadology of Leibnitz, Lotze established a
carefully designed and poetically expressed system.
Movement of ideas across the borders of languages—and cultural
foci—is a complicated process involving evaluations and misunder-
standings. Lotze’s philosophy was perceived from the Anglo-Saxon
world as
. . . composed of so many heterogeneous ingredients and has so

many side issues at stake, that it presents the appearance of admin-
istering to every recognized cult in turn, from teleological Idealism
to scientific Materialism, about equal shares of favor and abuse.
(Eastwood, 1892, p. 305)
There is a certain preponderance in the English language renderings

of complexity toward overlooking the unity of wholes and creating
“cocktail solutions” from any structured model that the Continental
European or Oriental world view has diligently produced. The focus
on part–whole relations is substituted by various qualitative and quan-
titative evaluations of the elementary components, thus eliminating
the whole.
Eastwood’s evaluation of Lotze is thus certainly limited—what has
been sacrificed by turning his contributions into a mixture of differ-
ent perspectives is the systematic effort to create a general system of
thought that would transcend the local limits of the “objectivity wars”
of the nineteenth century sciences in Germany. Yet it did not—neither
Germany nor beyond it.9 When two sides are in conflict, a third way
that transcends them both could be a way out.
Ideal-Realism and Emerging Psychology

Lotze’s philosophical system—labeled by others Ideal-Realismus
(Ribot, 1886)—was an effort to overcome both Kantian and Hegelian
perspectives. He had “. . . a poet’s feelings and longings after the ideal,
which force him beyond the sphere of physical science” (Lindsay, 1876,
p. 366). This characteristic is usual for most serious intellectuals—in
science and literary fields. He started his interest in philosophy from
the side of aesthetics—and in line with the widespread German tradi-
tion of music in human lives—considered all events to be analogical to a
melody (Kuntz, 1971, p. 22). With his aesthetic background, Lotze was
skeptical of the mechanical explanations of higher-order psychological
114
phenomena by way of physiological reductionism. He was looking for

ways of synthesizing the higher and lower levels of psychological and
physiological orders. In such synthesis, the philosophy of history was
to constrain the focus of psychology and enable anthropology to look at
human consciousness (Lotze, 1857, p. 15). The individual and cultural
phenomena were to be studied together. In Lotze’s words,
We want a Social Mechanics which can enlarge psychology beyond

the boundaries of the individual, and teach us to know the course,
the conditions, and the results of those actions and reactions which
must take place between the inner states of many individuals, bound
together by natural and social relations. Such a psychology would
furnish us, for the first time, not with graphic pictures of individual
stages of historic development and of the succession of the different
stages, but with rules which would enable us to compute the future
from the conditions of the present; or to speak more exactly, not the
future from the present, but a later past from an earlier past. (Lotze,
1899, vol 2, p. 194, added emphasis)
The focus on signs (“actions between”) and reference to the social

“computation” of the future from the pasts provide the main lines
for psychology ever since. The “computation” notion of course could
not be realistic but the link of individuals with the social network
has remained on the agenda. Lotze’s version of psychology—that of
mutual relatedness of the body and the soul—could be seen as a core
of emerging psychology.
Signs are Not What They Signify
Lotze’s theory of local signs (Lokalzeichen) was an effort to make
sense of the person–environment unity (Lotze, 1852, pp. 330–357—for
a thorough coverage see Woodward, 1978). The perception of the
external world, in its endless fluctuations, needed to be encoded with
relative stability. That stability could be granted by the emergence of
signs—linked to local experiences, yet abstracting from those. Lotze
posited the emergence of such signs within the nervous system, going
beyond simple sensations (Lotze, 1886/1846, p. 58). The registration
of a moving object “out there” in some direction—from the viewing
position of the perceiving organism (“in myself ”)—constitutes an ex-
ample of encoding of the events lived through by way of local signs.
Local signs are built on the basis of experience and serve as guiders
of the psyche toward further experience. They grow as synthetic psy-
chological phenomena on the basis of sensations working through the
115
nerve pathways, and allow for the organism to operate in the holistic
frame of perceptual-motor space in its different forms—visual, tactile,
and acoustic. The concept of local signs made it possible for Lotze to
make sense of melodies—dynamic acoustic gestalts that unfold in the
time and space.10
Together with this focus on sign formation comes the question
of duality of signs—the sign is not the object it denotes. Lotze here
antedates the thinking of Bertrand Russell and Gregory Bateson who
entertained a similar idea in the context of class inclusion.11 In Lotze’s
words,
Our ideas [presentations12] are not what they signify—the idea of

sweet is not sweet, the idea of half is not half. And our intuitions
[Anschauungen] of extended things do not themselves possess those
properties which make up the content intuited, and there do not ex-
ist between them those spatial connections the existence of which
between the objects intuited are indicated by them. Our idea of the
greater is not itself greater than that of the less, our idea of a triangle
is not triangular . . .. (Lotze, 1899, vol 2, p. 604)
The centrality of signs in encoding experiences comes to its ex-

treme—and therefore most visible—case, that of unknown qualities
of things.13 As Lotze outlines it,
. . . the name unknown qualities does indeed express, by the name

unknown, our incapacity of cognizing these qualities; but in calling
them qualities it keeps up the erroneous appearance of our having
at least the general notion under which this unknown may be cor-
rectly thought as one of its species. Now not only have we no idea
what kind of quality constitutes the being of things [Dinge], but we
err even in thinking that we may subsume this under the general
notion of quality. For this name quality, as long as it has any definite
meaning at all, always denotes something that by its nature has reality
only as a state of feeling of some sensitive being, but which except in
such a being, except as felt, cannot exist either independently or in
dependence on something else. (Lotze, 1899, vol 2, p. 629, original
Lotze, 1864, p. 514)
The notion of quality—known or unknown—is a result of the per-

ceiver–world relation. Of the former, any quality of colors of objects
is not in the object, but through the object in the psychological domain
of the perceiver. The presumption of qualities that are unknown il-
lustrates the capacity of human sign construction to create meaning
116
for objects that do not (or not yet) exist. It feeds into the discussion of
nonexisting objects (that subsist, rather than exist) in the work of the
“Graz School” of Alexius Meinong (see a brief coverage in chapter 7
of this book).
The Fate to be Misunderstood

Lotze had clear understanding of how his theoretical system of re-
lating the two “fighting camps” about science at his time could—and
would—be misunderstood.14 Yet that did not deter him to give it a
try. For him, psychology—the study of geistige Dasein15—should, like
other sciences, be based on general principles that, in his time, were
claimed by the physiological side of the materialist–idealist confron-
tation. Yet Lotze would not agree to reduce all the phenomenological
complexity to physiological principles—nor accept nonsecular ideas.
His standpoint in-between indicated the focus on systemic linkages
between levels of organization:
. . . our explanation of the mechanisms of the mind will agree with

what the natural sciences have to say; and on the other hand it will
steer clear of all ethical and religious questions which have their own
rightful and autonomous place in the science of the mind. We shall
put together the general principles that so far have been obtained by
means of psychological research without taking sides or becoming
committed to any specific philosophical language or school. When
doing so, however, we shall not lose sight of the fact that there are
cultural elements (Elementen der Bildung) which from outside
physiology govern the thinking of all human beings and which as a
person and as a professional the scientist ignores at his peril (Lotze,
1852, cited via Berrios, 2005, p. 127).
The crucial issue at stake is the decision whether knowledge is hi-

erarchically structured—heterogeneous—or devoid of such structure.
It is largely an axiomatic question yet with dire implications for what
kind a science we have. Over a century later—and speaking from the
perspective of physical chemistry as it looks at biology—Michael
Polanyi provided a simple proof for the hierarchical view of nature
in society:
If all men were exterminated, this would not affect the laws of in-
animate nature. But the production of machines would stop, and
not until men rose again could machines be formed once more.
(Polanyi, 1962, p. 1308)
117
The hierarchical control is the rule in the world, and the question
is—what kinds of form it takes, and how it is regulated. Talk about
“dualisms” and fights against models that recognize hierarchical order
are meta-level organizers of knowledge construction that block the
possibility of breakthroughs in any science of open systems.
Where is the Beginning of a Discipline?

The move of psychology into a central place in German discourses
in the nineteenth century grows out of the specific role the French
Revolution played in the experiences of German intellectuals. They
were at first fascinated by the ideas (see chapter 5), and subsequently
devastated by the destruction and occupation that came through
Napoleonic wars and nineteenth century revolutions. The question
of the order in societies—especially those of German lands divided
into many political units—became crucial.16 Of course the skeptic
perspective that Immanuel Kant had on the future of the field trig-
gered much of that discourse on the philosophical end—how can a
discipline that grows out of focus on the personal worlds in the eigh-
teenth century social invention of subjectivity fit with the abstract,
generalized, mathematical ideals17 for a science. Furthermore, the
issue of personal subjectivity became crucial in nineteenth century
social negotiations of unity (and disunity) of countries. Psychology
in the nineteenth century Germany became the arena of ideological
battles between idealist and materialist philosophical perspectives on
what knowledge should be like, ending up in a version that glorified
the experimental method and empirical focus in general and distanced
itself from philosophical issues.
However, psychology’s canonical history is told as a very different
story in various books on the history of discipline. Psychologists seem
unambiguous about when psychology emerged as an independent
science—1879 in Leipzig, with the opening of his laboratory. Yet there
is something strange in such claim: one administrative step—opening
an institutional unit in one university—becomes the birthplace of the
whole discipline. We here face the possibility that this origin story of
psychology is a myth, cultivated and used to proliferate the “scien-
tific credo” of psychology as a laboratory discipline.18 What emerges
from our new look at history of psychology in the nineteenth century
German lands is the reality of collective construction of the new
field—Johann Friedrich Herbart starting his lecture course on the
topic in 1806. Psychology as a discipline was born out of the tensions
118
between the Enlightenment philosophies of the eighteenth century

and the hopes of liberation of the human psyche by the stated ide-
als of the French Revolution. The latter, followed by the Napoleonic
wars (Leary, 1980a, p. 293), occupation of much of Europe that was a
brutal intervention into the traditional ways of living (Broers, 1996).
Conscription of young men to be killed in Napoleon’s war efforts from
all over occupied Europe, and new social rules for local life introduced
by the French occupiers created a tumultuous social situation. As a
by-product of such social turmoil, it led to the escalation of interest
in the public discourse about the psyche and the discipline that might
study it—psychology.19 Psychology—the discipline with the soul as its
object—became a problem for persons after societal tensions.
Herbart was indicated as the initiator of different directions in
psychology explicitly in mid-1850s (Lazarus, 1856, p. v), together
with the movement away from the Naturphilosophie toward a neo-
Kantian direction (Liebmann, 1865). The 1810–70 time period was
rich in discussions about what psychology is (Teo, 2007), should be,
and efforts to separate it from its neighboring disciplines of philoso-
phy, physiology, and theology. These discussions (see Biunde, 1831;
Brett, 1921, Chalybäus, 1854; Rosencrantz, 1843; Leary, 1978, 1980b,
1982) led to Hermann Lotze publishing his definitive book in 1852
(Lotze, 1852), followed by Gustav Fechner and in the 1860s–1870s by
Franz Brentano (1874) Wilhelm Wundt (1863, 1874) and Immanuel
Hermann Fichte (1873).
If we looked at the emergence of psychology in all of its complexity,
Lotze’s (1852) book on medical psychology or physiology of the soul
could be considered the starting point of psychology as a science. Its
title nicely reflects the ideological controversy between the psychology-
as-soul-science and materialistic psychology as physiology that was
actively discussed in the German academia at the time. The term—
psychology—had been used since the 1730s (by Christian Wolff20)
and, especially, as Immanuel Kant’s verdict was that it could not be a
science. Yet in the first decades of the nineteenth century—following
Herbart’s lectures on psychology started in 1806 (Jahoda, 2006)—we
can observe an upsurge of numerous texts explicitly treating the notion
of psychology. There was an institutionalized reason for it—in 1824
psychology became established in Prussia as a discipline in which ex-
aminations were to be taken (Prüfungsfach—Teo, 2007, p. 137). Other
German lands followed Prussia, so the need for books from where one
could study psychology became widespread.
119
The books on psychology came in a high variety of forms for varied

target audiences. Following Johann Friedrich Herbart’s first Lehrbuch
zur Psychologie of 1816 (Herbart, 1887), books on psychology sprung
up in German lands as mushrooms after a rain (see Teo, 2007). Thus,
a book for gymnasium students appeared in 1824 (Fischhaber, 1824),
followed by Herbart’s own (1825) book and a series of writings by
Fries (1820—Handbuch der psychischen Anthropologie) and Beneke’s
(1825) look at philosophy of feelings, as well as explicitly Psychologische
Skizzen (Beneke, 1827). The efforts of book writers were usually link-
ing philosophy, logic, and psychology (Mussmann, 1827). The period
1830s–1860s gave the German readers further richness of access to
psychology (Beneke, 1845, 1850; Biunde, 1831; George, 1854; Ideler,
1857; Reinhold, 1839; Rosenkranz, 1843; Schilling, 1851; Waitz, 1849).
In contrast with such active writing of long treatises on the issues of
psychology or the study of Seeleleben in the first half of the nineteenth
century, Wilhelm Wundt was a newcomer to the psychology scene after
it had been established discursively in the narratives of philosophy,
law, and theology. His work began at the end of these four decades of
fascination with the concept of psychology (Wundt, 1862, 1863, 1874)
The term—Psychologie—was circulating in the German intellectual
circles widely and wildly long before our canonical views on history of
psychology of the twentieth century dare to mention. No surprise that
it was a convenient target for the war between idealist and materialist
directions in the sciences as a whole.
Can a Science Have a Birthdate?

When—and how—would a science begin? When the term is invent-
ed and becomes used? When the first foundational book is published?
Or a society established? Or a particular thinker simply claims that
she or he has by now established a new science? Or, even worse, why
would thinkers later on claim that a certain personage of the past was
“the founding father” (or mother) of a given discipline?
The negotiation of birthdates and “founding persons” is of relevance
for the processes of social guidance of the field from its present toward
its future. It constitutes an act of use of history in its symbolic form:
In the professionalization of a discipline, a “founder,” treated as a

standard or banner, is very useful in rallying together otherwise
rather disparate individuals and groups. The professionalization
of a discipline or group, in part, involves creating a self-identity,
120
drawing a line between “us” and “them;” between our group and
“theirs,” between the receding past and the progressing present.
To crown the founder is to recognize that a new epoch has begun.
(Evans, 2004, p. 25)
Psychology has emerged in the middle of fights between opposing

ideological camps in the German context. By its nature—focusing
on the psyche—the soul (Seele) or spirit (Geist) is habitually granted
a liminal status in the discourse of the sciences. This was true in
the 1850s as it is now. From its beginning, psychology is a case of
an intellectual miscarriage between the idealist and materialist ef-
forts to get it fully to themselves (Leary, 1978). Dividing the unborn
before the birth pangs are over is a risky step—the precious baby
might never see the light. It could have emerged as an independent
discipline, branching off from philosophy on the basis of an idea
emerging in a bed,21 or the publishing of a book. Yet psychology—in
its self-reflection—started by the establishment of a laboratory.22
At least the later—twentieth century—rewritings of psychology’s
history attributed that role to Wilhelm Wundt and to the symbolic
event of opening his laboratory in 1879 rather than to any treatise
anybody—Wundt included—published. Opening a laboratory is an
administrative act of no substance. In contrast, books published on a
new subject matter are substantive.
The young science was fragile. Already twenty years after the
laboratory was established, the first discussion of the “crisis” in the
barely born discipline was published.23 Ever since most of psychology’s
self-reflective discourse entails a proud focus on “we are in crisis!”
(see chapter 9). So—by our usual historical narrative—machines, not
ideas, were the cultural-historical markers of psychology’s birth, not
ideas. History of psychology texts usually show off pictures of old brass
instruments for laboratory experiments as the marker of the solid-
ity of the discipline. Psychology as the newborn is seen in a curious
reversal—where the forceps used to pull it out from its philosophical
birth canal are taken for the baby.
It is hard to find another discipline that could start from the invention
of an instrument, rather than of an idea—or system of ideas. Undoubt-
edly, instruments such as telescopes, microscopes, and computers
are of value to science, but they are not automatically triggering new
ideas or practices in that science. Invention of the telephone did not
establish human needs to communicate, but the needs to communicate
121
led to the invention of the telephone. New technology can open the
horizons for new approaches in the sciences, but it can also become
used without making use of its true innovation potential.
At the Crossroads: Between Physiology and Mental Functions

The notion of “objectivity” was caught in the birth process of
psychology between the two fighting sides of the German Wissen-
schaften—the knowledge of the Geist and that of the Natur. Lotze had
tried to integrate the two in poetic ways but with little novel impact. His
integrating voice was lost in between the warring ideologies, despite
the fact that his work was well known in his lifetime, and in the decades
before World War I. The latter created new wars in psychology—
between mentalism and behaviorism—which continued the splitting
and fragmenting of the object of psychological investigation.
The Physiological Turn
Herman Helmholtz was trying to build up psychology on the side
of the “objective” ideological opposition in a new form (Cahan, 1993).
Helmholtz could be
. . . credited with smuggling philosophy into his fundamentally material-
istic times by adhering to dual-aspect monism. Dual-aspect monism is a
philosophical approach that is metaphysically monistic (there is only one
material reality), but epistemologically dualistic (there are two funda-
mentally different ways of knowing that reality). Following Kant’s posi-
tive critique, Helmholtz held that the external, physical world could only
be known by mathematical, scientific study of quantifiable causes of
phenomena . . .. On the other hand, the world as we know and perceive
it daily was based on phenomenal knowledge of—not the objective
quantities of nature—but the qualities with which our sense organs
internally registered these outer excitations. (Makari, 1994, p. 556)
The unity of quality and quantity—Hegel’s major contribution—had

gotten lost in the fight for objectivity. The dual-aspect monism allows
for setting the quality versus quantity coexistence together with loss of
the connection between the two. Yet in organismic systems, it is precisely
that connective tissue—the membrane (Valsiner, 2007b, 2009a)—that
is the key for explanation of both. The Helmholtz-Wundt line cre-
ated the psychology that suffers from dualism, accepting and fighting
against it, to our present days. Helmholtz brought Kant’s notion of the
a priori given to the concrete domain of perception. In his 1855 Königs-
berg lecture to celebrate 100 years of Kant’s inauguration, he could
122
appropriately claim the reality of what is being perceived (“out there”).24

And for him that “out there” was in the body, not in the Geist.
Helmholtz was a crucial predecessor to Wilhelm Wundt who
branched off his experimental psychology—under the label of physi-
ology.25 Wundt moved from philosophy to physiological psychology in
the 1870s and took the “Newtonian” stand. It seems that the emerging
psychologists of the 1860–70s were as eagerly becoming physiologists
as in our time psychologists are lured to “hard science” through the
clicking noises of a fMRI machine, or to looking for single genes for
complex psycho(patho)logical functions in the hyper-long genetic
bases chain. It is not the real gain for knowledge that these machines
provide but the appearance of being deeply “scientific.” The dominance
of the inductive empiricist model of science that governs psychology
supports such keeping up appearances.
The Sin of a Philosopher in Disguise: Wilhelm Wundt in His Complexity

Wundt’s own early discourse on psychology—before 1870 which
he himself called a “youthful sin” (Graumann, 1980, p. 34)—was by
far more substantive than his later work. Probably being young—and
sinful—is good for both psychology and emerging psychologists. The
“early Wundt”—with his “Heidelberg Program”—considered simple
psychological phenomena (e.g., sensations) to be difficult to study,
while complex ones—the stable creations of the human mind (stories,
constructions) seemed to him as easily accessible. Hence his suggestion
for expanding the method of observation into that of experimenting,
by introducing artificial constraints that make the simple phenomena
accessible for study. The “Heidelberg Program” considered psychol-
ogy a Naturwissenschaft (Graumann, 1980, p. 37) in which inductive
construction of knowledge, rather than metaphysics, leads the field.
Yet it was not meant to be high in mathematical sophistication.26
“Emptying” the “Soul”
Dominance of the “materialist” perspective over the “idealist” one
has casualties. Here we see another paradox of the social power roles
of different knowledge-making enterprises. In the German context of
the time, physiology was not a separate discipline but a subordinate
part of anatomy. That had implications:
Function was considered to be subordinate to structure; one started

with the anatomical organ and looked for its specific function.
123
The body was a static hierarchy of organs, each with its characteristic
function. Thus, questions of physiological function could only arise af-
ter the structures to which the functions belonged had been established
anatomically. The unit of investigation was the visible anatomical
element, and the preferred method was that of dissection. (Danziger,
1990, p. 25, added emphasis)
That primacy of structure at the expense of the function can be

seen in early experimental practices of psychology. A quintessential
example is the use of reaction time measurements in order to “dissect”
the mind. Reaction time as a phenomenon is completely ephemeral
functional elicitation—it is a formal, “measured” time (rather than
duration—dureé—in terms of Henri Bergson) recorded from some
set (structural) event (stimulus) by set instruction to the person
(“act as quickly as possible”) until another event (actual response)
is produced. The nature of the recorded time—which in the data
becomes essentially a pause between two events (i.e., measured as
“empty time,” not dureé which is filled with experience)—became a
window through which experimental psychologists tried to access
to presumed structural processes in the nerve impulse transition.
The effort was fully devoid of any reflection of the person’s subjective
experience.
The fact that neuronal transmission requires time is obvious, yet the
time differences between responses to different stimuli do not reflect
the content of the transmitted messages. Something psychological
was presumed to be analyzable from nothing—the formal time dif-
ference between responses to different conditions! The soul became
represented in psychology by empty time intervals—the content of
what the reaction was about was not studied27 in the efforts to use
reaction time measurements to elucidate the ways of work of the mind.
The mind was presented as a reacting—not constructing—response
machine.
The social inferiority of physiology to anatomy is an interesting
borrowing for the emerging psychology—one sub-dominant emerging
field (psychology) borrows its idol for being “science” from another,
albeit a part of it that is subservient in the donor field. The ambiva-
lence of knowledge of psychology continues—the “rigor” of experi-
mentation was not enough. In parallel to his laboratory, Wundt was
keeping up work on higher psychological functions that could not
be studied by the experimental methods. Neither could introspec-
tion be useful. Wundt—like Herbart years before—separated the
124
phenomena of internal perception (innere Wahrnehmung) from those

of active self-observation (Selbstbeobachtung—Danzinger, 1990,
p. 35), with the former fitting for the science of psychology, and the
latter not.28
Wundt’s interest in complex—not experimentally available—
phenomena culminated three decades later by his version of Völk-
erpsychologie (Diriwächter, 2004; Volkelt, 1924). In Wundt’s thought,
the segregation of the “Newtonian” (physiology) and cultural (Völk-
erpsychologie) directions was strategic (cf. Ash, 1980)—he established
his scientific credo in the German social environment through physi-
ological psychology while being interested in the general philosophical
issues that come with higher psychological functions.29
Wundt was clever in his double masking—of philosophical interests
through physiology. All through his life he was interested in basic
philosophical questions yet turned his activities to creating his version
of physiological psychology which became experimental psychology
rather than physiology.30 The social politics of Wissenschaft in Germany
was moving in 1850–70s decisively toward a narrow look at elementary
processes as prioritized, separating the complex phenomena of human
psyche to the domains of logic or ethics. Wundt kept up interest in
both in parallel31 since his youth (Volkelt, 1924)—at times lecturing
on both in parallel32—yet their synthesis was not to happen. Wundt’s
two key foci—the developmental approach and idea of synthesis of
elements into wholes (schöpferiche Synthese)—did not link well with
the necessarily holistic descriptions of existing cultural patterns of
other societies.
The Beginning of Psychology from
the Other Side—Völkerpsychologie
While the first trajectory to psychology entailed the answering of
the question of how the human physiological system produces psy-
chological phenomena—sensations, perceptions, and thoughts—then
the second pathway to psychology comes from the system of society.
Already Herbart’s (1825) psychology starts from the questions of
the psychology of the social units—the state—and its relations with
individuals. The second route of emergence of psychology was based
on the specifically human inventions not shared with other species—
language, folk myths and customs, and language. There was the start
of Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie of Heyman Steinthal and Moritz
Lazarus in the 1850s (Lazarus, 1856; Steinthal, 1855) that led to the
125
start of the Zeitschrift für Völkerspsychologie in 1860. This was a move

to situate psychology in-between philosophy and “Newtonian” natural
science. It was set to study complex cultural phenomena—languages
and folk traditions that are linked with them (Kalmar, 1987). Languages
have strict structural order yet allow for local modification of it for the
sake of expression. And, there are many different languages all over
the world which all make human living possible.
Based on Johann Friedrich Herbart’s establishment of psychology
(Lazarus, 1856, p. v) through a foundational textbook in 1816 (Lehrbu-
ch zur Psychologie) and in 1824–25 (Psychologie als Wissenschaft neu
gegründet auf Erfahrung, Metaphysik und Mathematik—Herbart,
1825, Jahoda, 2006), as well as on the interest in philology, this third
direction was very close to cultural anthropology that was to develop
later at the intersection of Germany and North America—Franz Boas’s
kind (Bunzl, 2003). Yet in its mid-1850s version, Völkerpsychologie
constituted just one of the number of directions in which psychology
as a new discipline was about to develop. As Steinthal (1855, p. 391)
pointed out, the study of the collective (folk) level of psychological
phenomena—a psychological ethnography (psychische Ethnologie)—
was to become the basis for philosophy of history. That this prediction
did not become true is due to the ascending dominance of the physi-
ological reductionist tradition in psychology in the nineteenth century,
and the post-modernist refusal—mimicking Wilhelm Dilthey—of
looking for universality.
The beginning of Völkerpsychologie can be traced to 1851 (Leicht,
1904, pp. 9–10) to the question of “what is the German national spirit”
(Deutsche Volksgeist) like? The ideological flavor of such beginning is
obvious.33 By the end of the 1840s, with development of liberal ideolo-
gies on the one hand and conservative crackdown of the revolutions of
1848–49, the issue of the “national spirit” was far from being an aca-
demic matter.34 Every person is the object of individual psychology, and
when persons live together in a society then the object of investigation
is the unifying Gesamtgeist—the Volksgeist (Leicht, 1904, pp, 72–73).
In a way, that focus is not dissimilar to our contemporary questions—
in European Union—to figure out what “European identity” is. It was
developed by Lazarus in direct parallel with the contemporary focus
on unity in the biological world—in the concept of organism.
Importantly, the Lazarus-Steinthal version of Völkerpsychologie
(see Diriwächter, 2004) changed the direction of inquiry—from the
individual Seele to that of culture—yet it retained the duality of the
126
focus on folk-historical (history of society seen through the patterns of

culture) and “psychological ethnology” (language, customs, etc). While
indeed providing a “third way”—keeping psychological phenomena
away from either being reduced to psychology or to transcendental
agency—Völkerpsychologie still remained in-between the “Newtonian”
and “Goethean” directions:
. . . so far as Völkerpsychologie . . . attempts to discover general laws,

it resembles the natural sciences. There is, however, a significant
difference in the nature of the phenomena being investigated. Natu-
ral phenomena, including those of individual psychology, remain
constant, while the Geist that constitutes the object of Völkerpsy-
chologie progresses and is continuously being enriched. (Jahoda,
1993a,b, p. 151)
The content of the study was changed, yet the ambivalence of be-
ing in-between two fighting “camps” remained. What Lazarus and
Steinthal proposed was a kind of “cultural morphology.” Goethe’s
idea of natural sciences—rejected by the anti-idealist campaigns of
mid-nineteenth century—were transposed to the study of culture
as a holistic system (Mancini, 1999, p. 72). It was not the basis for
Wundt’s Völkerpsychologie of early twentieth century (Jahoda, 1993a,b,
pp. 181–183) as the latter distanced from that—possibly as a means
to keep its romantic connotations at a distance.
Conclusion: The Collective Birth Pangs

of an Emerging Discipline
In the middle of the nineteenth century, all sciences—natural, cul-
tural, and “spiritual”—still shared the primacy of the notion of quality
(structure, form, order) over quantity (as a secondary indicator of
qualities). With the advancement of the empiricist ideology together
with the Galtonian urge for counting, that relationship of quality and
quantity disappeared by the twentieth century.35 Our contemporary
split between “quantitative science” and “qualitative perspectives” is
firmly rooted in the historical developments in the fights for science
in nineteenth century Germany. The loss of focus on the relationship
between quality and quantity—started by Hegel in the beginning of
the nineteenth century and disappearing by its end—occurred under
social guidance that selected it out in favor of the reductionist either–or
positions. The latter positions stem from political oppositions in the
societies of nineteenth century Europe; taking any “party line” would
127
lead a thinker—be it on topics of society or of psychology—to such

positions. The unity of opposites is the first casualty on the battlefield—
and the simple fact that any battlefield, be it of armies or ideas, exists
only thanks to such unity is easily forgotten.
Psychology emerged as a science at least six decades before we
usually think it did—in the 1820s rather than in 1879. Or—even more
accurately—it grew out of eighteenth century philosophical concerns,
introduced by Christian Wolff and disputed by Immanuel Kant and all
of his interlocutors. Yet, as a discipline, psychology emerged under the
impact of the Napoleonic wars and the revolutions in Europe, over the
whole nineteenth century. The creators of the new discipline—Hermann
Lotze, Wilhelm Wundt, Hermann Helmholtz, Gustav Fechner, Moritz
Lazarus, Chaim Steinthal, Franz Brentano, and (earlier) Johann
Friedrich Herbart,36 Friedrich Eduard Beneke37—entered the study of
the complexity of the human psyche through different perspectives.
Some of them looked at elementary functions (Helmholtz), others
focused upon the higher order phenomena (Lazarus, Steinthal), and
as always, there were scholars who tried to do both (Fechner, Wundt,
Lotze). All of these vantage points were necessary—and treated as
such by all the founders of the discipline. However, under the social
guidance that called for their separation from one another, some of
them became prioritized over others. And in the later rewritings of
psychology’s history from the viewpoint of the “winner”—the empirical
experimental psychology in the twentieth century—the whole rich-
ness of social discourses about psychology was reduced to one—the
myth created around Wundt’s laboratory and about the experimental
perspectives.38
We can observe in the philosophical treatises in the early emerg-
ing psychologists the intellectual—and sometimes affective—
tensions of being at the crossroads. Further separation of the
directions came in late nineteenth century discussions of how Gei-
steswissenschaften from Naturwissenschaften are mutually incompat-
ible—yet necessarily capturing the important aspect of the human
soul. Where the newly born psychology might belong in that polar-
ized mindscape was an ideologically charged question then—and it
remains so in our time. Psychology can be described as an offspring
of divorcing parents who both claim that fragile creature to be fully
and truly theirs!
128
Notes
1. The philosophy of German exceptionalism—Sonderweg—has been around
over the past two centuries, granting simultaneously phenomena of high
erudition and certain righteousness when encountering other cultures
different ways of being (Steinmetz, 1997).
2. Wundt (1920, chapter 2)—description of the crushing of the Baden Republic
in 1849.
3. Gerhard Benetka (2002, pp. 52–57) has described the history of “physiolo-
gizing Kant” in the 1850s. It seems that the different ideological perspectives
in the German contexts at the time, and maybe later, could not do other-
wise but to remodel their fitting intellectual predecessors—be these Kant,
Hegel, or Goethe—to enlist them as supporters of their current dominance
assertion (Sturm, 2001; Sturm and Wunderlich, 2010).
4. In later writings Lotze started to leave out his anterior first name, remaining
Hermann Lotze (Lindsay, 1876, p. 363).
5. William James adopted Lotze’s Microcosmus for his teaching at Harvard,
and saw him as a fresh start, contrary to Hegelianism. Josiah Royce, in
contrast, saw him as a “weak” version of Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel
(Kuntz, 1971, pp. 65–66).
6. Dewey (1887, p. 425): “Lotze is difficult to class, having, upon the whole,
an independent basis; he is indebted to Kant and to Herbart in about equal
measures while he is everywhere influenced by the physiological aspects
of the science.” A decade later, explaining psychology to U.S. Congress-
men, James Mark Baldwin remarked: “Lotze . . . deserves the credit of it
[experimental psychology], the credit of the great-minded constructive
pioneer; and Wundt is the founder of the science in the sense that he first
realized the expectations of Lotze’s genius by actually planning and execut-
ing experiments of wide range and on a large scale . . ..” (Baldwin, 1901,
p. 360). On a more personal side, G. Stanley Hall remarked, “His philosophy
is his daily inner and outer life. He never indoctrinates, but holds that the
deepest motive of philosophizing is to utter and share humanities’ doubts
and ignorances with others” (Hall, 1881b, p. 95).
7. In American translation—An essay concerning man and his relation to
the world—Lotze (1887). Note the loss of any reference to history in the
translated title.
8. As Santayana (1971, p. 131) points out, Lotze’s philosophy was “just what
it might have been had Kant never lived.” Lotze rarely mentioned Kant (in
the middle of his contemporaries’ use of Kant to create natural science).
9. Lotze was the most widely-known German philosopher in North America
in the second half of the nineteenth century–until early 1900s. The reasons
for that were not in his substantive ideas, but the fit of these ideas with the
needs of young intellectuals—as Kuntz (1971, p, 48) put it:
“. . . in both English-speaking countries there was the common back-

ground of a rising neo-Hegelianism and all of them except Santayana
were Protestants troubled about their religious faith. Both their native
129
empirical beliefs and their biblical faith were in trouble. Lotze was known
as the man who could see them through the difficulties of adjusting the
old biblical authority, to the new authority of science.”
Lotze’s prominence waned together with the takeover of psychology of

the methods-dominated philosophy (cf. Boring, 1929, pp. 250–251 for an
ideological evaluation of Lotze’s role).
10. The issues of space perception and spatial aesthetics became a central
topic for inquiry in the second half of nineteenth century psychology in
Germany. Theodor Lipps in the field of architecture, and Carl Stumpf in
the psychology of acoustic tones extended Lotze’s original focus.
11. Which entailed the focus on the fact that a category name (e.g., “chair”)
cannot belong to the set what it is a label of (e.g., that of all physical objects
designated as chairs—on which one can sit, but one cannot sit on the word
“chair”).
12. Lotze (1864, p. 485) uses Vorstellung in the original.
13. The theme of the nature of qualities in the subjective meaning-making of
persons was crucial for Lotze over decades—Lotze, 1841, p. 298 ff on quali-
ties. Quality is a sign—hence not belonging to the object it is supposedly
characteristic of, but through the subjectivity of the person.
14. In his introduction to Microcosmus: “I can hardly hope that the result of
this attempt will meet with a very favourable reception . . . [which is] . . .
due for the most part to the ease with which any mediating view may be
interpreted so as to seem favourable to either of the one-sided extreme
views which it was designed to avoid” (Lotze, 1899, vol. 1, p. xvi).
15. Usually translated as “mental life”—yet its implication pertains to affective
(spiritual—geistige) view of the existing other (Dasein) that is located within
oneself. The innerlichkeit (“inside-ness”) social representation together with
the investigative direction myself (here) → myself-out-there (presented in
my feelings, thoughts, etc.).
16. As a proof of that connection, consider Herbart (1825, pp. 21–30) where
the role of the state and wars and the conduct of political leaders is being
considered as input phenomena for psychology. In the twentieth century
a similar role has been documented by Kurt Lewin (1917).
17. The mathematization of psychology over the twentieth century in terms
of turning it into a statistical enterprise—with primacy of inductive gen-
eralization—would not have made Kant change his opinion of the future
of psychology. Just the contrary—making psychology statistics-dependent
continues to be Kantian proof that it cannot be scientific. It is the abstract,
generalizing function of mathematics—geometrization rather than arith-
metization (see Husserl, 1970, pp. 27–30).
18. A similar “point-like” ascription of “revolution” in another discipline—
chemistry—to Lavoisier and year 1789 has been questioned in history of
chemistry (Bensaude-Vincent, 2003) in favor of a time period approxi-
mately dated from 1789 to 1869 (Mendeleev’s periodicity table). The
key role in creation of the origin myth of psychology as a “laboratory
science” belongs to Edwin Boring (1929), who later defended the notion
of “birthdays” (Boring, 1965), yet having had elaborated on their relativity
earlier (Boring, 1927).
130
19. Of course that popular discourse was built upon the Wolff-Kant con-
trasting thoughts and became exemplified in the 1790s by the appear-
ance of public journals on psychology, mostly dedicated to bringing to
the readership psychological curiosities of daily life and descriptions of
out-of-ordinary examples of the psyche to share these examples with the
medical guild members (Tobin, 2001, pp. 19–20). Such journals lasted a
short time. Among these Karl Phillip Moritz’s (later edited by Salomon
Maimon) Gnothi seauton, oder Magazin für Ehrfahrungsseelenkunde
als ein Lesebuch für gelehrte und ungelehrte (1786–93) followed by Carl
Christian Schmid’s Psychologisches Magazin (1796–98) and Immanuel
David Rauchart’s Repertorium und Bibliothek für empirische Psychologie
und verwandte Wissenschaften (1792/93, 1798/99, and 1801) need to be
mentioned. The focus on everyday psychological experiences—the no-
tion of empirical psychology since Christian Wolff in 1732—was brought
out to the interested public clergymen and medical doctors, as well as by
philosophers (also see Schmid, 1791). Jakob Friedrich Fries published his
first treatise on the foundations of psychology in Schmid’s Psychologishes
Magazin in 1798 (Leary, 1982).
20. In his Psychologia empirica (1732). The term was used earlier—at the end
of sixteenth century. Or, likewise, the public proliferation of the notion
of psychology could be traced to years 1783–93 and the publication of
the Magazin zur Erfahrungseelekunde by Karl Philipp Moritz and, later,
Salomon Maimon as the first journal of psychology (Förstl, Rattay-Förstl,
and Winston, 1992). Psychology was prepared by the social discourses of
the eighteenth century and emerged in the nineteenth century.
21. The precise dating of the starting point of a new discipline is usually an act
of social-institutional convention, as it serves myth-making purposes. Thus,
Edwin Boring’s History of Experimental Psychology (Boring, 1929 p. vii)
reified the myth of Wundt’s work in the 1860s and 70s and his laboratory
as the starting point for all psychology, with grave commissions (Hogan
and Vaccaro, 2006, p. 134). One could locate that point in a dream—or in
the moment an idea crosses the mind.
“. . . the morning of October 22, 1850, when Gustav Theodor Fech-
ner, lying in bed, realized the possibility of measuring the intensity
of sensation and bringing these numerical measurements into causal
relationship with the numerical measurements of external stimuli.”
(Müller-Freienfels, 1935, p. 48)
To add to this dependence of conventional marking of “birthdates,” why
do we not date psychology’s appearance back to Herbart’s Lehrbuch der
Psychologie—of 1816 (cf. Jahoda, 2006). Likewise, psychology could equally
well be declared to start with Lotze’s Medicinische Psychologie oder Physi-
ologie der Seele (Lotze, 1852).The rhetoric character of establishing such
“birthdates” becomes obvious—a corpus of ideas develops over a period
of time, with often long latencies of becoming recognized as valuable for
the science.
22. “A laboratory (informally, lab) is a facility that provides controlled condi-
tions in which scientific research, experiments, and measurement may be
performed. The title of laboratory is also used for certain other facilities
131
where the processes or equipment used are similar to those in scientific

laboratories. These notably include: the film laboratory or darkroom, the
computer lab, the medical lab, the clandestine lab for the production of
illegal drugs” (Wikipedia, consulted January, 11, 2010). The focus in psychol-
ogy laboratory is still on equipment the use of which is spatially separated
from the activities in the world beyond the enclosed space—“. . . the power
of the laboratory (but of course also its restrictions) resides precisely in its
enculturation of natural objects” (Knorr Cetina, 1992, p. 118). As Bruno
Latour (1987) has wittily demonstrated, laboratories emerged as a territory
on which the uninitiated could witness the performance of experiments
and get the input of the knowledgeable insiders.
23. By Swiss philosopher Rudolf Willy (1855–1918), whose book Die Krisis
in der Psychologie lamented the continuation of “speculation” rather than
turning to become “empirical science”—see Teo, 2008, pp. 49–50). This
links the twentieth century “crisis talk” with the nineteenth century fights
about atomistic and holistic perspectives in knowledge construction (see
chapter 9).
24. Helmholtz was building on Johannes Müller’s earlier claim that psychology
can be studied only physiologically (Benetka, 2002, p 52). The question of
reduction of the psychological phenomena to biological ones that is in vogue
at our times was a result of the epistemological disputes in German lands
of the first half of the nineteenth century. Johannes Müller’s demonstration
(in 1833) of the similarity of sensation in response to outside and inside
(directly on the nerve) stimulation—the law of specific energy of senses—
surely emphasizes the key role of the material carrier of psychological
functions. But it does not prescribe reduction of the psyche into the nerve
tissues.
25. Translating psychology into physiology was not only Wundt’s per-
sonal preference. Aside from reflecting his own development (Wundt,
1868), it fitted the Zeitgeist of the 1870s Germany. An external observer
commented:
That physiologists have thus gradually encroached on the region of psy-

chology, is a fact which should excite no wonder. For in a certain sense
physiology may be said to include the whole of empirical psychology. If
every mental act is a function of some part of the nervous system, then
a complete account of this system would imply complete explanation
of mental processes, which are its functions. (Sully, 1876, p. 23, added
emphasis).
The reductionism here starts from denial of levels of organization within

the organism.
26. Hall (1917, p. 298) recalls from his time in Leipzig in 1880s:
“Wundt and his new work were then looked on not only with suspicion
but with active criticism by his colleagues. He had been dismissed as an
assistant by Helmholtz because of his lack of mathematical training . . .
as Helmholtz thought, while physiologists and medical men generally
regarded him as an interloper in their field.”
132
27. Reaction time studies are similar to the use of rating scales—both entail
a maximally simplified task (push a button, put a mark on a line) without
direct interest in the process of how the person constructs such response
(Rosenbaum and Valsiner, 2011; Wagoner and Valsiner, 2005). Of course
there is reality of the neuronal transmission behind the reaction time stud-
ies, while it is missing in rating scales.
28. This distinction—present in Wundt’s early program before 1870 (the
“Heidelberg Program”—Graumann, 1980) and defended vigorously (Wundt,
1879, 1880—critique of Adolf Hurwicz’s making feeling the central phe-
nomenon for psychology—later became the core for the dispute between
Wundt and the “Würzburg school” of Oswald Külpe and Karl Bühler in early
1900s. Its origins go back further to Johann Friedrich Herbart (Herbart,
1825, p. xiv).
29. This segregation was encoded in the selection of labels for public domain—
Wundt’s classic book Grundzüge der physiologische Psychologie (first edi-
tion 1874) used the notion “physiological” as a synonym to “experimental.”
Wundt’s focus was not original even in his time—his opponent Adolf
Horwicz had published a similar effort two years before (Psychologische
Analysen auf physiologischer Grundlage—Horwicz, 1872). Four years after
establishing—privately—his laboratory of psychology in Leipzig (1879)
Wundt also established a journal—Philosophische Studien (1883)—to cater
for more general issues than laboratory experimentation. At around the
same time his rival in Berlin—Carl Stumpf—negotiated with Berlin Uni-
versity so as to avoid the label “laboratory”: to be in his newly established
Psychologisches Seminar—so as not to leave an impression that his research
group would be working on small insignificant technical studies in a lab—
“American-style narrowness” (which they ended up doing anyway—see Ash,
1998, pp. 33–36—for a full description). On the other hand, the positive
appeal of the concrete in contrast to the poetic was evident in Brentano’s
use of the notion “empirical” in the sense of experiential in his major book
title of 1874.
30. It has been claimed (Ben-David and Collins, 1966—see also Ash, 1980 for
a contextualized balanced view) that Wundt strategically used the social
halo of physiology to create a playing field of psychology where he could
address his philosophical questions.
31. Fighting efforts to unite them through the notion of feeling (Gefühl)—see
his disputes with Horwicz (1878, 1879, Wundt, 1879, 1880). Allowing the
notion of feeling to take the central place among psychological phenomena
(as Horwicz suggested—see Brentano, 1874, pp. 60–68) would have led to
unification of the Natur- and Geisteswissenschaft-streams in the psyche
and denied the primacy of the experimental method.
32. In Summer of 1875 in Zürich (Wundt, 1920, p. 222)—on logic and on
Völkerpsychologie.
33. It is a good example of a universally recurrent way of using social sciences as
both side-“effects” and “participants in the production” of national identity
narratives (see Carretero, 2011).
34. The discourse about psychological features that unify the Volk were in the
environment earlier—Lazarus himself claims to have heard of it in 1840
(Leicht, 1908). The link Nationalgeist–Volksgeist–Gesamtgeist was a unify-
133
ing idea. Lazarus saw from childhood joint living of Protestants, Catholics,
and Jews (Leicht, 1904, pp. 10–11), and remained himself true to his “Berlin
identity” even at the time of his professorship in Switzerland, 1860–66. Yet
his “German Vaterland” failed to treat him as part of the German identity.
In the anti-Semitic politics his efforts to gain philosophy professorship at
University of Berlin failed—the position went first to Herman Lotze, and
then to Wilhelm Dilthey. Lazarus himself was employed by the Military
Academy in Berlin, even while giving lectures at Berlin University. He never
gained professorship in this esteemed institution.
35. It was Hegel’s—and before him Fichte’s and Salomon Maimon’s—dialectics
that maintained a clear link between quality and quantity in their abstract
forms—accumulation of quantity transforms into new quality. It took natu-
ral sciences over a century and a half to see it implemented in the physical
sciences (Ilya Prigogine’s work), and it still has not returned to the social
sciences (which otherwise treat Prigogine’s contributions under the generic
label ”chaos”).
36. In fact, if psychology as a discipline were to be considered from the first
lecture course given under that label, the discipline would be dated back
to 1806 when Johann Friedrich Herbart introduced such lecture course at
the University of Göttingen (Jahoda, 2006, p. 21).
37. Beneke’s role in the development of pragmatic psychology and links with
English philosophies—as well as antecedent to Theodor Lipps’ psychologi-
cal aesthetics make him as parallel developer to Lotze as a consolidator of
the field (Stout, 1889, Troitskii, 1883).
38. A key role in this myth construction belongs to Edwin G. Boring. In his His-
tory of Experimental Psychology (Boring, 1929, p. viii), he explicitly stated his
credo of history as moving from Descartes, Leibnitz, and Locke to Wundt.
Of all German psychologists, Boring gives Wundt the largest coverage
(34 pages—pp. 310–344) while Brentano gets merely 6 (pp. 345–351);
Stumpf, 10 (pp. 351–361); Lotze, 9 (pp. 250–259); Herbart, 12 (pp. 238–250);
and Lipps, only 2 (440–442). Both the philosophical and South-German
traditions of thought were barely—and often dismissively—presented.
134
7
Between Poetry and Science:
Locating Geisteswissenschaft
on the Map of Knowledge
Poets and fiction writers create knowledge that is with us over

centuries. Despite the fictional nature of Hamlet we keep referring to
his tragic fate in our everyday lives. Yet Shakespeare never studied a
single case of a Danish prince to create his character, nor do we look
at Hamlet as a real person with whom we might enter into a dialogue
next time in a pub, or a cemetery. Hamlet is an artistic generalization,
and as such he carries understanding of basic psychological processes
that, at times, we might encounter in real life.
Is Hamlet a result of scientific investigation? Certainly not—
psychology in Shakespeare’s time had not yet emerged as a science. Is
Hamlet a fiction? Certainly, yet a fiction that operates as a generalizable
model for the human psyche, that later became captured by psycholo-
gists in their scientific efforts. Models, be these created by scientists or
fiction writers, are generalized and (in case of arts) personalized and
embodied schemata that carry knowledge across persons and historical
times. Scientific investigation is only one way of creating such general
models. Arts, literature, poetry, and religions create similar ones by al-
ternative routes. Often the models created in one domain contest others
created elsewhere. The emergence of the sciences entailed painstaking
dialogue with previous religiously provided models. That fight, visible
in German lands in the nineteenth century, and in North America up
to now (in the question of evolution and creationism), is both socially
guided and acts as a social guide for knowledge construction itself.
The Waves of Fashion
Social fashions change, and so do power games. The rapid growth
of the fascination with the Naturphilosophie in the first decade of the
135
nineteenth century gave rise to a revolt by the 1840s that led to the
effects to make sense of what kind of knowledge is generated by dif-
ferent disciplines. Physics and chemistry were on the one side, and
history, economics, together with—from 1850s to 1860s onward—
psychology on the other side of the spectrum of knowledge generating
areas. The flow of industrialization created new foci for establishing
unifying concepts. Thus,
By the middle decades of the nineteenth century, the epistemol-

ogy and ethos of truth-to-nature had been supplemented (and, in
some cases, superseded) by a new and powerful rival: mechanical
objectivity. The new creed of objectivity permeated every aspect of
science, from philosophical reflections on metaphysics and method
to everyday techniques for making observations and images. (Daston
and Gallistel, 2007, p. 195)
The “objectivity war” was not about objectivity in the sciences, but
of prominence of one or another kind of knowledge in the rapidly
industrializing German society. Efforts to unite the opposites, such
as the efforts of Lotze to integrate the body and the soul (chapter 6,
above), were in vain.
Psychology as a self-made discipline emerged in the middle of
these fights between the opposing camps. By its nature, focusing on
the psyche—the soul (Seele) or spirit (Geist)—it was granted a liminal
status in the discourse of the sciences. Psychology as a separate sci-
ence emerges as a by-product—a narcissistic child who enjoys the
continuous self-inquiry shouting out “I am in crisis!” attacking its
parent disciplines, emulating the latest fashions of occult, physiology,
neurosciences, or postmodernism. Fights about social positioning of
one’s viewpoints may cease to be tools for investigation and become
goals in themselves. Much of the critique in psychology—meta-level
fights for or against one or another ism (behaviorism, cognitivism,
mentalism, positivism, etc.)—are examples of such transposition of
focus where new perspectives are sacrificed to righteous fighting
with imaginary classes of opponents. The ideological wars about
Wissenschaft in nineteenth century Germany were no exception.
Psychology as a Geistige Naturwissenschaft: The Legacy

of Wilhelm Windelband
It was a third way, not forcing the newly independent discipline
to either of the “camps” of “Newtonian” or “Goethean” kinds, but
136
Between Poetry and Science
rather trying to push for benefitting from psychology as being in the

advantaged in-between position. Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915), a
key figure in German philosophy of the turn of the twentieth century,
contrasted psychology’s subject matter (which makes it fit historical
sciences) and its methodology—as it had developed by 1890s—located
it among natural sciences (Windelband, 1998, p. 11).
It is not surprising that in the partition of Naturwissenschaften and
Geisteswissenschaften it was psychology that was caught in the middle.
It was Windelband who in his rector inauguration speech in Univer-
sity of Strassburg in 1894 took to himself to sort out the mindscape
of sciences and to locate psychology on that landscape. Psychology
as the study of the soul (Seele) was ambiguous. It was forced into a
class distinction of strict separation between “natural” (Naturwissen-
schaften) and “spirit” (Geisteswissenschaften) classes of knowledge in
the second half of the nineteenth century. As that opposition was set
up as the map for knowledge domains in science, psychology ended
up in between
. . . which, while in its subject belongs to the realm of Geist, is for-

mally or methodologically to be included among the natural sciences.
(Mos, 1998, p. 41)
The liminality of psychology was particularly visible in the efforts to

label the discipline in the middle (“spiritual natural science”—geistige
Naturwissenschaft—cf. Windelband, 1904, p. 10).1 Psychology was
dealing with complexity of ephemeral phenomena. In contrast to
history’s records of rulers, wars, and their one-time material results—
ruins, captured territories, and handicapped soldiers—psychology
dealt with the complex internal perception of the world by the rulers
and the ruled. These perceivers of the inner universes were obviously
present in their bodily existence—unless the soul “departed” from
the body once the striving patriotic soldiers were killed on a battle-
field, or simply died in yet another epidemic of the plague or other
killer diseases of the times. The souled bodies asked the higher order
beings—deities and kings—for help by flocking into churches, where
other well-bodied and usually well-fed persons—the clergy—were all
ready to provide such guidance.
Yet psychology as a discipline was sufficiently irrelevant—in the
German context of the nineteenth century sciences—to need a clearly
defined place among other sciences. Up to the beginning of the 1920s,
137
psychologists in Germany occupied philosophy professorships and

were expected to contribute to science more than some empirical
accumulation of data. The problem of where to put psychology in the
pantheon of sciences was largely a matter of the general world view,
rather than that of the well-being of the discipline through economic
resources devoted to it. Windelband’s efforts to see psychology as a
special case of natural sciences (Naturwissenschaft des innere Sinnes)
brought it to the realm of general knowledge construction arenas.
A Misleading Neologism: Idiographic and Nomothetic Perspectives
Windelband introduced the contrast between knowledge construc-
tion that emphasizes the general (nomothetic) and that which focuses
on the particular (idiographic—Windelband, 1904, p. 12, 1998, p. 13).
His own context of introducing these terms is informative about the
confusions that have raged in psychology around the issues of the
reality of the phenomena observed in a single case:
. . . the empirical sciences [Erfahrungswissenchaften] seek in the

knowledge of reality either the general in the form of natural law
or the particular in the historically determined form [geschichtlich
bestimmten Gestalt]. They consider in one part the ever-enduring
form, in other part the one-time [einmalige] content [Inhalt], de-
termined within itself, of an actual happening. The one comprises
sciences of law [Gesetzwissenschaften], the other sciences of events
[Ereigniswissenschaften]; the former teaches what always is [was
immer ist], the latter what once was [was einmal war]. If one may
resort to neologisms [neue Kunstausdrücke], it can be said that the
scientific thought is in one case nomothetic, in the other idiographic.
(Windelband, 1998, p. 13, inserts from Windelband, 1904, p. 12)
Windelband’s contrast was built on classical philosophical grounds.

As Plato focused on the general immutable character of phenomena,
Aristotle sought the same—generality—in the purposefully develop-
ing individual being (Windelband, 1998, p. 12). Thus both nomothetic
and idiographic perspectives—in their different ways—strive toward
gaining generalized knowledge. Furthermore, remembering the inevi-
tability that any experience of anything is a singular phenomenon (as
it unfolds for the living individual in irreversible time), the basis of all
human knowledge is inevitably idiographic—that what is experienced
once. On the basis of such unique experiences, it is our mental systems
that create knowledge either by ongoing comparison of another unique
experience with the previous one (retaining the time parameter), or by
138
accumulating such experiences into collections of similarly classified

objects (losing the time parameter). Thus, all science is idiographic as
it strives toward generalization about its phenomena through time.
The latter limit makes it inevitable that any new phenomenon to be
explained is discovered first in its singular form. Each reobservation
of these forms, or “sampling,” is in effect finding other uniquely sin-
gular forms in their contexts that belong to the same category. The
result of such inquiry can become nomothetic in the sense of gener-
alization based on evidence that “once was” and “another time was
as well”, and—given that—“might be on the next occasions.” Yet the
“might be” need not necessarily mean “will be,” except in the cases of
nondevelopmental phenomena. The possibility of emergence of a new
form maintains the tension of all nomothetic knowledge as it faces
new—idiographic—encounters with the phenomena.
Interestingly, this necessary primacy of the unique-to-be-made
general was missed by Windelband, who did not (contrary to Hegel,
see chapter 5) focus on the notion of infinity.2 Instead, Windelband—
perhaps unwillingly, as his 1894 speech was meant to bring peace to
warring ideologies of disciplines—fed further into the fight between
materialist (identified by Naturwissenschaften) and idealist (assumed
to belong to Geisteswissenschaften) camps. The notion of nomothetic
became synonymous with the former, that of idiographic, with the
latter. The further fight that ensued, exemplified by the controversy
between Windelband and Dilthey, led psychology to the need to take
sides on one or the other side of the divide. This was further esca-
lated when the nomothetic–idiographic parallel as it was mapped
onto Naturwissenschaften–Geisteswissenchaften contrast became
transported into the English speaking countries.3 There the latter—-
Geisteswissenschaften—were replaced by the notion of the humanities
in the rendering into English, with complete loss of any implication of
general knowledge or science.4
Knowledge—Lost in Translation into Science
Science, in the English language worlds, resulted in the contrast
between the sciences and the arts. In the German language room, its
result was to separate two domains of knowing—about the nature
(Naturwissenschaften) and of the spirit (Geisteswissenschaften). The
contrasts between the opposites in the two languages were not the
same. The English opposition inscribed an exclusive separation be-
tween the terms (if X is “science” it cannot be “art,” and vice versa),
139
while the German one maintained inclusive separation where the

Geist could give flavor to the approach to the Natur, based on the
inclinations of the thinker.
Yet in both cases the whole—the unity of knowing—became lost.
Differently from the beginning of the nineteenth century where poetry
could be part of human inquiry, by two centuries later it is not assumed
that a poem could enlighten a physicist—or even psychologist—to
create an innovative hypothesis in one’s research field. The arts and hu-
manities may be fascinating, yet not “serious enough,” for the enterprise
of science. At best they can provide some anecdotal evidence but no
penetrating understanding of the micro-, macro-, or psycho-cosmos.
Yet the creator of the meaning—a knowledge-making scientist—is one
in one’s thinking and feeling. She or he unites the art of science with
the pleasures of its logic and suffers from the increasing avalanche of
administrative bureaucratic management techniques.
The role of background social representations in the guidance
of science becomes visible in such processes of translation. It has a
background in the separation of the supposed subjective (arts) and
objective (positive knowledge of science) in English. In the German
case the contrast remained between two—equally relevant—ways of
knowing, within which the subjective side was primary. Hence the
enormous flow of different efforts to capture the spirit of the world
and the soul that has appeared in the German language by poets and
philosophers since the sixteenth century.
Cultural Tools—Carriers of Knowledge

Human beings are ordinary persons—until they become philoso-
phers, or even psychologists. Their childhoods are organized by other
ordinary persons who change their diapers, take them to church or
museum, let them go to school, and demand from them mastery of
what in the current historical period is considered to be necessary
knowledge to live in their social worlds. Such necessary knowledge in
European history is that of music. Thus, it was not surprising that,
It was in music that German culture found its own voice. At a time
when the German language was still incapable of expressing the
ultimate depths of psychic life, music became the language of the
German mind and heart. It replaced the music of Italian passion. In a
succession of artists whose only analogue can be found in [the history
of ] Greek sculpture, there emerges a distinctive mode of expressing
hovering moods, the tensions of psychic life, and the harmonious
140
confluence of different voices in the world. This is achieved in those

symphonies by Haydn that leave behind the determinacy of optical
images or the strictures of words. (Dilthey, 2002, p. 362)
The carrier function for inquiry into ideas in the society involved
can thus change from one historical period to another and to differ
between different societies (or subparts of those) at any given time. The
philosophical and scientific—both Natur- and Geisteswissenschaft—
understanding in German contexts of the nineteenth century were
supported by the carriers of music and poetry rather than by those
of commerce and railroad building (as in England) or of administra-
tive hierarchy of post-Napoleonic France. Musical experiences were
shared by the intellectuals of the time, and they surfaced in their work.
Psychology emerged largely on the basis of acoustic—musical—phe-
nomena through the nineteenth century, and moved to the centrality
of visual perception in the twentieth century. It would of course be a
wild—and horrifying—speculation how the experiences of Facebooks
and Twitters might change the thinking in the human sciences in the
twenty-first century still ahead of us.
The Picturesque Intellectuality5 of Wilhelm Dilthey
Dilthey’s role in the history of psychology is profound—his ideas
precede the twentieth century fascination with Gadamer and the
discursive turn. Dilthey was a brilliant teacher and speaker “who
was more interested in formulating his thoughts in speech than
upon paper6” (Müller-Freienfels, 1935, p. 98). He was persuasive in
his presentations and in his grandiose plans of writing multivolume
treatises on relevant historical themes. Yet he never got to finish any-
thing beyond the first volumes of these plans. His role in the intellec-
tual circles of his time was mediated through oral discourses, which
were forceful7 and polemic. He fought against the elementaristic re-
duction of complexity of psychological phenomena that was gaining
dominance on the side of physiological (experimental) psychology
of his time. Yet his focus on the wholes was poetic, at times musical,
rather than formal (mathematical). He emphasized the embeddedness
of the person in the world, accessible through understanding rather
than explaining.
Dilthey turned the focus of thinking from the Geist (as it was in the
focus by Hegel) to the Leben—the life, viewed in its totality. The Ger-
man intellectual tradition has been built on these two concepts, neither
of which are well matched in other languages. Dilthey attempted to
141
capture the totality of living through the notion of understanding. As

Ernst Cassirer pointed out, Dilthey claimed that
. . . history cannot be conceived through abstract concepts; rather, the
only access to it is through the richness of “lived experience” in all its
forms. The world of history can only be derived from the structure
of lived experience. This is the only way to gain an “understanding”
of historical reality. (Cassirer, 1996, p. 161)
Here starts the divergence: oppositional presentation of abstract

(decontextualized) and immediate (activity and experience based)
approaches. The philosophical concepts from German history—Geist
(soul) and Leben (life)—remain visible as themata in our contemporary
cognitive sciences (of the mind rather than the soul) and in activity
theories of contextual kinds. In the beginning of the nineteenth cen-
tury, the Geist had been dealt with by Hegel and the great number
of neo-, anti-, and non-Hegelians in the decades before Dilthey. The
latter, at its core,
. . . serves as the antithesis to static conceptions and a one-sided focus
on consciousness or reflexivity. Formal constructs themselves issue
from Leben, and are its expressions. Leben ‘throws up’ intellectual
activity, and no amount of internal, self-oriented ruminations will
gain any insight into the true grounding of this enterprise. (Bleicher,
2006, p. 343)
Since psychology occupied an anomalous place in the grand German

dispute about knowledge—Wissenschaft—and as it was in dire need
of being organized into a category, the fights about its fate were sub-
stantial. The flow of German philosophical disputes in the nineteenth
century led to the differentiation and hierarchical integration of the
system of knowledge—science—into strict categories, and creating
dominance hierarchies between them.
Wilhelm Dilthey’s focus on the distinction between Naturwis-
senschaften and Geisteswissenschaften in 1883 led to the articulation
of each of these within their own epistemological systems, and to
exclusive separation of the two—while emphasizing the unity of the
object (person). What Naturphilosphie had tried to take advantage
of—the unity of the nature and the human beings (inclusive separa-
tion of sciences)—was replaced by clear exclusive separation. The
mechanical-materialist direction of analysis was turned into opposi-
tion to the holistic focus on unique synthesis of understanding in the
Geisteswissenschaften
142
The Misery of Classifications

For Germany, discussions of metaphysics of the Geist have been
typical pastimes (Neumann, 2008, p. 42). It is in that framework that
discussions about the place of psychology took place. The dispute about
the scientific status of psychology raged wide in the nineteenth century.
Wilhelm Dilthey classified it into Geisteswissenschaften, (Harrington,
2000, 2001) while Wilhelm Windelband kept it in Naturwissenschaften
categories—yet with qualifications (see above). Dilthey was true to his
commitment to the human understanding of the act of living. In his
ambitions, he remained an artful thinker:
Compared with Herder’s or Hegel’s grandiose visions or even with

Ranke’s story of the world, Dilthey’s attempts lack unity and coher-
ence. He had neither Herder’s belief in humanity nor Hegel’s faith in
the progress of the consciousness of liberty, nor Comte’s conviction of
the triumph of science. He was a relativist. Universal history existed
for him not as a problem to solve extensively, but only intensively.
(Masur, 1952, p. 106)
Dilthey’s focus on psychology as a human science was thus a way

to keep his ground clear for intensive understanding of living. Both
Dilthey and Windelband were victims to the classical logic with its
exclusivity. Once a category inclusion/exclusion gets established (“X is
either A or B”), the classical logic cannot tolerate an example that falls
into the “zone of excluded middle” (“X is both A and B”). The decider
is forced into one or the other category, or the classical logical scheme
is not applicable and another frame is needed for the map, especially if
that map is multifeatured and inherently contradictory. Different single
criteria may be brought forth by different arguers at different times,
leading to no clear classificatory conclusion. Hence the disputes about
where psychology “truly” belongs have not vanished over the twentieth
century and give rise to new ones in ours (Gergen, 1984; Moghaddam,
2004). The obvious alternative—refusal to use the given opposition, or
at least decision not to use two-valent logic in the decision making—is
somehow not so easy for the social discourse to eschew.
A “side effect” of such continuing ambivalence is asset of other cru-
cial questions—that of qualitative and quantitative methods (Mey and
Mruck, 2005), idiographic and nomothetic approaches (Lamiell, 1998,
2003, 2009), difficulties that psychology has with becoming interdis-
ciplinary in its focus, and the move toward prioritizing the empirical
work at the expense of theoretical conceptualizations. Avoiding the
143
ghosts of the Geist in contemporary psychology has made it reducible

to either biological (see the current fascination with fMRI machines)
or social discourses (“people are texts”). By focusing on the person
the psychological phenomena disappear—persons become either
texts, or genes!
Idealizing Psychology as Geisteswissenschaft: Dilthey’s Quest
The whole of the object is to be understood. But what is the object
and what does it mean to understand? Dilthey’s focus on philosophy
as viewed through history leads him to psychology—but the kind of
psychology that stands against the simplifying elementaristic reduction
of complexity that his contemporary psychologists, Wilhelm Wundt
in their lead, were attempting through experimental investigation. In
contrast, science for Dilthey
. . . start out as psychology, but a psychology planned in a way to
illuminate the general structure of consciousness and the generic
system of functioning, in short, the reality of living consciousness
in its typical articulation. This science will, by the same token, be
the true philosophy. (Ortega y Gasset, 1946, p. 162)
Such flow of understanding in everyday life is not automatically

resulting in generalizations, all the more that Dilthey was skeptical
of such transitions beyond the life. No surprise, then, that his own
flow of living made him never finish planned (preorganized) treatises
beyond volume one, and to publish minimally in his lifetime. The
sketchy nature of his contributions reflects his theoretical view of the
flow of living.
Yet the personal style is not sufficient to explain Dilthey’s ideas. In
order to understand Dilthey, it is necessary to understand the social
position—in between the German condition of his time, its religious
roots, and its current scientific imperatives—that made Wilhelm
Dilthey into a historian-turned-into-psychologist. For him
the subjectivist beginning of his epistemology had to be stretched to
meet the objectivist demands of his sciences, and the tentative char-
acter of scientific investigation lay uneasily beside the epistemological
demonstration of wholesale Allgemeingültigkeit. The historian’s urge
toward ever finer qualification and detail, approaching the ineffable
individuality of the past as a limit, warred constantly with the will
to generalize and abstract in the systematic sciences; the necessities
of the one were sacrilege to the other. In the separation between
Geisteswissenschaften and Naturwissenschaften lay a dualism which
144
had to be maintained at all costs, and the cost was nothing less than
ultimate unresolved dualism in epistemology and Weltanschauung,
a thing with which reason can never rest content. And worst of all,
the spectacle of the restless flow of history threatened all belief with
a skepticism which would destroy philosophy even in its modern
scientific disguise. (Morgan, 1933, pp. 360–61)
Fascination with history emerged as a by-product of industrialization

and the growth of petite bourgeoisie (Andriolo, 1979). Psychology and
history share a major characteristic of their objects of investigation—
generality in uniqueness. The individual for Dilthey was “not a monadic
individual but a socially and culturally formed or organized person-
ality” (Ash, 1998, p, 73). Both human psychological happenings and
historical events in a society are one-time events—never to repeat. The
“loss of virginity” and “end of the Soviet Union” are real events of direct
relevance for the participants in the events—yet they are not replicable.
Such historicism was common in German thought since Herder in late
eighteenth century, and Dilthey a century later followed suit.
From History to Stable—Local—Knowledge

Historicism as a perspective can be
. . . described as the view that everything pertaining to the human

world is part of the stream of time—that is, part of history. Like
positivism, historicism denies the existence of eternal values and the
Enlightenment conception of natural law. Instead, it maintains that all
cultural phenomena, including values and laws, traditionally believed
to be “eternal and immutable,” are products of this-worldly creative
force which could be nature, history, or life. (Bulhof, 1980, p. 18)
Historicism leads to local knowledge, and an exaggerated belief in

context specificity. Generalization becomes impossible—yet these
are made by the persons who understand what happened before, all
the time. But how can unique events be general? This question has
been a puzzle and an obstacle to finding a synthesis of Naturwissen-
schaften and Geisteswissenschaften. Dilthey was himself caught in a
vicious circle:
. . . as a thinker following the Enlightenment tradition, Dilthey

embraced the Enlightenment hope that history could be mastered
by objective knowledge; on the other hand, as empirical historicist
historian, Dilthey was aware that the historian himself is part of the
stream of history and that therefore his knowledge of history must
145
be in some sense subjective and consequently incapable of mastering

history. (Bulhof, 1980, p. 32)
Wilhelm Dilthey’s role in clarifying—and fortifying—the difference

between the two categories is crucial in the history of science. By situ-
ating psychology clearly in the Geisteswissenschaften category, Dilthey
inevitably8 fortified the already existing dominance fight between the
two camps—psychological phenomena can be understood through
“feeling into” them in all their uniqueness, while natural phenomena
could be explained by specifying their causes. The leading science
among the ones where understanding operates is history, where each
event experienced by a society is unique and approachable by way of
understanding.
Dilthey needed psychology for his philosophical system. Acts of
understanding can be very varied, from general to the concrete. Mu-
sic served as a domain where examples of the latter came to Dilthey’s
thought. Listening, or creating, music is an act of understanding that
cannot be reduced to its elementary constituents. In that context,
. . . life itself can become accessible through the recreation of cre-
ation. To be sure, we have merely a work before us, one that in order
to endure must be fixed in some part of a space, whether in notes,
in letters, in a phonogram, or originally in a remembrance. What is
fixed in this way is an ideal explication of a process, of a musical or
poetic nexus of lived experience. (Dilthey, 2002, p. 241)
The temporal whole can then be reconstructed by the musician—or

a recite of a poem—by the established form that leads to live action:
Tone follows upon tone and aligns itself with it according to the laws
of our tonal system. This system leaves open infinite possibilities, but
in the direction of one of these possibilities, tones proceed in such
away that earlier ones are conditioned by subsequent ones . . .. There
is something like a mutual consent between figures that attract and
that repel each other. (Ibid)
Living-in-music is thus a concrete example of what kind of phe-

nomena Dilthey’s psychology of understanding would treat, and
how. Both abstraction that goes above the holistic flow of living, and
introspection that would try to penetrate underneath that flow, were
discarded by Dilthey. His perspective—paraphrasing Kant—was that
of Leben-an-Sich (living-in-itself )—the dynamic nexus (in German:
Zusammenhang—fitting together) of the flow of experiencing, that
146
could—in his terms should—be understood, not explained. The special

nature of the flow of living makes explanation of it (as in the case of
natural sciences) impossible:
Life as it elapses in time or as spatially distributed is categorically
articulated in terms of the relationship of whole to parts. History, as
the fulfillment of life in what occurs sequentially and simultaneously,
is then, categorically speaking, a further articulation of this relation
of parts to whole. This part–whole relation is not like the configura-
tion of objects that someone would see when entering a room. These
objects belong together only by reference to the life of a person who
owns them. Otherwise they could as well be dispersed. No inherent
relationship to each other links them together. How different is this
in a historical process! From the viewpoint of the natural sciences,
every totality is an indifferent sum of masses in motion. Movement
and mass and their relation according to laws are never changing in
the course of time. By contrast, in every configuration of life, there is
an inner relation of a part to whole, and therefore this configuration
is never indifferent . . .. (Dilthey, 2002, p. 263, added emphases)
Dilthey captured the crucial feature of developmental phenomena

that were—and are—the major conceptual stumbling block for devel-
opmental science (Baldwin, 1906, Valsiner, 2009b). Yet he resisted the
notion of higher (or lower) qualitative stages to be part of development,
and considers the latter to be a flow of “ceaseless progression” (ibid,
p. 264) from one dynamic state to another. Qualitatively different states
would surely occur in that flow9—yet no hierarchical differentiation
is part of the picture.
Dilthey reformulated psychologists’ introspective focus on internal
observation (Selbstbeobachtung)—rejected by Wundt and others in the
experimental psychology realm—into a tool for experiential philoso-
phy, giving meaning to one’s self-produced experiences (Selbstbesin-
nung). Ortega y Gasset, a thinker indebted to Dilthey and thinking in
parallel to him, labeled this method autognosis, as one which
. . . is no longer introspection, at least not explicitly, but “analysis
which examines, from the sciences down to political life, all products
and functions of humankind in order to find their irreducible condi-
tions in human consciousness. (Ortega y Gasset, 1946, p. 178)
The experiences of living are thus important both for living it-
self, and for understanding the multiplicity of the dynamic cultural
constructions—partly self-generated, partly others-given—that a
person encounters.
147
Striving Toward the Stratified Whole: The South

German Pathway of Thought
The southern (Austrian) focus remained largely at distance from
the pro- and anti-Kantian disputes that raged in the north over
the nineteenth century. Yet the move toward creating a psychol-
ogy as an autonomous Wissenschaft happened in parallel in the
borderlands to the Mediterranean culture area. Thus, when in
1874, Wilhelm Wundt exposed his version of psychological sci-
ence (Wundt, 1874) on the experimental (“Newtonian”) side, it was
corroborated by a parallel treatise by Franz Brentano. There was a
difference—Brentano’s psychology was built on the core focus on
experiencing (his meaning of “empirical”), rather than on the search
for physiological bases for elementary psychological functions that
occurred in Wundt’s laboratory program. It would be Dilthey, rather
than Wundt, whose ideas would be closer to the Southern German
and Austrian mentality. What “Austrian” means here is not based
on country boundaries—Carl Stumpf who was German was a cen-
tral figure next to Brentano. Likewise the orientation was to make
philosophy scientific—through psychology. Focus on living experience
and teleology would be accepted in this move to science (Rollinger,
2008), while the Pietist tradition proliferating through the
perspectives entering through the philosophy of Kant would distrust
or suppress it.
The Southern German-language philosophical directions seemed
to be relatively free of the Kantian legacies of Germany. In some sense
it was an opposing tradition to Kant’s philosophy. The basic divisions
of psychological functions differed: while the German tradition—the
division of sensation (Empfindung), feeling (Gefühle), thinking, and
willing (Wille)—dominated, the Austrian tradition started from pre-
sentations (Vorstellungen) and judgments (Urteile) as basic classes of
the functioning of the mind (Rollinger, 2008, p. 233, 2009, p. 5). In that
difference in the framing of psychological phenomena we can trace
the holistic orientation within which complex phenomena were not
to be reduced to their elements. Rather, the question of appropriate
level of analytic generality prevailed:
. . . although the Brentanists were systematic thinkers, they had no

liking for systems; or, put otherwise, they analyzed problems with
extreme care but never thought to build a philosophical system.
(Poli, 1998, p. 8)
148
The Brentano tradition found its prominence in philosophy, logic,

and language sciences—with the perspectives of Carl Stumpf, Edmund
Husserl, Christian von Ehrenfels, Anton Marty, Kasimir Twardowski,
and Alexius Meinong gaining prominence there. Yet their work was
psychological in its origin—the goal for the scholars from the tradition
of Brentano was to establish psychology-based philosophy. Brentano
himself, in his last wishes for Austria (as he was leaving the country to
settle in Italy), called for the establishment of a psychological institute
as the basis for philosophy (Brentano, 1895, p. 33). His disciples ac-
complished that goal, in various locations in Continental Europe.
The separation of the disciplines on sociopolitical grounds that pro-
ceeded through the ideological fights “for science” in the nineteenth
century surely had their impact on how psychology reconstituted its
history in the twentieth century. The theoretical, rather than experi-
mental, differences between the north and the south were the targets
of disputes between the “Berlin Gestalt” and “Graz holistic” groups
(see Ash, 1998, pp. 139–43).
The Nature of the Whole
Configurations of elements make wholes—rather than from the
side of wholes (which may differentiate to show the presence of their
parts—see also axioms in chapter 2). Of course, there were efforts to
start from the whole in psychology’s history. The “Gestalt perspec-
tives” of the late nineteenth century did insist on the wholeness of the
psychological qualities. Their starting point was
. . . the attempt to answer a question: what is melody? The most

obvious answer: the sum of the individual tones which make up the
melody. But opposed to this is the fact that the same melody may
be made up of quite different groups of tones, as happens when the
same melody is transposed into different keys. If the melody were
nothing other than the sum of the tones, then we would have to have
here different melodies, since different groups of tones are involved.
(Ehrenfels, 1988c, p. 121)
As patterns of generalized kind, Gestalt qualities are the basis

for innovation. Yet Ehrenfels—writing in 1890—was not the first to
point to the primacy of the whole over its parts. In 1873, it was Carl
Stumpf who—describing the making of a musical accord—pointed
to the nonreducibility of the whole to its component tones (Stumpf,
1873, pp. 104–05).
149
The process of completion of the Gestalt is always open-ended (as

the person faces the uncertainty of the impending future) and hence
calls for free generation by the creative activity of imagination:
The mind that organizes psychical elements into new combinations
does more than merely displace the component elements amongst them-
selves: he creates something new [Der Geist, welcher psychische Elemente
in neue Verbindungen bringt, ändert hierdurch mehr als Kombina-
tionen; er schafft Neues]. (Ehrenfels, 1988a, p. 149, 1988b, p. 109)
Thus Gestalt qualities are synthesized by the Gestalt-maker (the
Geist)—they are not ontological givens. They are in a constant process
of being reconstructed anew, through the relation of the psyche with the
world. The role of imagination—fantasy—plays the role of synthesizer
(“schöpferische Tätigkeit der Phantasie”—Ehrenfels, 1988a, p. 149).
Qualitative Levels
The result of such creativity was the recognition of emergence of
Gestalt qualities of “higher order”—new qualities that may defy de-
scription in verbal terms, yet operate precisely in our relations with
our environments. Thus, we may recognize the composer of a melody
we hear for the first time, obviously by way of some generalized image
of the similarity of the new tunes with others we have heard before.
Yet we cannot explain how we succeeded in doing it.
Together with the emergence of qualitatively higher forms of Ge-
stalten comes the question of their maintenance, and dissipation. The
hierarchy of Gestalt qualities could be tested by how they preserve
interventions that might eliminate them—how enduring are the par-
ticular level of Gestalt qualities:
A rose is a Gestalt of higher level than a heap of sand: this we recog-

nize just as immediately as that red is fuller, more lively color than
grey. . . . For a fixed degree of multiplicity of parts, those Gestalten
are the higher which embrace a greater multiplicity of parts . . .. One
imagines the given Gestalten (a rose, a heap of sand) to be subject
to gradual, accidental and irregular interventions. Whichever of the
two Gestalten thereby survives the wider spectrum of changes of the
higher level. (Ehrenfels, 1988e, p. 118, added emphasis)
The emphasis on “gestalt qualities” filtered into the disputes about

holism in the twentieth century (Diriwächter and Valsiner, 2008), lead-
ing to the fights between the “Berlin Gestaltists” and the Second Leipzig
School (Ash, 1998). The root of the question of “gestalt qualities” is the
150
dynamic emergence of new quality from previous parts (Gelb, 1911).

Here Hegel’s philosophical analysis of the transition from quality to
new quality through quantity could have been productive. Yet that
part of history of Naturphilosophie was not utilized.
Conclusion: Psychology Well-Prepared to be “In Crisis”

What the events over the nineteenth century show that psychology—
the bastard discipline the domains of which were claimed by both
parents, Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenchaften, and whose
emerging practices were disputed by both—was all ready for the
twentieth century pastime of talking of itself as “in crisis.” When
Rudolf Willy started the “crisis talk” in the 1890s, the discipline had
already been battered for the whole century. Entering the twentieth
century meant further consolidation of the “winning side” view of the
disputes—in terms of a method (experiment) turned into the symbolic
tool for purity of the new science. The psyche went underground, and
even if it did burst out into the public domain in the fleshful depictions
of psychoanalytic interpretations, it remained a scientia-non-grata
for twentieth-century science that preferred the realities of lives of
white rats and problem-solving computers to efforts to look into the
subjective worlds of the handlers of those—not to speak of those of
the poets, prostitutes, or politicians. The “crisis” in psychology that
became talked about over the twentieth century was real, yet the very
talk about it may have changed it. But how?
Notes
1. More precisely—in the case of psychology
“. . . ihrem Gegenstand nach ist sie nur als Geisteswissenschaft und in

gewissem Sinne als die Grudlage aller übrigen zu characterisieren; ihr
g a n z e sVe r f a h r e n a b e r, i h r m e t o d i s c h e s G e b a h r e n i s
vom Anfang bis zum Ende dasjenige der Natur wis-
senschaften. Daher sie den es sich hat gefallen lassen müssen, gele-
gentlich als die “Naturwissenschaft des innere Sinnes” oder gar als
“geistige Naturwissenschaft” bezeichnet zu werden” (Windelband,
1904, pp. 9–10) [“. . . to judge by its subject, it can only be characterized
as a humanity, and in certain sense as the foundation to all others; but
its entire procedure, its methodological arsenal, is from beginning to
end that of the natural sciences. For this reason, psychology has had
to allow itself to be characterized at times as the ‘natural science of in-
ner sense’ or even as ‘the natural science of the mental’.—Windelband,
1998, p. 11].
151
Windelband’s double characterization repeats Lotze’s ‘medical psychology’

or ‘physiology of the soul (Seele)’ contrast—Lotze, 1852, see chapter 5).
2. The focus (or the lack of it) on the philosophical issue of infinity is of cen-
tral relevance for creating the axiomatic of the social sciences. Accepting
the infinity of human experiencing makes the building of such axiomatic
possible with a focus on development.
3. The nomothetic–idiographic contrast appeared in English in 1898
(Münsterberg, 1898; see Hurlburt and Knapp, 2006). It was actively utilized by
Gordon Allport later, albeit without success, to bring psychology in North
America to a reasonable look at this contrast, not to speak of its use.
4. In fact, this translation leads to not only nonscientific but a positively
anti-scientific surplus meaning (Lamiell, 1998, p. 27). No surprise that
the notion of idiographic—and the use of single cases—has been absent
or ridiculed as “soft” in the twentieth century psychology as it has moved
to the dominance zone of the English language (Toomela, 2009).
5. As Dilthey’s credo was described by his friend count of Paul Yorck von
Wartenburg (Masur, 1952, p. 107).
6. Later, Lev Vygotsky showed a similar pattern of creativity by speaking.
7. Dilthey’s style was described in the following way: “What William James
had exposed with endearing humor, Dilthey expounded with academic
severity, documenting his accusations with a mass of historical erudition”
(Müller-Freienfels, 1935, p. 99).
8. By way of being interpreted by his contemporaries—Harrington (2000,
2001). Nuanced perspectives are often pushed into the straightjacket of
the either/or logic. A similar case has happened with presenting Goethe
as mathematics-hater (Dyck, 1958).
9. Dilthey contrasted that with speculative fantasies about progression to
higher and higher stages (e.g., Hegel’s absolute Geist), and instead claimed
that development “. . . does involve an increase of distinctiveness and of dif-
ferentiation, etc. in the subject. But it is possible for a life-course to remain
bound to the natural background of vegetative growth, maturity, and decay
occurring between birth and death without fulfilling any higher meaning,
just as in lower realms of life.” (Dilthey, 2002, p. 264)
152
8
Psychology in a Perpetual Crisis
Psychology as a science is a strange creature. Ever since its indi-

viduation from philosophy, physiology, and language studies, we hear
recurrent claims of exaggerated nature when psychologists talk about
their discipline. These range from self-congratulatory positive (“we
are real [currently fashionable: cognitive, neuro-, etc]-scientists”) to
desperately negative (“we are not [yet?] a real science”). Added to these
are alarm cries—“we are in crisis”—kind. It looks like psychology as a
discipline entails the psychological characteristic of narcissism at the
level of its own collective narratives about itself as a science. Instead
of solving its problems it creates a new one—a lamenting discourse of
the general nature of the discipline itself. Given its complicated history
of emerging in the context of European cultural history (chapters 5–7)
this outcome should not be very surprising.
Of course the state of affairs in psychology is similar to other sci-
ences that operate at the border of what is known and what is not yet
known. “Being in a crisis” would be a normal state for any enterprise
of knowledge construction where the previously created understand-
ing of the phenomena is constantly under challenge by new ideas and
evidence. However, if the meta-level reflexivity about a science—“we
are in a crisis”—becomes escalated, it may become increasingly difficult
to innovate the discipline. Worrying about “doing things right” may
obscure the very act of “doing”—be it “right” or “wrong” or indetermi-
nate. Psychology seems to have been the target of intensive disputes
as to its possible viability since the eighteenth century (chapters 5–7).
As such it should not be very surprising that its role as a self-doubting
science continues through the twentieth century into ours.
The “Progressive Era” in Psychology—Twentieth Century
Any progress includes its opposite—nonprogress. The latter, a
state of temporary stability, may give rise to various further develop-
ments—a regress, a stalemate, and other versions of no movement.
153
This is a natural movement within any developing system. From

that perspective—very much along the lines of Naturphilosophie or
Hegelian dialectics as outlined above (chapter 5)—the separation of
psychology from philosophy and becoming an autonomous science
included changes that could both enhance and inhibit the develop-
ment of knowledge. The concern about being a “real science” comes
to psychology of today under the social suggestions that raged in the
nineteenth century.
Twentieth century brought with it changes in social life that were no
less revolutionary than the ones resulting from the French Revolution
at the end of the eighteenth century. The preference for empirical da-
ta—kind of “evidence based philosophy”—started to challenge purely
philosophical speculations. The data were indeed rich, presented in
tables rather than by reliance on statistical signs (Smith et al., 2000),
as statistical methods were only emerging and took another fifty years
to become socially normative.
At the same time, the artistic freedom of creating new aesthetic ob-
jects abounded—the avalanche of the Jugendstil in architecture in the
1890s, and the move to nonrepresentational art around 1900s where
the artists’ “inner necessity” would express itself in any possible way—
“linking the observer’s soul with spiritual forces of nature through a
process of empathy (Einfühlung)” (Williams, 1971, p. 329). Similarly,
the development of abstraction in the art of Piet Mondrian (Janssen
and Joosten, 2002) is a crucial development in the arrival of the new
century. Abstracting from the concrete—pictorial or textual—became
the Zeitgeist. So did the move toward generalization—the first half of
the twentieth century is marked by moves toward universal science.
The changes occurred in European and North American societies
from the 1890s to the World War I, with dramatic impacts of that war.
The establishment of psychology’s formal separation from philosophy
in Germany was at stake (Ash, 1998—chapter 3 on the clash between
philosophers and psychologists about nature of professorships). This
“fight for equal status” started before World War I, continued in the
inter-wars period, and practically became established during World
War II (in 1941, by introduction of the degree of psychology diploma in
German universities). Wars are promoters of psychology—it is through
the work with shell-shocked soldiers, widows, and children trauma-
tized by air-raids that psychology finds its practical relevance.
The period after World War I in Germany was that of economic
and political turmoil, culminating in the social context of the
154
Weimar Republic. The “crisis talk” was present in many social spheres,
striving toward the synthesis of meaningful world views (Ash, 1991).
The question of psychology’s role in a society surfaced in number of
ways in the “crisis discourses” in the 1920s, and continues to do so
until our time. It is interesting that three of these—by Hans Driesch
(1925, 1927; Koffka, 1926), Lev Vygotsky (1927, published in 1982),
and Karl Bühler (1926)—appeared in parallel around the same time.
Their contents were continuous with psychology’s nineteenth-century
soul-searching and part of a lager cultural quest (Husserl, 1970), yet
now the “crisis talk” indicated that the newly autonomous young
discipline was supposed to overcome the philosophical “baggage” of
the past on its own. The 1920s was a time of criticism and efforts to
overcome the crisis, by young men like Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget
(Wozniak, 1996).
Hans Driesch—Crisis in Psychology by Overlooking Telos of the Whole
Hans Driesch (1867–1941), whose main scientific work is known to
be in biology, was a German zoologist of late 1800s and a philosopher
of the first decades of the twentieth century and the originator of the
major theory of vitalism in 1903. While being a direct descendant of
Naturphilosophie, Driesch’s vitalism was not a mystical “life factor”
projected into the living beings.1 Rather, it was a recognition that in
a world of living beings, the very uncertainty of future adaptation
calls for anticipatory preparations for not-yet-present environmental
conditions. Hence the need for direction (through teleology) and “sur-
plus” construction of new forms, the function of which, at the given
moment, is not yet determinable (through the systemic functioning
of the organism). As the organism functions in parallel at different
levels of organization, psychological issues are an integral part of
the nature. Driesch’s theory of psychoids (1903) leading into his phi-
losophy of freedom (Driesch, 1917) were efforts to make sense of the
relative autonomy that natural evolution has made possible. Driesch’s
basic philosophy was summarized by himself as “the goal in itself ”
(“das Ziel (telos) in sich”—Driesch, 1939, p. 268) in contrast to Kant’s
“Ding an Sich” (‘thing-in-itself ”). The concept of the psychoid was an
expression of “action entelechie” (Handlungsentelechie) of individual
wholes.
Driesch is the originator of the notion of equifinality (equipoten-
tiality) and of the focus on the organism (Driesch, 1908) that was
later carried further by Kurt Goldstein and the General Systems
155
Theory. His focus on the individual followed from the recognition of

equipotentiality—if two (or N) different organisms (or organ systems)
are prepared in their developmental courses to arrive at a similar
outcome state, then the analyses of such autonomous movements
requires a focus on individuality. Mechanical cause–effect ties fail to
explain individualized answering reactions (Driesch, 1908, p, 73). The
organism is an active constructor of one’s future, living through the
environment, rather than reacting to it.
Driesch had clear empirical support for this generalization from
his experiments on regeneration of lower aquatic species—a dissected
embryo at the gastrula stage would develop into a full-fledged organ-
ism. Some kind of information—equifinality regulation (äquifinale
Regulationen—Driesch, 1905, p. 213)—about the final state of the
morphological structure had to be there in the embryo to guide it af-
ter extraction of its part to the adult state. The same outcome—adult
state—could be achieved both by “normal” and surgically altered cases
of the embryos. It is possible under the systemic organization of the
body which allows for compensatory development of new trajecto-
ries. The organism is a zusammengesetzte Totalität2 (Driesch, 1905,
p. 200).
Coming to look at his contemporary psychology through the prism
of his systemic view of nature in its generative and regenerative rich-
ness, the efforts of psychologists to gain “objectivity” through looking
at simple phenomena of perception, attention, and behavior missed the
point for Driesch. Having looked at the behavior (of embryos) carefully,
Driesch considered the “behaviorist credo” to be an impasse for psy-
chology, preferring a different way of conceptualizing the discipline:
My psychology is a real “psych”-ology. It starts from that which is

immediately given to me as to a consciously having (not “doing”)
subject. It then enumerates, under the name of a theory of materi-
als, the various somethings which I may consciously have. This is the
static part, as it were. The dynamic part that follows then studies the
laws of sequence of my somethings. It is forced to break with the old
association theory and to introduce limiting and directing agents.
Also the concepts of subconsciousness and coconsciousness and a
good many others appear upon the scene. My soul is the fundamental
theoretical concept. (Driesch, 1927, p. 12)
Driesch preserved the levels of organization of quality within the

organism—without reduction to a lower level. The overlooking of
156
qualitative novelties by classic—at his time Wundtian and behav-

iorist—psychologies was for Driesch worth a serious critique of the
discipline:
. . . psychical life is full of meaning [Bedeutung or Sinn], of signifi-

cance, of sense . . . that very feature has been overlooked by the clas-
sic psychology, or, at least, has not been appropriately treated by it.
(Driesch, 1925, p. 16)
The meanings are dynamic—never recurring. Driesch built directly

on the philosophy of Henri Bergson. For meanings in the making,
I never can have the very same content a second or third time,
because, by its having been had already, it is made different from
what it was the first time! For the second or any subsequent time,
that content carries in itself two accents: one of before and another
of already known, which it did not carry when it was possessed first.
Thus every content is exclusively what it is and there cannot be two
quite identical contents. (Driesch, 1925, p. 25)
Driesch’s focus comes close, yet in different terminology, to

Vygotsky’s and Bühler’s focus on mediation of the human psyche
through signs. By his own admission (Driesch, 1923, p. 26) his philo-
sophical system is “idealistic” but not “subjectivistic.” The centrality of
biological growth through irreversible time entails the ideal, the yet-
to-be-known future state of the developing organism. Yet the embryos
that develop to their species-specific adult states are obviously not
subjective in their development.
Limiting Agents and Directing Agents
By focusing on the dynamic features of psychological functions,
Driesch introduced organizing concepts of two kinds. The limiting
agents are
. . . such unconscious causal psychical factors as reduce the number

of possible associations, i.e., of all those associative affinities which
might possibly be awakened, if the pure association theory were
true. (Driesch, 1925, p. 55)
Out of the manifold of possibilities, our unconscious was supposed

to specify a narrower range that acts as input material for the conscious
work of the mind. That limited flow of “stream of consciousness” is
further organized by directing agents—conscious factors that guide
157
the meaning-making process from the limited range of possibilities

to the actuality of one.
Driesch’s biological philosophy was a powerful critique of the psy-
chology of his time. It concentrated on the overlook by psychology of
multiple pathways to the same developmental state (and its further
diversification), the underestimation of the future orientation, and the
overlook of higher psychological functions. Of course in the context of
his time, and working in-between biology, psychology, and philosophy,
Driesch’s efforts to overcome the crisis in psychology were largely in
vein. His ideas about psychology were easily dismissed by psycholo-
gists fighting for the “Newtonian science” for two reasons: one, he was
an outsider (biologist and philosopher) to the “new psychology,” and
two, his philosophy was teleological in its core.
Lev Vygotsky: Crisis by Failure to See Unity of General and Unique
We have covered the work of Lev Vygotsky and its social context
extensively elsewhere (Valsiner and van der Veer, 2000; van der Veer
and Valsiner, 1991). In 1927, while seriously ill, Vygotsky wrote a
manuscript The historical sense of the psychological crisis that, like
many other of his works, remained unpublished for a long time
(Vygotsky, 1982a,b). The importance of Vygotsky’s coverage of psy-
chology in terms of its “crisis” was of relevance for his development of
the cultural-historical direction in psychology. For our look into the
history of ideas, his text is important in two ways. First, it allows us
to understand Vygotsky’s intellectual interdependence with his im-
mediate environment (of booming and buzzing use of Marxism—see
Valsiner, 1988; van der Veer and Valsiner, 1991). Secondly, Vygotsky’s
critical analysis of psychology allows us to chart out ways for new
approaches.
Some common questions about the identity of a complex thinker
of the past—or present—are incredibly naïve when compared with
the sophistication of the theoretical heritage. The questions that are
superficially asked about thinkers of the past—“was Vygotsky a Marx-
ist?” or “was Ernst Haeckel a Nazi?”—miss the point of viewing the
thinker within her or his context. Surely Vygotsky was knowledgeable
of the Marxist discourses around him—and had read Marx care-
fully himself—to the point of using some of the key ideas in his own
rhetoric calls.3 But at the same time he was critical of the superficial
uses of Marxist slogans by his contemporaries and clearly parted his
ways with such kind of “slogan Marxism.”4 Yet the key ideas from
158
Marx and Engels—social primacy of human lives, and dialectics—

were accepted by Vygotsky. Yet these ideas came from the history of
Naturphilosophie, transformed through the social uses of these ideas
in nineteenth century discourses and through the first decades of the
twentieth century. Uses of grandiose labels to describe ordinary human
beings is misleading. Vygotsky was as much a Marxist as any univer-
sity professor in our present-day world—who owns shares on a stock
market and worries about their fate—and could be called a “venture
capitalist.” Surely he was borrowing from relevant ideas of Marxism of
the time—the ethos in the social environment of Russia in search for a
new form of society—but he did not follow any orthodoxy. Vygotsky’s
Marxism, his Jewish enlightening background of growing up in an
intellectually oriented family, the turmoils of pogroms, World War I,
and the following revolutions were all functional in his development
of ideas. But, most of all, his deep dedication to poetry and theatre is
where we might find roots of his creativity.
In the most generic way, Vygotsky detected the crisis expressed in
one sentence:
Psychology wants to be a natural science about non-natural

phenomena. (Vygotsky, 1982a,b, p. 380)
All the nineteenth century fighting for “psychology as natural sci-

ence” (chapters 5–7) is here expressed in a pointed way—ignoring
the higher psychological functions takes psychology of the 1920s
away from its appropriate object of investigation. The whole dispute
between “Newtonian” and “Goethean” directions through the nine-
teenth century—that culminated in the Dilthey–Windelband efforts
to classify psychology into one or another category—stem from this
opposition. For Vygotsky, that opposition needed to be overcome by
a dialectical leap that uses the best of both sides, while creating a new
synthetic science. The recurring “crisis” could be overcome that way,
by double negation of both the “Newtonian” and “Goethean” perspec-
tives. He did not live to see that happen. This still has not happened,
while the “crisis talk” continues.
Of course one can romanticize the value of doing something useful
for “the other”—one’s friend, one’s family, or even one’s society. By the
1920s, the avalanche of applied psychology had entered the scene, and
the question of societal usefulness of the new discipline became a cru-
cial factor in the meta-theoretical discourse (Vygotsky, 1982a,b, p. 387).
159
The infiltration of the pragmatist direction from philosophy to socio-

political thought created a new criterion for evaluating knowledge—if
a particular direction in psychology is deemed to be useful, it must be
adequate. Yet, useful for whom? Here the extra-scientific social power
negotiations started to play their role. The generic “useful for society”
would mean something very different in the Soviet Union or United
States in the 1920s, or the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and so on. The
conglomerate agency subsumed under the label “society” is deeply
multivoiced and finds “use” out of any, possibly mutually contradic-
tory, parts of knowledge produced by any science.
The uncertainty of evaluation of psychology by criteria of usefulness
becomes combined by mutually exclusive language use by presenters
of different credos in psychology. The language use highlights different
features of the complex phenomena—and frames what a fact is. Fact
is not a given “thing” but the result of a researcher’s relating with the
object phenomena through the lens of the selected language forms.
Thus, as Vygotsky pointed out,
Such unquestionable and real, general to all, facts, such as the

Oedipus complex of the psychoanalysts, simply do not exist for other
psychologists, and for many these are the most crude fantasy. For
W. Stern who is generally positively oriented to psychoanalysis, the
usual psychoanalytic interpretations in the sense of the school of
S. Freud which are for them as undoubtable as temperature measure-
ments in a hospital . . . resemble the . . . astrology of 16th century.
For Pavlov a claim that a dog remembers about the food when the
bell rings is no more than a fantasy. Similarly for an introspectionist
there exists no fact of muscle movement in the act of thinking, as a
behaviorist would claim. (Vygotsky, 1982a,b, pp. 299–300)
Much of psychology is involved in fighting for the prevalence of one

or another language register in our time as well. By exclusively segregat-
ing languages, psychology segregates the empirical data, with the result
that complementarity of different theoretical perspectives becomes
difficult, or impossible. Psychologists spend much time specifying their
social positions on the ideological mindscape filled with many “isms”
(behaviorism, introspectionism, cognitivism, etc.), negotiating their
relationships on that mindscape, claiming “breakthroughs” through
the use of data accumulation techniques, and fragmenting the complex
phenomena into different “zones of influence.” The general unity of
knowledge is the casualty in this social process of being-in-society.
160
For Vygotsky, overcoming the crisis entailed the creation of general

knowledge—science is one, and it generalizes. This generality is to
be achieved through the study of individual cases (see the Windel-
band/Dilthey disputes—chapter 7 above) that represent universal
principles. Thus, the use of signs by human beings to organize their
lives is a universal, species-specific feature of human beings. How, for
what goals, and when they use that feature, and what kinds of signs
they construct, is necessarily a historically unique particular case. The
particular represents the general, and the researcher decides when,
where, and for what kind of knowledge s/he enters into an empirical
encounter with the object:
I.P. Pavlov practically studies the real activity of the salivary gland of
a dog. What gives him the right to call it the study of higher nervous
activity of animals? Maybe he should carry out his experiments on
a horse, a crow, etc.—on all or at least on the majority of animals,
so as to have the right to draw such conclusion? But it is precisely
that—Pavlov did not study saliva production of a dog as such, and
his experiments did not increase our knowledge of a dog as such,
through the study of saliva secretion as such. He—in the case of a
dog—did not study the dog, but an animal in general, in the case of
saliva production—the reflex in general. That is—in the case of this
animal he studied all that is common of the object phenomenon with
all similar phenomena. That is why his conclusions pertain to not
only all animals, but to all of biology. (Vygotsky, 1982a,b, p. 404)
It is only in our days that the focus on the relevance on the single
systemic subject begins to return to psychology (Molenaar, 2004,
2007). It should be very clear (and simple)—any real existing person
encounters any kind of life event in its full singularity at the first time
of its happening. Hence, the psychological (and biological) systems that
encounter such novelty cannot in principle be built on the frequency
of such happenings (since that frequency of new events is by definition
always one). Any science that attempts to find out how such systems
work needs to see how they work in case of the ever singular instances
of novelty—not after accumulation of a “large enough sample” of such
unique instances. Vygotsky was neither first, nor alone, in this call for
generality of knowledge based on particular cases. Thinkers like Kurt
Lewin and Gordon Allport made claims in a similar direction.
The general science that Vygotsky hoped for would entail a careful
construction of holistic units of analysis that would retain the relevant
features of the phenomena and their dynamics. Psychology since then
161
has made some—yet limited—progress in working out a clear con-

cept of units (Marková, 1990, Matusov, 2007). The notion of semiotic
mediation, built on the legacies of Vygotsky and Charles S. Peirce,
would move psychology toward a new form (see chapter 10), which in
Vygotsky’s imagery of general science would be very different from its
present state—resembling it no more than “Canis major, in Spinoza’s
words, is similar to a barking dog” (Vygotsky, 1982a,b, p. 436).
Of course psychology never stays in the same place. Since 1920s
much has changed, in the direction of increased crisis (from Vygotsky’s
perspective—see Toomela, 2007, 2008). Vygotsky’s suggestion of build-
ing a general psychology that remains psychological (rather than being
reduced to either sociology or neurosciences) continues to be on the
agenda of science, where efforts to get rid of the psyche abound.
Karl Bühler: Crisis of Unmeaningfulness of Psychology
Karl Bühler’s crisis story resembled that of Vygotsky’s in its basics,
yet the world of psychology looked different from the vantage point
of Vienna in contrast to that of Moscow. Vienna in the 1920s was the
place where theory and practice as well as Austrian philosophical roots
and American pragmatism were meeting (Ash, 2005) in the middle
of fierce sociopolitical struggles, and where different key perspectives
of psychology lived side by side.5 Like Vygotsky’s, Bühler’s theoretical
contributions—but not his work that linked with the empirical credo—
were overlooked for a long time.6
Psychology had, by Bühler’s time, endorsed the ideal of “nonmean-
igfulness” in psychological materials under investigation. This was
exemplified by efforts to use “nonsense” materials in memory tasks.
The avoidance of meaning is perhaps fitting to characterize the crisis
in which psychology has been through the twentieth century. On the
one hand, it has always been governed by meanings, created from all
sides—theoretical, empirical, applied, political, etc.—of the interests
groups that find psychology useful. On the other hand, in its meth-
odology, psychology has resisted the inclusion of meaningfulness into
its knowledge base. Thus, the meanings that come from the socio-
moral-political texture of the given society at the given time (guided
by sociodigms—Yurevich, 2009) are put into research practices as if the
latter were ideologically neutral (and, therefore, “objective”—another
meaning that supports the “unmeaningfulness” of psychology).
Bühler first wrote on what he saw as crisis in psychology first in the
form of a long article (Bühler, 1926), which then became a book (Bühler,
162
2000 [1927]). The book includes Bühler’s analyses of the state of affairs
in different schools of psychology (associationist psychology, “thinking
psychology” (Denkpsychologie), behaviorism, “soul”-psychology, and
psychoanalysis). The book contains a first sketch toward speech theory,
brings to focus the notion of cultural psychology, and the notion of
Funktionslust (Bühler, 2000, chapter 4—Zur Kritik der Psychoanalyse).
While dismissing Freud’s treatment of pleasure as an invention of a
Stoffdenker (a person unable to think in terms of form, Gestalt, and
productivity), Bühler retained pleasure as a principle. Locating plea-
sure in the process of acting itself made it possible to see the world
of children’s play and adult lives going beyond the pleasure principle,
toward the enjoyment of nonprincipled process of living. This followed
from his interpretation of the work done in the Institute. The relevance
of the child development materials that were collected in Vienna is
visible all through Bühler’s work. The primacy of the social (“mutual
guidance” of communication partners) in the psychological domain
was the starting point for his theory of communication.7
The Crisis Talk Continues—To Our Time
After the wave of discourse over crisis in psychology in the 1920s,
we can observe similar upsurges of collective self-reflexivity in the
1970s (about social psychology—Morgan, 1996) and 1990s (around
developmental psychology—Burman, 1996). Of course the usual ne-
gotiations between perspectives within psychology—fights between
“mentalists,” “behaviorists,” “cognitivists,” “socioculturalists,” “evolu-
tionary psychologists” and any other “-ists” has continued on a regular
basis beyond the peaks of “crisis talk.”
What is the function of “crisis talk” in the collective self-regulation
of a discipline? If we were to draw parallels with the persons undergo-
ing psychotherapy, the corresponding “protest narratives” (cf. Cunha
et al., 2010) close—rather than open—the problematic mind to inno-
vation. It turns out in the study of psychotherapy processes that the
client who actively “protests” about one’s problem does not neces-
sarily move toward their solution. This may be similar in psycholo-
gists’ deconstruction efforts—talking about “crises” in the discipline,
or “fighting dualisms.” Instead of “protest,” a “reconceptualization
narrative” is needed to reach to the possibility of being different.
In psychologists’ talk about “crisis” in their field a similar impasse
occurs. “Crisis” makes for good and continuous publicity and active
disputes—without synthesis.
163
There are numerous reasons for such nonproductivity of “crisis”

discourse. First, it creates rhetoric opposites for the sake of elucidating
the target—i.e., the crisis. Such binary opposites are treated as mutually
exclusive, with the result that the discussion of the “crisis” is turned
into a rhetorical win-or-lose game between the posited opposites.
In the “crisis” of “behaviorism,” the up-and-coming neo-“mentalist”
(calling itself cognitivist) credo was meant to highlight the dominance
shift in the social prominence of the perspectives. “Crisis” talk can
lead to social repositioning of perspectives relative to one another but
does not guarantee novel solutions within a new perspective. Fighting
“behaviorism” or “dualism” does not easily lead to innovation in the
perspective that has become homogenized for that “fight.”
Secondly, the “crisis talk” can expand into other rhetoric forms
that establish their own existence in the idea-scape of the discipline,
becoming encapsulated, and thus providing an arena for discourse that
is immune to innovation. Morgan (1996) specified two such emerging
genres—the nostalgic and the critical. The latter has given rise to the
label “critical psychology” that has developed on the margins of psy-
chology since 1960s and has developed its own contrarian social orga-
nization. By creating a new consensus group on the basis of critique of
its opponent, vaguely labeled the mainstream, the direction of critical
psychology opens for itself a legitimate rhetoric domain of being criti-
cal of—while not attempting to change—the discipline. In the outsider
role, this kind of “crisis talk” supports precisely the object of that
talk. Similar to the wider society’s need for law-breakers to maintain
precisely the law that the breakers challenge, the critical genre in a
discipline8 ends up supporting precisely the object of its critique.
The nostalgic crisis discourse accomplishes a similar outcome, albeit
without revolutionary rhetoric. Rather, it can be viewed as closer to
lamenting discourses—about the faith in science—but with no creative
solution:
The problematic of nostalgia unfolds from its inherent paradox: while

it projects the present discontent into a more satisfying future, it si-
multaneously valorizes the past from which the discontent emerges.
When diagnoses of the ‘crisis’ are expressed through arguments
over method, ethics, or social relevance, nostalgic texts evoke the
imagination of a period in the past in which problems in these areas
could be resolved through reference to the unassailable foundation
of a mastering Reason. Simultaneously, they secure this unassailable
ground for a more helpful future. (Morgan, 1996, pp. 273–74)
164
Similar to the critical discourse, the nostalgic discourse creates a

closed discourse field, yet that in contrast to its critical sibling looks
“positive,” which blocks the development of new perspectives. Hence
efforts toward unification of the admittedly fragmented discipline
(Goertzen, 2008) necessarily remain either unrealistic or only rhetori-
cally productive.
The Pleasure of Being in Crisis: How to Proceed
Beyond that “Pleasure Principle
What is, at first glance, strange is the persistence of the talk about
“crisis.” Actual crises are omnipresent, as they are a necessary part in
development, and do not need to be highlighted as such. In contrast—
talking about “being in crisis” is different—it is a generalizing discourse
that is created with some aims. For the given discipline that may turn
out as a social block for knowledge (displacement). Instead of solving
the central problems of a science, the scientists may end up in lengthy
disputes—laments about what their science is not, rather than making
it to be new. “Crisis talk” can replace a search for new solutions (i.e.,
ways of overcoming the crisis) with recurrent narrating of the “state
of affairs” (lament about “being in” crisis). Both functions of reflexive
talk—overcoming and maintaining a status quo—are widely used in
societies (cf. Valsiner, 2000a,b, 2002, 2007a,b on semiotic demand
settings9). Hence it is not surprising that
. . . psychology’s methodological discourse expresses a kind of “poet-
ics” of crisis, perceived in a positive light as something that stimulates
the development of the psychological science, and makes it more
perceptive of its methodological problems. (Yurevich, 2009, p, 2)
Of course such “poetics of crisis” has a wider background than

merely the field of psychology. It is not a coincidence that the three
thinkers—Bühler, Vygotsky, and Driesch—were worried about psy-
chology’s “crisis” in the 1920s (also—Koffka, 1926). The “crisis” by
1920s was based on the failure of psychology in the middle of the
“science wars” of the nineteenth century. Psychology failed
. . . because, even in its primal establishment as a new kind of [sci-
ence] alongside the new natural science, it failed to inquire after
what was essentially the only genuine sense of its task as the uni-
versal science of psychic being. Rather, it let its task and method be
set according to the model of natural science or according to the
guiding idea of modern philosophy as objective and thus concrete
165
universal science . . .. Thus the history of psychology is actually only

a history of crises. (Husserl, 1970, p. 203 [original German 1935–37,
published 1954])
Psychology has been, among other sciences, precisely the most

fitting target for social guidance of a science. That guidance involves
both “vertical” and “horizontal” social processes. The hegemonic so-
cial powers (such as a government or other institutions) may provide
a direction for “what is useful for societies from science X” which is
corroborated by peer negotiation of such utility.
We construct a framework of knowledge—in this case something
we call “psychology”—through strategic use of semiotic mediators.
Such construction happens at the intersection of the immediate
constructors—persons in the profession—and the usually ill-defined
conglomerate we call “society” to which intentionality, rationality, and
benevolence are attributed, almost to the extent of personification.
“The society” may be said to “want” or “demand” something from the
given science, it may “provide” resources, and scientists may be said
to “serve” or “contribute to” it. Yet—as was pointed out in chapter
2—society is a conceptual construction that has no agency. It is a gen-
eralized abstraction based on the processes of human relationships.
Crisis Talk” as an Example of Pessimistic Optimism
We need to understand how “crisis talk” functions in relation to its
object. The talk about “crisis” takes place in the liminal conceptual do-
main between what has happened in the developing system—person,
society, or discipline—and what could happen in the future, but for some
reason has not happened. “Crisis talk” is in this sense a discursive strat-
egy to promote change, in some direction. The idea of “overcoming”
a crisis has the direction either to a previous status quo, or to a new
state of affairs. “Crisis talk” is an optimistically oriented pessimistic talk
of the present time, in contrast to “evaluation talk” (e.g., “psychology
today is useless”) or to “progress talk” (e.g., “psychology today is pro-
gressing well”—cf. Gergen and Gergen, 1984 on narrative forms).
The Importance of Saying Nothing
“Crisis talk” creates a specific social position of the talk-maker. It
is supposedly about an object (“X is in crisis”), yet its role is set up by
the context of talking about that object, rather than by the object itself.
The talk-maker reflects upon the past, considers the desired direction
of the future, and proceeds to evaluate the object. The “crisis” theme
166
would emerge if there is a discrepancy between the image of the past

and the desired image of the future. It is projected outward to the
symbolic conglomerate consensually called “the discipline” (psychol-
ogy, history, science in general), yet with self-inclusive participation
in the lamented collective fate of the object. Thus, a psychologist may
say “psychology is in crisis” that would, in covert ways, include “I as a
psychologist who has not solved problem X because of some features of
my discipline, am in crisis.” This generalized attribution of one’s failure
becomes—by covert blaming it on the state of the discipline—a psycho-
logically distanced arena for camouflage discourse.10 Yet from within
such camouflage actual breaking “out of ” the crisis can occur—when,
where, and by whom cannot be predicted. In this sense the lamenting
about crises may be a constructive base for innovation.
“Crisis talk” is one of the forms of reflexive meta-level construc-
tions that characterize the object. Such reflexive constructions entail
a structure of oppositions between (collective) Self and Other, both
internally (Self of “present state” contrasted with Other of “the past
state” and “future desired state”) and externally (Self of “desired state,”
whether existing or desired, contrasted with an external Other—an
opponent, a barrier, etc.—see also Lin (1999) on how these roles
developed in Chinese history narratives). Much of critical talk about
psychology uses the ambiguous notion of “the mainstream” as the
external Other, against whom the current narrative of overcoming
“the crisis” is constructed.11 That Other (“mainstream,” whatever way
defined or implied) needs to be created as such Other to create the
framework for narrating the story of the Self in its current declared
state (“crisis,” “success,” “stagnation,” etc). The question for a history
of the discipline is whether the different “external Others”—opposite
“schools of thought” and different background social streams of
thought in the given society—are made explicit.
Conclusion: Overcoming the Crisis
At least one feature of psychology’s discourses is clear—the pleasure
of discussing the crisis needs to be overcome. Aside from the “psychol-
ogy-as-crisis” talk I would include here its corollaries—the “finding
and finding dualisms” talk, and “we-have-no-methods” talk. These
are discursive genres of displacement—not providing solutions but
extending the life course of the problems. The crisis is merely a sign
of other problems—hence talking about crisis is misleading. Robert
Rieber has made it clear:
167
The field has metastatised and there is neither the opportunity to

start afresh, nor is there any notion of a scientific psychology. To-
day the crisis is a product of overdevelopment and misdirection . . ..
In defining success, we have to avoid the idea that “bigger is better.”
(Rieber, 2001, p. 117, added emphasis)
The misdirection of psychology—as I have tried to show in this part

(chapters 5–7)—is a result of systematic social guidance of the field
into proliferation of empiricism. The ideal of “empirical science,” not in
the meaning given to it by Brentano (as experience-focused knowledge
base), but in the sense of theory-phobic and methods-determined
practices is the overdevelopment of “the literature” without synthesis
of general knowledge. Psychology could benefit from a drastic reduc-
tion of the published journal articles that no longer can be read by
researchers, who no longer read “the literature” before they do their
studies, or even when they write up yet another empirical manuscript.
How to overcome such alienation of the Wissenschaft—that remains
the question.
Notes
1. Driesch himself distanced his perspective from the history of German
idealism, emphasizing that his goal is to create a system of holistic theory
of order (Driesch, 1923, p. 28).
2. This concept in English could be rendered, quite awkwardly, as “the whole
that is brought together”.
3. Like claiming that psychology needs its own Capital, as that treatise written
by Marx was the bible for the Marxists.
4. Vygotsky (1982a,b, pp. 434–35) commented “. . . our science will become
Marxist to the extent to which it becomes true, scientific. It is in the direc-
tion of turning it into the real one, rather than coordinating it with Marx’s
theory, that we will be working on.” He followed this with a declaration of
considering “Marxist psychology” the only true one . . . yet immediately
qualifying this claim by stating that all what is true of previous psychology
belongs to the new “Marxist psychology.”
5. There was no connection between the Psychology Institute of the Bühlers
and the circle of Freud. In fact there was a rejection of psychoanalysis by
the Zeitgeist of the Institute.
6. Weimer (1974, p. 252) attributes that overlook to “Harvard revenge”—
for Bühler’s refusal to leave Vienna for Boston in the 1920s. Yet there are
more substantive reasons for it—Bühler’s main work within the Würzburg
tradition and his emphasis on language were not well fitting into the re-
writings of psychology’s history from a strict experimentalist perspective.
The contributions of William Stern—well known on the empirical side, yet
overlooked for his personalistic theory—share a similar fate (see Budwig,
2000; Lamiell, 2003).
168
7. As well as a basis for psychotherapy. Yet, decades later, in the context of

the United States, that became presented under the label of “humanistic
psychology”—Bühler, 1965. The fitting of this label is of substantive interest
by itself.
8. Interestingly, the sub-areas with “critical” in their names seem to spring
up in the social sciences—critical psychology, critical sociology, critical
anthropology—but not in the natural sciences, for example, critical as-
tronomy, critical physics, critical chemistry.
9. The Semiotic Demand Setting is a social-normative framework for people’s
talking about X while not talking about the topics adjacent to it (non-X or
Y), with prescribed “talk arenas” where talking is normatively intensified,
yet dissociated from any domain of action (talk shows, gossip sessions,
etc.)—see chapter 4 (Figure 4.4).
10. I use the notion camouflage here to emphasize the functional nonfunc-
tionality of talk. We talk about anything without the talk including new
information (cf. Toda and Higuchi, 1994 on the mundane nature of everyday
talk). Sometimes expressing oneself through talking becomes a substitute
for acting, yet the specific nature of the talk is socially visible as if it were
acting. Talk about “crisis” is often a camouflage for apparent action that
does not take place.
11. The same happens if a dominant social group in a discipline (the actual
“mainstream”) constructs an opponent “out there” that is assumed to be
of consequence for the Self of that dominant group. Thus, dismissals of
the external Others such as “soft science” or “mysticism” by psychology
carries a similar function of consolidating the “inside” in opposition to
“outside.” Independent of what or where “the inside” is, the construction
of the corresponding external Other role is needed (e.g., any system of law
in any society needs “lawbreakers”—real or imaginary—to consolidate and
maintain its role).
169
Part III
Facing the Future—
Transcending the Past
Given the prevailing tendency to reify statistical artifacts, and
therefore to confuse statistical with psychological reality, it was quite
natural for statistical significance testing to be employed as a basis
for decision about the validity of psychological hypotheses . . .. More
generally, it was a practice that reduced the demands made on psy-
chological theorizing—no trivial achievement for a discipline that had
never been able to get its theoretical house in order.
Kurt Danziger (1990, p. 154)
Psychology has been guided into an epistemological impasse by the

very desire of various interested parties to make the discipline scientific.
This paradoxical verdict about the history of this important but hard
to pinpoint a discipline makes it a good empirical case for bringing
out general principles of social guidance of sciences. Psychology’s ever
reinvented “crises” are a symptom of ambivalence in the relationship
of the science and society.
Of course it is hardly the case that psychology in the twenty-first
century is on the forefront of other sciences—or at least of other
social sciences—in solving basic problems of the mental and social
lives of human beings. It is a field of high promises paired with deep
distrust in case these promises were to become fulfilled. If its find-
ings were to become of profound use in any society there would
be immediate barriers created for its uses.1 Psychology’s success in
making sense of the human mind is an inherently ambiguous mo-
ment of social innovation and has not changed over the past century
as such:
We live surrounded by an enormous body of persons who are most

definitely interested in the control of states of mind, and incessantly
craving for a sort of psychological science which will teach them
171
how to act. What every educator, every jail-warden, every doctor,

every clergyman, every asylum-superintendant, asks of psychology
is practical rules. Such men care little or nothing about the ultimate
philosophic grounds of mental phenomena, but they do care im-
mensely about improving the ideas, dispositions, and conduct of
their particular individuals in their charge.2 (James, 1892, p. 148)
William James saw the positive focus in social pragmatism of people

in power—jail-wardens and superintendants of any role—and without
doubt it is the social institutions who have become both the users and
the guardians of psychology. The world wars of the twentieth century
have boosted psychology. Yet, psychology remains—even a century
after William James so bluntly declared the pragmatic interest in
psychology—an outsider to the glory and beauty “contests” between
physics and chemistry on the one hand and genetics and neurosciences
on the other. The latter dominate in the domain of public visibility in
the beginning of the twenty-first century as the complete description
of the genome of yet another animal gets hailed as a grand break-
through that would lead to new socially valuable consumer products—
medicines and cure. It is not very surprising that twenty-first century
psychology strives toward the glory of social visibility by sticking its
research participants into the tunnels of fMRI machines and displaying
the colorful brain images as the latest breakthroughs of science—rather
than those of a sophisticated version of phrenology.
Nevertheless, I argue that the social guidance process that has been
visible in the discourses around—and in—psychology is not specific
to that discipline. Maybe these processes are amplified because of
psychology’s marginal status among the sciences—being in-between
the Geistes- and Naturwissenschaften (chapter 7) and in its twentieth
century Anglicized version—being separated by the division between
the humanities and the sciences. Yet all the parts of the system—socially
stratified collectives of persons taking on the role of knowledge-makers
(“scientists”3), administrators (kings, dukes, deans, or grant agencies
program directors), “social others” (“the public” or practitioners)—
are similarly in place in other sciences. Likewise have all sciences
dependent on the innovations in technology. Last, but not least, the
social system that “makes sciences” includes its own quasi-outsiders
looking inward—historians, journalists, and enthusiasts of the given
field of knowledge.
How can we make sense of such heterogeneous societal mechanism?
It is a system of societal regulation that allows for rapid growth of
172
Facing the Future—Transcending the Past
knowledge in some area, while making sure that an adjacent area is

kept for long periods in a state of stagnation, or in the phase of “normal
science” if we were to reuse the Kuhnian idea here. While psychology’s
selected “scientific other” has been physics—an area as remote from
psychological phenomena as possible, but one of high prestige through
mystiques of glorifications—the more productive comparison with the
so-called “hard sciences” would be that of history of chemistry.
There was little of “hard science”—other than the reactions of
chemicals—in chemistry in the nineteenth century. Rather, it was
in a conceptual confusion while promoting its value for practices in
society. Its historical roots, in alchemy, were still rather fresh, and
dismissed. It was only from 1830s onward that chemistry moved into
the use of a systematic language of abstract formulae, and by 1870s
when the formulated chemicals were organized into a system of speci-
fiable knowledge (Mendeleev’s table). Chemistry was a “far cousin” of
psychology, through the mutual relative of physiology. As has been
emphasized in narratives on history of psychology, the standard story
of psychology becoming scientific has been that of becoming physi-
ological in its nature. Yet at the same time when psychology has been
moving toward physiological reductionism, physiology was fighting
the efforts by organic chemistry to reduce physiology to its chemical
bases. In the nineteenth century, the boundary between physiology
and chemistry,
. . . raised passionate debates . . . Nineteenth-century chemists sub-

mitted animal compounds to elementary analyses in their laborato-
ries, while physiologists claimed that they could not understand the
processes transpiring in living bodies because they dealt with dead
matter. (Bensaude-Vincent, 2003, p. 209)
Interestingly, similar borders were present between chemistry and

physics, and between psychology and physiology. The differentiation of
the various disciplines was going on by active building of boundaries—
to create the stage for overcoming such boundaries.
Notes
1. Already existing analogues are the barriers erected against the utilization
of genetically modified agricultural crops (see chapter 4).
2. Or, likewise, may try to block the use of the know-how by one’s opponents.
When the present author was interviewed in the middle of the 1980s by
some very secretive officials of the U.S. Government about “the state of
affairs in Soviet Psychology” their interest was not in the philosophical
173
roots of such psychology but in one single question—have “the Soviets”

developed a psychological weapon that can affect others over a distance?
Needless to say there was no indication of such huge applied success of
the discipline anywhere in sight. The imagery of seeing “weapons of mass
destruction” in any country currently in the status of a political adversary
is but a faint replica of such trust in the power of psychologists.
3. This notion was introduced by William Whewell in 1834 (see also Yeo,
1986):
“There was no general term by which these gentlemen could describe them-
selves with reference to their pursuits. Philosophers was felt to be too wide
and too lofty a term . . . savants was rather assuming, besides being French
instead of English; some ingenious gentleman proposed that, by analogy
with artist, they might form scientist, and added that there could be no
scruple in making free with this termination when we have such words as
sciolist, economist, and atheist . . . others attempted to translate the term
by which the members of similar associations in Germany have described
themselves, but it was not found easy to discover an English equivalent for
natur-forscher. The process of examination which it implies might suggest
such undignified compounds as a nature-poker, or nature-peeper . . ..”
(Whewell, 1834, pp. 59–60).
174
9
Learning from the Fate
of Psychology
Psychology entered 20th century as a promising young science, with
new experimental laboratories being established and Freud’s
Interpretation of Dreams instigating a new psychological culture.
At the start of the 21st century, however, the science of psychology
appears in a puzzling state, somehow empty of radically new
insights into the human situation.
Steinar Kvale (2003, pp. 597–98)
Has psychology lost its soul? Is it being traded off on an epistemic

market as a well-wrapped product under the label of some ism? A
brand name of “behaviorism” is as concealing of the ideas as its later
dominant substitutes of “cognitivism” or “socioculturalism.” Or is
the soul kept with an epistemic pawnbroker until new values emerge
and it is bought back to the realm of everyday craftsmanship? How is
psychology creating new knowledge? And what role does the history
of the discipline play in such innovation?
Psychology of today is well characterized by an evaluation that Serge
Moscovici gave to the state of social psychology in the early 1970s.
According to him, the fragmentation of generalized thought has led
to a situation where
. . . theoretical models exist side by side in a relationship which nei-
ther constitutes real dialogue nor fertile contradiction. It is therefore
not surprising that the empirically established facts are nothing but
a heterogeneous collection, as are the theories on which they are
supposed to depend. The experiments and empirical studies are not
really capable of confrontation in a common framework. (Moscovici,
The situation is hardly improved by early twenty-first century

(Schwarz, 2009; Watzlawik, 2009). Moscovici points to the core of
175
the issue: the motivating social representation of the positive value

of empirical work in science—separated from generalization efforts
and clustered by “the literatures on X”1 as cataloguing devices—fail
both to provide guidance for practical applications and block the
emergence of generalized knowledge (Toomela, 2008; Toomela and
Valsiner, 2010).
Jan Smedslund: Critiquing the Reign of Pseudo-Empiricism
Search for general science in psychology almost but disappeared in
the second half of the twentieth century where the prevailing empiri-
cism together with the introduction of theories as “umbrella”-type
positions created a very different kind of discourse about what sci-
ence is (Toomela, 2007, 2008). Jan Smedslund’s critique of psychology
of the end of the twentieth century provides a new solution to the
Naturwissenschaften/ Geisteswissenschaften problem: he posits the
applicability of completely deductive logical system—of axioms leading
into theorems (a mechanical system) to the wide varieties of meanings
within the common language and its uses (Smedslund, 1995, 1997).
The logical rigor of Naturwissenschaft, in its deductive side, was to
represent the seemingly boundless riches of the common sense. Yet
the latter richness cannot be presented as a rich but finite pool of fixed
meanings (derivable from the theorems of common sense). Meanings
are “born”—in metaphoric extensions of language uses—and they are
constructed by the language user. It is here where the innovation of
the Naturphilosophie two centuries before—living through environ-
ment by the constructive use of language—enters as a correction to a
model built on deductive classical logic.
Even if Smedslund’s solution may be a theoretical impasse for the
misfit of classical logic to ever-developing natural and social phenom-
ena, his reasons for building his psycho-logic are based on a devastating
recognition of the crisis in psychology—psychology produces pseudo-
empirical work under the label of being an empirical science:
In looking for plausible hypotheses to test, I believe researchers are

unknowingly influenced by the conceptual or meaning relationships
between the words in language. The closer two terms are related
conceptually, the more plausible it appears that they are related
empirically. This means that psychological research tends to be
pseudoempirical, that is, it tends to involve empirical studies of re-
lationships which follow logically from the meanings of the concepts
involved. (Smedslund, 1995, p. 196)
176
Learning from the Fate of Psychology
As long as the common sense is built into the language, the mean-
ings of the language guide the thinking of their user—be it a child,
adult, or a researcher. This follows from the functions of language in
our communication and thinking. The problem for psychology as sci-
ence emerges only when the primacy of the empirical research (that
relies on inductive generalization) gives the researchers the “side ef-
fect” of treating common language terms as if they are scientific. The
common-sense notion of “mind” ( “my mind,” i.e., a meaning I know
within myself, and nobody else can know directly from outside) is
elevated into the general status of “the mind” (personal core of each
and every person—including me—but with the additional feature that
nobody has direct access to it), and considered as a theoretical term.2
Yet any derivation from it—according to Smedslund—is determined
by the psycho-logic of the common sense. Hence any “theory of mind”
cannot be studied empirically, or if psychologists tried it, they would
be involved in pseudo-empirical inquiries. Psychology has not figured
out how to coordinate inductive and deductive knowledge construc-
tion pathways, not to speak of their synthesis in an abductive generic
knowledge scheme (Pizarroso and Valsiner, 2009).
However, Smedslund’s critique of the contemporary practices
of psychology leads to a different impasse—the theory building of
deductive-logical kind “implies representations of possible psycho-
logical relationships and not the necessary relationships that are the
substance of logic” (Stam, 2000, p. 163, added emphasis).3 A deduc-
tively built solution that replaces the construction of novelty in the
thinking of a researcher by the act of borrowing from a fixed (even if
infinitely large) set of theorems each of which has one single trajec-
tory of applicability cannot fit the phenomena of the psyche that entail
equifinality and mutuality of organism–environment relations. While
classical logic was the “gold standard” for the natural sciences of the
nineteenth century, limits of its applicability become clear in efforts
to build developmental science in the twentieth century (Valsiner,
2009b). Deductive formal systems are closed for further development
of ideas. Instead, some version of abductive inference4 would keep the
investigative process open for innovation.
Psychology as a Socially Useful Science: Perils of Pragmatism
The relevance of utility for a science—psychology in the lead—
comes from the development of pragmatist ideologies in the North
American context over the twentieth century. The complex of ideas
177
that we now label “American Pragmatism” was a general orientation

toward life by men (and women) of action. Pragmatism
. . . put ideas to work and judged them by their results. . . . It rejected

theories and abstractions and established the single standard of
workability. It was as practical as the patent office—or the Declaration
of Independence. Its expediency was individual; it came, increas-
ingly, to be social, to require that men work together to establish
the truth of their hopes.
It was a democratic philosophy, held every man a philosopher,
gave every man a vote, and counted the votes of the simple and
the humble equal to those of the learned and the proud. It took its
truths where it found them, sometimes from the unlikeliest places.
It made philosophy a servant, not a master, an instrument, not an
end. It assumed that men could direct their spiritual as they did their
political destinies; it overthrew the tyranny of philosophical authori-
tarianism and substituted the democracy of popular representation.
(Commager, 1950, p. 95)
Pragmatism was thus one of the few contributions to philosophi-

cal thought that the U.S. social history has provided to the world.
American pragmatism brought philosophy out of its ivory towers to
the marketplace of common living. As such, pragmatism was situated
in the middle of growing social regulation within the U.S. society
named “the Progressive Era”—a label used by the various populist and
post-populist social reformers in the U.S. in the first two decades of
the twentieth century.
Pragmatism was a philosophical perspective emerging in the context
of the social changes that were leading to the “Progressive Era” (Saf-
ford, 1987). In psychology, pragmatism led to behaviorism. In both
cases, the prevailing focus on consequences—how to predict and
control them—led to defocusing from the autonomous, self-reflexive
individual in favor of an adequately behaving rat or citizen. The focus
had shifted from that on agency to that on social rules—away from
. . . a world in which individuals took greater initiative and greater

risks, based on their own sensibility, creativity, and responsibility
(agency), to a world in which thought and action are more and more
rationalized, bureaucratized, and routinized (ultimately reduced to
a set of rules). From free, fallible, and meaningful action, humans
have turned toward a more controlled, definitionally correct, and a
meaningful behavior. (Leary, 2001, p. 427)
178
These values were encoded in the credo of behaviorism. Behavorism

at its inception was not a scientific but a moralistic movement, similar
in tone to the preaching of pragmatism of the time. Both pragmatism
and behaviorism fitted the needs of social powers that used previ-
ous consequences to predict future gains—hence the proliferation
of psychological testing during and after World War I in American
organizations.
Opposites move into each other. The emergence of pragmatism in
the U.S. at the end of the nineteenth century was an outgrowth of the
intellectual liberation from the long history of religious control of the
society (see Valsiner and van der Veer, 2000, chapters 4 and 5). Yet
in this movement it retained many of the stylistic features of the very
same social traditions against which it fought. It quickly established its
own quasi-religious nature. The “will to believe” quickly turned into
“the will to accept the duty to believe.” Psychology follows the tradi-
tions of wider society and is open to mini-conversions to a different
belief system—from mentalism to behaviorism, from behaviorism to
cognitivism, and who knows where else.
Pragmatism was meant to be an alternative to intellectualism—the
belief in the finite existence of the mind as such. As such, it constituted
a general belief system which made the notion of utility the core for
the determination of the “truth” or “falsity” of ideas. In the middle of
human personal experience (characterized by James as “quasi-chaos”;
James, 1904, p. 543), practical consequences of action lead to the pos-
sibility to establish the truth value of facts.
True ideas are those that we can validate, corroborate, and verify.
False ideas are those that we can not . . .. The truth of an idea is not a
stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes
true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process,
the process . . . of its verifying itself, its verification. Its validity is the
process of its validation. (James, 1907, p. 142, added emphasis)
Yet—as shown in Part I of this book—facts, viewed semiotically, are

fictions (that present some features of reality). The process of verification
ranges widely—from direct testing of an object, to inter-personal estab-
lishment of a common language referent. James’s example was a clock
on the wall. He claimed that if he would consider that object a “clock”
and his interlocutor would agree that it is a “clock,” that this indirect
verification can be sufficient as it works for the given purposes.
179
Construction of the Purposes

What are these “given purposes”? How do they become “givens”?
These were questions that were left out of the field of interests of
otherwise all-encompassing William James. These can emerge in the
course of establishing a social consensus in a group. Yet that amounts
to illusory intersubjectivity (Rommetveit, 1985) which conceals a large
leap in faith—a conventional illusion thus becomes truthful.
James saw truth emerging at the intersection of belief verifica-
tion new belief cycle. Yet much of human knowledge is mediated via
symbolic means, and not immediately available. For example, the act
of reading about “tigers in India” in a here-and-now setting provides
the immediate access to the qualities of the paper on which the text is
written (e.g., to a molecular architecture “beneath” the smooth white-
ness of the paper). Yet the meaning of “tigers in India” is available to
the reader only via representative or symbolic knowing (James, 1895,
p. 107). The latter is fully dependent upon the trustability of the writer
of the text. The possibility that there might be no tigers in India is not
considered by the reader, as the story is created by the writer. The author
of a text can guide the recipient in a direction of reconstruction of the
message that accepts the general premiss of the message—“what I tell
you cannot be doubted.”
Nowhere is that acceptance of the premiss utilized with greater
social impact than in fiction. Fictional characters are made up by
the author, yet they are not only believable by the reader, but hyper-
believable. Their fictional nature is their strength—the fact that Anna
Karenina committed suicide is never doubted, especially as Anna
Karenina is a fictional character created by Tolstoy (Eco, 2009). If a
newspaper reports the fact that Dr. David Kelly’s body was found dead
in a forest, the reader looks for further verification of the case being that
of a suicide, entertaining various conspiracy theories to the opposite.5
Not so in the case of fictional characters in a novel—the author’s pen
or keyboard striking makes their fate undoubtable.
Avoiding Phenomena: How Could Psychology Go Astray?
The test of the statement above is right here—how can one claim
that psychology has gone that way? Aaro Toomela’s authoritative claim
(Toomela, 2007, 2008; Toomela and Valsiner, 2010) guides our thinking
in the direction of recognizing “a crisis,” while a similar authoritative
statement of the opposite (“psychology continues to thrive”) would
work in similar ways of social guidance of our focus of attention.
180
What constrains psychology in any given country—Germany in

the past, or the USA in the twentieth century? A historicist answer
comes from Moscovici’s social representation theory—the history of
social representations carried forth across generations in the given
society. Psychoanalysis took hold in France on the basis of the history
of Catholic confession (Moscovici, 1961). Dorothy Ross in her retro-
spect on her historical analysis of the social sciences in USA locates
the main general context in the complex of ideas that are captured by
the notion of national exceptionalism:
American exceptionalism was pre-historicist; it tied American his-

tory to God’s eternal plan outside of history. Richard Hofstadter once
remarked that America was the only country in the world that was
born perfect and continued to progress. American progress would
be a quantitative multiplication and elaboration of its founding
institutions, not a process of qualitative change . . ..
. . . American social scientists shared the national ideol-
ogy not only as Americans, but also as social scientists. Ameri-
can exceptionalism was one variant of the discussion about
modernity within which the social sciences formed . . .. Excep-
tionalism . . . was the discursive frame within which the social
sciences worked, the language which set their core problem and
shaped the logic of their solutions to it. The role of exceptionalism in
the social sciences was not merely rhetorical, but deeply rhetorical.
(Ross, 1993, p. 104)
Of course the United States has no exceptional (!) claim to excep-

tionalism—other countries develop their own brands of the same
(cf. Steinmetz, 1997 on German Sonderweg). Yet in the U.S. history, the
stream of secular religiosity, which exceptionalism framed, has guided
social sciences in the United States toward obligatory quantification
(and away from viewing the structural dynamics) of the phenom-
ena, the use of statistical methods as the way to appear “scientific.”
Precisely, they appear (rather than are) scientific, it is revealed from
social histories of statistics how the belief in large numbers antedates
psychology’s unconditional surrender to the charms of statistical
inference since the beginning of the twentieth century. The belief in
numbers, especially large numbers, is a moral imperative. Psychology
deals with complex issues—morality, values, and consciousness—and
is at times called moral science (Brinkmann, 2006; Gergen, 2006). Yet,
in order to investigate its moral nature—one needs to work through
its opposite—a non-moral (or maybe im-moral?) science.
181
A Science of No Moral Implications:

A Brief Look Into Chemistry
Psychology’s crooked history needs a background that would allow
us to investigate the general processes of social guidance of knowledge-
making in the sciences. A fitting “nearest neighbor” for psychology
would be chemistry. Interestingly, that similarity has been emphasized
since 1820 (Thomas Brown) to Wilhelm Wundt’s focus on creative
synthesis—borrowed from chemistry or Brentano’s (1895) dismissal
of physiology6—to our present day (Giorgi, 2000; McCrae, 2010). Yet
these occasional efforts to benefit from a neighboring discipline have
remained mere expressions of opinions, rather than grounds for new
construction. But, as we know, opinions do not think. They are dead-
end states for creativity.
Aside from basic differences—links with the sociomoral texture of
a society are not to be found in chemistry—there are many similarities
between the disciplines. Both deal with structured phenomena that
include quantitative aspects as parts of their qualitative functioning.
Both take interest in the transformation of the substances they work
with: chemicals that react with other chemicals,7 or psychological
phenomena (thoughts, feelings, etc.) undergoing transformations.
Both were denigrated by Immanuel Kant in late 1700s not to be ready
for the status of science because mathematics seemed not possible to
be implemented in them (Nye, 1993, p. 32). Back in the nineteenth
century both attempted to prove Kant wrong—chemistry successfully,
and psychology—so far—unsuccessfully. The overtake of psychology
by statistics—the “empire of chance” (Gigerenzer et al., 1989)—would
hardly satisfy Kant’s pietistic moral rule for being a “true science.”
Both disciplines also went through their phases of nationalistic
appropriation. Both disciplines made public their had “national
character” during their pre-paradigmatic phases—chemistry in the
eighteenth to nineteenth centuries was at first a “French science”
which became shared with “German science,” in opposition to “Eng-
lish chemistry.” In psychology—originally a “German science”—we
still talk until our time about different “national schools”—“American
psychology,” “Soviet psychology,” “European psychology.” Both have
lived through complicated relations with philosophies, chemistry
overcoming the metaphysical concerns by late nineteenth century
to develop its own generalized theory,8 while psychology simply has
repressed philosophical issues from its core in favor of inductive
empiricism and accepting the assumption of accumulation of averaged
182
knowledge.9 Even the basic concepts—chemistry’s focus on affinity and

phlogiston, and psychology’s on relationship and soul—have historical
parallels. Chemistry overcame the use of the notion of phlogiston over
the nineteenth century after Lavoisier gave it its deathblow, while psy-
chology continues to speculate with its analog—intelligence of various
kinds—up to the present time.
Layers of Language in Chemistry
Scientific language in any discipline is central for negotiating its
investigative orientation with the integration of knowledge and its
accessibility to the nonscientific public. In psychology the issue of lan-
guage has been poorly differentiated—efforts are made either to reduce
its scientific language to its common counterpart (Siegfried, 1994),
or to move toward inductively based theories that mimic the logic of analysis
of variance or to declare a result of a method—such as factor analysis—
the basis for a theory (e.g., five-factor theory of personality).
In contrast, chemistry has overcome its alchemical language uses in
the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries (see Crosland, 1995; Vickers,
1984). In ways very analogical to our modern day psychology’s label-
ing of inductively discovered factors and then believing that the labels
have a causal force,10 the alchemists operated on the basis of analogies
between celestial, material, and mystical meaning systems. Alchemy
compressed layers of abstraction into a complex of meanings where
the reactions performed in a laboratory could be explained by occult
forces, analogies with planets, or at least by the sensorially available
characteristics of the states of chemicals.11
As a result of breaking free from its alchemical past, chemistry
has incorporated a differentiated system of layers into its scientific
language. Nye (1993, p. 70) has outlined three layers:
Chemical discourse proceeds between these levels as is necessary
for the given communication effort. The copresence of these three lay-
ers of language use is of course the historical remnant of chemistry’s
relations with alchemy and physics of its time. Yet, seen prospectively,
the differentiated picture of such language layers affords the discipline
Layer Core terms

Natural philosophy: matter attraction aggregation
Chemistry: substance affinity composition or
combination
Natural history: body relationship constitution
183
flexibility of presentation of ideas in relation to the desired audience.

While in psychology the common language and scientific terminology
become fused into one complex (e.g., the notion of self—the scientific
and common language meanings are not distinguished in the term),
then in chemistry the differentiated language domain allows for
fitting the messages to the recipients. In chemistry, the history of the
common language meanings
. . . survives in their synchrony in a different manner than is the case

in natural languages. In natural languages diachrony manifests itself
only through the etymology while in chemistry lay and semi-lay
terms coexist today as clear synonyms with and to the functional
and systematic names, and the choice of terms is determined by the
efficacy rationale of the various communication situations pertaining
to the field of chemistry. (Mounin, 1981, p. 218, added emphasis)
It is as if chemistry borrows the flexibility of combining different

layers of language use from Hindu religious thought—where the same
deity can bear different names in different contexts, and can transform
its identity into a new form at an instant (see chapter 11 on Indian
Psychology). Such flexibility, operating in terms of pseudoconcepts,12
has a clear advantage over the use of logical concepts (see chapter 1)
in openness against dogmatic fixation of the knowledge in the making.
It also provides the needed flexibility for communication with the lay
public (see chapter 4) as the translation of the key ideas can be made
fitted to the knowledge base of the nonspecialist audience.
At the level of concrete terminology, there are at least four layers of
names—for the same substances—used in the chemical nomenclature.
The first one overlaps with those in the common language—terms like
water or salt are used both in chemistry and everyday life. In chemis-
try one can encounter at least four layers of names for the chemicals
talked about (Mestrallet Guerre, 1980, referenced via Mounin, 1981,
pp. 217–18):
1. Lay terms that represent either a specialization of common sense terms

(water, salt, ammoniac) or neologisms based on alchemic roots of chem-
istry (aqua forte, tincture of litmus). These names do not represent the
actual chemical composition of the substance, and are arbitrary encoding
of the objects. So, the term water has no implications about its composi-
tion of H-O-H.
2. Semi-lay terms that combine the root of a common sense word with a pre-
fix or a suffix that connects to a paradigm (benzene, ethylene, propylene).
184
Nothing in the name gives information on the structure of the chemicals,

yet their function as a category name can be elaborated in the terms of
the components.
3. Functional names that specify major chemical function (phosphoric acid,
benzoate of soda, silver chloride).
4. Names that describe the sum of the elements—rigorous and absolutely
unambiguous reconstruction of the substance is possible
—2-methyl pentane =CH3-CH2-CH2-CH-CH3
|
CH3
The interesting comparison of the intertwined language layers of

chemistry with those of psychology is the latter’s absence of Layer 4
terminology. In chemistry that layer entered in the first half of nine-
teenth century (Klein, 2004) starting from the introduction of abstract
formulae to replace language-based depiction systems (e.g., H2O
for water introduced by Berzelius in 1813). Secondly, psychology’s
discourse has been aimed at compressing the functions of Layers 1–3
into one term (e.g., attachment, self, intelligence, unconscious). While
chemistry has moved to expand the depth of abstraction in the ter-
minological field over the past two centuries, psychology has moved
toward constriction of it to fuse common language notions with special
functional terminologies (e.g., lack of separation of the meanings of
interaction in the technical use in case of analysis of variance and theo-
retical terms in generalized claims for causality in terms of “interaction”
of two factors). This has made it possible for psychology to proliferate
its terms in an illusory understandability by the lay public, whereas
in chemistry the communication with the lay public occurs through
back-translation of Layer 4-encoded knowledge into Layer 1 terms.
The importance of flexible moves between the immediate and the
abstract are conceptual benefits for chemistry where the move toward
increasing abstractness of concepts is paralleled by their increasing
possibilities for parallel iconic and indexical presentation (Weininger,
1998). This feature of chemical language use allows for quick move-
ment between general (categorical but vague) and specifically pre-
cise. Language uses the flexibility for not only communicating with
different audiences, but also to reposition the researcher relative to
the research problem involved. Chemistry keeps its creativity open
through the flexibility of its language use—and by the interesting aspect
of it: the most concrete use of the language (the “systematic layer”) is
simultaneously the most abstract. The latter is the result of introduction
185
of a new formulaic language to chemistry in the 1810–30s, largely

thanks to Berzelius (Klein, 2004).
It seems that sciences go through a nonlinear trajectory to arrive at gen-
erality. As we know from the history of psychology, its generalizations—
arrived at through the inductive strategies—are incapable of providing
knowledge that stands beyond the already observed particulars. It can
approach the Kantian imperative of purity of thought only through
abstracted categories, yet these categories do not afford useful appli-
cation in the future where the circumstances may be different. Such
inductively created categories—when reached—are the end point
of inquiry. For example, nothing follows the arrival at the five factor
solution for personality (the “Big Five”) for development of new forms
of personality. The “Big Five” are descriptive of the past—and do not
let any sixth personality factor to enter their pantheon in the future.
Chemistry is different because of its mystical origins and practical
implications of making useful substances—medicines and industrial
materials. All through its history of breaking free—first from alchemy,
and secondly from the emphasis on empiricism that followed the
former—chemistry has been negotiating its ways of referring to what
is happening in the chemical reality. The result has been a multilayered,
often mutually disputed, multiplicity of sign systems that may be used
for different purposes. At some moments in the construction of the
semiotic systems analogies (but no fusion!) with common language
use may occur. Thus,
. . . once you conceive of molecules as if they were ordinary objects,

they therefore abstract them from their original chemical context,
you can imagine these molecules performing all kinds of functions
that only ordinary objects use to do. As of sudden, molecules whose
images look like a basket . . . are supposed to carry things around.
Since molecular baskets can be created at definite sizes, they are sup-
posed to be quite selective in carrying only molecules or ions of the
corresponding size—what supramolecular chemists call “molecular
recognition”. And molecules whose images look like rotors are not
only called rotane but also supposed to perform the mechanical
function of rotors . . .. (Schummer, 2006b, p. 61)
The important difference here from psychology’s use of language is

the distanced abstraction of terminology that allows the freedom of
extension of the meaning by importing a common language analogy,
leading to further innovation of the abstract conceptual system. The
use of common language—at some junctions—enhances the growth
186
of the abstract semiotic system. In contrast, in psychology the abstract

term would end up being appropriated by the common language
term—in an effort to explain to the layperson (the psychologist him/
herself being the very first one) what the abstraction means in terms
of the common sense. Instead of helping the generalized meaning sys-
tem of abstraction grow, the psychologist’s common sense analogy
eradicates the abstraction!
Further help for the enhancement of chemical abstraction comes
from the move from formulaic presentations (known from 1810s,
initiated by Berzelius) to three-dimensional models (propagated since
1930s by Linus Pauling—Nye, 2000) that are known to the wide public
through various popularizations of the “double helix” of the DNA.
Such move to graphic imagining is possible since chemistry—with the
installation of Mendeleev’s periodicity table (Bensaude-Vincent, 2009)
as its central organizing framework—is indeed capable of predictions
of what kind of new elements should exist (but are not yet discovered),
and what kinds of chemical reactions could happen (but have not yet).
No similar move from inductive generalization (that dominated chem-
istry before Mendeleev, i.e., before 1860s) to deductive substantiated
predictions has happened in psychology up to now.
Transformation of Moral Concepts: The Question of Purity

Chemistry is a “messy” science, given the realities of all kind of
naturally occurring substances. These realities produced the need to
clarify the knowledge of the discipline to work through the opposite—
consider the notion of pure substances, find ways of granting such
purity, and to perform all of the key chemical reactions with such
substances. The need for “pure materials” in the history of chemistry
could be compared, quite unfavorably, with psychology’s striving for
its samples to be “representative” of the “whole population.” If chem-
istry attempted to use a similar notion—selecting random samples
of some chemical from their natural habitats and trying to perform a
chemical reaction with the “average” (or “cocktail mixture”) of such
samples—it would fail. The chemicals in natural environments come
in context-bound ways, but their presumed ideal state is that of fixed,
“pure” state that—if combined with other “pure” chemicals—can result
in new (also “pure”) synthesized chemicals.
Hence it is not surprising that the issue of purity of the materials
has been central. Historically, the notion of purity of chemicals bor-
rowed from the religious notion of the concept—the purity of the soul.
187
In Eurocentric societies the color white is pure, and the chemical com-
positional cleanliness could also at first be viewed in terms of sensory
qualities. Nonpure reactants are not productive in chemistry, and
before the focus on the chemical composition as guarantee of purity,
it was the geographic location that became the key to purity:
To repeat an experiment and obtain identical results from that

obtained previously, it was necessary to have precisely the same
reagents under the same conditions. One way in which to ensure
some constancy of quality of a reagent (not necessarily purity) was
to specify a substance extracted from one particular place. A famous
example was alum of Tolfa. At a time when the composition of alum
as a double salt was not understood, it was often the case that samples
of supposed ‘alum’ did not, for example, exhibit the properties as
a mordant in dyeing, which was one of the principal uses of alum.
(Crosland, 1995, p. 32)
As emphasized above, chemistry would have no use of techniques

of random sampling to represent the whole spectrum of different
gradations of nonpurity of a quality. Instead, as pure as possible re-
agents were to be found for performing reactions. With the success of
understanding of the molecular composition of the “pure” chemical,
and development of capacities to synthesize it, the focus on purity of
the reagents as a starting condition became accepted social practice. A
similar strategy never took hold across most of psychology—exceptions
being cases of brain-damaged patients in neuropsychology.
The Importance of Reversibility of Reactions
Chemistry also possesses a feature in its knowledge construction
that psychology shares—the temporary state of invisibility of its object
of investigation. If a psychologist observes a toddler rapidly picking
up new words and subsequently fails to see their use in the few fol-
lowing months, the question of whether the child “has lost what has
been learned” or that the words have become latently present—albeit
“hidden”—is of importance. Similarly some properties of chemicals
can seem to “disappear” within a sequence of laboratory reactions but
could be made to reappear. The conceptual question of their ontologi-
cal status was as crucial in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries for
chemistry as the contrast between competence and performance was
in twentieth century psychology. Would an act of nonperformance
(after previous performances) signify the vanishing of competence
or some version of latent hiding of the competence? This has been a
188
core issue for psychologists, while in chemistry it became resolved

by way of specification of the sequences of chemical reactions. The
practical goals of chemistry, in its metallurgical and pharmaceutical
practices (cf. Klein and Lefèvre, 2007), granted that the focus on how
to synthesize the new overtook the speculations of whether the “old”
is lost or “merely hidden.”
Chemistry’s Communicating with the Public
As was emphasized before (chapter 4), any science is in need of some
ways of communicating with its “significant others”—be these kings,
governments, or the indefinite populace usually called “taxpayers”—
and neutralizing the potentially dangerous potential opponents, while
ignoring the rest of the populace. It is usual to not present the images
of the scientists in scientific journals—“science is enunciated without
reference to the enunciator” (Jacobi and Schiele, 1989, p. 750). Yet
in the background of all communicative efforts around a science is a
complex network of more—or less—vested interests that unite both
propagation of the social role of the discipline and its defense of its
“secrets.” If some know-how in any science becomes usable by political
or commercial power, it vanishes from the realm of public accessibility,
while a substitute “myth story” can be created to fortify its publicly
visible social role.
Chemistry’s public presentation of itself as science is indicative of
such delicate task. The secretive events in alchemists’ laboratories
were in parallel combined with public presentation of the miraculous
events that their alchemical experiments were supposed to accom-
plish. Parts of the alchemical procedures were selectively covered to
avoid replication by the noninitiated while the public was informed
about the successes of the procedures (Crosland, 1978, chapter 2). The
“black box” of the authoritative talk—first to other alchemists (who
were expected to understand the encoded messages) and secondly,
simultaneously, to the lay public (who were expected to understand
the powers of alchemy, but not being given sufficient information to
perform the alchemical tasks)—was to simultaneously defend the
“guild” and make its power be publicly visible.
The emerging science of chemistry followed suit in its reliance on
public spectacles in the propagation of its powers. This was helped by
the emerging “culture of curiosity” in the eighteenth century (Pérez,
2008), which entailed extensive development of public spaces with foci
on entertainment. Chemistry joined other sciences in showing off their
189
“magic tricks.”13 Chemistry’s tricks had a special feature—the magic

of appearance, disappearance, and reappearance. A substance can be
shown to disappear in the full view of the audience and be “brought
back” by the next act of the demonstrating chemist.
Yet there are dangers of exaggeration of such magic tricks, for a
young science barely out of its alchemic cradle. While Joseph Priestley’s
chemical demonstrations in the eighteenth century were explicitly
meant to curiosity and surprise, which were to be triggered “as soon
as possible” (Golinski, 2008, p. 122), the images of the persons who
performed the tricks were presented differently. The mystique of the
trick should not make the trickster suspicious. In the crucial phases of
the discipline—during the nineteenth century when links with alchemy
were actively avoided—the general image of a man holding up and
gazing at some substance in a glass container was avoided in public
presentations (paintings, and later photographs). The closeness of
such imagery, implying the alchemist with its magic, was too close for
comfort. Most of the depicted chemists were viewed, in German and
English tradition, sitting on a chair with some glassware or chemical
apparatus in the background and books or notes on the foreground.
Some chemists were shown with their inventions,14 or working in the
laboratory (Schummer and Spector, 2007, p. 222). The iconic presenta-
tions of the chemical scientists were sober and reassuring, while their
public presentations of chemical reactions needed to be sensational.
Communication between a science and its lay public needs to be
multifaceted so as to emphasize suspense while reassuring the normal
nature of the suspense-makers—ordinary heroes.
The Nature of Scientific Languages: Relating to Common Language
There has existed specifiable yet episodic and superficial affinity
between chemistry and psychology. For the latter, the suggestions for
learning from the concept formation history of the former has been
episodically suggested since 1820 (Thomas Brown—Richards, 1992,
p. 336) to our time (Giorgi, 2000; McCrae, 2010) but to no avail. The
contributions by Charles Sanders Peirce to psychology, via philoso-
phy and semiotics (and impacts on William James and James Mark
Baldwin), find their roots in his education in chemistry (Schummer,
1996). Both chemistry and psychology also shared the “external
others” in their development as “external others”—physics (with envy)
and physiology (with ambivalence—psychology surrendering itself to
it, chemistry—trying to capture physiology).
190
Such lack of success in psychology’s fertilization by chemis-

try over two centuries speaks of a latent social-representational
block (similar to that in the proliferation of developmental ideas
in psychology)—that of discomfort with qualitative ruptures. Both
chemistry and developmental science elevate the notion of qualita-
tive transformation—by a chemical synthesis of new compounds or
emergence of new psychological functions—to the central focus of
their investigation. Hidden in such transformations—ruptures—is
also the uncertainty of facing the new, which could be dangerous, or
useful and desired. Both disciplines deal not with the world as it is,
but with the world as it could be. In the case of psychology, that focus
on the possibilities of change is further curtailed by the social norms.
Psychology operates in the context of moral, religious, and political
ideas of what the world should be like. This ideological stand guides the
development of the discipline, producing curious “blind spots,” as its
knowledge base becomes consensually validated. The result is an exag-
gerated accumulation of “right kinds of data” the value of which for both
general knowledge and practical applications remains often unclear.
In contrast, chemistry is known to be a science that creates its own
object of investigation, by synthesizing new chemicals (which already
alchemists sincerely attempted) and explaining how these could be
created (which is the task of scientific chemistry). Similar voices in
psychology are rare. From time to time we may hear stories like “if you
want to understand the world, try to change it.” Yet the historically
prevalent ethos of “prediction” (and “control”) has kept psychology’s
focus off from the Bildung of the psychological phenomena. The issue
of methodology—liberated from sociomoral social demands, yet under
the limits of the dynamic nature of the ever-changing phenomena—
requires a special chapter for deeper analysis.
Conclusion: Science’s Moral Imperative—Of Being Non-Moral
The comparison of psychology’s history with that of chemistry is an
eye-opener—psychology trails chemistry in its struggle to overcome
similar conceptual hurdles and in dealing with social expectations
about what kind of knowledge it could produce. Psychology’s progress
has been slow over the past century. Due to social controls, drastic
reorganizations of the discipline by two world wars as these force
migration of researchers and links with new social demands. Hence,
William James’s description of the discipline a century ago still feels
very contemporary. According to him, psychology
191
. . . is today hardly more than physics was before Galileo, what

chemistry was before Lavoisier. It is a mass of phenomenal descrip-
tion, gossip, and myth, including, however, real material enough to
justify one in the hope that with judgment and goodwill on the part
of those interested, its study may be so organized even now as to
become worthy of the name of natural science at no very distant day.
(James, 1892, p. 146, added emphases)
The century after James did provide a transformation, from “phenom-

enal description” to the never-ending parade of statistical p and F values
in psychology texts that have—vainly—been meant to arrive at induc-
tive generalization in lieu of science. In the effort to emulate the external
features of the ideal—pure—“natural science” psychology has let the
sociomoral guidance of its conceptual schemes generate an increasingly
massive empirical data base without the development of a theoretically
distanced abstract thought system that was crucial for chemistry’s
formularization in the first half of the nineteenth century.
The comparison of the histories of these two disciplines also leads
to an interesting paradox: in order to deal with complex psychologi-
cal issues (all deeply interwoven with the affect-laden psychological
functions that can be summarized by the vague term moral), the
science itself needs to distance its conceptual schemes from being
socially guided by the moral imperatives of social life. Psychology—to
be a science of psychological phenomena that are inherently moral in
their nature—cannot be moral in its theoretical and methodological
development. The lesson to learn from the history of both chemistry
and psychology is that of impossibility of “moral science”—the lat-
ter was the core of alchemy in the history of chemistry. Thus, our
contemporary calls for considering psychology as moral science are
deeply misguided—they subordinate the knowhow of psychology
to the sociomoral textures of the societies and let the sociopoliti-
cal institutions within these societies guide what kind of knowledge
can be obtained about human psychological functions, and in which
ways.15 Psychology is involved in a constant discursive struggle for
liberation from the confines it has historically been guided by—first
religious, then secularly sociomoral and political. Since its know-how
is literally very “close for comfort”—in contrast to that of chemistry
or astrophysics—that liberation struggle is long and complicated. It
includes the infiltration of the social control agents into the collec-
tive mind of the discipline itself. By making the social role of “being
professional” in psychology actively disciplined to fit into the social
192
mores of the particular society at the particular historical time guar-

antees the subordination of the field. What for chemistry was possible
after its breaking off from the confines of ordinary language while
preserving its flexible uses for different social communication tasks is
still complicated for psychology. The richness of the common language
could be a resource for psychology, but it can (and has) become an
obstacle for arrival at general science, be it called natural science, or
anything else.16
Notes
1. The notion “contribution to the literature” on a specific topic (e.g., on
social representations, on cognitive dissonance, etc.) is accepted in psy-
chologists’ discourses as a positively valued cliché. The more appropriate
notion of “contribution to knowledge” becomes an obscure romantic and
old-fashioned phrase. Furthermore, the “literatures” are often indexed by
the name of a theorist (e.g., “Piagetian literature,” “Vygotskian literature)
or a current fashion (“literature on positive psychology”).
2. Contrast this with a relationship of “this particular triangular object” and
“the triangle” (as a geometric form). The latter is not dependent on any
empirical information about the former—its freedom from the experiential
referents allows mathematicians possibilities for invention.
3. More specifically,
“. . . once functionalized, terms such as ‘intention to act’ are defined

within the model and require no further evidence for their existence.
Their correspondence with meaning of natural language guarantees
that they will always be ‘found’ in practice.” (Stam, 2000, p. 163, italics
added).
4. However, the notion of abduction by Charles S. Peirce has curious limits.

It was considered a failure by Peirce himself (Pizarroso and Valsiner, 2009),
and in formal terms it is a hybrid of classical logic (as a static alternative
to the dichotomy of induction–deduction) and the recognition of the
dynamic flow of psychological processes. It is here where a new look
at the dialectical ideas of Maimon, Fichte and Hegel (see chapter 5) can
be productive.
5. The reference here is to British weapons expert who was found dead after
suspicion of leaking sensitive information.
6. Brentano (1895) found physiology to be an unfortunate “middle field”
between psychology and chemistry.
7. Marcellin Berthelot in 1876: “Chemistry creates its object. This creative
faculty, akin to that of art, forms the essential distinction between chemistry
and other natural or historical sciences” (quoted via Bensaude-Vincent and
Simon, 2008, p. 99).
8. In late sixteenth century Andreas Libavius warned a student not to as-
sociate with chemists who were not philosophers (Nye, 1993, pp. 59–60).
193
Not being a philosopher in chemistry at that time meant being an

alchemist. Together with chemistry as “empirical science” that positive value
of philosophy vanished—between the nineteenth century and the 1970s
there was no noticeable philosophy of chemistry (Schummer, 1996)—as if
science did not need a generalized frame. In our century, philosophy and
semiotics are back.
9. As is evidenced by the trust in, and use of, meta-analytic strategies at ar-
riving at generalizations in psychology, belief that a summary of empirical
studies, by aggregated statistical “effects,” reveals general principles.
10. For example, “my high introversion makes me to be shy in public.”
11. A particularly difficult mental puzzle for the alchemists was an apparent
disappearance of such perceivable characteristics at different phases of al-
chemical experimentation. For example, if gold turns into red crystals, has it
vanished? Or is it merely disguised? Explanations for such transformations
could be built on analogy with transmutation (of souls), or masking. The
latter became demonstrated through reversal of the reaction—red crystals
could turn back into gold (Crosland, 1995, p. 38).
12. The contrast between concepts and pseudo-concepts (concepts that retain
heterogeneous nature of thinking complexes) comes from the work of Lev
Vygotsky.
13. The themes used in public demonstrations were widespread:
“Everything—light, electricity, magnetism, water, gases, minerals, plants,
cadavers and monsters—was apt to be displayed before the public. Between
the culture of curiosities, which flourished in the seventeenth century,
and the modern distinction between academic and popular science that
emerged across the nineteenth century, Enlightenment science strikes us
as a complex and multifaceted activity” (Bensaude-Vincent and Blondel,
2008, p. 1).
14. The making of iconic meanings of scientists and their inventions becomes a
popularization device that is removed from the original context of discovery.
See the case of illustration of the “double helix” of DNA and Watson and
Crick in the time span from 1953 to the present (Chadarevian, 2003). An
occasional photograph taken after the discovery in 1953 was turned into
a public glorification sign in 1968.
15. Contemporary history of the functions of the “human ethics” committees or
“institutional review boards” (IRBs) shows the direct role of sociolegal and
political guidance of science, under the appealing label of “protection of the
research participants” from potential adverse effects of the act of knowledge
construction. In contrast, the business of political presentations—media
message creation—is remarkably free from such confines (but subject to
direct economic and political regulations). The delegation of the social
censorship role from institutions to peers is a powerful social mechanism
that operates as if it were a device of purification—cf. Ceci, Peters and
Plotkin (1985).
16. For example, synthetic science—a fitting goal for any focus on the interdis-
ciplinary nature of contemporary science.
194
10
Pathways to Methodologies:
Semiotics of Knowledge
Construction
All scientific thought is dominated by the demand for unchanging
elements, while on the other hand, the empirically given constantly
renders this demand fruitless. We grasp permanent being only to lose
it again. From this standpoint, what we call science appears not as an
approximation to any “abiding and permanent” reality, but only as
a continually renewed illusion, as a phantasmagoria, in which each
new picture displaces all the earlier ones, only itself to disappear and
be annihilated by another.
Ernst Cassirer (1923, p. 266)
It has been my long-term interest to understand how a science, like

psychology, has become ideologically fixated in its notion of being
“empirical science” and concentrating upon the methods. The latter
are being treated as if those were the solution to all the problems.
Emerging as a thinker from a historically oriented European context
of the hinterlands of the German language room,1 overtaken by the
Marxist dialectics discourses that were inserted into the society of
Soviet occupied Estonia by the period of my years of studies, I have
never been able to understand how methods can be separated from
the larger scheme of knowledge construction. We have described
that general scheme as the cycle of methodology (Branco and Valsiner,
1997—see Figure 10.1). And, worst of all, I fail to blame myself for
that lack of understanding of how methods—particularly the variety
psychologists proudly call “standardized” ones—can provide solutions
to basic problems of science.
The analysis in this book provides a simple answer: the history of
being guided into being a natural science in its form while remaining
195
“super”-natural2 in its subject matter guarantees its fixation upon the

techniques rather than what stories can be told through those—or
other—techniques. Stories told have become mundane—these amount
to those by accountants (e.g., “accounting” for X amount of “variance”
in Z) rather than theorists. Theories, when used, are utilized in their
“umbrella function” (Valsiner, 2000a, p. 65, especially Figure 5.3) of
letting a particular empirical tradition gain visibility. The “umbrella”
of “Vygotskian perspective” may be summoned to give a protective
frame for any traditional method.
Alternatively, methods in psychology have been moved to become
theories (Gigerenzer, 1991). Many middle-level theories in psychol-
ogy emulate the ANOVA (analysis of variance) data analysis method
scheme, of assuming that the theoretical account can consist of “main
effects” and “interactions” in a neat summative solution. Psychology
has become ANOVAted! Or if not that, the acceptance of correlational
relationships in the data as the final point of discovery of generalized
relations blocks the beginning of in-depth inquiry. Psychology has
become an anxiously perfectionist science where methods—socially
standardized and consensually approved—dominate over ideas, and
where the acts of data collection become seen as the place where
science takes place. Given the consensual belief in the “law of large
numbers” increasingly large numbers of ordinary public are being
contacted for participation in psychological research, most of which
ends up with trivial results.
How can this state of affairs be transcended? Our historical cov-
erage hints toward the need of replacement of some nonscientific
background beliefs and theoretical axioms by new ones. Incidentally
the new are also old. As we can see from the history of the discipline,
most of the potentially innovating ideas have been around a long
time. They have been discussed, tried out, and have vanished under
the social guidance that directed the discipline elsewhere in its social
practices. In this chapter I outline a few of those.
The Idiographic Nature of Science
There is a good reason to return to Windelband’s efforts to focus
on two mutually linked directions in any science: nomothetic (based
on general laws—“what always was”) and idiographic, which we could
characterize as the single event “that has just happened.” Yet as such
we can distinguish it from other—previous—events by recognizing
its difference. Such recognition can be of inclusive separation of this
196
Pathways to Methodologies
event, in which case we are directed toward looking at the ways in

which the new event emerged from the previous one—a developmental
perspective. It can also be distinguished from the past by the act of
exclusive separation that leads to the classification of similar events
into categories of same identity. The temporal ties of the event are cut
and eliminated in the latter case. The event becomes a specimen in a
category of like events.
The idiographic and nomothetic sides of a science are not opposite
separate categories but mutually inclusive and necessary facets of the
knowledge construction process. There is an asymmetry in their role,
however—all sciences are idiographic before the nomothetic side can
become available. This is a necessity granted by the experiential nature
of knowledge construction. If the “empirical science” credo is taken
seriously, the knowledge constructor needs first to encounter one new
specimen of some (so far) unidentified object—the very first one. Only
after that becomes the creation of the new category possible—based on
differences of the single specimen (an “outlayer”) from the others. At
first, the number of cases in a new category is one—and the category
becomes established, when the discovery of the second, third, and N-th
specimen occurs. Physical sciences—astronomy, physics, chemistry,
etc.—are thus quintessentially idiographic in their first discoveries of
something new and, later, in their testing of nomothetic principles
in an experimentum crucis. Data accumulation—aggregation—plays
no crucial role in basic sciences. A single critical experiment—or a
series of its unique modifications—is set up to create new general—
nomothetic—knowledge. This unity of the two was recognized by
Windelband (1998, p. 19, see also Lamiell, 1998, p. 30).
Psychology—under its social canalization—has moved in a different
direction. As Lamiell points out,
Unfortunately, Windelband’s understanding of general has not
been preserved in 20th century scientific psychology. Instead, and
coeval with the emergent hegemony of statistical thinking, the term
‘general’ gradually came to be used where the term aggregate was
needed in order to convey properly the meanings under discus-
sion. The blurring, nearly to obliteration, of this distinction within
mainstream psychology during this century is arguably one of the
discipline’s most untoward epistemological developments. (Lamiell,
1998, p. 30)
By replacing the notion general by that of aggregate, the discipline

secures itself inductive generalization rules based on the “law of
197
large numbers,” while legitimizing the exclusion of “outlayers.” The

general becomes not only equal to the aggregate but to the “in-group
aggregate” from which the “unwanted elements”—the “outlayers”—
are excluded. This “in-group aggregate”—a heterogeneous entity as
it is accumulated—becomes homogenized by the act of averaging
or prototyping (Valsiner, 1984). The result is generalization through
the essence—represented by the average or prototype—of a pseudo-
homogeneous class. Through the replacement of general by aggregate
and generalizing to the generic inductively via the aggregate (see
Valsiner, 1986a,b), psychology reifies the common sense.3
Nowhere is that reification more visible than in personality re-
search, where the supposed success of discovering the “5 basic fac-
tors” and even declaring them analogues of chemistry’s periodicity
table (McCrae, 2010) constitutes “. . . much less a psychology than a
demography exploiting a psychological vocabulary” (Lamiell, 1998, p.
34). Demography is a crucial feature of information linked with social
organization of society, but it has no bearing upon the psychological
worlds of any individual within the society. Such trajectory produces
pseudo-empirical knowledge (Smedslund, 1997, 2009, and discussed
in chapter 9 of this book) and guarantees a standstill in theoretical
developments.
The reversal of this impasse in psychology is relatively uncompli-
cated—the return to the notion of allgemeine (Lamiell, 1998) in the
context of idiographic science. In the latter, it is axiomatically accepted
that the analysis of single cases as systems is the adequate basis for gen-
eralizable knowledge (Molenaar, 2004; Salvatore et al., 2009). General-
ity is achievable “not despite the N=1 but in virtue of it” (Lamiell, 1998,
p. 31—see also Salvatore and Valsiner, 2010). It is possible through
abstracting the systemic properties of the single case (idiographic
study) to make up a generic model—which is then in its hypotheti-
cally nomothetic form to the next case—again applied idiographically.
Knowledge grows through such coordination of its idiographic and
nomothetic component processes that feed into each other.
Unity in Diversity
Psychology since early twentieth century has mixed up the notions
of general and specific, treating them as irreconcilable opposites. As
such, talking about individual case cannot in principle tell us anything
about the general principles, and vice versa. This has led to “displac-
ing solutions” such as claims that all knowledge is “local” (as it is
198
context-bound) and therefore no generalization is possible. Whether

one starts from the general or from the particular, the issue of general-
ity is a difficult issue.
However, it is not so if the seeming opposites are considered as uni-
fied in the same whole, and their relationship is that of oppositional
relatedness (contradiction—cf. Hegel in chapter 5). As Lamiell has
pointed out,
. . . no logical incompatibility whatsoever exists between the study

of individual persons, on one hand, and the scientific quest for laws
or “law-like” regularities pertaining to persons in general, on the
other. (Lamiell, 2003, p. 244)
The semiotic subject status4 of individual human beings guarantees

that any general principle of psychology necessarily takes the form of
high individuality—in fact, it is expressed in the uniqueness of each
individual phenomenon. The question of generality becomes that of
context-dependent generation of such uniqueness based on general
laws. Windelband’s goal of finding the general in the particular is
satisfied in this perspective. General here is not “common to all,” but
“variable to each,” yet based on common general principles. This feature
fits the basic premise of the “second cybernetics” (Maruyama, 1963,
1992)—in open systems the regular functioning of such systems pro-
duces increased, rather than curtailed, variability. This means novelty
is the name of the game. General principles of systemic organization
give raise to ever-open flow of novel forms. Psychology, as much as its
stern practitioners might want, cannot be defined as a science of control
and prediction of anything—ideas or behavior—for the simple reason
that systemic control produces precisely the unpredictable emergence
of novel forms! The latter is necessary for organisms’ adaptation to un-
predictably fluctuating environmental conditions—and in the human
case—for constructing “stable moments” of preadaptation.
Abandoning the “Psychometric Imperative”
De-institutionalization of psychology’s methods is one of the pos-
sible roads to open the door for the discipline to escape from the
confines of pseudo-empiricism. This entails a simple return to the
basic experimental—or investigative—attitude in science long known
in physics: for each theoretically relevant research question the appro-
priate method for empirical study is created with the focus on the fit
between the phenomena and theories.5 The notion of a “standardized
199
method” is antithetical to this basic scientific notion. The only feature

of knowledge that is being given by the fact of the standardization of
a method is its institutional valuation: by the standards consensually
accepted by the given community of researchers in a given country,
the “calibrating work” on the method under question is considered
to be “valid” and “appropriate” for use to gain “objective” data. As
these consensual norms in psychology over the last century are
psychometric ones—built on the assumptions underlying the statistical
method—the knowledge base in psychology becomes socially guided
by such consensus in the direction of unquestionably accepting such
assumptions.
In other terms, the use of standardized methods in psychology
rigidifies the method and makes it incapable to produce new knowl-
edge. The method is not open to discovery of new empirical aspects
of the phenomena but functions to distance researchers from them
(Rosenbaum and Valsiner, 2011; Wagoner and Valsiner, 2005). The
social convention of trusting standardized methods as pillars of ob-
jectivity acts as social guide for the kind of knowledge that is possible,
expected, and valued.
The primary aspect of the epistemological blindness that the
standardized methods produce for psychology is the overlooking of
the dynamic aspects of the phenomena for the sake of turning evi-
dence about ongoing processes into their static representations. The
“empire of chance” (Gigerenzer et al., 1989) reigns without accepting
the dynamics, which may underlie the very ”chance” it is meant to
deal with.
Based on the analysis of these two trajectories already back in the
1930s (Watson, 1934), Toomela points out the intellectual impasse
of the dominance of the quantitatively oriented North American
trajectory:
Last 60 years in psychological research have given us thousands,

perhaps even millions, of ways how to predict statistically one
psychological variable by way of another. At the same time, many
fundamental questions have even not been asked because of limited
methodological thinking. We still find “objective” scores without
knowing how many different psychological mechanisms may un-
derlie the same score. We do not know how psychological aspect of
experimental conditions may have contributed to study results. Study
of fragments gives very little to understanding of a human person as
a whole . . .. Statistical probabilistic prediction has become an end
200
goal of studies even though most of the thinking and insight should
begin where the science of mainstream psychology seems to end now.
(Toomela, 2007, p. 18, emphasis added)
We can perhaps create a parallel to HIV in the biological world in

the form of IIDS (“intellectual immune deficiency syndrome”). Like
in the breakdown of biological immunity, the migration of dominant
ideas—propagated with a missionary kind of fervent—may break down
the natural intellectual immune system of thinkers in another society.
Such dominant ideas act as conceptual blinders. For instance, the axi-
omatic acceptance of quantification as the guarantor of objectivity in
psychology is possible only if the natural intuitive anti-position “but
the psychological phenomena as I experience them are all qualitative”
is weakened, or blocked (Brower, 1949, p. 326).
The suggestion to abandon the “psychometric imperative” as a
quasi-moral duty of the researcher to force qualitative phenomena into
the quantified straitjacket of statistically analyzable data is not new.
Looking back at his long life-course in psychology and evolutionary
theory, James Mark Baldwin made such suggestion in 1930:
The . . . quantitative method, brought over into psychology from
the exact sciences, physics and chemistry, must be discarded; for its
ideal consisted in reducing the more complex to the more simple,
the whole into its parts, the later-evolved to the earlier-existent, thus
denying or eliminating just the factor which constituted or revealed
what was truly genetic. Newer modes of manifestation cannot be
stated in atomic terms without doing violence to the more synthetic
modes which observation reveals. (Baldwin, 1930, p. 7, emphases
added)
The claim to eliminate unreflective quantification is not a crusade

against mathematical rigor in psychology. Just the opposite—what is at
stake is to make sure that the mathematical thinking tools employed by
social scientists fit the nature of the phenomena. The necessary input
data for statistical inference—elementaristic accumulative counts of
independent units—do not fit.
Leaving behind the quantification imperative would open a door for
innovations. Science of mathematics is in no way limited to statistics,
which, after all, is merely a narrow area within applied mathematics.
Formal models that developmental psychology may find fitting may
belong to the realm of qualitative branches of mathematics (Valsiner,
1997, chapter 3). Removing the “psychometric imperative” does not
201
eliminate quantification as a strategy for research—it merely restores

the primacy of the qualitative questions to which quantitative answers
are usually sought. The value of mathematics in any science is in the
potential for its tools to transcend the inductive generalization path-
way—that is usually supported by statistical inference—and move into
the realm of high-level abstract epistemology. This move in chemistry
in the 1830s–1860s made it possible to transcend the ideology of “being
empirical science” in favor of being a science—abstracted knowledge
system—with potentials for varieties of empirical extensions.
A Return to the Dynamic Methodological Stance
Whether the data derivation in a science is quantitative or quali-
tative, it entails distancing of the researcher’s experience from the
immediate experience with the phenomena, for the sake of arriving
at the power of abstractive generalizations (Valsiner et al., 2009). In
this sense, data are facts (signs) that are impoverished in relation to
the phenomena of their origin, and not yet empowered by the act of
abstractive generalization.
There are three directions in the transformation of phenomena into
data that have guaranteed the artifactual status of much of the evidence
on which contemporary social sciences are based:
• Eliminating the dynamic flow of the phenomena in the data
• Eliminating the hierarchical order (part–whole relations) in the trans-
formation of phenomena into data
• Eliminating the immediate context of the phenomenon in its trans-
formation into data.
• Eliminating intersubjective divergences in the appraisal of events for
the sake of the illusion of “objectivity”
Each of these elimination strategies blocks the movement of sci-
entific knowledge into vast areas of relevant information about the
phenomena. As we have seen from preceding chapter, elimination
of evidence about the dynamic flow of phenomena in the data has
blocked the advancement of developmental science for about a century
The elimination of hierarchical order has made it difficult to handle
issues of complexity. The elimination of context has led psychology to
overlook the social nature of psychological phenomena.
Methodology as an Epistemological Cycle
Since 1997, we (Branco and Valsiner, 1997) have been building all re-
search efforts of our research groups along the notion of methodology
202
as an epistemological cycle (see Figure 10.1). That cycle has two

major features—it considers the educated intuition of the re-
searcher as the starting point—as well as desired goal—of all
knowledge creation efforts, and it gives a role of secondary impor-
tance to the specific methods that are included in the methodology
cycle. Science is—and remains—a deeply subjective personal
meaning-making activity for the scientists. Scientists in this respect
do not differ from artists—they only use different means to reach
their goals
The crucial nature of the methodology cycle is the inclusion
of all philosophical (metatheorerical), theoretical, and phenom-
enological features of knowledge-making in the activities of the
researchers. The research process is a whole and the scientist a
holistic knowledge-maker who mostly makes mistakes (e.g., sets
up hypotheses that turn out to be wrong) for the sake of the goal of
finally arriving at adequate knowledge. Mere use of “right methods”
(e.g., our contemporary psychology’s fascination of ANOVA or other
analysis methods, or reliance on “standardized scales”) is no guaran-
tee of objectivity (see also chapter 3 on history of objectivity in the
sciences).
The methodology cycle in Figure 10.1 is in fact nothing new—it is
another form of depicting the classic scientific method that was ori-
ented toward arrival at general knowledge. Newton, Leibniz, Oerstead,
Darwin, or Einstein took this kind of unity of all facets of knowledge
construction for granted. In our contemporary psychology, however,
that model is replaced by “theory-as-umbrella” notion (Valsiner,
2000a,b, p. 65, Figure 5.3.B) where a currently fashionable theory
of some honored “guru figure”—Piaget, Vygotsky or any other—is
claimed to have created an overwhelming framework (“theory”) under
the umbrella of which the standard methods of data collection or sta-
tistical analyses are used to “create knowledge.”6 This way of reducing
the epistemological cycle to simple use of “accepted methods” under
the all-covering veil of “theory” is a move back (in terms of chemistry)
to a version of alchemy. Obviously, psychology in the twenty-first
century has much to learn from its own history, especially from the
failures of the discipline to capture the crucial phenomena of human
existence. The subjectivity of the researchers (see chapter 3) is central
to the methodology cycle—there can be no arrival at objectivity other
than through subjectivity.
203
BASIC
ASSUMPTIONS
(META-CODE)
INTUITIVE
EXPERIENCING
BY THE
Constructed
RESEARCHER PHENOMENA
THEORY
–SUBJECTIVE
RELATING WITH THE
WORLD
CONSTRUCTED
METHODS
DERIVED“DATA”
Figure 10.1â•… The methodology cycle (after Branco and Valsiner, 1997)
Dialectical Perspectives in a New Form: Structure of Synthesis

Dialectical perspectives have made episodic appearance in psychol-
ogy, being at times hailed as promising solutions, only to be forgot-
ten under powerful social guidance of either pro-quantifictional or
anti-philosophical social forces that have turned the discipline into a
state that could be labeled neurotic empirical science. It is put into a
situation of double bind. While the general ethos of dialectics seems
intuitively feasible, its misfit with the “psychometric imperative”
makes it difficult to fit into the texture of the discipline. Furthermore,
204
the generalizing ethos of dialectics fares poorly with the social con-
sensus of not seeking “grand theories” which are dangerously close to
philosophies, but rather build local or middle-level quasi-general and
often mechanistic models.
Psychology Facing Dialectics in the Twenty-first Century
As a decidedly “minority perspective” the dialectical perspective has
from time to time come under scrutiny for researchers in the twen-
tieth and in our century. These efforts have been few and remained
episodic in their nature. Of course there was the carefully sociopo-
litically guided upsurge of interest in dialectical perspectives in the
psychology in post-1917 Russia, which ended with the elimination of
psychology in 1936 (Valsiner, 1988, pp. 39–116). It is the perspective
of Lev Vygotsky on the synthesis in affective processes, exemplified in
the feeling-into objects of art (Vygotsky, 1971, 1987, for overview see
Valsiner, 1988, pp. 130–40, and van der Veer and Valsiner, 1991, chap-
ter 2) that counts as the best exemplar of the application of dialectical
principles to psychological events. The dialectical unit of analysis for
psychology needs to be charted out. Vygotsky’s effort was clear (even
if obscured by Russian to English translation):
Psychology, as it desires to study complex wholes . . . needs to change
the methods of analysis into elements by the analytic method that
reveals the parts of the unit [literally: breaks the whole into linked
units—metod . . . analiza, . . . razchleniayushego na edinitsy]. It has
to find the further undividable, surviving features that are character-
istic of the given whole as a unity—units within which in mutually
opposing ways these features are represented [Russian: edinitsy, v
kotorykh v protivopolozhnom vide predstavleny eti svoistva].7 (Vy-
gotsky, 1982a,b, p. 16)
Since the 1870s, the leading metaphor used to explain the need
to consider different qualities at different analytic levels has been
the contrast between water (H2O) and its components (oxygen and
hydrogen).8 Yet such application was not a dialectical theory in its full
elaboration—it could be seen as a sketch in the direction of developing
such theory. The water molecule is a fixed structure—as an example
it illustrates the need to study structured units. Yet in the molecule
structure there is no information of the nature of the ties that keeps
the whole together, and lets it transform into a new state.
Vygotsky’s predecessors who moved in the similar direction—James
Mark Baldwin (1915, 2010) and John Dewey (1896), also working on
205
the phenomena of art objects, likewise stopped half-way to the solu-

tion (see Valsiner, 2009b, 2010a,b). They managed to emphasize the
tension between opposites within the whole, and accept the process
nature of these tensions, but they had no scenario for the transforma-
tion of the whole into a new state.
The social inhibitors that have consistently stopped contemporary
psychology from developing new dialectical formal models is the
axiomatic assumption of inductive inference and of the operation
of quantification. Combination of these two leads to the Denkstil
of the researchers that renders complex phenomena unapproach-
able and guides the epistemological blindness of the researchers
toward ignoring synthetic (and, more widely, developmental) phe-
nomena. The acceptance of the assumptions of the General Linear
Model (GLM) as the basis for any inductive analyses further guar-
antees that psychology is blind to qualitative transformations. The
dominant role of statistical inference completes the elimination of
complexity from the researcher’s view. As said above, the widespread
move of a single statistical tool—ANOVA—into the role of a proto-
type of theories (Gigerenzer, 1991) elaborates the implications of such
“blind spot”:
When the analysis of variance (ANOVA) is used to decompose

variance, interactions describe relationships between experimen-
tal manipulations and outcomes. Thus, statistical interactions are
components of general linear models. But the dialectical method is
essentially nonlinear, and dialectical interactions refer to dynamic
processes rather than static representations. (Camp and McKitrick,
Under the influence of the “statistical imperative,” our contempo-

rary psychology reconstructs complex psychological phenomena in
ways that no longer represent the qualities of the phenomena. If such
situation occurs in a science, it would be natural to change the set of
axioms that lead to futile research, to another set that would open
the door for adequate general knowledge construction. That such
axiomatic shift has not happened over the past century—if anything,
we see the social normative movement to the opposite direction—
indicates that psychology is under social guidance by powerful and
redundant social control mechanisms. There must be some rationale
for keeping psychology providing pseudo-empirical solutions to hu-
man problems. That rationale can be especially visible if we examine
206
the shadow European colonial policies have shed over the world (see
chapter 11 on coverage of some of these).
The few existing efforts to bring the dialectical perspective to con-
temporary psychology have something in common—the dominance
of the phenomena over the semiautomatic application of ready-
made “methods.” Different areas of research have at times given us
examples of such efforts—environmental psychology (Werner and
Altman, 1998), developmental psychology (Basseches, 1989; Kvale,
1977; Overton, 1998; Pascual-Leone, 1984, 1995, ; Riegel, 1975, 1979),
clinical psychology (Greenberg and Pascual-Leone, 1995; Greenberg,
Rice and Elliott, 1993; Kramer, 1989; Verhofstadt-Denève, 2000, 2003,
2007), personality psychology (Giorgi, 2000; Holzkamp, 1992; Rychlak,
1976a,b, ), and social psychology (Cvetkovich, 1977; Georgoudi, 1984).
The increasing interest in the psychology of women has led to new
perspectives of dialectical thinking when viewing women in their
intra- and inter-psychological relations (Falmagne, 2009), and it has
peripherally entered into the discourses of schools of management
(Mitroff and Mason, 1981).
In the North American context, the appearance of dialectical
perspectives has been largely based on the pragmatist traditions of
James, Dewey, and Peirce that emphasize the dynamic features of the
phenomena. This has been combined by selective borrowing from
Soviet and German traditions (Holzkamp, 1992; Riegel, 1976a,b,
1978; Scribner, 1985). At times, the input from Jean Piaget’s focus on
progressing equilibration is guiding the efforts to introduce dialectical
perspectives (Basseches, 1989; Kramer, 1989; Pascual-Leone, 1988;
Pascual-Leone and Johnson, 1999).
A Curious Gap: Opposition and Contradiction—Without Synthesis
A unifying feature of all dialectical perspectives that have emerged
in psychology in the latter part of the twentieth and beginning of
the twenty-first century is their avoidance of addressing the notion
of synthesis. The primary components of a dialogical approach—
accepting the unity of opposites in the same whole, and the focus on
contradiction between the opposing but united parts—are in place (for
example—Jameson, 2009). But the focus of dialectical synthesis is not;
instead, we can observe the notion of transition in the processes that
researchers look at.
The notion of qualitative transition to a new level of structural orga-
nization is not made explicit.9 At times dialectics becomes immersed
207
in the dynamic field of “radical interactionism” (Smith, 1977, p. 721),

linked with the notion of “transaction” (Werner and Altman, 1998)
or declared “relational” (Overton, 1998). For example, in an effort to
introduce the dialectical perspective to managerial planning, Richard
Mason defined a system “dialectical,” if it
. . . examines a situation systematically and logically from two dia-

metrically opposite points of view. The dialectical approach begins
by identifying the prevailing or recommended plan and the data
which were used to derive it. The question is posed: “Under what
view-of-the-world is this ‘optimal’ plan to follow? This result is an
attempt to specify a set of plausible and believable assumptions that
underlie this plan. That is, they serve to interpret the data so as to
logically conclude that this plan is best for achieving the organiza-
tion’s goals. (Mitroff and Mason, 1981, p. 7)
The reduction of dialectical thought to the consideration of oppo-

sites—with the goal of optimization of their relations—fits well the
North American social organizational form of democratic governance
and the social discourse practices that have been established in the last
four centuries. Its roots are in the English social organization, exempli-
fied by the adversarial negotiation of disputes and justice:
Dialectically, a defense attorney implies a prosecuting attorney whose

role is to mount a convincing case for the defendant’s wrongdoing
so that conviction and appropriate punishment can ensue. As op-
posing forces that form a unified whole, the defense and prosecut-
ing attorney form a system that is inherently adversarial. (Anchin,
2008, p. 808)
The unity of the contradicting opposites of two attorneys—or the

unity of mutual animosities between two major political parties—
constitute sufficient historical ground for the premises of the dialectical
thought to fit in the Anglo-American social world. However, the unity
of these opposites has a fixed final outcome—there is no novelty in
the jury’s “guilty” or “not guilty” verdict, nor in the judge’s decision
of the selected forms of punishment. Neither does a new form of
governance—communal or dictatorial (e.g., the emergence of “The
Emperor of the United States,” be this role taken by Bill Gates, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, or ET, not to speak of a coup d’etat in Washington,
DC—all socially impossible scenarios)—emerge from the oppositional
process of contradiction between opposing forces. The contradictory
208
oppositional process between two parts of the same whole leads to

one or another pre-set choice to dominate over the other—but not to
emergence of novelty.
Thus the difficulty of importing the dialectical thought to North
America has strong historical boundaries that make its arrival limited
in scope (see chapter 5). True, the notion of synthesis is mentioned
in the dialectical discourse,10 yet its implications are reduced to that
of choice between options, and even to the task of optimization. The
notion of optimization fits the class of “well-structured problems” in
terms of Herbert Simon but is inapplicable to the class of “ill-struc-
tured” problems.11 It is in the case of the latter, which include most
life events, that dialectical processes lead the unpredictable flow of
movement between the known and the new. In a similar vein, dialec-
tical relations can be presented as a set of antinomies (e.g., identity/
community, openness/closedness, etc.—Gauvain et al., 1984) in which
the opposites are viewed as mutually linked and filled with tension.
That tension is maintained but not transformed into a new tension.
(overcome—Aufheben in Hegel’s terms12)
Overcoming the Limits: Beyond Selection to Synthesis

We can also observe the translation of the notion of dialectical
synthesis to the dynamic choice—a selection process between op-
tions that becomes presented as an act of construction (Greenberg
and Pascual-Leone, 2001, pp. 168–69; Pascual-Leone, 1995, p. 340).
There is an effort in the developmental perspective of Pascual-Leone
and its extension to psychotherapy research by Leslie Greenberg to
emphasize the emergence of “truly novel” (creative) moments in human
psychological functioning—yet the elaboration of how such synthesis
of novelty takes place has been hard to conceptualize. The centrality
of resistances in relation with which the dialectical process unfolds
provides a connection point with the Gegenstand-based world view
of Alexius Meinong and his Graz school. The phenomenological field
of psychotherapy brings researchers closest to the conceptual solu-
tion of the issue:
The construction in therapy of new “healing” schemes (one im-

portant form of therapeutic change) occurs by representing in the
new scheme both the pattern of coactivation of schemes that pro-
duced the in-therapy performance and the subject’s own reactions
(cognitive, emotional, or affective) to this performance. When, for
209
example, the components of conflict are activated in therapy, the two

opposing processes interact, and a new, higher level structure may be
spontaneously synthesized . . .. This new structure captures within
itself the pattern of coactivation of the previously opposing schemes,
as well as newly formulated material, thus forming a higher level
structural totality. Internal contradictions (often of a multidi-
mensional nature) are resolved by the tacit or explicit dialectical
synthesis of opposing activating schemes, and this synthesis is a
source of novel structures. (Greenberg and Pascual-Leone, 1995,
p. 180, added emphases)
The centrality of dialectical synthesis is paramount here—yet how

it happens is not explored. The preservation, in new form, of the pre-
vious opposition is accepted, yet the way of “leap” to the new form
remains a “black box”—called synthesis (“forming a higher level of
structural totality”). The tension to want to look at the synthesis as
the core of development and (simultaneously) closing up that look
by the emphasis on the meaning of the word itself (synthesis) as suf-
ficient may stem from the kind of psychotherapy that the Greenberg
team has been conducting—that of facilitating affective change in the
present13 (Greenberg, Rice, and Elliott, 1993). Such empirical defini-
tion of the role of the therapist makes it possible to observe dialectical
changes once they have happened but not analyze the very processes
of such synthesis. Yet they capture the spiral movement ahead in the
psychological functions:
Construction of personal meaning . . . involves a process of continu-
ously synthesizing information from variety of different sources and
consciously symbolizing those to form a subjective reality. This is a
dialectically constructive process that requires simultaneously at-
tending to embodied felt experience and constructing a particular
current representation of it. This dialectical process of symbolization
of experience in awareness leads to the construction of new views
of self and reality. It is here that language plays an important role in
constituting our emotional experience. Our feelings are influenced
by how we formulate them. (Greenberg et al., 1993, p. 57, added
emphasis)
Human beings simultaneously both discover and create meaning—

and use that in the organization of their lives. The Greenberg and
Pascual-Leone’s direction of applying a dialectical scheme to human
multi-level affective and cognitive functioning is the closest contem-
porary application that continues the Fichte-Hegel line of dialectics
in psychology.14
210
All these efforts to present the dialectical idea through the ac-
cepted terminologies of the twentieth century indicate the difficulty
of presenting the notion of emergence, synthesis, in psychology of
our times.15 It either becomes a “black box” explanation—easy
to claim but hiding the underlying processes—or it becomes di-
luted in the dynamic perspectives variously labeled interaction-
ism or transactionism. The core difficulty of dealing with synthesis
conceptually is psychology’s dismissal of the idea of hierarchical or-
ganization together with that of irreversible time. Synthesis can be
understood when emerging in time and leading to the growth of the
hierarchical order.
Constructing and Reconstructing Dialectics

The ways in which different versions of the idea of dialectics slowly
infiltrate contemporary psychology are very different from the frontal
philosophical attack on the understanding of nature that Schelling,
Hegel, Fichte, and Maimon attempted at the end of the eighteenth
and beginning of the nineteenth centuries (see chapter 5). Georgoudi
(1984, pp. 84–88) has outlined eight assumptions of dialectical theory
for the purposes of our contemporary psychology to change its course
from pseudo-empiricism to science:
1. Dialectics does not claim ontological first principles
2. Dialectics is a form of mediation
3. Dialectical relations are founded on negation
4. Negation furnishes the major grounds for transformation
5. Transformations are processual
6. Processes are characterized by a teleological orientation
7. Dialectical relationships are to be construed as concrete level experiences
and not as reflected abstractions
8. The scientific task of generating understanding is historically situated and
relational
Of these eight assumptions, it is the third and the fourth that are
critical for distinguishing dialectical perspectives from other dynamic
and interactive views (see chapter 5 on the notion of double negation
in Hegel). As Georgoudi points out,
At the most fundamental level, to recognize any existing entity is

simultaneously to recognize its negation, that is, its state of nonbeing.
The act of recognition itself demands negation. Thus, any stipulated
entity exists in a condition that forms its negation. (Georgoudi,
1984, p. 85)
211
The negation to something (A)—non-A—is thus a relevant constitu-

ent part of that what is being posited (A). The tension emerging in this
negation leads to the overcoming of the previous opposition:
Contradiction furnishes a primary impetus for the transformation of

stipulated entities standing in such a relationship. The transformation
is mutual: both entities are mutually altered so as to create a newly
stipulated entity. However, in the recognition of the newly stipulated
entity, the grounds are established for its own contradiction. Thus,
contradiction does not entail negation in the sense of denunciation,
but rather in terms of a negative affirmation. (Georgoudi, 1984, pp.
85–86, added emphasis)
The key issue of understanding dialogical contradictions is to sepa-

rate their meaning from affect-laden evaluation (“denunciation”). The
notion of contradiction is values-free—even if the substantive material
in a particular contradiction can be value-laden. As Jean Piaget has
explained,
Logicians are accustomed to speak of the principle of contradiction

as if it were a legal law, which by itself could foresee its own meaning
and the extent of its application. But it is clear that the principle of
contradiction does not apply itself in this way, for in and of itself, it
does not indicate whether something is contradictory or not. We
know in advance that, if A and B are contradictories, we must choose
between them, but we do not know at the outset if they are. (Piaget,
1928/1995, p. 189, added emphasis)
Piaget of the 1920s—still freshly versed in all the rich material chil-
dren gave him in his studies of their minds—could locate the limit of
classical logic. The actual choice, A or B, is considered rational as an
imperative of separation (of B from A). The act of such exclusive sepa-
ration is an axiomatic given for logicians, but not for a biologist (who
Piaget was). The grounds for choosing (A or B) are left open to values
and affect. This is guaranteed by the human use of language. The affec-
tive nature of human experiencing is necessarily in contradiction with
the ways in which persons use language to streamline their experiences
and move to new ones. However, the key question—how do we know
that A and B are in some form of contradictory relation?—remains out
of focus for classical logic. Piaget’s solution comes close to Hegel’s a
century before (see chapter 5), when the principle of contradiction is
viewed as setting the stage for the search for unity of thought. It has
been developed further by Verhofstadt-Denève (2000) in the context of
212
dialogical drama therapy. Such search for unity treats contradiction as a

form of relationship between—seemingly irreconcilable—opposites:
A dream, in effect, is an attempt to systematize all the diverse impres-

sions which assail one’s consciousness . . .. Suppose there is a dream “I
am dead and not yet dead. There stands before me my friend X, who
is himself and yet someone else. It is he who had killed me but I am
not dead . . .,” etc. In spite of the contradictory nature of these words
and concepts, there is an attempt at systematization. The dual friend
effectively condenses the characteristics of two persons that can be
brought together. The notion of death without death is an attempt to
systematize a duality of impressions which consciousness attempts
to justify, to unite them into a whole. (Piaget, 1928/1995, p. 190)
Psychotherapy process (Greenberg and Pascual-Leone, 2001, p. 183;

Verhofstadt-Denève, 2000, 2003, 2007) is the arena where psychologi-
cal issues necessarily display all the empirical nuances of dialectical
processes. It entails a pressing problem—a steady state of a dynamic
equilibrium—that is to be transcended by way of the therapeutic
encounter.
How Psychotherapy Can Reveal Dialectical Processes?
The dialectical operation of the human psyche may be obvious in our
everyday life actions and feelings, but to capture it in systematic ways to
turn it into “data” is not a simple task. The practices of psychotherapy—
by the mere feature of being devoted to efforts to solve “problems” that
have not found a solution in the everyday lives of the clients—are the
most potent domain for finding access to dialogical processes. There
is demonstrable resistance to change in psychotherapy, together with
the opposite—the desire to change. This “stalemate” of opposites allows
the crucial feature needed for the study of psychological processes, to
slow them down, in relation to their ordinary flow. A psychotherapy
client whose problem has reached a status quo and who want it to be
solved experiences the steady state that therapy is meant to break, yet
it can happen only slowly (if at all). The tension between the status quo
(problem) and the attempted solution is what can be observed by the
“psychological microscope” of looking at the psychotherapy process
(Cunha et al., 2010).
Such encounters utilize rather simple—yet psychologically pow-
erful—tools, like triggering the dialectical tensions within one’s own
mind by forcing the client to change the positions (e.g., chairs they sit
on, in a drama therapy). Chairs can be positioned, and repositioned,
213
allowing the persons who sit on these chairs to reposition themselves

not only spatially, but also psychologically. Working from the premises
of theatre—turned into psychodrama by Jacob Moreno—it is possible
to get participants to enact different scenarios of possible tension-filled
interactions with the others (Verhofstadt-Denève, 2000, 2007). The
example of how a therapeutic context operates as a microscope for
observing dialectical feelings-in-action comes from Leni Verhofstadt-
Denève (2003)—the case of “Paula” who is at the time of the therapy
encounter a twenty-three-year-old law student. Her parents got a di-
vorce when she was fifteen. As an adolescent she reports having had a
fine relationship with her father (Verhofstadt-Denève, 2003, p. 190):
“We were just like a couple in love, he picked me up at school with

his convertible . . . and then we went to the movies together; mother
doesn’t like the cinema, and she liked the idea of me and my father
getting on so well; she was always very busy . . . my friends envied
me . . . my father is an attractive man . . . but suddenly his attitude
changed; he no longer had time for me . . . he arrived home later and
later and . . . one evening, mum told us they were getting a divorce . . .
father had found ‘the love of his life’ . . . a 20-year-old girl. I’ve hated
him ever since . . . I still can’t understand . . . one evening I came to
see him, and I hit him and bit him as hard as I could . . . while his
girlfriend was watching, crying . . . I was beside myself with anger . . ..
That was about four years ago . . . he still keeps touch with me . . . but
I don’t wish to see him anymore. He caused mum too much grief . . .
I recently met Jack; he’s a law student as well . . . he’s a very sweet
boy . . . but for how long?”
In the drama therapy group (where members play roles for each
other—Verhofstadt-Denève, 2003, pp. 191–93), Paula introduces
herself in the I-form, saying:
I am Paula, I’ve lost a father and this hurts me more than if he’d
actually died.
The Director then asks her to stand behind the symbol for the
father (a group member chosen by P for this role), to empathise with
her father as much as possible and then to speak in the I-form as if
she were her father:
I’m Paula’s father and I don’t understand why Paula hates me so much
. . . I keep hoping that one day she’ll understand me . . . but I fear she
no longer wants any reconciliation (Paula’s eyes fill with tears).
214
The Director asks Paula to move back behind her I-chair and be-
come herself again:
D: Did you hear what your father said?

P: Yes, he’s right, I’m feeling confused . . . I want him back . . . and
then again not . . .. (added emphasis)
Later during a dialogue with the father, P yells at him:
P: You’re a traitor and you’ve dumped us like a piece of dirt . . .

D: Paula, what are your experiencing, what are you thinking of, what
do you feel? . . .
P: I feel rotten . . . why am I doing this? . . . I love him . . . what I’m
saying to him doesn’t correspond to what I feel for him . . .. (added
emphases)
This small example, interpreted somewhat differently from the

original (see Verhofstadt-Denève, 2003), is an example of how op-
posite feelings feed into each other, escalating both of the extremes.
This is of course no novelty for that part of psychology that has dealt
with affective psychodynamics. For our methodological purposes here
we can emphasize how the drama therapy context facilitates not only
the bringing out of the opposite feelings and letting these to become
constructed into semiotic messages (acted out in the context, rather
than acted “inward” in everyday life). The example also shows the
location in the process where the “double negation”—negation of the
negation—can be traced (first negation: “I loved him, I do not love him
anymore”; its second negation: “why am I doing this? . . . I love him . . .
what I’m saying to him doesn’t correspond to what I feel for him”).
What is not present in the example is the synthesis—of any form (e.g.,
a generalized “I am now at peace with my father” or neutralizing “all
this does not bother me anymore”). Of course to expect instant syn-
theses in a therapy session would mean giving almost magical powers
to episodic dramas.
Any theatrical enactment in a psychodrama involves creation and
use of semiotic means—symbols of language or other iconic or indexi-
cal signs—with the goal of breaking the current equilibrium. This prac-
tical goal of arrival at moments of synthesis makes psychotherapy the
location where the tension between affective experience and language
forms16 can be observed to “leap” into a novel form.17 As William James
remarked over a century ago—the creation of semiotic framing of the
215
flow of feelings does not in any way represent “the true” feeling—but
one that is already past, modified by the very act of self-reflection. His
example is of interest here
The present conscious state, when I say “I feel tired,” is not the direct
feeling of tire; when I say “I feel angry,” it is not the direct feeling of
anger. It is the feeling of saying—I-feel-tired or saying-I-feel-angry—
entirely different matters, so different that the fatigue and anger appar-
ently included in them are considerable modifications of the fatigue
and anger directly felt the previous instant. (James, 1884, p. 3)
James’s recognition of the tension between the feeling and the word
as unfolding in irreversible time indicates the inevitability of consid-
ering dialectical synthesis the core in human ways of living. The very
fact that the two levels of psychological functions—the immediately
evoked feeling and its mediated regulation by signs—are located on
the two sides of the ever-moving infinitely small time moment of “the
present,” makes the construction of psychological novelty an ever-
recurrent process. Meanings that emerge from the depths of the past
and anticipations of the imagined future are results of some kind of
dialectical synthesis that immediately turns into a thesis for the next
encounter with the world.18 The act of meaning making is that of
double negation—first, the reality of the event (feeling) of the past is
negated (“saying-I-feel-angry” negates the previous flow of feeling), and
the statement itself (“I am angry”) negates the process by which—the
act of “saying-I-am-angry” itself—the categorical statement “angry”
emerged. Processes that have led to outcomes—moving from a flow
of feeling to the attribution of the category “anger”—have negated
their own making of the outcomes, thus making the researchers’ task
of studying such processes complicated.
Learning from the Oriental Traditions
The first lesson to learn is to understand the permanence of oppo-
sitions—the relationship between parts is a given, not a constructed
one. The Chinese Yin–Yang opposition is often recognized, but not
understood in its implication, which is that
. . . the relationship of Yin and Yang exists in all things and “phe-
nomena” in nature, even in disassociated parts of things. Just like the
magnet, even after dividing into two parts over and over again, each
part still obtains the two poles of north and south. (Hu and Li, 2009,
p. 153)
216
The obligatory unity of the opposites leads us to the necessity to dis-

cover the general principles by which these opposites relate with one
another. In chapter 5 some of the original dialectical thinking—from
Maimon to Fichte to Hegel—was outlined. These relevant beginnings
have not been developed further—largely because of the dominance of
classical logic—especially its identity axiom. For any system of thought
that emphasizes linkages between parts of a system that belong to the
same whole—yet are different from one another while being parts of
the whole—such reduction to straightforward axiom “If A then not
Not-A” amounts to bypassing the very core of the issues at stake. As
Klaus Riegel playfully pointed out, Hamlet’s perennial question
B or not B, That is the Question
has an answer that bypasses the usual solutions offered by that
Shakespeare’s famous problem solver, as it has the form
B and Not B, that is the answer. (Riegel, 1978, p. 87)
Of course the answer is incomplete—what form would and take
in this picture? This has been a recurrent difficulty for theoretical
models that emphasize mutual inclusion of parts of the whole, within
the whole.
Breaking Out of the Cycle: From Dynamics to Dialectics
How can our thinking move from the exclusive to the inclusive
track? Figure 10.2 depicts an example of the extension of the dialec-
tical idea of the opposites existing within a whole, as they operate
through each other (compare with Figure 5.1). Building upon the
“membrane notion” (Valsiner, 2007a,b), each of the opposites (A and
non-A) operates as a “membrane” relative to each other, providing for
pathways of “movement through.” In other terms, two adjacent related
parts of the same system provide for conditional transparency of the
barrier19—conditions for dealing with the limits set. The question to
answer is not whether such boundaries exist—they are everywhere
from cell membranes to organ layers to skin to societies’ bureaucratic
establishments—but under what conditions they can be related with,
and when can they be transformed into a new state. Answers to these
questions need to be structurally specified—the locus of the relevant
action has to be explicitly posited.
Thus, the positing of thesis (the move A→ non-A, see Figure 10.2)
evokes its opposite of the initial position (A) in the form of the field
217
of non-A (Josephs, Valsiner, and Surgan, 1999). That, in its turn, cre-
ates the contra-positioning (“antithesis”: the move non-A→ A). The
latter feeds onto the former, and the cycle can enter into a sequence
of repetitive iterations. If that happens, the “thesis”→ “antithesis”→
“thesis” loop becomes similar to that of Möbius band—where the
figure and ground (“back” and “front”) are mutually connected (as
part of the system) and constantly exchange positions.20 Such eternal
dynamics entails harmonious tension between opposites (the Yin and
Yang unity, as exemplified by the magnet example, above). Yet—for
emergence of synthesis—it is the nonharmonious tension that can
escalate to a “breaking point” that is necessary. That nonharmonious
tension emerges on the basis of the harmonious one, through the
diversification of the processes in two “diversion points” (D1 and D2
in Figure 10.2).
The notion of D-points allows us to conceptualize both the process
as a background and as the basic unity of opposites—where each
“anti-thesis”
D-point 1
Non - A
A
D-point 2
“thesis”
“synthesis”
Figure 10.2â•… A possible structure for synthesis

218
“negates” the other. That negation is not that of a denial of the other’s
existence, but an act of counter-positioning itself to that other. This
background has been viewed in the context of Dialogical Self theory
as “mutual in-feeding” (Valsiner, 2002) that is widely present in the
ideational flow of psychotherapy participants; yet, in and by itself,
it does not reach any new breakthroughs. It merely constitutes the
basic process upon which synthesis can be built. The actual move to
synthesis comes from the parallel channel processes in both A and
non-A that “negate” the first negation (“double negation” in terms of
classical dialectical thought of Maimon and Fichte). The disharmoni-
ous tension leads to a sudden qualitative leap—dialectical synthesis
(Figure 10.2).
Psychological examples of the functioning of such complex pro-
cesses can be discovered in extraordinary situations, or aesthetic
ones. The person in tension needs to be within a relationship (with
another person, or with an object—Gegenstand) and of the basis of
such relating-with-the-object can experience the escalation of the
disharmonious tension that leads to a qualitative breakthrough—a new
equilibrium in a new form. Phenomena of such kind are abundant in
the meaning-making in encounters with aesthetic objects—the tension
between opposites leads to “catharsis”—a kind of “short circuit” of the
affective tension that results in new hyper-generalized new feeling
(Vygotsky, 1987, p. 204).
Example
A person’s self-reflection (thesis)—A, when activated leads to the
non-A of its opposite. Continuing with Piaget’s hypothetical dream
example:
Thesis: “I am dead” (A) → “But as I am saying that I am non-dead”

â•… (non-A)
Antithesis (first negation): Non-A (“I am non-dead” → “I am alive”)
â•… → A “I am non-alive”→ “I am dead”
That antithesis feeds further into A (“I am non-alive”), which in

its terms feeds further into the non-A field, triggering another vague
antithesis, which is being circumvented again through feed-in to A,
and so on.
This picture fits the notion of interactivity between opposites, is
dynamic, but it excludes any novelty. The general picture one obtains
from this dynamic of self-dialogue as a Möbius loop structure fits
219
the notion of omniscopus language use in fortune telling (Aphek and

Tobin, 1990). Language can be used as an “omniscope”—recognizing
all possibilities, committing oneself to none of them—but reaching
clarity through wide-field unclarity. For example, a fortune-teller says
to a client:
“you will have serious problems” and “you will overcome your
problems”
Single negation—of the thesis by the antithesis, and of the antithesis

by the thesis—gives us a dynamic picture of change, albeit one without
any specification of how development might take place. Change is the
result of different formations of the general antithesis (non-A is a field,
not a point), but none of them lead to new development as they are
resuppressed—the act of first negation—by the thesis (A), rather than
overcome through it. For making development explicit, the second
negation is necessary—of the whole A–non-A Möbius loop by the
tension generated on its basis. The critical question is the process in
points D1 and D2 that may let a new tensional opposition to grow in
contrast to the Möbius process (or not). In parallel to the maintenance
of the Möbius process, a new opposition can grow that negates the
maintained process. It is here where the adventures emerge (on the
basis of mundane life), or where a person breaks an old routine (and
feels good about it).
Blocking Possible Action: Negotiation Under Post-hypnotic
Suggestion
The time of increased interest in hypnosis and post-hypnotic sugges-
tions was the decade of the 1890s. Aside from examples of compliance
with the hypnotist’s suggestions, the evidence from the data revealed
remarkable examples of resistance to the instructions given under
hypnosis. For example,
I suggested to a person in hypnosis that when he wakes up he must

take a postcard from the table. When he woke up, he almost imme-
diately looked around on the table and his gaze became fixated on
a certain spot. Do you see something—I asked. “I see a postcard.” I
said good-bye to him and prepared to leave, but he still keeps staring
at the table. Don’t you need to do anything?—I ask. “I would like to
take that card, but I do not need it!” answers the man, and leaves,
not having fulfilled the suggestion and obviously fighting with it.
(Bekhterev, 1903, p. 14, emphases added)
220
Bekhterev’s example of the posthypnotic suggestion here indicates

how a flexible blocker or enabler of a range of actions (e.g., “I do X
because I want to” and “it is tempting to do X but I don’t want it”) is
generated through the opposition. The suggestion from the external
agent—you need X—(A) moves through non-A field where its negation
(I do not need X) emerges, and blocks the suggested action.
Semiosis in Making the Difference: Signs of Inhibition
and Dis-inhibition
The key of the regulation of single versus double negation at D1 and
D2 is in the hands of the semiotic organizers that regulate the diver-
gence of the relation of the Möbius process with that of innovation.
These mechanisms can take the form of ruling out any doubt in the
A–non-A relation, or accepting it at some (but not other) moments.
Such organizers include meanings that are moral operators—blocking
a particular extension into novelty by affective referencing of morally
imbued feelings of horror (“I think X but how can I think this way?!”
Antidotes to such organizers are revolutionary promoters—signs
that inhibit the moral operators and allow ruptures in the semiotic
systems to happen (“but I want to think this way!”). The relationship
between these two kinds of semiotic mechanisms is catalyzed by
hyper-generalized meaning fields (“atmospheric conditions”—Cabell,
2010). A visitor to an art gallery (“atmosphere of art”) may encounter
a classic nude sculpture of Ancient Greek masters. The immediate
moral operator would suppress the emergence of any feeling of aes-
thetic beauty from the encounter and would lead to protests to the
gallery personnel against such acts of “public nudity” of the marble
figures of human kind.21
In contrast—to a revolutionary promoter in the context of art
museum—a catalytic condition could inhibit the moral operator. The
latter might be in its regular place in daily life—the museum visitor
could be annoyed if his or her adolescent child were to be found nude
in public and denounces it vehemently. Yet in the museum, the viewing
of classic Greek sculptures would lead to the feeling of beauty of the
nude created of marble. However, it has not always been the case that
sculptures and paintings have occupied such special status. Phenom-
ena of vandalism toward symbolic objects—examples of Byzantine
(eighth to ninth century AD) and European Reformation (sixteenth
century) acts of iconoclasm (Besançon, 2000, von Grünebaum, 1962)—
illustrate the role of hypergeneralized catalytic signs enabling the
221
SEMIOTIC CATALYST: A FIELD-LIKE HYPER-GENERALIZED SIGN THAT ENABLES THE

“GENERAL ATMOSPHERE” FOR THE FLOW OF THE SELF-DIALOGICAL PROCESS
THE ARENA OF
GATEKEEPING BY
SIGNS:
PATHWAY
DIS-INHIBITOR
TOWARDS
(“ I want NEW”)
NOVELTY: TENSION
CAN OVERTAKE THE
AND POSSIBLE
INHIBITOR PATHWAY OF THESIS
SYNTHESIS
(“I must A or non-A”) AND ANTITHESIS:
THUS CREATING A ONGOING TENSION
FLEXIBLE SYSTEM RELATING WITH THE
THAT SEEMS OTHER
“INCONSISTENT”
Figure 10.3â•… The semiotic regulation process at the diversity point
disinhibition of moral operators by way of revolutionary promoter

signs. The recurrent phenomena of looting at times of uncertainty of
the social order are likewise phenomena that could be covered by this
explanatory system.
In Figure 10.3, the abstract process of diversity regulation is de-
picted. The primary function of signs is to inhibit the possibility for
innovation, and channel all the A–non-A process further toward
the dynamics of the Thesis→ Antithesis→ Thesis→ . . . loop. Yet
that primary semiotic inhibitor can be itself inhibited by a meta-
level sign (the highest in that hierarchy—and the most hypergen-
eralized of them all—are personal meanings about one’s self: “I
want,” “I will”). Such system of strictly localized semiotic regulation
processes guarantees flexibility of human conduct—and the epi-
sodic nature of “adventuresome-ness” of the system. Human conduct
is usually conservative in its ways, maintaining its modus ope-
randi in everyday mundane actions, yet “bursting into” sudden and
seemingly unexpected moments of aesthetic, sensual, or exploratory
elation.
The system depicted in Figure 10.3 is also an elaboration of the
unity of opposites at the level of human society, specified by Serge
Moscovici:
222
Our society is an institution which inhibits what it stimulates. It both

tempers and excites aggressive, epistemic, and sexual tendencies,
increases or reduces the chances of satisfying them according to
class distinctions, and invents prohibitions together with the means
of transgressing them. Its sole purpose, to date, is self-preservation,
and it opposes change by means of laws and regulations. It functions
on the basic assumption that it is unique, has nothing to learn, and
cannot be improved. Hence its unambiguous dismissal of all that is
foreign to it. Even its presumed artificiality, which might be consid-
ered a shortcoming, is taken, on the contrary, for a further sign of
superiority, since it is an attribute of mankind. (Moscovici, 1976, p.
149, added emphasis)
This double function—inhibiting and enhancing—is crucial for

developing dialectical notions of psychological processes. Each psy-
chological function is in a potential state of transformation (Figure
10.3) under some specific regulatory conditions.
Interestingly, most of psychology’s terminology does not reflect
this kind of unity of opposite tendencies within the same function.
Research on human attachment does not include, immediately and
obligatorily, the processes of dis-attachment. For example, stories told
in child psychology about the kind of attachment (types A, B, or C)
that the infant develops toward the caregiver overlook the immediate
process of dis-attachment that proceeds in unison. Psychology has
the habit of exclusively separating functions that are mutually linked,
and treating them as if they were unitary causal entities, rather than
dynamic processes where precisely the mutual feeding into each other
makes the given psychological function possible.22
Why would such persistent construction of conceptual “blind spots”
happen? Why would a discipline that is concerned about its status
as “science” limit itself from assuming terminologies that would ad-
equately map on the phenomena? The social guidance of the ways psy-
chologists think may give us an answer. The reflection upon processes
that involve unity of opposites that is promoted in societal discourse
is itself socially guided against explicating such unity of opposites. For
example, psychologists’ observational “coding schemes” or multiple
choice answer formats in questionnaires exclude the discovery of the
unity of opposites before the researcher has administered the method
to the very first research participant. Obviously, the situation does not
become different when the same method is applied to 1+N others in
the conglomerate that is called a “sample.” Psychological methods are
223
usually looking for respondents’ opinions—and not into the mecha-

nisms that lead to the statement about any of these opinions.23
This kind of social guidance at the meta-level (guidance of how
researchers are expected to think about what they study) may explain
the long tradition of reduction of relationships (e.g., mother–child
attachment as a process of affective relating) to static “entities” of
the “properties” of the participants in that relationship (e.g., “mea-
surement” of “attachment types” either in the child or in the mother
but not in-between them). Relational, and dialectical, perspectives
are socially guided toward exiting from the theoretical domains of
contemporary psychology. The idea of a tension between opposites,
which is overcome by a “leap” to a new (unpredictable) state, misfits
with the longstanding idea that psychology is a science of “prediction
and control” of “behavior.”
Conclusion: Double Semiosis in Science—or—Psychology’s
Social Self-guidance
All knowledge is encoded in signs. Some of the signs present direct
link with the phenomena, others guide the direction of that very link.
Such “second order” guidance creates the basis—Denkstil in terms
of Ludwik Fleck (1979)—for the derivation of relevant knowledge.
The particular focus of how knowledge is created is socially guided
by this double semiosis. Such doubleness guarantees both enhanced
focus on some facets of the phenomena and oversight of the adjacent
facets. Our knowledge is thus necessarily uneven—it includes areas
of expertise next to those of ignorance. One could say, generalizing,
that all scientific knowledge-making is a dialectical opposition of the
known and the not-yet-known. The ignorance that is inevitable since
our knowledge construction maps on our life courses in ways that
cannot be separated from our quality of living our lives. A scientist
fatally ill with tuberculosis works quickly and sporadically; another,
free from illnesses, works systematically from day to day.
The social guidance of the models of thought in science that orients
the direction of research activities is part of the internalized personal
cultural systems of the scientists. It is a particular scientist, after inter-
nalizing a particular limit on one’s imagination, who defends the limit
with increasing vigor and proliferates one’s own “intellectual blind-
ers.” Once this proliferation becomes part of the scientist’s personal
life philosophy, it becomes unalterable. We can see in the thinking of
scientist the concurrent presence of rigidity and openness—as their
224
dynamic interdependence guarantees both new discoveries and vicious

defenses of the general paradigms that are clearly inadequate—yet have
been parts of the life courses of their development. The conservatism
of science is supported by the paradigm-defending searchers for new
discoveries and solutions!
Notes
1. The Estonian land—a small piece of flat surface confined by the limits of the
Baltic Sea and Gulf of Finland on one side, and by not always friendly bor-
ders on the East on the other—was since thirteenth century administered
by German landowners. Its major university—that of Dorpat (in German
version) or Yurjev (in the Russian version), in actuality that of Tartu—has
been a German-style university of the provinces of the German lands
(similarly to Czernowitz/Chernovtsy or Graz—for the Austro-Hungarian
Empire). Precisely, thanks to its borderland status, Estonia has provided
the German-language sciences a number of major breakthroughs ( Magnus
and Kull, 2012).
2. This term may fit all the psychological and higher mental functions that
cannot be reduced to the elementary summative conglomerates that exist-
ing questionnaires and “standardized method” de facto are geared toward.
Psychology remains, as shown in chapter 7, Naturwissenschaft des inneren
Sinnes (as Windelband described it). The notion of experiential has become
replaced by “empirical,” even in the understanding of the title of Franz
Brentano’s fundamental book (Brentano, 1874).
3. As Lamiell (1998, p. 31) points out:
“There is no reason to believe that Windelband would have been any-

thing other than dumb-struck by the notion that a general law governing
some aspect of human psychological functioning could be established
simply by discovering that an empirical relationship has held true on
average for some ‘group’ of ‘subjects’.”
This is proven by Windelband’s later philosophy of the freedom of the

will (Windelband, 1905) as well as in his earlier treatments of psychology
(Windelband, 1875, 1876).
4. A term introduced by Lamiell (2003, p. 266) to emphasize that under all
circumstances of living the human beings remain active meaning construc-
tors. This indicates the reality of generality in ever-increasing variability
(both inter-individual and intra-individual) in their conduct, as predicted
by Maruyama (1963, 1992).
5. For example, Knorr Cetina (1999) demonstrates in her ethnography of
the activities of physical scientists that 90 percent of their time—after
experiment—is dedicated to the finding out whether the result could have
been caused by the “instrument error” or interference. In contrast, the use
of “standardized” instruments in psychology is axiomatically assumed to be
free of such interferences because of the trust in the institutional validation—
standardization.
225
6. This is evident every time when a psychologist claims to have constructed

a “valid and standardized scale” to “measure” the “zone of proximal devel-
opment” (Vygotsky’s concept—see van der Veer and Valsiner (1991) on its
history and meaning) or when analysis of variance is claimed to be usable
for data that are supposed to be of systemic kind.
7. It is important to note that the intricate link with the dialectical dynamics
of the units—which is present in the Russian original—is lost in English
translation, which briefly stated the main point: “Psychology, which
aims at a study of complex holistic systems, must replace the method of
analysis into elements with the method of analysis into units” (Vygotsky,
1986, p. 5).
8. This metaphor has been used in scientific discourse at least since 1872,
when J. S. Mill used it in his Logic (p. 371): “Not a trace of the properties of
hydrogen or of oxygen is observable in those of their compound, water.”—R.
Keith Sawyer, personal communication, February 20, 2002.
9. Often one can find these transitions covered by blanket abstract terms—
such as the opposition is declared as “mutually constituted”—for example,
constitutive relationism of Sergey Rubinshtein (cf. Riegel, 1978, p. 13)—
which of course fit the phenomena but have the problem of ending the
inquiry, rather than promoting it. In the semiotic guidance of thinking
two kinds of signs are present: the promoters (that enhance further in-
vestigation) and inhibitors (which block further inquiry, either by making
it superfluous—no more knowledge needed—or ambiguous in abstract
sense).
10. Actually, Mason (ibid, p. 8) makes an explicit reference to Hegel and the
notion of synthesis, yet without specification of how it happens. The authors
confess that Hegel’s “treatment of dialectical reasoning will probably always
appear as puzzling or obscure at best” (Mitroff and Mason, 1981, p. 32).
There exist powerful blocks in North American cultural history against
understanding and adoption of the dialectical ways of thinking—in contrast
to the history of Continental Europe.
11. The contrast between “well-structured” and “ill-structured” problems
was introduced by Herbert Simon in 1957. Well-structured problems are
those that can be formulated explicitly and quantitatively and that can be
solved by known and feasible computational techniques. The ill-structured
problems require judgment and guess (Simon and Newell, 1957—in Simon,
1982, pp. 383–85).
12. Verhofstadt-Denève (2000, pp. 34–35) explains the three meanings of
Aufheben: to destroy (repeal), to preserve, and to lift (change, develop).
The idea of development entails both destroying the previous state—yet
preserving it as the basis for new restructuring. That unity of construction
and destruction has mostly been ignored by the English-speaking world’s
discussions of dialectics.
13. “The therapist attempts to hear, see, and understand clients as they are at
that moment and to stimulate experiential processing rather than attempting
to formulate hypotheses about clients’ internal dynamics or to change or
modify clients’ cognitions or behaviors” (Greenberg et al., 1993, p. 3, added
emphases).
226
14. It also comes close to the differentiation theory of Heinz Werner—new

meaning emerges through differentiation and integration of experience
(Greenberg et al., 1993, p. 56).
15. An example of such fitting of the idea of dialectics into twentieth
century conceptual frames comes from M. Brewster Smith who ends
up translating dialectics into a dynamic perspective of John Dewey.
Dialectics
“. . . is simply a thoroughgoing, radical interactionism, an interactionism

of developmental process. The rigid dialectic triad is of no help. Rather,
what comes into focus is a progressive interplay of polarities: organism
and environment, assimilation and accommodation (Piaget), Self and
Other (Mead), etc. A dialectical process is a developmental and histori-
cal process in which spiraling interaction produces ever emergent results
that transform the very terms of interaction as it goes along.” (Smith,
1977, p. 720, added italics)
The terms used to describe the dialectical process in the quote above
create a persuasive story of a dynamic kind that in its believability op-
erates as if it is an explanation of the dynamic processes. Yet, the uni-
formly generic abstractions concatenated with one another are without
further specification and cannot be translated into concrete terms or
mapped on phenomena. Thus, they open an arena for inquiry while
simultaneously closing it for further inquiry through the use of appropriate
but not heuristically generative terms. The insertion of new and appealing
“black box” terms instead of old ones innovates the issue by providing no
solution.
16. The second form of progress in therapy process happens in the relations
of emotions in the person’s experiences. Here
“. . .transformation occurs by accessing new emotional possi-

bilities that were not previously accessible in order to change more
dominant maladaptive emotional responses. Thus, anger may be
accessed to empower and transform fear or shame. Sadness or compas-
sion may be accessed to soften anger.” (Greenberg and Pascual-Leone,
2001, p. 183)
Such reorganization of affect dominances is not dialectical in the sense

of focus on synthesis (emergence of novelty)—in contrast to “truly novel
performances.” (Pascual-Leone and Irwin, 1994, pp. 75–76)
17. Such moments of qualitative breakthrough are rare and hard to come by—
see Cunha, Gonçalves and Valsiner (2010).
18. This is captured by TEM—Trajectory Equifinality Model (see Sato et al.,
2007, 2009; Sato, 2011).
19. From a structural point of view, all living world can be described as a system
of boundaries that organize the temporal order of living through allowing
for slowed-down—or speeded-up—crossing of such boundaries.
227
20. This key figure of topology was introduced in 1858 by two German
scientists—Johann Benedict Listing and August Möbius. Its form is of the
kind:
21. This has been documented in the history of art museums in the United
States (Beisel, 1993). There have also been examples of ambivalence about
nude sculptures. A concrete example of the negotiation of the self-reflexivity
concerning public nudity (and its hiding) is the case of Antonio Canova’s
sculpture portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte as Mars in 1805–11 (Johns,
1994). At first accepting (grudgingly) the notion of being portrayed as a
classic Greek god—by convention presented as a nude—by the time the
sculpture was finished and arrived in Paris, the Emperor decidedly avoided
the public display of his glorified nude form.
22. There are notable exceptions—Jean Piaget’s treatment of assimilation and
accommodation as two mutually inherently linked processes in the pro-
gressing equilibrium of development (see Pascual-Leone, 1988).
23. See Wagoner and Valsiner (2005) and Rosenbaum and Valsiner (2011) on
the processes involved in giving answers on rating scales.
228
11
Globalization and Its Role in
Science
The postmodern mind has the structure of Escher’s lithographs: in
which the cathedral has not a single entry nor a single exit in view, no
view of long corridors of access to separate places—instead, everything
moves into another, ascent and descent, concave and convex, inside
and outside. The impossible space in external reality becomes possible
for internal reality of the mind.1
Luciano Mecacci (2003, p. 145)
Human social history has resulted in globalized, and at the same

time, locally fragmented ways of looking at our societies, and at
ourselves. Talk about globalization at our times is a complex within
which positive and negative, optimistic and scary, and other themes
are mutually bound. On the one hand, globalization signifies freedom.
Borders—of countries, and of scientific discipline—become increas-
ingly permeable. Old distinctions—between myself and “the others,”
between societies, between science and everyday life—take new forms
that both open up knowledge for wider range of users. However—
where old distinctions vanish, new are being made—and these may
bring with them frictions, conflicts, or at least misunderstandings.
Thanks to globalization, people lose their income in one country but
gain it in another. What is usable from the newly available understand-
ing becomes immediately abusable. That latter distinction is of course
very fluid and depends upon the social positioning of the evaluator.
Yet it is a testimony to the unity of the opposites within the same
whole that needs to be accepted and understood, rather than denied
by forcing the complex reality to one (or the opposite) single fixed cat-
egory (Figure 1.1.A). The general direction of thought that maintains
the unity of opposites—that of Maimon, Fichte, Hegel, Rosenkrantz,
and the Indian and Oriental traditions—creates the conceptual basis
229
for the study of both the society and the psyche. The question that is
open is how to proceed (along the lines of Figure 1.1.B), rather than
whether the axiom of the unity of contradictory opposites is a viable
starting point.
Our fascination, tempered by fear, in relation to globalization indi-
cates the inherent ambiguity in the value of knowledge. It can be put to
practices in very different ways. The builders of nuclear bombs utilize
the same knowledge about nuclear physics as the builders of nuclear
power stations. The same knowledge base about the human psyche can
be used by torturers and therapists—albeit in opposite directions.
Globalization: Unity of Opportunities and Suspicions
Globalization is everywhere in the twenty-first century, involving
encounters with consumer goods produced in countries very far from
one’s own, the new neighbors wearing clothes very different from one’s
own (and speaking in tongues one cannot understand), military ac-
tions to protect people by bombing them taking place rapidly in places
far or near, and tourists invading one’s home town looking for places
one never thought of any interest to anybody. Shopping malls and
high-rise apartment buildings may emerge next to the slums (Jackson,
2010)—all similar to any other corner of the world in their planning.
Vending machines for bottled water, condoms, and Coca Cola can be
found in unexpected places. These are some of the everyday indicators
of the whole world becoming a “global society.” Yet, as ill-defined as
the notion of society has been itself, so is its global extension. Perhaps
the only clarity of globalization is that it attempts to create a unified
society on the Planet Earth, yet with ambitions of colonizing the Moon
and maybe Mars.
What is “Global Society”? Economic, Political, and Social Tensions
of Globalization
Globalization as a term has only recently moved into fashion. It
became popular among economists and journalists in the 1980s,
together with the extension of corporations extending their interests
across their national borders. The strategies of (by now) “multinational”
companies
. . . included international market campaigns, global sourcing by
manufacturing firms, and shifting investment, employment, and
profit among different countries. More generally, “globalization” in
business journalism and economics referred to the integration of
230
Globalization and Its Role in Science
capital markets that was part effect, part condition, of these corporate
strategies. (Connell, 2007, p. 370)
As any economic change, the impact of it is ambiguous—some

benefit from it, others have much to lose. The promotion of the ben-
efits of the new “global society” in mass media went together with its
proliferation in the economic sphere—and rather successfully. When
social sciences started to study it—in the 1990s—they accepted the
advent of globalization as a fact, rather than an interpretation of the
rapid changes in the world. Sociology was not ready to return its
focus—reoriented toward “local societies” over the twentieth century
(Connell, 2007)—to look at the whole world as a mega-society. Yet it is
a continuity of abstraction—from the original “society of X” (engineers,
doctors, stamp collectors, etc.) the notion had been generalized to the
abstract “society as nation” by the middle of the nineteenth century
(Wagner, 2000). The notion of “global society” is a further abstractive
generalization along these lines. This “new global society” can be de-
scribed to be of increase in social diversity (together with the opposite
tendency of worldwide homogenization), difficulty in creating social
norms (as these are counteracted by local counter-norms), difficulty
in planning (together with efforts to make long-term multicountry
plans that are likely never to bear fruit), and—most importantly—
transformation of politics into a public spectacle (Baumann, 1998).
Statements by politicians are now accessible everywhere in the world,
yet they cease to represent policies and become persuasive as well as
façade-making symbolic messages.
The global changing in our lives brings irreversible changes also to
sciences. Globalization is not only proliferation of knowledge-related
economic activities around the geographical spaces. It also entails the
changes in the distinctions between knowledge creators, populariza-
tion of knowledge (see chapter 4), and users of the knowledge. The
close relation between the object of study in a science—be this human
mind or the “greenhouse effect” on climate—and the makers of both the
problem and efforts to solve it creates a social order where knowledge
creation enters into the sociopolitical texture of the social world, and
the latter guides the ways in which knowledge is being constructed.
Equality of Minds in Knowledge Construction: Transcending Borders

Science tolerates no country boundaries. A positive effect of the
global changes in economics is that previous national borders for the
231
movement of knowledge—and knowledge-makers—have become

increasingly open. Our contemporary turn to the focus on the study
of dynamic processes is a collective international effort. At our pres-
ent time, no single country—or a continent—has a dominant status
on the knowledge construction in the social sciences. This is a very
important aspect that needs to be highlighted as possibilities of free-
dom and creativity. Differently from other scientific areas which rely on
technological developments and are heavily economically dependent
on governments’ funding policies (for instance, the CERN’s group
in Switzerland), social sciences can be less dependent upon funding
institutions in their search for knowledge. They can rely on the diver-
sity of social contexts as triggers for the scientist’s creativity. Breaking
down old boundaries permits a type of freedom that becomes relatively
independent of the economic factors that make a particular kind of
research possible in one country, and not in others. This is the positive
side of globalization—as it involves the openness to emerging new ideas
from any place on the globe. Yet at the same time it sets into motion
a simultaneous process of limiting that emergence by way of setting
new barriers for what kind of new ideas are welcome. Globalization
for science is a double-edged sword.
The phenomena of interest for the social sciences are present in
any corner of the world, and the different cultural-historical back-
grounds of the researchers provide constructive input for new look
at the psychological and social processes. Our contemporary social
sciences are about to transcend their past as “colonial disciplines”—
set up to learn of the ways of the “distant and strange others.” In our
present world—filled with active and quick migrations—“the strange
other” may be our next-door neighbor (to whom we constitute another
“strange other,” in the reverse). Both are equal—economically and
legally—within the given society. And yet they remain unequal at the
same time. The dialectics of equality through inequality—of inequality
through equality—is accentuated in our globalizing world.
New knowledge in the social sciences emerges in very different
places all over the world. Different cultural histories set the stage for
theoretical breakthroughs which were not possible within the Euro-
centric social sciences. We can distinguish two basic kinds of orien-
tation to knowledge: toward general categories that are assumed to
explain particulars, and toward the processes that are involved in the
making of such categories (see Figure 1.1). The former is expressed in
the tendency of explaining phenomena by classification and labeling—
232
an abstract category with a label X (“personality,” “security,” “justice”)

explain most of the human activities in the Occidental world. However,
perspectives from other societies—with the focus on the processes of
construction of knowledge—can help to overcome that limitation. The
globalizing world of our time makes the connection between these
perspectives possible—yet not easy.
Consider, for example, psychology’s perennial question of self-
identity of persons. Within the Euro-centric tradition “my identity”
is a “thing”—something I “have” in “myself ”—over time and across
contexts. Since such constructed “thing”—a personal abstraction of
a static essence—varies over situations, the question of “what is my
real self?” emerge in the ordinary Eurocentric mind. In contrast, in the
social history of societies in India, where all deities swiftly move from
one identity to another, assume different names in different renderings,
the look for “my real self ” is a foreign import. Instead, the very process
of figuring out one’s life-world, the process of moving toward an iden-
tity state (without ever reaching that “static state”) is the self-identity.
There is much that the theorizing of contemporary social sciences
could learn from non-European cultural-historical traditions.
Dangers in Disguise: Following What “The Society” Suggests

Social guidance of science—and particularly of the social sciences—
works against the liberating force of breaking out from any nation-
state dominance in the given field. Social sciences are both useful and
dangerous for the survival of the social systems—hence their guidance
toward more of the useful and less of the dangerous side. Psychology
has been an easy target for such guidance. By its nature it orients the
thinkers toward finding faults and inventing “cures” that pertain to
the individual minds (and hearts). In its focus on persons, psychol-
ogy could be an ideologically neutral discipline. Yet, as persons are
the ones who bring about social changes, psychology is a science of
special importance. It may discover something that undermines the
vested interests of social institutions, but equally, it can discover also
something else that supports such interests.
In a more general vein, social guidance constrains the social sciences
to follow the “needs” of the social institutions,2 rather than be ahead
of the emergence of such needs. Following the powerful in anything—
economic practices, inventions of the wheel, etc.—guaranteed that
the one who is being followed remains dominant over the one who
follows. From this perspective, the historical turn from industrial to a
233
consumer society (“sex-and-shopping society”—see Brinkmann, 2009)

is an interesting case. The economic system of societies all over the
world changes toward making the consumption of renewable mass-
produced goods—rather than creating value through durability of
constructed objects—into its modus operandi. In the political domain,
it is corroborated by the rule of few-years-term political coalitions, in
contrast to the rulers whose social order needed to last their own—and
their heirs’—lifetimes. From the orientation to loyalty to the social
power, societies have moved to emphasize the imperative of choice.
In our days we are put in a position of perpetual making of choices
and glorifying to ourselves and others how relevant it personally is.
The choices we have are indeed many, except for one—the choice to
decide between different given choices and creating one’s own (novel)
choice. The latter is made either socially difficult, or delegated to the
selected and carefully overseen “specialists” in engineering or genetic
modifications. Globalization goes hand in hand with consumerism,
and the latter is about making choices, not creating them. It reflects
the historically increasing economic power role of the “middle class”
all over the world, which in itself is a result of economic advance-
ment of the increasing buying power of increasingly large groups of
the populace.
Of course the globalizing consumer societies need somebody who
can create new choices to be made into fashions and fetishes. The
narrow social stream of producers of new choices is also carefully
guided—a robotic engineer who might create a robot who is capable
of a revolution (a “Che Guevara Robot” or “robotic Lenin”) might not
be appreciated, while his or her peer who designs a robotic vacuum
cleaner or a mechanical nursing home helper might be hailed as mak-
ing a great contribution to the society. Our contemporary increase
in the regulative discourse about genetically modified crops3 is a real
example of social guidance of the genetic science. To preserve one’s
social power the power-holder needs to make it sure that innovation
happens only in those domains of knowledge that have no impact upon
the very power source of the power holder. Of course, this has to hap-
pen within the social discourse that values creativity and innovation.4
All such “safe” innovations are declared to be grand breakthroughs
in the ever-growing socially relevant science, while their “unsafe”
counterparts are either eradicated before they emerge, or turned into
immunized social coating that preserves them “just in case” they may
become socially useful one day.5
234
That general rule of carefully guided development remains in place

in the move to consumer societies—albeit in a disguise. The focus on
“you have a choice” and the imperative “you must choose” hides the
reality that the whole set of the given choices is not to be modified,
other than by the institution who has patented the act of giving such
choices. The creativity of an artist becomes socially set up as those
of makers of advertisements for low-quality (yet appealing) and low-
durability products—that need to be replaced to satisfy the owner’s
escalated needs after shorter and shorter time spans.
How would social sciences fare within such changing societies? The
change from the nineteenth to twentieth century involved move into
a world where discourses about human actions—by institutions and
by the actors themselves—became governed by social rules that are
coordinated by ever-increasing anonymous collectives. The result is
vulnerability of the social sciences to passing fashions. Such fashions,
once emerged, validate themselves in a tautological manner (“X is in
fashion because X is fashionable”). This way of social maintenance of
ideas and practices penetrates into the core of how knowledge is cre-
ated in the social sciences—use of analysis of variance (ANOVA) or
any other technique for data analysis is considered fitting because it
is widely used and consensually accepted by reviewers.
This openness to consensual fashions has led to alienation from phe-
nomena in psychology. According to Sigmund Koch, a mid-twentieth
century analyst of the state of affairs in psychology,
. . . the psychologists of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s were more

concerned about attending to science (i.e., abiding by its methods
and procedures) than to psychology’s human subject matter (i.e.,
saying something truly significant about human nature). (Leary,
2001, p. 427)
In the context of globalizing consumer societies, the focus shifts

from “being scientific” to glorification of the escalated flexibility of
“making choices.” Brinkmann (2008) has demonstrated how the fashion
for humanistic psychology and the constructionist fashion in psychol-
ogy have fitted the goals of developing consumer societies. Changes in
the recent century have been toward the fortification of the “consumer
power” to consume more than is necessary for survival and to actively
endorse the passive role of “choice making” between preprovided op-
tions. The dialectics of the active and passive sides of human action
is set up without contradictions in flourishing act of consumerism.6
235
One could add the social uses of evolutionary psychology to the list
of the diligent and respectful servants of consumer societies, even if
particular perspectives within all of the three—humanistic, construc-
tionist, and evolutionary psychology—may be critical of that consumer
society ethos. Evolutionary psychology provides the scientific halo
for the focus on making choices—making the already made choices
post factum rational by the focus on their “survival value.” With all
the emphasis on the discourse on freedom of choice and the rational
positive nature of making “good choices,” the perpetual irrationality
of actual human development becomes carefully concealed from the
public eye. Behind every public display of social talk there is always
its opposite—an equally prominent public silence. Here such silence
preserves the given social order—to emphasize evolution rather than
revolution. What is needed for survival is not making but creating
new choices—options that did not exist before—so that the present
demand structure of the environment can be denied by transforming
it into a new one.
The Rhetoric Nature of “Being a Science”
All the social efforts to find “science” in one’s discipline—in which
psychology is specifically under scrutiny in this book—are parts of
a grand theatrical performance where different opponents display
their credos in different rhetoric styles, where practical actions lead to
neutralization or elimination of the opponents, and where the dramas
of “clashes of views” seem to be of value for renarration. Such grand
theatre performance is guided by its directors—institutional agents
who set up rules for how the performance happens and how it becomes
evaluated. Since late nineteenth century, the major performance rule
for “scientific” psychology—fortified by the myth of psychology’s
“birth” in 1879 (see chapter 6)—has been the “laboratory” nature of
the discipline and its “experimental” method. Since the 1950s, the
latter has become combined with equally formidable social rules of
“the statistical method” as the scientific one (Gigerenzer et al., 1989;
Toomela and Valsiner, 2010). All these features of knowledge con-
struction have been highlighted by the social guidance—both extra-
scientific and intra-scientific. Psychologists demand “purity” of their
science by way of the semiotic paraphernalia of “laboratories,” “tests,”
“experiments,” etc.
It is a remarkable historical feature of psychology that it has been
guided to be “a science” by importation of the place (laboratory), kind
236
of activity (experiment) and way of treating the data—all of which

are extrinsic to the nature of the psychological phenomena. All of these
are symbolic transformations of ordinary life. In contrast, the psyche
lives everywhere—not just within laboratory walls. It escapes any ef-
forts to be experimented upon and operates by heuristics rather than
by statistically valid generalizations. With this in mind, we can claim
that psychology has become a successfully misguided science!
All this is possible when the discipline alienates itself from its phe-
nomena and becomes vulnerable to be used as a social-institutional
tool. The success of applied psychology since World War I is evidence
of the latter. Becoming applied has streamlined psychology to begin
to serve different practical interests—some of which oriented toward
innovation, others, toward inhibiting it. Thus, the extensive use of psy-
chology’s evaluation instruments in social-bureaucratic practices are
examples of stopping innovation, rather than enabling it. Psychology
is of ambivalent value for institutions—its know-how is both feared
and kept of interest for socially profitable possible gains.
Psychology as a Distributed Science: A Cargo Moving Around the
World
Every human being around the world is involved in some kind of
intuitive reflection upon others—and about one’s own state of affairs.
The social framing of these ideations has traditionally been the role of
religious specialists of the given society, ranging from shamans to the
Pope. With the emergence of psychology as science in the European
context since the eighteenth century coinciding with the proliferation
of the colonial conquests of European political powers and religious
missions, psychology became an export article to worlds very different
from those of Europe.
Most of that export of the new discipline began in the latter half
of the nineteenth century. It included the willful assuming of the
standards—and practices—of the “new science.” Psychology was
brought to North America by those young Americans who travelled
to Europe—first of all to Germany—for higher education. Its adapta-
tion on the U.S. soil entailed its embeddedness in the socioreligious
history of the recipient country (Dolby, 1977)—in contrast to other
“arriving sciences” (like physical chemistry) that had no implications
for the moral life of the society. Psychology changed—adapted to
the social demands of the U.S. society—while physical chemistry as
society-neutral discipline stayed intact.
237
The phenomena of social guidance of psychology can be best

documented at the times of arrival of the new discipline—what was
brought in, in contrast to what was not.7 Psychology’s expansion from
Europe to other continents can be located in the time period 1880s
to the beginning of the World War I (see Figure 11.1). Some of that
migration—like the one to the independent United States—took place
in the context of educational relations with the “European culture” and
under the motivation of getting “the best” education for the young
university graduates who wanted to move toward new—increasingly
secular—domains of knowledge. In the context of the United States,
processes similar to those described for German history of the Tübin-
gen Stift (chapter 5) applied. Only the secularization of knowledge
here was to be achieved through sojourns to Europe for the highest
education in science and philosophy.
Similar migration of ideas to independent countries was the case
for Russia, Brazil, Argentina, and Japan, yet with different cultural
filters of reception (Taiana, 2006). Such filters—pre-existing social
discourses in society—can facilitate or block the arrival of the “foreign
1885
1875 1903
1917
1915
1906 1916
1898
Figure 11.1 Migration of psychological ideas from Europe to other areas

of the world, 1870s to 1917 (years in the scheme present the
opening of psychological laboratories)
238
intellectual cargo.” This happens through the constructive efforts of

the importers—to fit the “arriving cargo” to the conditions of the re-
ceiving social context (van der Veer, 1999). For example, the presence
of Catholic confession tradition in France allowing psychoanalysis to
become accepted (Moscovici, 1961). The example of blocking of the
arrival of both Wundt’s and Freud’s traditions into Argentina for half
a century (1898–1950s—see Taiana, 2006) is informative. Despite
the efforts of Felix Krueger in Buenos Aires in 1906–07, his efforts
to bring Wundt’s psychology (and his own Ganzheitspsychologie) to
Argentina failed. Instead, the French tradition of linking physiology,
experimental psychology, and clinical practice that dominated
Argentinian society at the time blocked both Wundt’s psychology and
Freud’s psychoanalysis—the latter until the post-World War II times.
The reasons for such blocking were extra-scientific.8 Social guidance
of a science is part of the social self-regulatory processes of the given
society itself.
The second line of migration of psychology before World War I en-
tailed its being brought into the areas colonized by European powers—
India, Pakistan, Singapore, and the Philippines are examples of this case
(Dalal, 1989). In both of these cultural areas, the arrival of psychology
as a part of the “colonial cargo” created an ambivalent relation with
the ideas and practices of the discipline that remain alive to our days.
The British “crown colonies” of Canada and Australia constitute an
intermediate case of the reception of the new discipline. Coming from
Britain—yet largely built up through Continental European models—it
was innovation of a less contested kind. Yet in all of this migration of
psychology, all through the twentieth century,
. . . the flow of knowledge has been from the west to the east, from
the developed world to the developing world. It has been a case of
one-way transfer . . .. There has been hardly any exchange of knowl-
edge, hardly any dialogue between partners in which both stand to
profit. (Sinha, 1989, p. 122)
An interesting case of migration of psychology out of its European

hub would be the cases of those societies that were never colonized,
yet may have opened themselves to the flow of ideas and practices from
that central source. Two empires on the borders of Europe—Russia and
Turkey (i.e., with all the history of the Ottoman Empire involved)—
are examples of clashes of basic assumptions about person–society
relations and those of the imported psychologies. Both Russia and
239
Turkey never went through a period of Enlightenment. The concept

of the person-as-citizen with rights did not emerge from the notion
of person-with-duties.9 In both we can observe no full takeover of
European (and later American) versions of scientific psychology, nor
the emergence of fully indigenous psychologies. Episodically, creative
new ideas emerged from the work of scientists from these marginal
backgrounds—the work of Lev Vygotsky and Muzafer Sherif serving
as prime examples—yet psychology as a whole discipline has remained
a historical patchwork of various waves of borrowings.
Changing of the Center
After World War I, and particularly after 1933 and during World
War II, the center of worldwide dominance in psychology relocated
from Europe to the United States (Figure 11.2). Yet the one-sidedness
of export of psychology continued from the “new center” in ways simi-
lar—or even exaggerated—than in the case of the previous Eurocentric
exportation. It takes the form of proliferation of teaching tools from the
donor source to the various recipients around the world. Psychology’s
export becomes built upon the earlier flow of other missionary efforts
emanating from a society with strong exceptionalist self-credo.
The special status of the United States—an independent country of
deep missionary attitudes, which over the twentieth century has been
an economic superpower—adds to the ease of the one-sided transfer
of the practices of psychology. Furthermore, what becomes exported
from psychology transformed in the U.S. context—standardized
assessment instruments and therapeutic practices—are consumer
products similar to hamburgers, toothbrushes, and Hollywood films.
Such products are easy to “package” for the recipients who operate
under the belief in the exceptionality of products made in a privileged
country. Often such introductions of “the cargo” are built on the local
social institutions. In Singapore and Fiji, for example, psychology was
tied with social work and medicine, while in Malaysia and Indonesia
the first carriers were educational institutions (Dalal, 1989, p. 128). Of
course the “unwrapping” of such packages in the local contexts triggers
the inevitable ambivalence of such practices in new contexts.10 Some of
the basic assumptions on which psychology in the European and North
American contexts has been built—the primacy of the autonomous in-
dividual being the best core example—simply are not applicable in the
rest of the world (Chaudhary, 2012). Instead, we are better off starting
from the notion of socially interdependent person whose autonomy is
240
a negotiated settlement (rather than an initial given) in one’s relations

with the social networks of family and community.
The political landscape after World War II set the stage for prolifera-
tion of psychology from the newly established power center (the United
States) to the rest of the world. Even though psychology “made in USA”
has been dominant—similarly to Hollywood movies and the exportation
of McDonald’s—it has by no means been monological. The opposing su-
perpower—the Soviet Union—attempted to export its style of psychol-
ogy (Valsiner, 1988) to the rest of the world, with particular successes
in the East European “control zone,” China, Vietnam, and a number of
countries in South America (Bhantumnavin, 1987; Hac, 1987; Taiana,
2006; van der Veer, 1999). The general focus on dynamics of psychologi-
cal processes and their embeddedness in action contexts—transformed
remnants of nineteenth century German philosophical and dialecti-
cal perspectives—were thus transported to new locations under the
label “made in USSR.” In contrast, German exports of psychology after
World War II were practically eliminated (with the probable exception
of Namibia) with psychology in Germany (West) becoming an active
and docile recipient from North America of the very discipline that
some hundred years before sailed off in the opposite direction.
Figure 11.2 Directions of missionary efforts: migration of psychological

ideas from North America to other areas of the world, 1970s to
2010s (solid arrows) and from Soviet Union until its demise in
1991 (broken arrows)
241
Globalization and Social Science: A Two-Way Process

Contemporary social talk is filled with references to globalization.
Ambivalence about global extension of previously national processes
carries over to the internationalization of the social sciences. The
proliferation of scientific know-how is a complex test case of knowl-
edge, since
The modern sectors of the Third World societies are now populated
by people who are in important respect Westernized, and this is
particularly true of students. The schools and universities that train
students in the modern sector are typically modeled after U.S. insti-
tutions, and with respect to music, films, clothing, and many other
aspects of their lives, these students are very similar to students in
U.S. institutions. We have argued that it is misleading to “test” the
“universality” of psychological theories and findings by comparing
the results of studies involving student participants in First, Second,
and Third World countries. Such studies are “within culture” (the
culture of modern students) and have simply served the double
reification process. (Moghaddam and Lee, 2006, p. 179)
Yet, if we look back over a century, a similar globalization existed

before (Figure 11.1)—only it was centered in Europe. Cultural tradi-
tions migrate in their ways in any century. The central globalizing force
for Europe in the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries was the seafar-
ing explorations that led to the colonial expansion. Before that, the
crusades and the role of empires that linked the historic Greece and
India were functioning in a similar way. Psychology’s export is a post-
colonial movement—there exist forms of ethnocentrism in Western
psychology. First, there is a core racism embedded in a number of basic
assumptions (Teo and Febbraro, 2003). The limitations of that are obvi-
ous and easy to overcome. Yet there is a hidden form of ethnocentrism
that characterizes psychology’s practices—the insistence upon English
language primacy in creating psychological vocabulary.
However, treating globalization in terms of a unidirectional
culture transfer model (Figure 11.3.A) would be an illusion. No cul-
tural transfer process—between persons, communities, societies, or
cultural areas—can be viewed as simple transmission of “containers”
of “cargo” that would keep their original functions in the land of the
recipients. The processes of cultural transfer are always bidirectional
in their nature (Figure 11.3.B). This entails an active stance by the
recipients in the process of “unpacking” of the messages from the
“donor,” and their reconstruction in new forms—from the viewpoint
242
of both the “donor” and the “recipient.” The example of cultural filters
of reception that blocked the arrival of Wundt’s and Freud’s ideas into
Argentina indicates the negotiated nature of the reception process
where the “normal state” in reception is ignoring or neutralizing the
incoming message.
Of course the unidirectional model (Figure 11.3.A) is a version of
the bidirectional model, with the suppression of the active role of the
recipient. The latter is often the case in administratively introduced
(enforced) acceptance of a given authoritative message, turned into an
authoritarian one. The phenomena well described by Stanley Milgram
in his studies on obedience to authority can be observed in a mac-
roscale in the exportation of psychological know-how from the United
States. It is often the case that North American college textbooks of
psychology—one of the major ways11 in which export takes place—are
misfitting with the cultural contexts of the recipient societies. Aside
from the differences in the cultural-historical underlying assumptions
A. Uni-directional model
PERSON PERSON
x’ x’’ B
A
B. Bi-directional cultural transfer model
PERSON PERSON
x’ x’’
A B
Figure 11.3 Two possible ways of looking at cultural transfer
243
about the human psyche, these textbooks also export the focus on
fragmented knowledge. Fragmentation of knowledge is encoded in
the multiple choice kinds of testing methods—to which the textbooks
are preemptively fitted. We can observe clearly voiced dissatisfaction
with such textbooks by the instructors all over the world—followed
by use of these textbooks, and translating of more of similar books—
rather than writing one’s own that would more appropriately fit the
local context. The “liberation psychology” movement—emphasizing
the value of indigenous psychologies—has built its argument on such
protest. Yet the change in practices has largely not followed suit.
Indigenous Psychologies: Contradictions and Opportunities
The other side of globalization, aside from new economic coloni-
zation of the “Third World,” is the rapid empowerment—economic
and political—of the people in these previously “poor” or “backward”
countries.12 The latter growth leads to not only economic development
but to selectivity about the sociocultural messages received from the
former “dominant partners.” The systems of social representations that
guide the cultural transfer of know-how are explicitly bidirectional in
their kind. Thus, general notions about liberty, democracy, fairness, etc.
operate differently in different areas of the self-globalizing world:
. . . it has become quite clear that Western-style democracy has to

be modified so as to satisfy the urgent Asian desire for economic
progress and social justice. Liberty, as this term is used in the West,
has mainly the negative connotation of freedom from arbitrary
restraint. In the Asian setting, it must be given a positive content;
governments have to assume a greater responsibility for provid-
ing opportunities for the growth and self-realization of citizens.
(Espiritu, 1989, p. 112)
The social movements to create indigenous psychologies are based

on such recognition of differences in basic assumptions. Indigenous is
not a pejorative word. We are all indigenous as unique human beings,
social units, and societies, coming to sudden contact with others of the
same kind and discovering that it is “the other” who is indigenous, not
ourselves. Different ways of actions follow: changing the other (by mis-
sionary or military conquests) or using the other for production (by im-
porting slaves, or allowing “guest workers” temporarily into “our country”
to alleviate labor shortages), or for consumption (creating consumer
demands for our products—arms or hamburgers—in their places).
244
In contrast to such administrative acts against the emergence of vari-

ous indigenous psychologies (Chakkarath, 2012) constitutes a case of
“liberation psychology”—creating psychology on the grass roots basis
that is not in the service of social, religious, or political institutions.
An indigenous psychology
. . . is the study of human behavior and mental processes within

a cultural context that relies on values, concepts, belief systems,
methodologies, and other resources indigenous to the specific ethnic
or cultural group under investigation; these indigenous resources
may be applied at different points in the entire process by which
psychological knowledge is generated. (Ho, 1998, p. 94)
Indigenous psychologies emerge at the intersection of political and

religious oppositions, and de facto become parts of these. In some
countries the direction of the political system is contradictory to Euro-
American psychology: in Pakistan and Indonesia, it contradicts Islam;
in China, Marxism (Dalal, 1989). It is not surprising that the social
movements for indigenization of psychology emerge at the margins
of such political and religious dialogues—in the Philippines (where
the Islamic, Buddhist, and Christian religious ideologies meet), rather
than in the countries in the region where each of these is in a domi-
nant position. This was similar during the emergence of psychology in
Germany at the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—at the intersec-
tion of the Protestant and Catholic split, together with the ambivalence
of the French Revolution and its aftermath.
Dialogues of Colonial Pasts: Psychology on the Philippines
The Philippines is one of the illusory constructions of political unity
that our contemporary political discourse likes to imply. It is hardly
anything more than an act of imagination to consider an archipelago
of 7,107 islands which are inhabited by over 60 million people of mixed
origins—native Filipino, Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Spanish—as one
homogeneous country. The Philippines is the margin for meeting of
three religious teachings—Islam, Christianity (Catholic and popular
Iglesia ni Kristo), and Buddhist. Having been the colony of Spain—
and later captured by the United States—the Philippines are a perfect
“melting pot” of different religious and social bases for living, and for
hybridizing social sciences.
The Spanish colonial and Catholic past brought to the Philippines
traces of eighteenth to nineteenth century philosophical psychology,13
245
while in the 1920s the British and North American versions of psy-
chology arrived. Curiously, the German tradition of Wilhelm Wundt
arrived much later, with the establishment of psychology department
at University of San Carlos at Cebu in 1954 (Enriquez, 1992, p. 15).
The reliance on the work of Wundt, Külpe, and Lindworsky was no-
table in the Cebu tradition in the 1960s. Furthermore, the Catholic
religious order set the stage for Belgian psychological influences at
St. Louis University in North Philippines. Such heterogeneity of the
varied trade routes bringing psychology in from various locations—
Spain, Belgium, Germany, and USA—in a time order that is different
from the “donor countries’” histories and embedded in the particular
history of the Philippines.
Specifics of the Philippine perspective emerge from the dialogue
between the Philippine psychologists involved in direct transition of
Euro-American psychology to their country, and their colleagues who
resisted such “cargo cult.”
As far as its position on the science-humanism issue is concerned,

Sikolohiyang Pilipino refuses to concede that the differences in the
orientation of science and humanism are irreconcilable. Sikolohiyang
Pilipino utilizes scientific methodology in the study of psychological
phenomena. However, it goes beyond the cold and impartial methods
employed by science in the belief that science is only a means to a
more fundamental end which is to serve the welfare of man, includ-
ing the Filipino. Sikolohiyang Pilipino is concerned not only with
the universal validity of psychological science but also in utilizing
such for the purpose of serving the interest of all mankind, thereby
affording protection to the disadvantaged Third World countries
like the Philippines. Sikolohiyang Pilipino thus aims to use science
to enhance, not to dehumanize, man. (Enriquez, 1992, p. 27)
The refusal to separate the Natur- and Geisteswissenschaft-oriented

sides of the psyche—that was the result of the social segregation of
social sciences in Germany in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—
remains in place in the Philippines.
Maintaining Spirituality in Science: New Psychology in India
Similarly to the Philippines, psychology in India has gone through
a phase of accommodation to the inserted Euro-American elements
of the study of the human psyche (Sinha, 1987) and overcome it by
insisting upon learning from the rich philosophical traditions of history
of the subcontinent. Yet, in its new incarnation, it resists the notion
246
of being “indigenous” and strives toward new course of proliferation.

Indian Psychology (IP) is
. . . deemed to be a universal psychology. It cannot be subsumed

under the labels of indigenous, folk, or cultural psychology, if that
purports to delimit the scope of psychological inquiry. For want of
a new term it has been also labeled as Greater Psychology . . . The
vast expanse of IP attends to the perennial issues of human existence
(e.g., human surviving, virtues, self-understanding, self-control,
Yoga, meditation, human conduct, pain, misery, kleshas,14 happi-
ness, bliss, health, well being, justice, morality, conflict) which are
not bound by any geographical region or time period. (Dalal and
Misra, 2010, p. 138)
The prospective program for developing a universal psychol-

ogy from the basis of the multitude of cultural conditions in India
(Chaudhary, 2004) and making use of the focus on higher psychologi-
cal functions (which have usually been left unanalyzed in empirical
traditions of psychology in the West over the twentieth century) cre-
ates a wide developmental perspective for the future. This is further
fortified by the realistic nature of the self in India—instead of notion of
the “I” centrality it is built upon the “we”-focus (Kapur, Subramanyam,
and Shah, 1997). Its key is the role of philosophy in psychology, and
it borrows its creativity from art.
Philosophy has not been separated from the new psychology in
India—the version that transcends the colonial past (Bhawuk, 2010;
Paranjpe, 1998; Valsiner, 2001). The new psychology in India has its
. . . emphasis on spirituality (adhyãtma) as a primary driving force

behind the kind of knowledge it pursues. Accordingly, the focus is on
self-knowledge and the attainment of self-realisation in the higher
states of consciousness. (Paranjpe, 2011, p. 12)
With this emphasis, the hierarchical nature of human psychological

functions—“lower,” “higher” (intentional acts) and “the highest” (the
spiritual level of knowing)—are all integrated in the course of human
life. In the context of India, science was practiced within religious
and spiritual study, rather than in opposition to it (Chaudhary, 2010,
p. 285). Starting from that unity of perspectives, it is not surprising
that the stated goals of the new universal Indian Psychology (IP) are
precisely opposite to the twentieth century Western psychology—to
the notion of prediction and control of behavior.15 Instead of external
247
features of conduct—behavior—it is a new form of the study of con-

sciousness that is built on the Indian traditions. IP is seen as applied
in its nature, working toward the liberation of the human beings from
being controlled (by others, and oneself ). It posits a telos—an ideal
state of being—and
. . . deals with the methods one can follow to attain that state. It
discusses the practices through which people can transform their
own lives to attain perfection, and thereby change the world they
live in. The goal of IP is to help a person move from a conditioned
state (mechanical and habitual thinking and responding) to an un-
conditioned state of freedom and liberation. (Dalal and Misra, 2010,
While the twentieth century goal of Western psychology was pre-

cisely to make a person act in conditioned ways so that people become
fitted into machine-like roles in social hierarchies, the new IP turns
that telos around and attempts to move the persons into transforma-
tions beyond any conditioning to an unconditioned state of heightened
freedom of creating one’s own conditions16 for acting, feeling, and
thinking. IP recognizes the limits of psychology’s history in modeling
itself after physical rather than biological sciences:
Arguably, psychology’s enthusiasm for prediction follows from the

highly successful prediction in physics of various subatomic par-
ticles inspired by the continued success of theoretical physics, mod-
ern psychology has committed itself to the hypothetico-deductive
model in research, which demands making predictions—often called
hypotheses—and empirically testing them. (Paranjpe, 2010, p. 8,
added emphasis)
Differently from physics, in psychology theoretical breakthroughs

are not leading the empirical investigation. Rather, theories are used
as “umbrellas” under which any use of any method for the empirical
prediction of a future outcome becomes legitimate. Such “umbrella”
function given to theories follows from the linear progress model of
scientific advancement that can be rooted in Hegel’s account of his-
tory. The newly emerging generalizing IP questions that assumption
of history
. . . as an irreversible march to progress from the past to the future

has contributed significantly to the Eurocentric character of the ideas
of progress . . .. In sharp contrast to this Hegelian notion, classical
248
systems of Indian thought assumed that history moves in cycles of

four stages of successively declining moral standards. (Paranjpe,
2002, p. 30)
The nonlinear—yet not necessarily cyclical—notion of history of a

science is surely a wider scheme of things in any discipline. We can
claim, for instance, that psychology in the last six decades has pro-
ceeded in directions of no progress (Toomela and Valsiner, 2010). It
does not follow that psychology needs to return to the precise state
of affairs of the pre-1933 era, but rather—in line with IP—that it can
develop a new pathway at the intersection of basic assumptions about
the human psyche that differ from those of European and North
American beliefs.
Japan and the Unity of the Psyche17
Japan has been an enigma for outsiders—especially to those from
Occidental countries. It is probably not so much the history of Japan’s
seclusion from outsiders in the past, or the general focus on the unity
with nature (rather than that of “conquering it”) that has created the
mystery. Ideas about “the other” often circle around through the “self”
rendering what one understands of the other’s understanding of the
“self ” seemingly comparable. The making of a meaning goes through
the Other—not in formal contrast of the Self against the Other. Thus,
arriving at intercultural consensus on “Japanese feudalism” (hokensei)
at the Tokugawa period entailed the first assertion about hokensei,
followed by
. . . Westerners who visited Japan in the late Tokugawa period discov-

ered a system similar to what was referred to as ‘feudalism’ in their
own country’s historical narrative. Naturally the perception of west-
erners that ‘Japan is a feudal state’ became known to the Japanese.
Japanese who listened to explanations of what feudalism was cannot
be blamed for thinking it was something similar to hokansei. Today,
the term hokansei is accepted as the equivalent of feudalism . . ..
(Ishii, 2007, p. x)
It is more likely that outsiders have tried to build their understanding

of Japan—or any other country of “the other”—on premises that may
fit with theirs but not with the world understanding in Japan. In my
terminology outlined above, efforts to make sense of Japan may have
been phrased in terms of exclusive separation, while it is the inclusive
separation that could fit better with the phenomena.
249
Danger of Pre-Set Exclusive Oppositions

A good example of the misfitting premise is the use of the ex-
clusive contrast of individualism versus collectivism as it is applied
to societies (Sinha and Tripathi, 1994), as if one or the other of
these characterizes both “the society” and each and every per-
son who “belongs to” that society. There is an implicit consensus
in cross-cultural psychology that both the violation of levels of
analysis (the personal level equated with that of society: “this Japanese
person is collectivistic” becomes “the Japanese are collectivistic”), and
paralleled with it—the use of exclusive separation (“if X is collectivis-
tic—X cannot be non-collectivistic”) rather than inclusive one (“if X is
collectivistic then X is also non-collectivistic”). If we refute this double
axiomatic superimposition, we get “This Japanese person—a scientist,
a psychologist—is at the same time collectivistic and noncollectivistic.”
Relating to the world as a scientist entails intransitive rather than tran-
sitive relations, with open ends, yet conservative reliance on what is
known. Thus, scientists are necessarily “well-behaved rebels.”18
From here on, one can study the processes of imitation and nonimi-
tation of scientific traditions in the discipline. Creating general—
scientific—knowledge begins from a personal (and culturally guided)
act of breaking out of the confines of the already known and explor-
ing the new horizons. The cultural prisms for making sense of the
other involve the projection of the self outward onto the other, thus
creating a set of always limited or cultural-historically positioned
view upon the other. Perhaps the most dramatic superimposition of
such “outsiders’” cultural blinders is the insertion of gender as an or-
ganizing principle into the views of “the others.” While the biological
fact of male–female role differences is clear, this need not be isomor-
phic at the cultural level. Thus, the British colonizers’ insistence on
the primacy of gender oppositions projected into the Yoruba society
in Nigeria overlooked the centrality of seniority (Oyewumi, 1997).
Likewise the construction of Hinduism in India has been an act of
social projection of the British into the complex realities of the Indian
subcontinent (Oddie, 2006).
Benefits of Strategic Anthropomorphism: Japanese Primate Research

Primate research in Japan has been enveloped by a general notion of
unity of the human sciences and the nature. It has been closely linked to
anthropology—both physical and social—rather than being separated
250
from the study of human species by being charted out as “the study of
animal behavior.” The roots of this nondistinction in science in Japan
are in the cultural history. The development of Buddhist thought in
Japanese history has made the counterpositioning of monkeys and
humans in science an unlikely opposition (Ohnuki-Tierney, 1987). In
Japan, the study of animal species is built on the unity of the human
and animal worlds, rather than their exclusive opposition. As Tetsuro
Matsuzawa emphasized,
The chimpanzee is the bridge to other living organisms who are shar-
ing the earth with us. By understanding chimpanzees, you can under-
stand the unique position of humans and also their responsibility. The
human is just one species among the millions or tens of millions of
species living on earth. This biodiversity is very important, indeed,
essential, for all the ecosystems of our earth, and it is threatened by
human activity. (Matsuzawa, 2006, p. 5, emphases added)
The emphasized parts in this quote reflect the respectful self-inclu-

sion in the nature and the moral imperative (responsibility) of the species.
This collective responsibility is a relation that emerges from inclusive
separation of humans (we are unique but we are parts of the world) from
the nature. A comparable statement which would be characterizing the
sciences in the Occident would entail segregation of the human species
from the others and a focus on the “conquering” of the nature. As the
founder of the “second cybernetics”—science of heterogeneity amplifi-
cations—commented, the difficulty in most of the Occidental sciences
is its epistemological, rather than intellectual, limitations (Maruy-
ama, 1988, p. 12). This epistemological limitation is best exemplified
in the understanding of similar—yet conceptually different—scenes:
In my lectures to architects in USA, I often show slides of Japanese

garden designs . . . and ask them to find the design principles. They
usually say: “naturalness.” When I ask them by what they mean
by “natural,” they say “random.” They are triply wrong. First, the
gardens are very carefully designed, using principles of interaction
among heterogeneous elements which enhance the individual-
ity of each element. Second, nature is not random: nature has
its own patterns. Third, heterogeneity does not mean randomness.
Interactive heterogeneity generates patterns away from randomness.
(Maruyama, 1992, p. 197)
Innovation in science starts from basic assumptions. It is here where

we have an excellent example of how a particular research tradition
251
in Japan has produced substantively new knowledge—an example of

a “well-behaving rebel,” perhaps.
“The Kyoto School” and Its Negotiations

Science is a building project, creating a solidly standing house of
objective knowledge, yet in configurations that are subjectively pleas-
ing. Any good house needs a fitting foundation. The cultural assump-
tions of Japanese cultural history have created an atmosphere where
meta-axiom of research has allowed the area to develop beyond the
“mainstream” of the given field. Study of primate societies and social-
cognitive capacities that has flourished in Japan since late 1940s is
an example of how a research field has become such “well-behaving
rebel”—without a rebellion!
At the first glance, the achievement of new insights into primate lives
seems to be based on “extra-scientific” (from the occidental standpoint)
perspective. It would be quite unusual to find a ritual of thanksgiving
to the research participants—animals—in Western laboratories. In
comparison, such rituals—kanshasai (Asquith, 1986) and prayer rituals
for monkeys’ souls, ireisai—occur in Japanese research laboratories.
The researchers honor the animals whom they study. In the Occident,
it is not the respect for the research participants but their separate
legal power (“informed consent”) that becomes semiotically marked.
Something is done—through an act of conduct—in relation to the
Other. What that something is marks the hyper-generalized meaning
field of relating with the Other. Both prayers for “monkey souls” and the
ritualistic descriptions of the research procedures (and the symbolic
acts of signing “consent forms”) are semiotic regulators of the social
roles of the researchers. In one case (that of Japan), such regulation
enhances the connectedness of the researcher and researchee, creating
a symbolic partnership. In the other, it separates them, by granting “the
other” their “inalienable rights,” while releasing the researcher from
the burden of treating “the other” as if s/he is similar to myself.
“Schools” in science are inherently ambiguous social units. On
the one hand, they unify the direction in which a particular group of
researchers works, thus potentially adding to the collective clarification
of knowledge through mutual enrichment and critique. However, on
the other hand, the formation of a “school” may lead to the establish-
ment of traditions of socially normative orthodoxy that stops active
inquiry and replaces it by rhetoric activities. History of psychology is
252
rich in such “rhetoric cycles” both on the side of phenomenological side

(psychology in USSR from 1930s to 1970s; Freudian psychoanalysis
after 1920s) and on the empirical side (American “behaviorism” since
1913). All of these fixations are catalyzed by the cultural-historical
conditions (Dolby, 1977), first of all resulting in the general value
orientations:
In most Eastern belief systems, the human soul can reincarnate in
many shapes and forms, so all living things are spiritually connected.
A man can become a fish and a fish can become a god or goddess . . ..
The study of animal behavior in Japan has never been contaminated
by feelings of superiority or an aversion to acknowledging humanlike
characteristics in animals. (de Waal, 2003, p. 294)
The “Kyoto tradition” in primatology started in 1948 (Takasaki,

2000) and has been built around the philosophy of Kenji Imanishi
(de Waal, 2003; Imanishi, 1984, 2002). It is a deeply philosophical tradi-
tion that builds both on Kitaro Nishida’s (Nishida, 1990) “philosophy
of nothingness” and on the dynamic unity of person and nature that
characterizes the work of Piotr Kropotkin and Jakob von Uexkyll.
Both of these traditions rejected the “war focus” of the relationship of
organisms with one another, emphasizing the processes of coopera-
tion and functional making of one’s environments (Umwelt—Chang,
2009). While emphasizing the unity of species and their settings, the
“Kyoto tradition” rejected the Darwinian notions of “war” for survival.
Survival is a coordinated—yet not tensions-free—linking of the organ-
isms with their environments. Such linking is embedded within fluid
and hierarchical structure of social relationships.
The critical conceptual breakthrough that the Imanishi tradition
brings to our understanding of primates (and into psychology at large)
is the acceptance of a variety of forms of interdependence between
parts of the same whole. Conflict (“war”) is only one of these—and one
that is the least constructive for the maintenance and development of
open systems. Various forms of coordination, often brought together
under the general term harmony, constitute the breeding ground of
evolution and development (in ontogeny, as well as in history).
Such coordination, taken to mother–offspring relationships in
the study of primates (Macaca fuscata), leads to the recognition of
learning-by-support (rather than learning-via-outcomes). The monkey
offspring learns from his mother
253
. . . to be more precise, from her attitude and expression, he can learn

first ‘what the problem should be’. (Imanishi, 1965, p. 35)
Here Imanishi applied the Freudian notion of identification to

the offspring–mother relation of the monkeys, something that the
“Western scientists” are overtrained never to do. Yet, in the context
of axiomatic unity of the living world makes the transfer of explana-
tory theoretical concepts acceptable. The focus on harmony here is
open-ended. It is the ‘feeling in’ to the other’s expectations of the
immediate future, which in itself is uncertain. Learning takes place
by socially supported opportunities for observation rather than by
feedback from the erroneous outcomes. Imanishi actively brings
into the thinking of primate worlds explanatory terms from human
psychology—psychoanalytic notion of identification. The focus is
on approximate—ambiguous—pre-adaptation to the impending
future, rather than learning from the past (through trial and error).
This general orientation to transfer of acquired new techniques to
the offspring is the hallmark of the research on higher primates
(Matsuzawa, 2006).
However, there have existed tensions on the border of the “Kyoto
tradition”—both within Japan, and within the international primate
research community (see Strum and Fedigan, 2000). The negotia-
tions involved have resulted in the pressures of diffusing the distinct
philosophical–empirical perspective into a wider field, with a loss of
their focus. Thus,
Some primatologists felt that Imanishi and Itani made a canopy
under which many worked, and that although that paradigm has
had negligible influence for many years, the Japanese have not
subsequently developed their own method and theory . . .. Sev-
eral (students and professors) have said they feel that Japanese
copy from the West, yet Western paradigms are not fully satisfac-
tory. Japanese researchers study ecology, behavior, and wide range
of problems, and they write in English, but, some say, they do not
have a larger picture; one commented that there is “no perspective
now” on Japanese studies, and no idea. (Asquith, 2000, p. 175, added
emphases)
This exercise of anthropology of science (questioning Japanese

primate researchers about their view, from “inside outward”) re-
veals an interesting ambivalent structure. The creation of a “canopy”
as something under which different empirical work (theory as an
254
umbrella notion), is done implies disconnection between levels of

knowing—a very “Western” idea. After all, the “popular in” theory of
primate research—sociobiology—is a similar “canopy.”
It can be claimed that the meta-theoretical starting point—strategic
anthropomorphism (Takasaki, 2000, p. 163)—in the primate studies of
the “Kyoto school” has paved the way for a creative alternative to the
Anglo-American domineering model of sociobiology by emulating the
evolutionary process into the wider context of the interrelated world
of living things (Imanishi, 1984, 2002). In the Imanishi tradition,
Evolution, i.e., the unfolding of self-development of the world of liv-

ing things, is implicitly assumed in this worldview. Imanishi’s view of
evolution, or “history,” is inseparable from his view that the society
of living things is composed of elements existing in space. In this
view, an evolutionary pathway is simply an extension of the “society
of living things” existing across time. In comparison with sociobiology
or behavioral ecology, which attempt to explain the world of living
things in the tradition of Darwinian theory of evolution, “Imanishian
biosociology” has an upside-down paradigm structure. (Takasaki,
Thus, thanks to the specific starting point in Japanese cultural

history, the notion of evolution can be widened by eliminating the
obligatory notion of “fight for survival” that has plagued the Anglo-
American evolutionary discourse.19 Instead, one is left with a dynamic
hierarchical model where individual adaptation is embedded within
multilevel social organization of the species.
What can we generalize from this glimpse into the “Kyoto tradi-
tion” in primate research in Japan? It is clearly a tradition well lo-
cated within the cultural–historical context of Japan (situated in the
middle of special relationship of humans and monkeys prior to any
science, well phrased in the general philosophy of the living beings) and
on the side of the empirical research program, meticulously detailed
both in its experimental and ecological-observational work. Precisely
because of such unique context has the “Kyoto tradition” provided
general science of evolutionary anthropology a clearly innovative
perspective—looking at the dynamics of multilayered forms of social
organization in the lives of primates. This focus, and subsequently
its empirical “fill-in” with data, would have been impossible under
conditions (usual in the West) of separating “the animals” from “us,
the humans,” by a boundary of culture, or of evolutionary distance.
255
The ambiguity of general ideas in Japan is a breeding ground for new

scientific approaches which in equally ambiguous philosophical worlds
of the Occident are covered by “conceptual blinders” that have been
in place over centuries.
Conclusion: Cross-Fertilization of Ideas Through Globalization
Psychology has travelled a rocky road, well prepared by the path-
setters of the nineteenth century who distanced it from human
subjectivity and intentional action in favor of the mechanistic ideal
of prediction and control of the human beings. It is not coincidental
that wars of the twentieth century benefitted the social acceptance of
psychology. It had something to offer for the human side of the war
“machinery”—testing of recruits, perception and action coordina-
tion in landing airplanes, or cognitive processes aiming a long range
missile or artillery shell. And—once the wars end—psychologists are
needed as caregivers to the hurt souls with post-traumatic stress and
lost personal capacities. Psychology has accepted the social role
given to it—as a servant for the society. As such it is helpful—even
needed—yet when and where such needs come to the fore is not its
own choice.
Servitude is a comfortable status quo—there is comfort in stability.
As a result of “serving the society,” however, there are basic conceptual
“blind spots” in the theoretical core of the discipline. Psychology
. . . remains trapped within the hegemonic individualistic, founda-

tionalist, essentialist, and positivistic epistemology that cannot enter
macropolitical discussions. Unfortunately, the domination of social
theory and political economic analyses prevents the existence of
discussions about the innovative, creative, and liberatory potential
of modern psychology for both the individual and society. (Gülerçe,
2006, p. 90)
However, the servants are also ardent observers of their masters.

They understand the weaknesses of the powerful—as observing the
latter at close quarters provides relevant know-how on how the social
systems work. Our look at globalization shows how psychology is about
to break through these traditions when seen on a worldwide focus,
precisely through the major contrast on what would make psychology
relevant for the psyche. Even if divided into two crude categories—“the
West” and “the East”—psychology has developed historically along
two different trajectories.
256
Knowledge in the East is not considered knowledge if it does not

change the knower. It is something to be “discovered” by the seeker. In
the West, knowledge has been turned into a product which is brought
and sold. Such knowledge is to be used for purposes of controlling
or for making systems more efficient. Its purpose is definitely not
the emancipation of human being. (Tripathi, 2010, p. 192)
Psychology as science has, in its Euro-American history, separated

itself over the past three centuries from the personal emancipation task.
In other terms, social institutions have taken over the field of expertise
that might—precisely by some form of emancipation—threaten their
own existence. Hence the success of practical psychological knowhow
in industrial, organizational, governmental, and educational practices
that act upon persons in their social roles. The persons’ own subjective
worlds have been distanced from science, leading in our twenty-first
century to renewed calls for “bringing the subjective” into the science
of psychology. Our historical account shows that “the subjective” was
there since its emergence in the eighteenth century European psychol-
ogy, only to be eradicated over the nineteenth century, culminating
in the credo of “behavioral objectivity” of the twentieth century. In
societies outside of the Euro-American axis such eradication has not
happened. The two historical trajectories meet at the equifinality state
of our time—in the task of creating the science of the subjective. That
science is necessarily idiographic in its nature (Salvatore and Valsiner,
2010). The restoration of focus on the subjective processes of cultural
human beings in their willful acts of living their lives is the contribu-
tion globalization can bring to psychology.
Notes
1. “La mente postmoderna ha invece l’architetture delle litografie di Escher: in
quelle case e cattedrali non vi è una sla entrata, no vi è una sola uscita, non
vi sono corridori che fanno accedere a luonghi separati, ma ogni percorso si
intreccia con un altro, salita è discesa, su è giù, concavo è convesso, interno
è esterno. Lo spazio impossibile nella realtà externa diviene possibile nella
realità interna dell a mente.”
2. The United States here gives us interesting examples of how the political
system evokes the “public actions” to attempt to limit the scope of research
on common-sense grounds. A current lower parliament majority leader
proposed that citizens “decide how to reduce federal programs through
voting,” including reporting on “questionable research” conducted with
funding from the National Science Foundation (Gade, 2011). More gener-
ally, the proliferation of various kinds of Web-based rating systems is a
vehicle for creating social capital based on events in the past to regulate
the future social events.
257
3. For example, Stone (2011)—a description of how the use of genetically

modified crops was violently challenged at a meeting in a Chinese univer-
sity, with accusations against the producers and promoters of such crops of
“cheating the whole country” (p. 1001). The economic dangers for farmers’
livelihood that such scientific progress brings are formidable. India banned
genetically modified eggplant in 2010 (Bagla, 2010). The uncertainties of
genetically modified rice become consolidated under the safe–non-safe
oppositional terms with the latter being privileged. Note that the regula-
tion of such crops is based on the anticipated future results. An elaborate
coverage of these issues is given in Bauer (2002) and Gaskell and Bauer
(2006). Promotion of negative or positive attitudes toward biotechnology
is mediated by strategic use of metaphors and operates along the mytho-
logical images of given society’s history, mediated by fiction films (Jensen,
2008).
4. This duality, of discourse vis-à-vis the social practice, is evident in edu-
cational practices, where teaching of “creativity” becomes incorporated
into rules-based curriculae of the educational system. Furthermore, the
dominance of the unidirectional culture transfer models (expert to novice)
has dominated in the histories of the social systems, while the bidirectional
model that emphasizes the role of the novice in transcending the incoming
messages has been rarely emphasized.
5. This practice has been widespread in competition between companies
in “buying up” their competitors (with their innovations), not in order to
use these innovations, but to own them so that these cannot be put to use
unless—or until—the owner deems it profitable.
6. The notion “it is your choice” is highlighted, leaving the other side of the
story—“within the limits we have given you”—out of focus.
7. American students to Wilhelm Wundt’s laboratory in the 1880s–1900s liked
to bring to USA the floor plans and designs for laboratory instruments they
found in Leipzig, rather than the complex ideas of German philosophical
and psychological theories of the time.
8. According to Taiana (2006, p. 49):
“Wundt’s and Freud’s theories were filtered, as were many theories ar-
riving from Europe to Argentina, through France. The cultural filter of
France belonged to the cultural filter of Argentina, which, in turn, was
part of the Argentinian search for a lost, but desired, shattered French
identity” (added emphasis).
In a similar vein, we could analyze the uncritical acceptance of our
contemporary borrowings from the United States by psychologists
in Russia (e.g., the turn to Carl Rogers in 1980s Moscow after the
demise of A.N. Leontiev and his activity theory) or Germany (acceptance
of empiricism by German psychologists at the end of the twentieth century,
or reception of Piaget in South America—van der Veer, 1999) as being part
of the process of cultural identity negotiations.
9. In Russia, the notion of “cintizenly duty” (grazdanskii dolg); in Turkey,

kul ; (janissar y, the conforming subject) in conjunction with
258
undifferentiated tebaa (the social conformity of the conformed subjects—

Gülerçe, 2006, p. 90).
10. For instance, application of family therapy schedules from North America
in the context of the Philippines (Charles, 2007).
11. The other being the reimport of actors; PhD students from outside USA,
Canada or Europe, after getting “trained” in the hegemonic style of psychol-
ogy, often return to their countries to proliferate the newly acquired trade
and ideology.
12. The less “politically incorrect” terminologies of the “Third World” or even
the “developing countries” hardly conceal the original dismissive ethos of
the powerful looking down at the powerless.
13. University of Santo Tomas was established in Manila in 1661.
14. Major obscurations to freedom in Buddhist thought.
15. If the Occidental psychology has been largely under the influence of
psychoanalysis and its “core myth”—the Oedipus complex—then Indian
Psychology can offer a vast richness of alternative myths with the help of
which psychology’s theoretical core could be built. The Kali or Ganesa
images are central in Indian everyday lives, are presented in myths, and
could be used as more comprehensive bases than the (modified) Oedipus
(Guzder and Kakar, 1989, pp. 301–02).
16. It is interesting that the English language translation of Ivan Pavlov’s
major contribution to physiology of the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth
century—uslovnyi refleks—has become translated as conditioned reflex
(implying the act of an outside agent—the researcher, the parent, the
trainer, the government—who does the act of conditioning). The adequate
translation—conditional reflex—would fit with the new ethos of IP, as
development of the wide range of conditional actions in relation to the
environmental demands creates the freedom from the actual conditions
by widening the range of applicable conditions.
17. The ideas in this part of the chapter were first discussed at the seventy-
second Annual Meeting of the Japanese Psychological Association, Sapporo,
September 21, 2008. Symposium: From Import to Innovation (The Future
of Psychology in Japan). Organizers: Shing-Jen Chen (Hokkaido University)
and Jaan Valsiner (Clark University).
18. In contrast to “disconnected rebels”—insurgents, anarchists, robbers—and
their counterparts among the power holders who suppress any aspect
of rebellion and demand complete honoring of static transitive social
hierarchies—tyrants, generals, mothers-in-law, etc.
19. A similar cross-societies contrast was there in U.S.–Russian differences in
the use of laboratory and field research methods in biology—Harré, 2009,
pp. 224–28.
259
General Conclusion
Science under the Influence:
Guided Exploration of the
Horizons of Knowledge
. . . the growth of scientific psychology has resulted in losing the
essential constituents, such as psyche and consciousness, and making
the enterprise an empirical discipline, which is composed of things
borrowed from various disciplines and nothing of its own. As such psy-
chology is so disintegrated and fragmented that a meaningful defini-
tion of the discipline is next to impossible.
Ajit Dalal and Girishwar Misra (2010, p. 125)
The liminal situation of psychology as a “natural science of the soul”

(as was described in chapter 7) is an example of knowledge as created
at the crossroads of social expectations for “useful knowledge” and
the axiomatic bases of “possible knowledge.” Psychology is a science
under close social surveillance from the time of its emergence in the
eighteenth to nineteenth centuries. Emerging “under the influence”
has actually played a formative role in the making of the discipline.
Of course psychology is not unique among other sciences in be-
ing socially guided. All sciences are socially guided by historically
established semiotic means. The basic questions they address—be
these linked with the beginning of the universe or its expected end,
the emergence of life, the preservation of the ozone layer, and so on—
are all embedded in socially contested contexts of varied interests.
While this understanding of social guidance in itself is no novelty,
the specific forms by which it takes place could be. These forms can
range from hidden guidance that seems to come from scientists
themselves—rules shared about “good science” the roots of which in
social ideologies may be lost—to violent clashes between proponents
of different “schools” (e.g., “Marxist psychologists” contra “bourgeois
261
psychology”) that may involve dismissal of the opponents from their

jobs. The roots of “Soviet psychology” in 1920s Russia are of such
kind—the predominance of the younger generation of psychologists
was prepared by administrative bulldozing of the “old guard” out of
their positions (Valsiner, 1988). Scientists—when taking on partisan
roles—can be as irrationally violent to one another as fans of soccer
teams or political rivals who end up democratic elections by cries of
“foul play” and at times, clashes between their militia forces. Knowl-
edge can be dangerous—when crossing over into ideologically con-
tested fields of social life.
Sciences in general—and social sciences in particular—have been
largely “socially blind” as to the role of the knowledge they generate
in different “social practices.” They have largely accepted the orga-
nizational rule systems of their everyday lives—grant application
procedures, research productivity evaluations, strategic financial and
conceptual plans-making by their institutions, faculty meetings, etc.
as if these were necessary tools for their productivity. They are not. At
best these are alleys to displacement of productivity by something that
looks like it. What has been out of focus—along the lines of the notion
of Semiotic Demand Setting (see Figure 4.4 in chapter 4)—has been
the constraining functions of that very productivity these ordinary
realities of administration of science bring with it.
For example, a ministry of education in an unnamed European coun-
try instructs all universities to constantly produce restructuring plans
of how to “improve their productivity.” Scientists become involved in
a series of long meetings in preparation of a plan—by the time it is
ready, the ministry asks for a new one, and so forth. The “betterment
of science” is discussed actively (Zone of Promoted Talking) at the
expense of actual work on betterment of that very same science. Yet
the participating scientists are guided to be convinced within themselves
that such bureaucratic activity about science is crucial for science. It
may become so if new regulations produced by it are implemented by
the administrators. The nature of such implementation is ambiguous.
Yet the social presentation of such measures is not. Administrators of
science are—by themselves—presented as helpful and indispensable
for science. Scientists’ participation in their self-organization—always
under some administrative guidance—creates an illusion of autonomy
for the scientists.1
Furthermore, it is the meta-level ideologies—“real science” in
contrast with “the other,” natural sciences in contraposition to “the
262
Science under the Influence
humanities” (in English language world, yet, let us remind ourselves

of the Geisteswissenschaften in the German sense—chapter 6)—that
set up the basis for “stage fights” between sciences. This has led to
stalemates in knowledge—the abandonment of key notions for a
discipline—as psychology’s century of forgetting the notions of the
psyche and consciousness shows. Not only are the last sixty years gone
astray (Toomela and Valsiner, 2010), but these years have established a
powerful self-defensive “mainstream” that continues to reduce psycho-
logical phenomena either to fMRI images or to social texts. As I have
claimed in this book, that practice is built upon the peculiar history
of psychology since 1790s. Maybe the last 150 years can be said to
be rather futile—since the move toward the physiological reduction
of the psyche (chapters 5–7) has replaced the search for a genuinely
psychological science.
Why Knowledge Matters?
The more intertwined is the subject matter of a science with the
socially constructed values and goal orientations the more direct and
dramatic guidance can be observed. It leads to renegotiation of the
margins of the given science and the public order of accepted knowl-
edge. Science produces knowledge for both knowing (about the objects
of its analysis) and for assuming a social guidance position about
the knowledge for its continuous innovation. The hypothesis of the
Earth moving around the Sun as a reversal of the previous knowledge
encountered dramatic social resistance. What a science produces as
possible knowledge goes through a sieve of social validation of it as
such by criteria that are external to the knowledge and its objects.
For example, abandoning the creationist stance upon phenomena
of biological evolution could have been a simple transformation
of a key assumption about the world in the nineteenth century—if
only scientific considerations were in play. Of course that was not
the case—the social-religious sentiments dominant in the Western
world have guided the discourses about the evolutionary hypoth-
esis over the last century and a half. Instead of a simple axiomatic
change, we can observe various fights around the issue over a century
later, and in fierceness that would let the Galapagos finches fly away
from their islands to let the humans stay in their mind of peace of
ignorance.
What is at stake? In different centuries these negotiations were of
different topics. In the seventeenth century the critical issue was the
263
movement of celestial objects and nobody was worried about the

“potential psychological damage” of the recurrent wars raging all
over Europe, then. Yet the movement of these celestial objects was
interpreted in terms of the actions of presumed celestial agents—and
the ideological fights were ignited with such power that they at times
burned the thinkers together with their books.
Perhaps the fights about “correct knowledge” in the twenty-first
century are no longer so heated but rather become embedded in the
democratic “majority opinion” about the themes studied by a science.
Scientists are no longer burnt on stakes, just merely redirected to
become “independent scholars” by their peers’ votes of no confidence
(read—no tenure). The topics of study that are considered “relevant”
become dominated by fashions triggered by journalistic focusing of
the public interest. But journalists cannot create new knowledge—they
can merely trade the public visibility of the existing one. Journalistically
popularized fashions in any science cannot be led to guide the future
directions of investigation. Likewise, politicians are incompetent in
providing such direction.
Knowing for What Purpose? Construction and Destruction as Bases
for Human Activities
Human beings as a culture-based species is distinct by its construc-
tion of elaborate technologies for warfare. These are used—have been
over millennia—with the results of devastation and human miseries.
Yet the need to “treat” these miseries psychologically is of recent in-
vention. By the twenty-first century, the negotiation of the boundaries
of the “post-traumatic stress disorder” (and many other psychological
constructions) comes into prominence. Social discourse around PTSD
abounds—in an ambivalent critique of the conditions that have led to
such disorder. It is hard to accept—on human emphatic grounds—the
act of destruction. By creating a label (PTSD), psychiatry and clini-
cal psychology produce a field of its application, and relevance “for
society.” Yet it is “the society” that has created these miseries, in the
first place. World history—of wars and famines—has always been
saturated by traumatic stress, yet the notion of its taking the form of
a disorder that calls for treatment lead our common public seek out
psychotherapists and medicines to fight it as an illness. The simpler
solution—avoiding wars and other forms of everyday trauma—would
undermine the incomes of the psychological helpers and pharmaceu-
tical companies.
264
In a less dramatic domain of negotiations, science becomes

functional in the format of its entertainment value. The mysteries
of the faraway planets are best understood in terms of one’s home
life. The discoveries of common-sense relevance—“is there water on
Mars?”—become highly valued through the entertainment value of
the new technologies and their actions on TV screens. The ordinary
person can compare the value of the water that can be produced from
one’s water tap with the question of water on another planet, and
relate to the otherwise impenetrable science through screen dramati-
zations. The slow movement of the Mars Lander, which at times gets
stuck “in the mud” and is then ready for further movement due to the
heroic minds of the control engineers, becomes similar to a regular
soap opera. Science becomes—in an open society—a source for leisure
and moralistic profit taking.
Getting to Know the Everyday of Science: Beyond
“Scientific Revolutions”
How do actual sciences proceed? Scientists’ reflexivity about their
own actions got a boost by Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 book on scientific
revolutions (Kuhn, 1962) and through him, recognition of the pioneer-
ing thinking of Ludwik Fleck (1979—original 1935). Social presenta-
tions of how science works have since the 1960s been under the spell of
the distinction of the “normal” and “revolutionary” states of scientific
knowledge-making. According to Thomas Kuhn:
First, that what scientists produce and evaluate is not belief tout
court but change of belief, a process which I’ve argued has intrinsic
elements of circularity, but of a circularity that is not vicious. Second,
that what evaluation aims to select is not beliefs that correspond to
the so-called real external world, but simply to the better or best
of the bodies of belief actually present to the evaluators at the time
their judgments are reached . . .. Finally, I have suggested that the
plausibility of this view depends upon abandoning the view of sci-
ence as a single monolithic enterprise, bound by a unique method.
Rather, it should be seen as a complex but unsystematic structure of
distinct specialties or species, each responsible for a different domain
of phenomena, and each dedicated to changing current beliefs about
their domain . . .. (Kuhn, 1992, p. 18, added emphasis)
Recognizing plurality of perspectives is in line with the postmodern-

ist credo. Yet its roots are historical. Kuhn’s picture of the “mindscapes”
of science emphasizes the heterogeneity of the Wissenschaft—thus the
265
nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ fights at the borders of Natur- and

Geisteswissenschaften are examples not different from the operation
of any science, even in our time. In psychology of today, the dialogues
around “the scientific method”—qualitative, quantitative, or “mixed”—
is an example of displaced precision. Instead of worrying about the
validity (and reliability) of the singular methods as such, the question
of full integration of the methods within the methodology cycle (see
chapter 10) is the issue. How have networks of psychologists—of both
“quantitative” and “qualitative” kinds—overlooked that? An answer
may be in the nonreflexive nature of the development of networks
of empirically oriented scientists whose point of connection is the
discussion of methods—as separated from theories.
The ANT Devouring the Kuhnian Perspective: The Reality of CANT
Recent three decades include a qualitatively new effort in finding
out how knowledge construction—first in sciences, but the same gen-
eral idea was quickly exported to other organizational context. The
Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) with all of its problems2 has provided
a fresh effort to see how knowledge emerges in the interplay of social
networks (Latour, 1987, 2007; Lee and Hassard, 1999. It emphasizes
the “horizontal” (or “lateral”) construction of networks of researchers
whose efforts are no longer possible in the solitary predicament of
individual thinkers, but who need to relate to others for completing
their tasks. The need for network building is a response to the frag-
mentation of knowledge in the first place.
ANT is also an experiment in bold conceptual thinking. Two key
innovations were introduced by ANT—the nonliving objects in the
knowledge construction process (ranging from pens, PowerPoints,
notepads, to microscopes and accelerators) were abstractly allotted
equal status of “living”—to those of the researchers. Secondly, the
researchers were viewed as creating networks—with others and with
“living objects”—with the focus on the processes of ever-expanding
widening of such networks. The network idea—similar to the popular-
ity of “neural networks”—was a creative extension introduced by ANT.
Going beyond the “neural network” analogy, the ANT networks could
expand and reorganize themselves. In a imaginative description,
The Latourian scientist bursts upon the scene as an accumulating,
aggressive individual born of capitalism, forming his networks and
gathering his allies everywhere, resembling all too closely a Western
businessman. (Martin, 1998, p. 27)
266
What the ANT has overlooked—in its focus on the actors who
create the networks—is that all activities in scientific knowledge
construction are socially guided by fictional agents (“institu-
tions,” “the society”—reality of social life). These “others” are as
much “alive” as our notepads or computer keyboards, maybe even
more so, since they can evaluate anything that we produce in col-
laboration with our computer keyboards. These social agents have
power over the formation of ANT networks that may profess the ap-
pealing idea of the equality of partners (researchers and objects). Yet
there is no equality in hierarchical power relations, and ANT networks
can build themselves only within conceptual spaces and empirical
practice fields that are specified by their social guidance at the time.
In this sense, we could speak of constrained ANT (to be abbreviated
as CANT).
In the move from ANT to CANT, the crucial addition is that of
the social constraint structures to the “bottom-to-sideways” network
construction. Already the controversy that ANT has created—by
considering nonliving objects as “living”—indicates the reality of
CANT. In principle, through human capacity for abstraction it
should be unproblematic where a network of scientists draws the
line between animate and inanimate abstractions. Discourse of vec-
tors as they “live in space” should be as simple as to consider one’s
pen—or computer keyboard—as “living.” Yet—even as an abstraction—
such designation encounters a border introduced by the subject–object
distinction in the scientific reasoning. Thus, the ANT view can be
limited by the CANT view—“no way computer keyboard of mine is
alive!”
Ironically, the act of scientific investigation—involving (by ANT)
living and acting-as-living participants on the researcher side—creates
nonliving objects out of the very much living research participants.
The object of investigation—even if a person—becomes usually treated
as a nonliving object. For instance, a personality profile obtained from
a living human being becomes a nonliving representation of that
human being. The ANT—in an effort to lift the object to the same
status as the subject—suggests to consider both of them as living.
This in psychology happens in the process of data creation—the re-
searcher (alive) with one’s research equipment (equally “alive” by ANT
standards) interacts with a research participant (alive) who provides
some evidence. Yet from the moment onward from obtaining that evi-
dence, the data become “dead”—for instance, the ratings a person has
267
marked on a paper do not represent the “alive” participant anymore.

Furthermore, the institutional uses of ANT, as well as any other research
perspectives, are likely to grant both the data and the researcher equal-
ity in terms of both being nonliving (alongside with their research
equipment). The researcher becomes a small wheel in an institutional
system (hence nonliving), and the person—“research participant”—
becomes nonliving in the context of data accumulation and the guar-
antees by the researcher to keep the anonymity, declared in “consent
forms.” Our contemporary institutional frameworks—structured
networks of social control—are in the process of expropriating the
ANT to become a goals-oriented CANT (Lee and Hassard, 1999;
Neyland, 2006).
If ANT is actually CANT, then the basic idea put forward in this
book—of multilevel social constraining of knowledge-making in the
history of human societies—becomes supported from the otherwise
anarchistic look at ever-growing actor networks that include one’s
computer keyboard together with one’s brain. However, the “guided
science” perspective encounters a difficult problem—the agency of the
guiders is not immediately obvious. The problem is avoided—but not
solved—by reference to the notion of “the society” in this guidance
process (e.g., “social guidance” of knowledge-making). Yet “the soci-
ety” in such discourse plays the role of a vague “black box.” We would
need to open that box in order to gain access to the acts of knowing.
The concept of society is a highly functional fiction. It is a nonexisting
object (in the sense of Alexius Meinong—whose ideas were briefly
covered in chapter 7) that subsists (rather than exists), is central for
our lives yet has no specifiable referent. It is a historically develop-
ing abstraction that is the result of social processes in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries (Wagner, 2000). If its original meaning—a
small social unit of persons related by some criterion (e.g., a society of
dentists)—becomes abstracted to the society in general, the concrete-
ness becomes lost. Discourse about the society became intense by the
middle of nineteenth century Europe where it entailed contrasting
it with the state on the one hand, and an abstract, sociomoral col-
lective entity that was larger than any local community but could be
presented as equally demanding. The “oneness” of the society was—
and is—an abstraction that is widely utilized in political discourses
by institutions.3 It is emphasized in political efforts to maintain unity
among heterogeneous social units so that these become presented as
abstractly homogeneous (“the society”).
268
The Knowledgeable Ignorant: The “Experts”

Transformation of the knowledge-making system from the nineteenth
to the twentieth (and twenty-first) centuries entailed increasing social
differentiation of the “knowers” (“experts”) and the “nonknowers.” Such
construction of the need for the role of “experts” led to the unpowering
of the users of “expert advice”:
Out of a lack of confidence, a lack of skill, respect for science, fear

of authority, or simply being too lazy to think for ourselves, we are
relying on experts rather than on our own insights. We now seem
to need experts to tell us that pollution is destroying the ecologi-
cal balance on earth, that nuclear bombs could blow up the world,
that real war is frightening to children, that people do feel stress
when they go through a divorce, that infants are healthier when
they are loved, that the family does have an important social role
in the development of children, and that the education system is in
trouble. What should be obvious to us only achieves the status of
“truth” when endorsed by experts. Our training is such that when
faced with even the smallest personal or societal issues, we often
look to experts for answers. This is tied into something peculiar to
modern U.S. cultural habits—the transformation of every moral
crisis into a technical problem for which there should be an expert
solution. (Moghaddam, 1997, pp. 9–10)
The making of social vulnerabilities is thus a necessary basis for

establishment of new forms of social competencies. We can now trace
the social roots the need for construction of “expertise” that can oper-
ate in ways of suggesting solutions to common problems of everyday
life directs psychology to the use of common sense phenomena—and
socially acceptable research agendas. This moves the discipline away
from generalized abstract knowledge.
Social Guidance of Science: Mechanisms and Their Impacts

Social practices invented to organize scientific work entail the
structure of social guidance. That structure of guidance is embedded
within the whole set of social practices of knowledge construction—
starting from the move from informal to formal education in history,
and ending with the specific practices expected from “the scientists” by
themselves, their peers, and the “public” (see chapter 4 on the contrast
between “popularization” and “vulgarization” of science).
The starting point of such guidance is higher education, within
which some of the students to be educated are moving toward
269
becoming researchers in different fields of science. Such emerging role

entails moves into mundane practices in social contexts of science—
washing laboratory equipment, or entering numbers into a computer—
as a small contribution to the “Big Science.” The “factory model” of
science (see chapter 3) is particularly open to such multiple trajectories
in the making of scientists. In such model, the need for “scientific work-
ers” by far surpasses the need for “scientific thinkers”—the producers
of new ideas. The “factory of knowledge” begins to resemble an ant
colony where the busy workers supply the fertile procreators with all
the necessary support.
The Social Web of Science: Tension of Institutional Takeovers
The “production line” of “scientific workers” in universities—
graduating young people with PhDs as the symbolic marker of their
qualification for science4—is itself embedded within the changing
social context of the universities themselves. Although there are varia-
tions between the different countries in how universities function, I
would dare to claim that universities worldwide are undergoing a major
loss of their academic autonomy through ever-complicated nego-
tiations with governments for support, selective entrance of private
business “takeovers” of parts of scientific decision making, and—last
but not least—the intra-sciences social dominance renegotiations that
coconstruct the loss of whatever social power the universities have had
in their histories. The traditional image of a knowledge-constructor as
a kind of a monk (or nun) in a monastery or convent, dedicating one’s
life to the muse of Knowledge, becomes replaced by a busy narrowly
focused “expert” who sells one’s expertise to the biggest bidders on
the academic labor market.
Moghaddam (1997) discussing the social implications of the dif-
ferential specialization in academia points to an interesting diagnostic
sign of the gradual loss of the social powers of institutions of higher
education:
It is from the professional associations that modern academics derive
their status and prestige. The university now looks to the professional
association to determine the pedigree of an academic. In making
its judgment, the university asks, Is this individual a president or
in some other way an official of a professional association? Has this
person received any awards from a professional association? How is
this individual evaluated by other professional specialists? A division
of responsibilities is evolving, with the university responsible for
270
advancement of rank and salary, and the specialized/professional

association responsible for advancement in knowledge. But since the
latter dominates the former, the university is becoming an instrument
of the association. (Moghaddam, 1997, pp. 27–28)
Here we can observe in universities’ internal “performance evalu-

ation” schemes of the faculty a case of capitulation to the efforts of
the takeover of the higher learning processes and, consequently,
the kind of knowledge possible to create by institutions that stand
external to science. The increasing bureaucratization of university
administrations—together with the impact of that on the intellectual
atmosphere of where the scientists work—guarantees that the SDS
system for academics directs their main effort toward the nonessential
aspects of knowledge construction:
. . . instead of being the intellectual home of academics, the structure
of the university has drifted into a mere bureaucracy. It has become
an administrative office that deals with salaries, pensions, sabbatical
leaves, and the administering of grant funds and class lists. If the
present trends continue, the university will become little more than
a large and complex accounting and personnel center. (Moghaddam,
1997, p. 28)
The trends into the twenty-first century seem to continue in that

direction, indeed. Two domains of innovation of knowledge seem to
lead the knowledge construction process—the informal networks of
scientists from different universities and other research institutions
(usually underfunded and discipline-politically “on the margins” of the
fields), and large, well-funded research institutes where the primary
role of the academics is research, rather than teaching. The former is
the domain of “free artisans” on the borders of institutionalized knowl-
edge construction places, the latter—in the center of sociopolitically
designated “directions of attack” in the production of new knowl-
edge. The latter do the kind of research set out for them—rather than
emerging from the intellectual needs of the researchers—by the social
powers. For example, a research institute designated (and funded) to
study topic X cannot change it to (suddenly more important) topic Y
without the agreement of the funding powers (and negotiating it with
“academic and financial plans”).
In contrast, the former—the “free artisans”—are the scientists who
in a curious way can be seen to benefit from the basic intellectual
271
alienation within their immediate institutions. They are among the

faculty who
. . . are only in their departments during their teaching and office
hours, when their time is completely taken up either by meetings
with students or administrative duties. Meetings between faculty
members seldom take place, and when they do meet it is generally
to discuss administrative issues, rather than for the purposes of
intellectual exchange. Consequently there is very little meaningful
intellectual contact, even between faculty members in the same
department. Their degree of specialization and lack of concern for
“the big picture” tends to make one colleague seem like an amateur
in another’s area of interest. (Moghaddam, 1997, p. 29)
Ironically, the alienated state of affairs within departments in univer-

sities leads to the opportunity to create open intellectual frameworks
with other colleagues from other universities. This is the borderland
of public–private conduct of researchers as persons whose informal
intellectual networks cannot be institutionally expropriated. Thus,
new breakthroughs are likely either in such networks of no externally
guidable directions, or from strictly guided and watched “research fac-
tories” of well-funded research institutes. The international openness
of contemporary academia—a side-effect of the general globalization
processes (see chapter 11)—makes it possible for both loci of knowledge
construction to benefit from the lay know-how of “the others.” While
universities and research institutes become taken over by bureaucratic
control, at least some of the academics can break themselves free
of that tendency by creating networks of counter-control. The scientific
thought breaks itself free—at times and in specific locations—from
the social guidance that directs it toward its pseudo-empiricism (a la
Smedslund, 1997). Yet these breakthroughs lead to the establishment
of new guidance structures—scientific knowledge is a Gegenstand, not
a thing. As such, even the established knowledge retains the ambiva-
lence of the scientific efforts being those on the border of knowing
and non-(not-yet)knowing (chapter 1).
How Knowledge Production is Suicidal to Itself
The naïve look at scientific productivity equates progress in a given
field with the publication of the results of the scientific endeavors.
Thus, progress is assumed to be in numbers:
The more articles and books published, the greater and better must
be our knowledge. This reasoning is in line with an atomistic model of
272
progress in human understanding, which assumes that breakthroughs

are achieved through the accumulation of bits of information—a
legacy of logical positivism . . .. Specialized “workers’ dig away
bit by bit, moving along ever-narrower lines, and accumulating
pieces of knowledge that will add to a master pile of information.
(Moghaddam, 1997, p. 43, added emphasis)
Interestingly, the general orientation toward quantitative accumu-

lation of knowledge enters into social evaluation schemes of the pro-
ductivity of scientists. At all levels—from junior to senior—important
administrative decisions tend to take into account the number of
publications, especially in socially signified (“peer reviewed”) sources.
The result—ever-greater number of publications in ever-larger num-
ber of new specialized and institutionally signified (“peer reviewed”)
sources—drives the accumulation of knowledge far beyond its us-
ability as such. Even review articles do not help—as the proliferation
of the “pieces of knowledge” is exponential. What is left out are the
strategies of generalization (the inductive line) and the corresponding
strategies of exclusion (on the deductive side) of knowledge use. Both
of these strategies are abductive (in the sense of C. S. Peirce—chapter
2)—hence the paradox: the more knowledge is accumulated, the more
any breakthrough in the given field depends upon theoretically based
elimination of some of the knowledge from further building of knowl-
edge. The social “engine” that promotes unbounded scientific produc-
tivity ends up at least complicating the actual processes of knowledge
construction. Not always is more also better! Overly rapid prolifera-
tion of a species can lead to its demise in biological evolution. In the
social construction of knowledge, the analog may be the rendering
of most of the accumulated evidence irrelevant for knowledge—the
extinction of the data.
All these practices are presented within a promotion zone that
rules out any doubts about the social functions of such efforts. Thus,
various kinds of academic “productivity” evaluations—counting num-
bers of (peer-reviewed) publications, or looking at the citation indices
of the authors (or “impact factors” of the publication sources)—are
always presented as benevolent and enhancing the progress in sci-
ence. Such positively flavored presentation is itself a social guiding
device, overlooking the inherent ambiguity in each of the aspects of
research in the social sciences: gaining access to research participants,
constructing adequate methods, creating methods, analyzing the data,
publishing the results, and dealing with the result in the public domain.
273
PERSONAL FOCUS ACTIONS FOR KNOWLEDGE SOCIAL GUIDANCE
WHAT DO THAT TO
I WANT TO STUDY!
STUDY? …not that
WHAT TO else!
STUDY?
HOW THIS WAY TO

IS BEST TO STUDY!
HOW TO
STUDY?
STUDY?
THIS
WHAT DO WAY TO
I WANT TO PUBLISH
DO WITH THE HOW TO so not to
RESULTS? MAKE PUBLIC? perish
THIS WAY TO
APPLY
WHAT IT HOW TO
MEANS? APPLY?
THIS WAY TO
THINK!
Figure 12.1 Social constraining of knowledge construction
Each of these steps is inherently ambivalent, filled with personal and

social tensions (depicted in Figure 12.1).
All research interest begins from an intuitive question about some
aspect of the given field that is not yet fully understood. Young psychol-
ogy students often voice their interests in parapsychology, only to be
told in no uncertain terms that such topics are not parts of scientific
psychology—so they should study cognition instead. Once they decide
to study that (or any other currently accepted topic in psychology)
274
the social imperatives upon “how to study” are set up in the form of
uniformed enforced consent. Thus, a young person who wants to study
children’s cognitive processes may be told to study their “intelligence”
using the “standardized intelligence tests” as these give the “objective
picture” and allow for being recognized in the scientific community.5
Or—at the least—the imperative of using the quantification of the
phenomena into the data can be suggested strongly as “the received
practice.” A young psychologist entering the field of research in the
twenty-first century has to proceed through a sequence of socializing
imperatives that would alienate him or her from the phenomena. The
social guidance system of psychology education is set up in ways that
guarantees the discipline to be hyper-productive in its empirical stud-
ies that follow current discursive theoretical frameworks as fashions
(“behaviorism,” “cognitivism,” “socioculturalism,” etc.) rather than
intellectual tools for thinking.
The decision—“how to make one’s work public”—is shared by psy-
chologists with all other sciences. The traditional mode of scientific
communication—letting one’s colleagues know of one’s findings—has
already been replaced by a multifunction communication tasks for over
a century. The act of publication has become a unit of social capital
for the author(s)—made so by their institutions—as well as persua-
sively informative message construction for others (see chapter 4 on
popularization). The numbers of publications are counted, evaluated,
and even weighted in universities’ formal academic evaluation systems
(especially in Europe). The citations to one’s publications are likewise
counted in such institutional evaluation systems (“the impact factor”).
The transformation of the contents-oriented message into a symbolic
form that is separated from the substance of the messages is one of the
primary social guidance strategies of knowledge construction.
The “impact factor”—a tool originally devised in scientometrics to
compare different publication outlets—has been transformed into the
symbolic evaluation tool of the authors who publish in such journals;
that is, the “impact factor” of the publication outlet becomes appro-
priated for evaluating each of the authors. This generates fashions
for publication in a journal for the sake of its “impact factor”—like
for individual wearers of clothes there is effort to buy expensive de-
signer brands.
A careful analysis of how the “impact factor” is calculated indi-
cates that it implicitly superimposes upon the given science an ar-
tificial “time window” of two previous years of citations to the given
275
journal.6 This indicates a social regulation of the evaluation of the given

work—promoting historical myopia of the given field as a social norm,
and disvaluing historical connections of the field. Since the particular
index is set up as an administrative tool it constitutes a concrete social
guidance act to the inherent world of the sciences. It sets the stage
for cutting the link of the field with history. Thus, the decision of how
to make one’s ideas public is heatedly socially negotiated act where
social power relations and ingroup/outgroup distinctions (“paradigm
differences”) within sciences enter the playing field. In a similar man-
ner, the ways of application, and even the ways of understanding the
findings, are similarly socially constrained (Figure 12.1).
Tensions Overcome: Antidotes to Social Guidance
Tensions that grow from the socially guided nature of knowledge
construction process lead to the construction of “symbolic antidotes”
to the “administrative symbolic viruses” that attack the intellectual
lives of academics. Bruno Frey (2003)—who compares academic pub-
lication for the sake of getting “a publication” with the time-honored
economic activity of prostitution—suggests a simple solution for jour-
nals’ reviewing processes to make reviewers’ demand on the submitted
manuscripts elective (rather than mandatory) in the submission pro-
cess. The need for scientists is to neutralize the social demands of the
regulatory system, as well as redirect these, is a necessary buffer against
the administrative takeover of knowledge construction processes. This
is possible due to the special role of the social sciences:
Social science again has become a part of the very reality it purports
to analyze. (Steinmetz, 1997, p. 274)
If social science makes its own object—a feature known of chemistry

since the nineteenth century—then it can also create the meta-level
semiotic system of its own evaluation. Such system cannot operate on
the basis of opinions—which, as is one of the leitmotifs of this book,
are not productive in the generation of knowledge. Rather, it is the
openness of the ideas for generative expansion (see Figure 1.1.B) that
could serve the basis for evaluation of the productivity in science. It is
the science that needs to guide the society to evaluate its work in its own
terms, not the other way round. The sciences that have crafted out vari-
ous forms of relative autonomy in their relations with public demands
and private interests have the chance to produce new knowledge.
276
From this perspective of need for distancing of the science domain

from that of social visibility and application, evaluation of a science
in terms of “how its findings can be applied” or “how many popular
journalistic news it generates” is a parasitic growth on the tree of
knowledge. Within the relationship of science and society both part-
ners guide each other. Yet the final determiner of such guidance need
to be the ones who work toward producing new knowledge—not the
ones who are eager to consume the fashionable knowledge icings on
the cake of new knowledge.
Psychology—A Science in between the Moral and Physical Orders
Psychology, dealing with socially relevant phenomena of human
feeling, thinking, and acting in always nonneutral social contexts, is
a good empirical example of such guidance processes. Psychology
is fragmented not because it is empirical, but because it has been
maintained at a distance from general issues that might be difficult to
accept by persons and institutions if the findings of the science arrive
at general knowledge about the human psyche.
As I have claimed in this book, psychology has been under the
guidance of social institutions which—in any country—have kept it
at a comfortable distance from their own central issues (of power)
and given it a status of potentially glorious servant. The network
of social institutions—some extra-scientific (tax collectors, politi-
cal and religious censors, political parties, businesses ranging from
manufacturers to journalists), others science-centered (scientific as-
sociations, popular science interests groups, etc.)—keep the general
mind orientation (Denkstil in Ludwik Fleck’s terms) operating within
limits and in directions that are primarily social and only secondarily
epistemological.
A good example of such guidance comes from the look at disci-
plinary textbooks. Textbooks in psychology in North America since
the beginning of the twentieth century were guiding the reader to be
interested—yet passive:
. . . the very function of a textbook is as “guide to the study of his

(student’s) mind; however, it is also taken to be instrumental in “deal-
ing with other minds.” . . . Beyond this image of reader as ambitious,
independent, and aspiring to certain skills, however, are textual mes-
sages that insist on passive readers. Questions scattered throughout
the text, study problems, and experiments to be performed—all
devices are purportedly innovations befitting the truly enthusiastic
277
reader—actually limit action and preclude the possibility of cognitive

independence. The answers to most study questions in the books
require no more than rote learning, and the experiments have a
single correct outcome. (Morawski, 1996, p. 152)
Psychology textbooks have been shown to differ cardinally from

those in biology at the end of the twentieth century as well (Smythe,
2005). The social guidance agenda for communicative messages in
psychology textbooks is that of knowledge construction by democratic
consensus within circumscribed areas of knowledge (“research fields”
inside psychology) that is being juxtaposed to others. Psychology’s
institutional self-presentation entails guiding students to think in
terms of “schools” of thought and their seemingly irreconcilable op-
positions (“mentalism” versus “behaviorism” versus “cognitivism”). The
possibility of mutual interpenetration of such declared-to-be-opposing
“schools” is deemphasized,7 if not ruled out. Students of psychology
are guided to see their discipline as a “patchwork” of “schools” that
over history had fought one another—some being eradicated, others
surviving. Such pseudo-evolutionary explanation of the history of the
discipline keeps the actual emergence and transformation of particu-
lar ideas (e.g., see Schelling’s formulation of organism-environment
relations in chapter 5) out of focus for renewed contemplation.
The frequent positively flavored presentation of “psychology as
useful for the society” is being put to critical test in the context of
its application in any institutional context. What is “useful” for the
school principals (e.g., information about pupils’ mental test results)
can be counterproductive to the pupils, confusing to the parents (see
Marsico and Iannacone, 2012), and—neutral for the teachers. Such
use of psychology’s methods outside of the methodology cycle in so-
cial contexts far off from those of Europe or North America can lead
to counter-propositions of liberation oriented and transformational
kinds (chapter 11). The contrasts of the act of application of psychological
methods with the social realities are particularly transparent there:
Is the ideal psychologist primarily a social engineer? [This is an]
odd question to raise, specially in the present disciplinary culture
of world psychology, with its war cries of social relevance and social
responsibility; and in the context of Third World psychology, patheti-
cally trying to be locally meaningful with the help of an imported
conceptual apparatus, confronting and trying to solve decade old
problems which are meaningless in the indigenous life world. (Nandy,
2001, pp. 393–94)
278
As was pointed out above, society is a relevant nonexisting object

to which the loyalty statements of “being useful for” can easily be at-
tached.
Psychology Moving Toward Its Horizons
The guided nature of psychology is likely to continue in the future.
As Alan Costall has expressed,
Psychology, as we now know it, was very much an institutional in-
vention of the ‘new’ university system of the nineteenth century . . ..
It has already suffered important divisions, for example between
‘pure’ and ‘applied’, or around the establishment of centres of ‘cog-
nitive science’. Many academic psychologists now see the close
identification with neuroscience as their best bet in the forthcoming
round of research assessment. Politically they may be right. But, in
the longer term, by going along with an unexamined notion of what
is supposed to count as ‘hard’ scientific psychology, many aspects of
modern psychology could be left extremely vulnerable. (Costall, 2010,
Costall’s comment is about psychology in Great Britain—yet one

can see similar tendencies worldwide. A university somewhere around
the world may be advertising a psychology position promising access
to fMRI technology—this exemplifies such short-sightedness that the
discipline is ready to display once again. Seems that two centuries of
wandering after the fashions of whatever has been labeled “hard sci-
ence” are likely to repeat themselves—albeit in a new form.
What alternatives to this repetition of the self-identity problems
of the past two centuries are there for psychology? How can these be
developed—in a field of closely watched innovations? The emergence
of integrative Indian Psychology as a new version of general psychology
of the higher psychological functions is one of the positive findings in
our search for novelty (chapter 11). Given the nature of such general
psychology—fortified by the philosophical tradition of India in its
heterogeneity of forms, and facilitated by the absence of the “science
wars” of Europe (chapters 5–8)—the new tradition can produce novel
ways of viewing the human psyche. The key to this is the inherent role
culture plays in this new psychology:
. . . culture is inescapably psychological in its composition. Yet,
while quintessentially psychological, issues of cultural variation
have played but a peripheral role in the psychological sciences.
In the major domains of inquiry, culture is conspicuously missing
from the agenda. And, where it has been of focal concern—in the
279
cross-cultural psychology movement—it has been treated in such

a way that it will not only continue to have a peripheral status, but
will also cease to transcend the cultural limits of its own production.
(Misra and Gergen, 2001, p. 406, added emphasis)
Here we can see a good example of how a particular focus on a

topic (culture) can actually block the use of that topic in the disci-
pline. The focus in cross-cultural psychology on differences between
societies—established by standard methods—do not allow theoretical
focus on how culture operates within the psyche. In contrast, the new
Indian Psychology sets the culture as a component of the psyche into
the center of general psychological inquiry (Cornelissen, Misra and
Varma, 2011; Misra and Gergen, 2001). Psychology becomes a science
through the inclusion of the know-how of people from all over the
world—by abstracting and generalizing from the complex phenomena
in war and peace.
At the Doorstep of a New Beginning
My presentation of the single case—history of psychology over the
past two centuries—leaves us with an ambivalent final verdict as to
the status of the discipline. It is the return to the future—move toward
recognition of the cultural nature of higher psychological processes
(as suggested in Indian Psychology—chapter 118)—that could bring
the discipline out of the crisis. Psychology’s look into its own mirror of
history leaves us with a rather queer image—avoidance of the psyche
at all moments where the turn toward its serious study was possible.
Thus, the initial tentative theoretical efforts of the Naturphilosophie
and Fichte-Hegel-nineteenth-century Hegelians were driven out of
focus of psychology as it emulated the conceptual arrogance of the
natural sciences in the end of the nineteenth century. Of course that
arrogance was an act of intellectual self-defense—the quasi-return
to the psyche in the form of the study of cognition in later twentieth
century did not remedy the situation. Neither has the sociocultural
turn succeeded so far—its problem remains in the lack of ideas for
analyses of experiential phenomena of qualitative and dynamic nature.
The upcoming fashion for the use of qualitative (or even “mixed”)
methods cannot replace a careful reconsideration of the methodology
as the unity of the whole knowledge-making process.
In the twenty-first century—looking back to its own history
of the kind usually forgotten or distorted in the mirror of history
(re)-writings—psychology has a chance to build itself as a new science.
280
It is through careful investigation of unsuccessful lines of thought in the

past—developed into a new form in the present—that it can innovate
itself. Psychology is a basic science that builds on the cultural histories
of the many versions of human ways of living as Homo sapiens inhab-
its our planet. The Eurocentric axiomatic basis of the science needs
internationally informed corrections, which are on the horizon. Will
the discipline manage to avoid the distorted mirrors through which it
looks at itself? Only time will tell—but there is a chance.
Notes
1. The British system of “Research Evaluation Exercises” over years is a good
example of how a set of ideas circulating among scientists—assembled into
an evaluation system—starts to act as a selective device for administrative
guidance of science (Fredriksen, Hansson, and Wenneberg, 2003; Gambrill,
2002).
2. Of which only four should be mentioned (as listed by Latour, 1999, p. 15):
actor, network, theory, and the hyphen. The self-reflexivity of the ANT is
one of its valuable features—a part of its belonging to the Grounded Theory
kind of inductive generalization perspectives that deconstruct their own
inductively derived concepts.
3. Examples abound: “the American society is individualistic,” “our society
requires that we be X Y Z.” Society as an abstraction cannot carry per-
sonality traits, nor can it “require” anything from anybody—it is only by
the activities of the persons who evoke the society as substantiation for their
actions (A Palestinian teenager claims “I throw rocks for my country”—
Hammack, 2010, p. 528) that the fiction acquires personified powers.
4. Cf. James (1903) on “Ph.D. octopus.”
5. Which, of course, is not the case ever since Jean Piaget turned the use of
intelligence tests around to proceed to look at cognitive processes, rather
than outcomes (Ducret, 1990, pp. 41–45). The century of intellectual pro-
ductivity of Piaget’s line of “revolutionary science” is depicted in Marti and
Rodriguez (forthcoming).
6. For example, the impact factor for a journal for year 2011 is calculated by
references made to papers published in it in 2009 and 2010—two years prior
to the current one. References to years before 2009 are not included—hence
the historically myopic time window.
7. The present author was welcomed with deep outrage when—in a morning
research seminar with Vygotsky-inspired researchers in Rio de Janeiro in
the 1980s he dared to comment that Vygotsky was a “good Piagetian.” In the
world of “schools,” the “Vygotsky school” and “Piaget school” are presented
as if direct opposites along the “social” versus “individual” emphasis of the
focus. Of course nothing is further from the actual development of their
ideas (see Marti and Rodriguez, 2012; van der Veer and Valsiner, 1991;
Vidal, 1991).
8. It needs only to be remembered that this very suggestion was the core of
the “crisis” talk in European psychology in the 1920s—see chapter 8.
281
Bibliography
Abbey, E. (2007). Perpetual uncertainty of cultural life. In J. Valsiner and
A. Rosa (Eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Socio-Cultural Psychology (pp. 362–72).
New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Adorno, T. W. (1961). “Static” and “dynamic” as sociological categories. Diogenes,
9, 28–49.
Anchin, J. C. (2008). The critical role of the dialectic in viable metatheory.
Theory & Psychology, 18, 6, 801–16.
Andriolo, K. (1979). Kulturkreislehre and the Austrian mind. Man, n.s., 14, 1,
133–44.
Aphek, E., and Tobin, Y (1990). Semiotics of fortune-telling. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.
Appadurai, A. (Ed.) (2001). Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.
Arnett, J. J. (2008). The neglected 95%: why American psychology needs to become
less American. American Psychologist, 63, 7, 602–14.
Ash, M. (1980). Academic politics in the history of science: experimental
psychology in Germany, 1879–1941. Central European History, 13, 3,
255–86.
Ash, M. (1991). Gestalt psychology in Weimar culture. History of the Human
Sciences, 4, 3, 395–415.
Ash, M. (1995). Verordnete Umbrüche, Konstruierte Kontinuitäten: Zur Entnazi-
fizierung von Wissenschaftlern und Wissenschaften nach 1945. Zeitschrift für
Geschichtswissenschaft, 43, 903–23.
Ash, M. (1998). Gestalt psychology in German culture 1890–1967. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Ash, M. (2005). The uses and usefulness of psychology. Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 600, 99–114.
Asquith, P. (1986). The monkey memorial service of Japanese primatolo-
gists. In T. S. Lebra and W. P. Lebra (Eds.), Japanese Culture and Behavior
(pp. 29–32). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.
Asquith, P. (2000). Negotiating science: internationalization and Japanese
primatology. In S. C. Strum and L. M. Fedigan (Eds.), Primate Encoun-
ters: Models of Science, Gender, and Society (pp. 165–83). Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press.
Avineri, S. (1968). Hegel revisited. Journal of Contemporary History, 3, 2,
133–47.
Bachelard, G. (2002). The Formation of the Scientific Mind. Manchester: Clinamen
Press [original in 1938].
283
Baerwald, L. (1905). Die Entwicklung der Lotzeschen Psychologie. Breslau:

Buchdrückerei H. Fleischmann.
Bagla, P. (2010). After acrimonious debate, India rejects GM eggplant. Science,
327, 767.
Baldwin, J. M. (1901). Historical and educational report on psychol-
ogy. Report of the Committee on Awards of the World’s Columbian
Commission. Vol. 1 (pp. 357–404). Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office.
Baldwin, J. M. (Ed.) (1901). Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. New York,
NY: Macmillan.
Baldwin, J. M. (1906). Thought and Things: A Study of the Development and
Meaning of Thought, or Genetic Logic. Vol. 1. Functional Logic, or Genetic
Theory of Knowledge. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co.
Baldwin, J. M. (1915). Genetic Theory of Reality. New York, NY: G. Putnam [new
edition New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2010].
Baldwin, J. M. (2010). Genetic Theory of Reality. New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction Publishers.
Baldwin, J. M. (1930). James Mark Baldwin. In C. Murchison (Ed.), A History
of Psychology in Autobiography. Vol. 1 (pp. 1–30). New York, NY: Russell &
Russell.
Baltes, P. B., and Cornelius, S. W. (1977). The status of dialectics in develop-
mental psychology: theoretical orientation versus scientific method. In
N. Datan and H. W. Reese (Eds.), Life-Span Developmental Psychology.
Dialectical Perspectives on Experimental Research (pp. 122–134). New York,
NY: Academic Press.
Bass, J. (2006). In exile from the self: national belonging and psychoanalysis in
Buenos Aires. Ethos, 34, 4, 433–55.
Basseches, M. (1989). Toward a constructive-developmental understand-
ing of the dialectics of individuality and irrationality. In D. A. Kramer and
M. J. Bopp (Eds.), Transformation in Clinical and Developmental Psychology
(pp. 188–209). New York, NY: Springer.
Bastos, A. C., and Rabinovich, E. (2009). Living in Poverty: Developmental
Poetic s of Cultural Realitie s. Charlotte, N C: Information Age
Publishers.
Bauer, M. (2002). Controversial medical and agri-food biotechnology. Public
Understanding of Science, 11, 93–111.
Baumann, S. L. (2010). The limitations of evidence-based practice. Nursing Sci-
ence Quarterly, 23, 3, 226–30.
Baumann, Z. (1998). Globalization: Human consequences. Cambridge: Polity.
Beaulieu, A. (2002). Images are not the (only) truth: brain mapping, visual
knowledge, and iconoclasm. Science, Technology & Human Values, 27, 1,
53–86.
Beck, U. (1992). Risk Society. London: Sage.
Beck, U. (2000). What is Globalization? Oxford: Blackwell.
Beckstead, Z. (2009). Shifting loyalties: reconsidering psychology’s subject
matter. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 43, 3, 221–27,
doi: 10.1007/s12124-009-9100-4.
Beckstead, Z. (2010). Liminality in acculturation and pilgrimage: when movement
becomes meaningful. Culture & Psychology, 16, 3, 383–93.
284
Bibliography
Begum, H. A. (1987). Psychology in Bangladesh. In G. H. Blowers and A. M. Turtle

(Eds.), Psychology Moving East: The Status of Western Psychology in Asia and
Oceania (pp. 65–70). Sydney: Sydney University Press.
Beisel, N. (1993). Morals versus art: censorship, the politics of interpretation, and
the Victorian nude. American Sociological Review, 58, 145–62.
Bekhterev, V. M. (1903). Suggestion and Its Role in the Social Life. 2nd
ed. St-Peterburg: K.L. Rikker (in Russian).
Belzen, J. A. (2005). A way out of the crisis? From Völkerpsychologie to cultural
psychology of religion. Theory & Psychology, 15, 6, 812–38.
Ben-David, J., and Collins, R (1966). Social factors in the origins of a new science:
the case of psychology. American Sociological Review, 31, 4, 451–65.
Beneke, F. E. (1825). Skizzen zur Naturlehre der Gefühle. Göttingen: Vanderhoeck
& Ruprecht.
Beneke, F. E. (1827). Psychologische Skizzen. Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht.
Beneke, F. E. (1845). Die neue Psychologie. Berlin: Bosen & Bromberg.
Beneke, E. (1850). Pragmatische Psychologie oder Seelenlehre in ther Anwendung auf
das Leben. Vol. 1. Berlin: Mittler und Sohn [Vol. 2 in 1851, Vol. 3 in 1853].
Beneke, F. E. (1877). Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturwissenschaft. 3rd ed.
Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn (first edition 1833).
Benetka, G. (2002). Denkstile der Psychologie. Wien: WUV.
Bensaude-Vincent, B. (1995). The savants and the rest. Diogenes, 43,133–51.
Bensaude-Vincent, B. (2001). A genealogy of the increasing gap between science
and the public. Public Understanding of Science, 10, 99–113.
Bensaude-Vincent, B. (2003). Chemistry. In D. Cahan (Ed.), From Natural
Philosophy to the Social Sciences (pp. 196–220). Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Bensaude-Vincent, B. (2009). A historical perspective on science and its “others”.
Isis, 100, 359–68.
Bensaude-Vincent, B., and Blondel, C. (2008). A science full of shocks, sparks, and
smells. In B. Bensaude-Vincent and C. Blondel (Eds.), Science and Spectacle
in the European Enlightenment (pp. 1–10). Aldershot: Ashgate.
Bensaude-Vincent, B., and Simon, J. (2008). Chemistry: The Impure Science.
London: Imperial College Press.
Benussi, V. (1913). Psychologie der Zeitauffassung. In M. Antonelli (Ed.), Vittorio
Benussi Psychologische Schriften. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002.
Berrios, G. E. (2005). Excerpt from Medicinische Psychologie oder Physiologie
der Seele by Dr. Rudolph Hermann Lotze. History of Psychiatry, 16, 1,
117–27.
Besançon, A. (2000). The Forbidden Image. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Bhantumnavin, D. (1987). Social history of psychology in Thailand. In
G. H. Blowers and A. M. Turtle (Eds.), Psychology Moving East: The Status
of Western Psychology in Asia and Oceania (pp. 71–88) Sydney: Sydney Uni-
versity Press.
Bhatia, S. (2000). Can we return to the concept of duty in a culture of rights?
Culture & Psychology, 6, 3, 303–16.
Bhawuk, D. P. S. (2010). Methodology for building psychological models from
scriptures: contributions of Indian psychology to indigenous and universal
psychologies. Psychology and Developing Societies, 22, 1, 49–93.
285
Bibace, R., Clegg, J., and Valsiner, J. (2009). What is in a name? Understanding
the implications of participant terminology. IPBS: Integrative Psychological &
Behavioral Science, 43, 1, 67–77.
Biunde, F. X. (1831). Versuch einer systematisachen Behandlung der emprischen
Psychologie. Trier: Verlag J. M. Gall.
Bleicher, J. (2006). Leben. Theory, Culture & Society, 24, 23, 343–45.
Bleicher, J. (2007). From Kant to Goethe: Georg Simmel on the way to Leben.
Theory, Culture & Society, 24, 6, 139–58.
Boesch, E. E. (1997). Heimweh und Fernweh. In E. E. Boesch (Ed.), Von der
Sehnsucht (pp. 79–103). Saarbrücken: Privat-Druck.
Borgatti, S. P., Mehra, A., Brass, D. J., and Labianca, G. (2009). Network analysis
in the social sciences. Science, 323, 892–95.
Boring, E. G. (1927). The problem of originality in science. American Journal of
Psychology, 39, 1, 70–90.
Boring, E. G. (1929). A History of Experimental Psychology. New York, NY:
The Century Co.
Boring, E. G. (1954). The nature and history of experimental control. American
Journal of Psychology, 67, 4, 573–89.
Boring, E. G. (1961). The beginning and growth of measurement in psychology.
Isis, 52, 2, 238–57.
Boring, E. G. (1965). On the subjectivity of important historical dates: Leipzig
1879. Journal for the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 1, 1, 5–9.
Borsboom, D., Kievit, R., Cervone, D., and Hood, S. B. (2009). The two disci-
plines of scientific psychology, or the disunity of psychology as a working
hypothesis. In J. Valsiner, P. Molenaar, M. Lyra, and N. Chaudhary (Eds.),
Dynamic Process Methodology in the Social and Developmental Sciences
Botkin, V. P. (2001). Germanskaia literature (German literature). In Friedrich
Schelling: pro et contra (pp. 179–83). Sankt-Peterburg: Izdatel’stvo Russkogo
Khristianskogo Gumanitarnogo Instituta [in Russian, original 1843].
Bourdieu, P. (2004). Science of Science and Reflexivity. Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press.
Branco, A. U., and Valsiner, J. (1997). Changing methodologies: a co-constructivist
study of goal orientations in social interactions. Psychology and Developing
Societies, 9, 1, 35–64.
Branco, A. U., and Valsiner, J. (Eds.) (2004). Communication and Metacom
munication in Human Development. Greenwich, CT: Information Age
Publishers.
Brandt, F. B. (1895). Friedrich Eduard Beneke: The Man and His Philosophy. New
York, NY: Macmillan.
Brandtstädter, J., and Reinert, G. (1973). Wissenschaft als Gegenstand der
Wissenschaft vom menschlichen Erleben und Verhalten: Überlegungen
zur Konzeption einer Wissenschaftspsychologie. Zeitschrift für allgemeine
Wissenschaftstheorie, 4, 2, 368–79.
Brechman, J., Lee, C-J., and Capella, J. (2009). Lost in translation? A comparison
of cancer-genetics reporting in the press release and its subsequent coverage
in the press. Science Communication, 30, 4, 453–74.
Brentano, F. (1862). Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach
Aristoteles. Freiburg bei Preisgau: Herder’sche Verlagshandlung.
286
Bibliography
Brentano, F. (1867). Die Psychologie des Aristoteles. Mainz: Franz Kirchheim.

Brentano, F. (1874). Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte. Leipzig: Duncker
& Humblot.
Brentano, F. (1889). Von Ursprung sittliche Erkenntnis. Leipzig: Dinder und
Humblot.
Brentano, F. (1895). Meine lezten Wünsche für Oesterreich. Stuttgart: Verlag der
J. G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung.
Brentano, F. (1981). Sensory and Noetic Consciousness. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul [original published in German 1929].
Brentano, F. (1995). Psychology from An Empirical Standpoint. London: Routledge
[German original in 1874].
Brett, G. S. (1921). A History of Psychology. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Brezell, W. J. (1970). The Young Hegelians. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Brinkmann, S. (2006). Questioning constructionism: toward an ethic of finitude.
Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 46, 1, 92–111.
Brinkmann, S. (2008). Changing psychologies in the transition from industrial
society to consumer society. History of the Human Sciences, 21, 2, 85–110.
Brinkmann, S. (2009).Literature as qualitative inquiry: the novelist as a researcher.
Qualitative Inquiry, 15, 8, 1376–94.
Broad, C. D. (1930). The principles of demonstrative induction. Mind, n.s., 39,
155, 302–17.
Broers, M. (1996). Europe Under Napoleon 1799–1815. London: Hodder.
Brower, D (1949). The problem of quantification in psychological science. Psy-
chological Review, 56, 325–31.
Bucchi, M., and Mazzolini, R. G. (2003). Big science, little news: science cover-
age in the Italian daily press, 1946–1997. Public Understanding of Science,
12, 7–24.
Budwig, N. (2000). Language, practices and the construction of personhood.
Bühler, C (1965). Some observations on the psychology of the third force. Journal
of Humanistic Psychology, 5, 54–56.
Bühler, K. (1926). Die Krise der psychologie. Kant-Studien, 31, 455–526.
Bühler, K. (2000). Die Krise der psychologie. In Karl Bühler Werke, Vol. 4.
Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft [original in 1927].
Bulhof, I. (1980). Wilhelm Dilthey: A Hermeneutic Approach to the Study of His-
tory ands Culture. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.
Bunzl, M. (2003). Völkerpsychologie and German-Jewish emancipation. In
H. G. Penny and M. Bunzl (Eds.), Worldly Provincialism: German Anthropology
in the Age of Empire (pp. 47–85). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan
Press.
Burman, E. (1996). The crisis in modern social psychology and how to find it.
South African Journal of Psychology, 26, 3, 135–42.
Buss, A. R. (1978). The structure of psychological revolutions. Journal of the His-
tory of the Behavioral Sciences, 14, 57–64.
Cabell, K. R. (2010). Catalysis: Cultural constructions and the conditions
of change. JISS: Journal of Integrated Social Sciences, 2, 1, 1–12 (http://
www.jiss.org/documents/volume_2/issue_1/JISS_2011_Catalysis_
Commentary.pdf ).
287
Cahan, D. (Ed.)(1993). Hermann von Helmholtz and the Foundation of

Nineteenth-Century Science. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Cairns, R. B. (1986). Phenomena lost. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The Role
of Individual Subject in Scientific Psychology (pp. 97–111). New York, NY:
Plenum.
Cajori, F. (1918). Origin of the name “mathematical induction.” American Math-
ematical Monthly, 25, 5, 197–201.
Cambrosio, A., Keating, P., Schlich, T., and Weisz, G. (2006). Regulatory objectivity
and the generation and management of evidence in medicine. Social Science
& Medicine, 63, 1, 189–99.
Cambrosio, A., Keating, P., Schlich, T., and Weisz, G. (2009). Biomedi-
cal conventions and regulatory objectivity. Social Studies of Science, 39,
5, 651–64.
Camp, C. J., and McKitrick, L. A. (1989). The dialectics of forgetting and re-
membering across the adult life span. In D. A. Kramer and M. J. Bopp (Eds.),
Transformation in Clinical and Developmental Psychology (pp. 169–87). New
York, NY: Springer.
Campos, G. P. (2000). What are the duties of the cultural theory of duties? Culture
& Psychology, 6, 3, 317–31.
Carretero, M. (2011). Constructing Patriotism: Teaching History and Memories
in Global Worlds. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishers.
Carrier, M. (2001). Kant’s theory of matter and his views on chemistry. In
E. Watkins (Ed.), Kant and the Sciences (pp. 205–30). New York, NY: Oxford
University Press.
Cassirer, E. (1923). Substance and Function. New York, NY: Dover.
Cassirer, E. (1981). Kant’s Life and Thought. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
[original in German 1918].
Cassirer. E. (1996). The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Vol. 4. The Metaphysics of
Symbolic Forms. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Cattaneo, C. (1864). Dell’ antitesi como metodo dí psicologia sociale. Il Politec-
nico, 20, 262–70.
Ceci, S., Peters, D., and Plotkin, J. (1985). Human subjects review, personal val-
ues, and the regulation of social science research. American Psychologist, 40,
9, 994–1002.
Chadarevian, S. (2003). Portrait of a discovery: Watson, Crick, and the double
helix. Isis, 94, 90–105.
Chakkarath, P. (2012). The role of indigenous psychologies in the building of a
basic cultural psychology. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Culture
and Psychology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Chalybäus, H. M. (1854). Historical Development of Speculative Philosophy from
Kant to Hegel. Edinburgh: T & T Clark.
Chang, R. S. (Ed.) (2009). Relating to Environments: A New Look at Umwelt.
Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishers.
Charcot, J.-M. (1889). Leçons du mardi a la Salpetriere. Paris: Progres Medical.
Charles, L. (2007). Cultural competence as a relational process. Qualitative
Inquiry, 13, 8, 1160–76.
Chaudhary, N. (2004). Thinking through Culture. New Delhi: Sage.
Chaudhary, N. (2010). Review of handbook of Indian psychology. Journal of
Cross-Cultural Psychology, 41, 284–92.
288
Bibliography
Chaudhary, N. (2012). Affective networks: the social terrain of a complex

culture. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology.
New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Chelmow, D. (2005). Evidence-based medicine: quantitatively moving
from the universal to the particular. In R. Bibace, J. Laird, K. Noller and
J. Valsiner (Eds.), Science and Medicine in Dialogue (pp. 139–58). Westport,
CT: Praeger.
Chelnokova, O. (2009). Functional magnetic resonance: constructing the data?
Psychology & Society, 2, 2, 168–75.
Commager, H. S. (1950). The American Mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Compayré, G (1907). Herbart and Education by Instruction. New York,
NY: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.
Connell, R. (2007). The Northern theory of globalization. Sociological Theory,
25, 4, 368–85.
Cornelissen, R. M. M., Misra, G., and Varma, S. (Eds.) (2011). Foundations of
Indian Psychology. Delhi: Pearson.
Costall, A. (2010). The future of experimental psychology. The Psychologist, 23,
12, 1022–23.
Couch, C. J. (1986). Markets, temples, and palaces. Studies in Symbolic Interac-
tion, 7, A, 137–59.
Crisciani C. (2001). Fatti, teorie, “narration” e malatti a corte. Note su em-
pirismo in medicina nel tardo-medioevo. Quaderni storici, n.s., 108, 3,
695–718.
Crosland, M. (1978). Historical Studies in the Language of Chemistry. Mineola,
NY: Dover.
Crosland, M. (1995). Changes in chemical concepts and language in the seven-
teenth century. Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Preprint
25, 31–46.
Cunha, C., Gonçalves, M., and Valsiner, J. (2010). Identity transitions in psy-
chotherapy: the role of re-conceptualization innovative moments. Paper
presented at the Sixth International Conference on Dialogical Self, Athens,
September 30.
Cvetkovich, G. (1977). Dialectical perspectives on empirical research. Personality
and Social Psychology Bulletin, 3, 688–96.
Dalal, A. K. (1989). Book review of Psychology Moving East. Psychology and
Developing Societies, 1, 1, 127–30.
Dalal, A. K., and Misra, G. (2010). The core and context of Indian psychology.
Psychology and Developing Societies, 22, 1, 121–55.
Danet, B. (1980). ‘Baby’ or ‘fetus’? Language and the construction of reality in a
manslaughter trial. Semiotica 32, 3/4, 187–219.
Danziger, K. (1990). Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological
Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Danziger, K. (1994). Does the history of psychology have a future? Theory &
Danziger, K. (1997). Naming the Mind: How Psychology Found Its Language.
London: Sage.
Danziger, K. (2001). Sealing off the discipline: Wilhelm Wundt and the
psychology of memory. In C. D. Green, M. Shore, and T. Teo (Eds.),
289
The Transformation of Psychology (pp. 45–62) Washington, DC: American

Psychological Association.
Das, K. (1993). Inner Spaces: New Writing by Women From Kerala. New Delhi:
Kali for Women.
Daston, L. (1992). Objectivity and the escape from perspective. Social Studies of
Science, 22, 597–618.
Daston, L. (1998). What can be a scientific object? Reflections on monsters
and meteors. Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 52, 2,
35–50.
Daston, L. (2000). Can scientific objectivity have a history? Mitteilungen der
Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, No. 75, July, 31–40.
Daston, L. (2001). Perché I fatti sono brevi? Quaderni storici, n.s., 108, 3, 745–70
[Why are facts short? [also in Preprint 174, MPIWG, 2001, pp. 5–21].
Daston, L., and Gallistel. P. (2007). Objectivity. New York, NY: Zone Books.
Daston, L., Müller-Wille, S., and Sibum, H. O. (2001). A History of Facts. Preprint
174. Berlin: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte.
Del Rio, M. T., and Molina, M. E. (2009). Recalling as a holistic experience:
objects, emotions and meanings united. Culture & Psychology, 15, 4, 485–
95.
Devereux, G. (1967). From Anxiety to Method in the Behavioral Sciences. The
Hague: Mouton.
de Waal, F. B. M. (2003). Silent invasion: Imanishi’s primatology and cultural bias
in science. Animal Cognition, 6, 293–99.
Dewey, J. (1887). Psychology. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers.
Dewey, J. (1896). The reflex arc concept in psychology. Psychological Review, 3,
3, 357–70.
Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New York, NY: Perigee Books.
Dilthey, W. (1870). Leben Schleiermachers. Erster Band. Berlin: Georg Reimer.
Dilthey, W. (1905). Die Jugendgeschichte Hegels. Berlin: Verlag der Königliche
Preussische Akademie der Wissenchaften.
Dilthey, W. (1906). Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner.
Dilthey, W. (1907). Das Wesen der Philosophie. In P. Hinneberg (Ed.), Die Kultur
der Gegenwart (pp. 1–72). Berlin: B. Teubner.
Dilthey, W. (1927). Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswis-
senschaften. In Wilhelm Diltheys gesammelte Schriften (Vol. 7). Leipzig:
B. G. Teubner.
Dilthey, W. (2002). The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Diriwächter, R. (2004). Völkerpsychologie: the synthesis that never was. Culture
& Psychology, 10, 1, 85–109.
Diriwächter, R. (2009). Idiographic microgenesis: re-visiting the experimen-
tal tradition of Aktualgenese. In J. Valsiner, P. Molenaar, M. Lyra, and
N. Chaudhary (Eds.), Dynamic Process Methodology in the Social and Devel-
opmental Sciences (pp. 319–32). New York, NY: Springer.
Diriwächter, R., and Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (2008). Striving for the whole. New Bruns-
wick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Dolby, R. G. A. (1977). The transmissions of two new scientific disciplines from
Europe to North America in the late 19th century. Annals of Science, 34,
287–310.
290
Bibliography
Donnelly, M. (1998). From political arithmetic to social statistics: how

some nineteenth-century roots of the social sciences were implanted. In
J. Heilbron, L. Magnusson, and B. Wittrock (Eds.), The Rise of the Social Sci-
ences and the Formation of Modernity (pp. 225–39). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Dorling, J. (1973). Demonstrative induction: its significant role in the history of
physics. Philosophy of Science, 40, 3, 360–72.
Draaisma, D., and DeRijcke, S. (2001). The graphic strategy: the uses and func-
tions of illustrations in Wundt’s Grundzüge. History of the Human Sciences,
14, 1, 1–24.
Driesch, H. (1903). Die “Seele” als elementarer Naturfaktor. Leipzig: Verlag von
Wilhelm Engelman.
Driesch, H. (1905). Der Vitalismus als Geschichte und als Lehre. Leipzig:
J.A. Barth.
Driesch, H. (1908). The Science and Philosophy of the Organism. London: Adam
and Charles Black.
Driesch, H. (1914). The History & Theory of Vitalism. London: Macmillan.
Driesch, H. (1917). Das Problem der Freiheit. Berlin: Otto Reichl.
Driesch, H. (1923). Mein System und sein Werdegang. In R. Schmidt (Ed.), Die
Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen (pp. 1–28). Leipzig: Felix
Meiner.
Driesch, H. (1925). The Crisis in Psychology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Driesch, H. (1927). Critical remarks on some modern types of psychology. Peda-
gogical Seminary, 34, 3–13.
Driesch, H. (1939). Entelechie und Seele. Synthese, 4, 6, 266–79.
Ducret, J.-J. (1990). Jean Piaget: Biogaphie et Parcours Intellectuel. Neuchatel:
Delachaux et Niestlé.
Duveen, G. (1998). The psychosocial production of ideas: social representations
and psychologic. Culture & Psychology, 4, 4, 455–72.
Dyck, M. (1958). Goethe’s thought in the light of his pronouncements on applied
and misapplied mathematics. PMLA, 73, 5, 1, 505–15.
Eastwood, A. (1892). Lotze’s antithesis between thought and things I. Mind,
n.s., 1, 3, 305–24.
Eaton, W. R. (2005). Boyle on Fire. London: Continuum.
Eco, U. (2009). On the ontology of fictional characters: a semiotic approach. Töid
Märgisüsteemide Alalt/Sign Systems Studies, 37, 1/2, 82–97.
Ehrenfels, C. von (1988a). Über Gestaltqualitäten (1890/1922). In C. von Ehren-
fels (Ed.), Philosophische Schriften. Vol. 3. Psychologie Ethik Erkenntnistheorie
(pp. 128–67). München: Philosophia Verlag.
Ehrenfels, C. von (1988b). On ‘Gestalt qualities’. In B. Smith (Ed.), Foundations
of Gestalt Theory (pp. 82–116). München: Philosophia Verlag.
Ehrenfels, C. von (1988c). On Gestalt qualities (1932). In B. Smith (Ed.), Founda-
tions of Gestalt Theory (pp. 121–23). München: Philosophia Verlag.
Ehrenfels, C. von (1988d). Über Gestaltqualitäten (1937). In C. von Ehrenfels
(Ed.), Philosophische Schriften. Vol. 3. Psychologie Ethik Erkenntnistheorie
(pp. 168–70). München: Philosophia Verlag.
Ehrenfels, C. von (1988e). Gestalt level and Gestalt purity. In B. Smith (Ed.),
Foundations of Gestalt Theory (pp. 118–20). München: Philosophia Verlag.
[excerpt from Kosmogonie, 1916].
291
Elias, N. (1996). The Germans: Power Struggles and the Development of Habitus
in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Engels, F. (1967). The German Revolutions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Enriquez, V. G. (1989). Towards cross-cultural knowledge through cross-indig-
enous methods and perspective. In R. Pe-Pua (Ed.), Sikolohiyang Pilipino:
Teorya, Metodo at Gamit (pp. 120–30). Lunsod Quezon: University of the
Philippines Press.
Enriquez, V. G. (1992). From Colonial to Liberation Psychology: The Philippine
Experience. Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.
Espiritu, A. C. (1989). The limits of applicability of Western concepts, values
and methods in the social sciences to the concrete realities of Asian soci-
eties. In R. Pe-Pua (Ed.), Sikolohiyang Pilipino: Teorya, Metodo at Gamit
(pp. 111–19). Lunsod Quezon: University of the Philippines Press.
Evans, R. B. (2004). New growth from phantom limbs: tenuous attributions to
our predecessoers. In T. C. Dalton and R. B. Evans (Eds.), The Life Cycle of
Psychological Ideas (pp. 17–32). New York, NY: Kluwer/Plenum.
Evans, R. J. W. (1977). Learned societies in Germany in the seventeenth century.
European Studies Review, 7, 129–51.
Evers, H.-D. (2005). Global knowledge: the epistemic culture of development.
In R. Hassan (Ed.), Local and Global: Social Transformation in Southeast Asia
(pp. 3–17). Leiden: Brill.
Fahnestock, J. (1998). Accommodating science: the rhetorical life of scientific
facts. Written Communication, 15, 3, 330–50.
Fahnestock, J. (2004). Preserving the figure: consistency in the presentation of
scientific arguments. Written Communication, 21, 1, 6–31.
Falckenberg, R. (1901). Hermann Lotze. Stuttgart: Fr. Frommanns Verlag.
Falmagne, R. J. (1995). The abstract and the concrete. In L. Martin, K. Nelson,
and E. Tobach (Eds.), Sociocultural Psychology: Theory and Practice of
Doing and Knowing (pp. 205–28). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University
Press.
Falmagne, R. J. (2004). On the constitution of ‘self ’ and ‘mind’. Theory & Psychol-
ogy, 14, 6, 822–45.
Falmagne, R. J. (2009). Subverting theoretical dualisms: discourse and mentalism.
Farr, R. (1993). Common sense, science and social representations. Public Un-
derstanding of Science, 2, 189–204.
Fernandes, T. S. (2008). Chemical metaphors in sociological discourse:
Durkheim through the imagery of Rousseau. Journal of Classical Sociology, 8,
447–66.
Fichte, I. H. (1873). Psychologie: Die Lehre vom bewussten Geiste des Menschen.
Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus.
Fichte, J. G. (1794). Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre. Leipzig: Chris-
tian Ernst Gabler.
Fichte, J. G. (1868). The Science of Knowledge. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott.
Fischhaber, G. E. F. (1824). Lehrbuch der Psychologie für Gymnasien und ähnliche
Lehr-Anstalten. Stuttgart: Johann Friedrich Steintopf.
Fleck, L. (1935). Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache: Einführung in die
Lehre vom Denkstil und Denkkollektiv. Basel: Benno Schwabe.
292
Bibliography
Fleck, L. (1979). Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Chicago, IL:

University of Chicago Press [original in German 1935].
Förstl, H., Rattay-Förstl, B., and Winston, M. (1992). Karl Philipp Moritz and
the Journal of Empirical Psychology: an introductory note and a series of
psychiatric case reports. History of Psychiatry, 3, 95–115.
Fortlage, K. (1855). System der Psychologie als empirische Wissenschaft und der
Beobachtung des innere Sinnes. Leipzig: Brodhaus.
Foucault, M. (1998). Different spaces. In J. D. Faubion (Ed.), Michel Foucault—
Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology. Vol. 2. New York, NY: The New
Press.
Fox, N. J. (2011). Boundary objects, social meanings and the success of new
technologies. Sociology, 45, 1, 70–85.
Fredriksen, L. F., Hansson, F., and Wenneberg, S. B. (2003). The Agora and the
role of research evaluation. Evaluation, 9, 2, 149–72.
Freeman, L. C. (2004). The Development of Social Network Analysis: A Study in
the Sociology of Science. Vancouver, BC: Empirical Press.
Frey, B. (2003). Publishing as prostitution?—choosing between one’s own ideas
and academic success. Public Choice, 116, 205–23.
Friedrich, J. (1898). Friedrich Eduard Beneke. Wiesbaden: Verlag von Emil
Behrend.
Fries, J. F. (1820). Handbuch der psychische Anthropologie oder der Lehre von der
Natur des menschlichen Geistes. Jena: Erdschen Buchhandlung.
Fritzsche, P. (2004). Stranded in the Present: Modern Time and the Melancholy
of History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gade, A. (2011). Undercutting the grant process. Science, 331, 673.
Gale, G., and Pinnick, C. L. (1997). Stalking theoretical physicists: an ethnography
flounders. Social Studies of Science, 27, 113–23.
Gambrill, E. (2002). ‘I am not a rubber stamp’ my experience as a non-UK RAE
adviser. Journal of Social Work, 2, 2, 169–85.
Gaskell, G., and Bauer, M. (Eds.) (2006). Genomics and Society. London:
Earthscan.
Gauvain, M., Altman, I., and Fahim, H. (1984). Homes and social change: a
case study of the impact of resettlement. In K. J. Gergen and M. M. Gergen
(Eds.), Historical Social Psychology (pp. 211–35). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
Gelb, A. (1911). Theoretisches über “Gestaltqualitäten”. Zeitschrift für Psychologie,
58, 1–57.
George, L. (1854). Lehrbuch der Psychologie. Berlin: Georg Reimer.
Georgoudi, M (1984). Modern dialectics in social psychology. In K. J. Gergen
and M. M. Gergen (Eds.), Historical Social Psychology (pp. 83–101). Hillsdale,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Gergen, K. J. (1984). An introduction to historical social psychology. In
K. J. Gergen and M. M. Gergen (Eds.), Historical Social Psychology
(pp. 3–36). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Gergen, K. J. (2006). Social construction as an ethics of infinitude: reply to Brink-
mann. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 46, 2, 119–25.
Gergen, M. M., and Gergen, K. J (1984). The social construction of narrative ac-
counts. In K. J. Gergen and M. M. Gergen (Eds.), Historical Social Psychology
(pp. 173–89). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
293
Gieryn, T. F. (1983). Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from

non-science. American Sociological Review, 48, 781–95.
Gieryn, T. F. (1992). The ballad of Pons and Fleischmann: experiment and narrative
in (um)making of cold fusion. In E. Mullin (Ed.), Social Dimension of Science
(pp. 217–43). Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Gieryn, T. F. (1999). Cultural Boundaries of Science. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Gigerenzer, G. (1991). From tools to theories: a heuristic of discovery in cognitive
psychology. Psychological Review, 98, 2, 254–67.
Gigerenzer, G., Swijtink, Z., Porter, T., Daston, L., Beatty, J., and Krüger, L. (1989).
The Empire of Chance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gilbert, S. F. (2000). Genes classical and genes developmental: the differ-
ent use of genes in evolutionary synthesis. In P. J. Beurton, R. Falk, and
H.-J. Rheinberger (Eds.), The Concept of the Gene in Development and Evolu-
tion (pp. 178–91). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gildea, R. (2008). Children of the Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Giorgi, A. (1985). Toward the articulation of psychology as a coherent disci-
pline. In S. Koch and D. Leary (Eds.), A Century of Psychology as Science
(pp. 46–59). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Giorgi, A. (2000). Psychology as a human science revisited. Journal of Humanistic
Glucksberg, S. (2008). How metaphors create categories—quickly. In
R. W. Gibbs (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook if Metaphor and Thought
(pp. 67–83). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Goertzen, J. R. (2008). On the possibility of unification: the reality and nature of
crisis in psychology. Theory & Psychology, 18, 6, 829–52.
Goke-Pariola, A. (1993). Language and symbolic power: Bourdieu and the legacy
of Euro-American colonialism in an African society. Language & Communica-
tion, 13, 3, 219–34.
Golinski, J. V. (2008). Joseph Priestley and the chemical sublime in British public
science. In B. Bensaude-Vincent and C. Blondel (Eds.), Science and Spectacle
in the European Enlightenment (pp. 117–28). Aldershot: Ashgate.
Gooding, W. L. (1881). Hermann Lotze. Methodist Quarterly Review, 63,
4th series, Vol. 33, 312–30.
Gramzow, O. (1899). Friedrich Eduard Benekes Leben und Philosophie.
Bern: Steiger.
Graumann, C. F. (1980). Experiment, statistics, history: Wundt’s forgotten first
program in psychology. In W. Bringmann, R. Tweney, and E. Hilgard (Eds.),
Wundt Studies: A Centennial Collection (pp. 33–41). Torontop: Hogrefe.
Greenberg, J. M. (2004). Clearing the “pillars”: multiple meaning of a Hubble
image. Public Understanding of Science, 13, 83–95.
Greenberg, L., and Pascual-Leone, J. (1995). A dialectical constructivist ap-
proach to experiential change. In R. A. Neimeyer and M. J. Mahoney (Eds.),
Constructivism in Psychotherapy (pp. 169–91). Washington, DC: American
Greenberg, L., and Pascual-Leone, J. (2001). A dialectical constructivist view of
the creation of personal meaning. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 14,
165–86.
294
Bibliography
Greenberg, L., Rice, L. N., and Elliott, R. (1993). Facilitating Emotional Change:
The Moment-by-Moment Process. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Gülerçe, A. (2006). History of psychology in Turkey as a sign of diverse mod-
ernization and global psychologization. In A. Brock (Ed.), Internationalizing
the History of Psychology (pp. 75–93). New York, NY: New York University
Press.
Gutmann, J. (1936). Introduction. In F. W. J. Schelling (Ed.), Philosophical
Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom (pp. xi–lii). La Salle, IL: Open
Court.
Guzder, J., and Kakar, S. (1989). Jazwant Guzder interviews Sudhir Kakar. Tran-
scultural Psychiatric Research Review, 26, 299–307.
Habermas, J. (1992). Postmetaphysical Thinking. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hac, P. M. (1987). Some observations on the historical development of psychol-
ogy in the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam. In G. H. Blowers and A. M. Turtle
(Eds.), Psychology Moving East: The Status of Western Psychology in Asia and
Oceania (pp. 89–99) Sydney: Sydney University Press.
Haeger, A. (1891). Lotzes Kritik der Herbartischen Metaphysik und Psychologie.
Greifswald: F. W. Kunike.
Hall, G. S. (1881a). A note on Hegel, his followers and critics. In G. S. Hall (Ed.),
Aspects of German Culture (pp. 153–74). Boston, MA: James Osgood.
Hall, G. S. (1881b). Hermann Lotze. In G. S. Hall (Ed.), Aspects of German Culture
(pp. 94–100). Boston, MA: James Osgood.
Hall, G. S. (1917). A reminiscence. American Journal of Psychology, 28, 2,
297–300.
Hamerow, T S. (1954). History and the German Revolution of 1848. American
Historical Review, 60, 1, 27–44.
Hammack, P. (2010). The cultural psychology of Palestinian youth. Culture &
Psychology, 16, 4, 507–37.
Harré, R. (2009). Pavlov’s Dogs and Schrödinger’s Cat. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Harrington, A. (2000). In defence of Verstehen and Erklären. Theory & Psychol-
ogy, 10, 4, 435–51.
Harrington, A. (2001). Dilthey, empathy and Verstehen. European Journal of
Social Theory, 4, 3, 311–29.
Harris, H. S. (1972). Hegel’s Development: Toward the Sunlight 1770–1801.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hegel, G. W. (1986). The Jena System, 1804–5: Logic and Metaphysics. Kingston:
McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Hegel, G. W. (1998). Dissertationi philosophicae de orbits planetarum. In
G. W. Hegel (Ed.), Gesammelte Werke. Vol. 5. Schriften und Entwürfe
(1799–1808). Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag [original 1801].
Hegel, G. W. (2001). Vorlesungen über die Logik. Hamburg: Felix Meiner
Verlag.
Hegel, G. W. (2006). Planet orbits. Translation of the 1801 dissertation by David
Healan, www.hegel.net/en/v2133healan.htm.
Hegel, G. W. (2008). Lectures on Logic. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press.
Heinrich, D. (1997). The Course of Remembrance and Other Essays on Hölderlin.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
295
Herbart, J. F. (1808). Allgemeine practische Philosophie. Göttingen: Justus Friedrich

Dankwerts.
Herbart, J. F. (1825). Psychologie als Wissenschaft, neu gegründet auf Erfahrung,
Metaphysik, und Mathematik. Königsberg: August Wilhelm Unzer.
Herbart, J. F. (1887). Lehrbuch zur Psychologie. 3rd ed. Hamburg and Leipzig:
Leopold Voss.
Ho, D. Y. F. (1998). Indigenous psychologies. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychol-
ogy, 29, 1, 88–103.
Höfler, A. (1905). Sind wir Psychologisten? Atti del V Concresso Internazionale
di Psicologia. Roma: Forzani e C. tipografi del Senato.
Hogan, J. D., and Vaccaro, T. P. (2006). Internationalizing the history of
U.S. developmental psychology. In A. Brock (Ed.), Internationalizing the
History of Psychology (pp. 133–51). New York, NY: New York University
Press.
Hogle, L. (2009). Pragmatic objectivity and the standardization of engineered
tissues. Social Studies of Science, 39, 5, 717–42.
Höijer, B. (2010). Emotional anchoring and objectification in the media reporting
on climate change. Public Understanding of Science, 19, 6, 717–31.
Holzkamp, K. (1992). On doing psychology critically. Theory & Psychology, 2, 2,
193–204.
Hookway, C. (2009). Lotze and the classical pragmatists. European Journal of
Pragmatism and American Philosophy, 1, 1, 1–9.
Horowitz, I. H. (2006). Privacy, publicity, and security: the American context.
Science & Society, 7, 1–5.
Horwicz, A. (1872). Psychologische Analysen auf physiologischer Grundlage: Ein
Versuch zur Neubegründung der Seelenlehre. Halle: C. E. M. Pfeffer.
Horwicz, A. (1878). Analyse der qualitative Gefühle. Magdeburg: A & R Faber.
Horwicz, A. (1879). Das Verhältnis der Gefühle zu den Vorstellungen und die
Frage nach dem psychischen Grundprocesse. Vierteljahresschirft für wissen-
schaftliche Philosophie, 3, 308–41.
Hu, S., and Li, X. (2009). The distance from psychological research to real
life. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 43, 2, 149–57,
doi: 10.1007/s12124-009-9092-0.
Huemer, W., and Landerer, C. (2010). Mathematics, experience and laboratories:
Herbart’s and Brentano’s role in the rise of scientific psychology. History of the
Human Sciences, 23, 3, 72–94.
Hurlburt, R. T., and Knapp, T. J. (2006). Münsterberg in 1898, not Allport in 1937,
introduced the terms ‘idiographic’ and ‘nomothetic’ to American psychology.
Husserl, E. (1919). Erinnerungen an Franz Bretano. In O. Kraus (Ed.),
Franz Brentano: Sur kennis seines Lebens und seine Lehre (pp. 153–67).
München: C. Beck.
Husserl, E. (1970). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenom-
enology. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press [original manuscript
1935–1937, German publication 1954].
Ideler, K. W. (1857). Lehrbuch der gerechtlichen Psychologie. Berlin:
A. W. Hayn.
Imanishi, K. (1965). Identification: a process of socialization in the subhu-
man society of Macaca fuscata. In S. Altmann (Ed.), Japanese Monkeys:
296
Bibliography
A Collection of Translations (pp. 30–51). Edmonton, AB: University of

Alberta Press.
Imanishi, K. (1984). A proposal for shinzegaku: the conclusion to my story of
evolutionary theory. Journal of Social and Biological structures, 7, 357–68.
Imanishi, K. (2002). The World of Living Things. London: Routledge (original:
Seibutso no sekai, 1941).
Ishii, S. (2007). Beyond Paradoxology: Searching for the Logic in Japanese History.
Tokyo: Jigakusha Publishing Agency.
Jackson, M. (2010). “Live in the way the World does”: imagining the modern in
the spatial returns of Kolkata and Calcutta. Space & Culture, 13, 1, 32–53.
Jacobi, D., and Schiele, B. (1989). Scientific imagery and popularized imagery:
differences and similarities in the photographic portraits of scientists. Social
Studies of Science, 19, 731–53.
Jacobi, D., and Schiele, B. (1993). Science in magazines, and its readers. Public
Understanding of Science, 2, 3–20.
Jahoda, G. (1993a). Crossroads between Culture and Mind. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Jahoda, G. (1993b). The color of a chameleon: perspectives on concepts of culture.
Cultural Dynamics, 6, 277–87.
Jahoda, G. (2006). Johann Friedrich Herbart: Urvater of social psychology. History
of the Human Sciences, 19, 1, 19–38.
James, W. (1884). On some omissions of introspective psychology. Mind, 9, 33,
1–26.
James, W. (1892). A plea for psychology as a ‘natural science.’ Philosophical
Review, 1, 2, 146–53.
James, W. (1895). The knowing of things together. Psychological Review, 2, 2,
105–17.
James, W. (1903). The Ph.D. octopus. Harvard Monthly, 36, 1–9.
James, W. (1904). A world of pure experience. II. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology
and Scientific Methods, 1, 21, 561–70.
James, W. (1907). Pragmatism’s conception of truth. Journal of Philosophy, Psy-
chology, and Scientific Methods, 4, 6, 141–55.
Jameson, F. (2009). Valences of the Dialectic. London: Verso.
Janssen, H., and Joosten, J. M. (2002). Mondrian 1892–1914: The Path to Abstrac-
tion. Zwolle: Waanders Publishers.
Jensen, E. (2008). The Dao of human cloning: utopian/dystopian hype in the British
press and popular films. Public Understanding of Science, 17, 123–43.
Johansen, D. (2010). Feeling in literature. IPBS: Integrative Psychological &
Behavioral Science, 44, 185–96, doi: 10.1007/s12124-009-9112-0.
Johns, C. M. S. (1994). Portrait mythology: Antonio Canova’s portraits of the
Bonapartes. Eighteenth-Century Studies, 28, 1, 115–29.
Josephs, I. E., Valsiner, J., and Surgan, S. E. (1999). The process of meaning con-
struction. In J. Brandtstätdter and R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Action & Self Develop-
ment (pp. 257–82). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Jung, A. (1840). Königsberg in Preissen und die Extreme dortigen Pietismus.
Vraunsberg: Verlag von Otto Model.
Kalland, A., and Asquith, P. J. (1997). Japanese perceptions of nature: ideals and
illusions. In P. J. Asquith and A. Kalland (Eds.), Japanese Images of Nature
(pp. 1–35). Richmond, Surrey: Curzon.
297
Kalmar, I. (1987). The Völkerpsychologie of Lazarus and Steinthal and the modern
concept of culture. Journal of the History of Ideas, 48, 4, 671–90.
Kant, I. (1790). Kritik der reinen Vernuft. 3rd ed. Riga: Johann Friedrich
Hartneck.
Kant, I. (1922). Critique of Pure Reason. New York, NY: Macmillan.
Kapur, R., Subramanyam, S., and Shah, A. (1997). Creativity in Indian science.
Kelly, M. (1981). Hegel in France to 1940: a bibliographical essay. Journal of
European Studies, 11, 29–52.
Kim, M. G. (1992). The layers of chemical language. I. Constitution of bodies v.
structure of matter. History of Science, 30, 69–96.
Kim, M. G. (2003). Affinity, that Elusive Dream: A Genealogy of the Chemical
Revolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Klein, U. (2004). Not a pure science: chemistry in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Science, 306, 981–82.
Klein, U. (Ed.) (2010). Tools and Modes of Representation in the Laboratory Sci-
ences. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Klein, U., and Lefèvre, W (2007). Materials in Eighteenth Century Science.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Klemp, N., McDermott, R., Raley, J., Thiebeault, M., Powell, K., and Levitin,
D. (2008). Plans, takes, and mis-takes. Outlines, 10, 1, 4–21.
Knight, D. (2006). Public Understanding of Science. London: Routledge.
Knorr Cetina, K. (1992). The couch, the cathedral, and the laboratory: on the
relationship between experiment and laboratory in science. In A. Pickering
(Ed.), Science as Practice and Culture (pp. 113–38). Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press.
Knorr Cetina, K. (1997). What scientists do. In T. Ibañez and L. Íñiguez (Eds.),
Critical Social Psychology (pp. 260–72). London: Sage.
Knorr Cetina, K. (1999). Cultures of Science. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Knorr Cetina, K. (2001). Objectual practice. In T. R. Schatzki, K. Knorr Cet-
ina, and E. von Savigny (Eds.), The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory
(pp. 175–88). London: Routledge.
Knorr Cetina, K (2005). How are global markets global? The architecture of a
flow world. In K. Knorr Cetina and A. Preda (Eds.), The Sociology of Financial
Markets (pp. 38–61). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Koffka, K. (1926). Zur Krisis in der Psychologie. Die Naturwissenschaften, 14,
25, 581–86.
Kohn, H. (1950). Romanticism and the rise of German nationalism. The Review
of Politics, 12, 4, 443–72.
Kramer, D. A. (1989). Change and stability in marital interaction patterns: a
developmental model. In D. A. Kramer and M. J. Bopp (Eds.), Transforma-
tion in Clinical and Developmental Psychology (pp. 210–33). New York,
NY: Springer.
Krasner, D. (2004). Dialogics and dialectics: Bakhtin, Young Hegelians, and
dramatic theory. In V. Z. Nollan (Ed.), Bakhtin: Ethics and Mechanics
(pp. 3–31). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Kraus, O. (Ed.) (1919). Franz Brentano: Sur kennis seines Lebens und seine Lehre.
München: C. Beck.
298
Bibliography
Kraushaar, O. (1936). Lotze’s influence on the psychology of William James.

Psychological Review, 43, 235–57.
Kraushaar, O. (1938). What James’ philosophical orientation owed to Lotze.
Philosophical Review, 47, 5, 517–26.
Kraushaar, O. (1939). Lotze as a factor in the development of James’ radical
empiricism and pluralism. Philosophical Review, 48, 5, 455–71.
Kraushaar, O. (1940). Lotze’s influence on the pragmatism and practical philoso-
phy of William James. Journal of the History of Ideas, 1, 4, 439–58.
Kruse, O. (2006). The origins of writing in the disciplines: traditions of seminar
writing and the Humboldtian ideal of the research university. Written Com-
munication, 23, 3, 331–52.
Kuehn, M. (2005). The reception of Hume in Germany. In P. Jones (Ed.), The
Reception of David Hume in Europe (pp. 98–138). London: Thoemmes
Continuum.
Kuhn, T. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press.
Kuhn, T. S. (1976). The function of dogma in scientific research. In
J. R. Averill (Ed.), Patterns of Psychological Thought (pp. 47–66).
Washington, DC: Hemisphere Publishing Co.
Kuhn, T. (1992). The trouble with the historical philosophy of science. The Robert
and Maurine Rothschild distinguished lecture, November, 19. Cambridge,
MA: Department of History of Science, Harvard University.
Kullasepp, K. (2008). Becoming a Psychologist. Ph.D. dissertation, Tallinn
University.
Külpe, O. (1913). The Philosophy of the Present in Germany. London: George
Allen & Co.
Kuntz, P. G. (1971). Introduction. In G. Santayana (Ed.), Lotze’s System of Philoso-
phy (pp. 1–105). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Kvale, S. (1977). Dialectics and research on remembering. In N. Datan and
H. Reese (Eds.), Life-span Developmental Psychology: Dialectical
Perspectives on Experimental Research (pp. 165–89). New York, NY: Academic
Press.
Kvale, S. (2003). The church, the factory and the market: scenarios for psychology
in a postmodern age. Theory & Psychology, 13, 5, 579–603.
Kyburg, H. E. (1960). Demonstrative induction. Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research, 21, 1, 80–92.
Lamberth, D. C. (2009). What to make of James’ genetic theory of truth? William
James Studies, 4, 1–20.
Lamiell, J. T. (1998). ‘Nomothetic’ and ‘idiographic’: contrasting Windelband’s
understanding with contemporary usage. Theory & Psychology, 8, 1, 23–38.
Lamiell, J. T. (2003). Beyond Individual and Group Differences. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.
Lamiell, J. T. (2009). Reviving person-centered inquiry in psychology: why its
erstwhile dormancy? In J. Valsiner, P. Molenaar, M. Lyra, and N. Chaudhary
(Eds.), Dynamic Process Methodology in the Social and Developmental Sciences
Latour, B. (1987). Science in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (1999). Pandora’s Hope. Essays on the Reality of Science Studies.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
299
Latour, B. (2007). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-

Theory. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
La Vopa, A. J. (2001). Fichte: The Self and the Calling of Philosophy, 1762–1799.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lazarus, M. (1856). Das Leben der Seele. Vol. 1. Berlin: Verlag von Heinrich
Schindler.
Lazarus, N., and Leicht, A. (1906). Moritz Lazarus’ Lebenserinnerungen. Berlin:
Georg Reimer.
Leary, D. E. (1978). The philosophical development of the conception of psychol-
ogy in Germany, 1780–1850. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences,
14, 113–21.
Leary, D. E. (1980a). The intentions and heritage of Descartes and Locke: toward
a recognition of the moral basis of modern psychology. Journal of General
Psychology, 102, 283–310.
Leary, D. E. (1980b). The historical foundation of Herbart’s mathematization of
psychology. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 16, 150–63.
Leary, D. E. (1980c). German idealism and the development of psychology in the
nineteenth century. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 18, 299–317.
Leary, D. E. (1982). The psychology of Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773–1843):
its context, nature, and historical significance. Storia e Critica Della
Psicologia, 3, 2, 217–48.
Leary, D. E. (2001). One big idea, one ultimate concern: Sigmund Koch’s
critique of psychology and hope for the future. American Psychologist, 56, 5,
425–32.
Lee, N., and Hassard, J. (1999). Organization unbound: actor-network theory,
research strategy and institutional flexibility. Organization, 6, 391–404.
Leicht, A. (1904). Lazarus der Begründer der Völkerpsychologie. Leipzig: Verlag
der Dürr’shen Buchhandlung.
Leicht, A. (1908). Moritz Lazarus. Berlin: Mittler & Sohn.
Lewin, K. (1917). Kriegeslandschaft. Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie, 12,
440–47.
Lewin, K. (1936). Principles of Topological Psychology. New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill.
Liakopoulos, M. (2002). Pandora’s Box or panacea? Using metaphors to create
the public representations of biotechnology. Public Understanding of Science,
11, 5-32.
Liebmann, O. (1865). Kant und die Epigonen. Stuttgart:Carl Schober.
Lin, X (1999). Historizing subjective reality: rewriting history in early republican
China. Modern China, 25, 1, 3–43.
Lindsay, T. M. (1876). Hermann Lotze. Mind, 1, 3, 363–82.
Lipps, T. (1906). Naturwissenschaft und Weltanschauung. Heidelberg: Carl
Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung.
List, F. (1981). On the use of the railway. In H. Glaser (Ed.), The German Mind
of the Nineteenth Century (pp. 182–84). New York, NY: Continuum [original
in German 1833].
Loftus, E. F., and Frenda, S. J. (2010). Bad theories can harm victims [book review
of The Trauma Myth by S. Clancy]. Science, 327, 1329–30.
Loftus, E. F., and Fries, J. F. (1979). Informed consent may be hazardous to health.
Science, 204, 4388, 1.
300
Bibliography
Longo, M., and Magnolo, S. (2009). The author and authorship in the internet
society. Current Sociology, 57, 6, 829–50.
Lotze, H. (1841). Metaphysik. Leipzig: Weidmann’sche Buchhandlung.
Lotze, R. H. (1843). Logik. Leipzig: Weidmann’sche Buchhandlung.
Lotze, H. (1852). Medicinische Psychologie oder Physiologie der Seele. Leipzig:
Weidmann’sche Buchhandlung.
Lotze, H. (1856). Mikrokosmus: Ideen zur Naturgeschichte und Gesichte der
Menscheit. Vol. 1. Leipzig: S. Hirzel.
Lotze, H. (1857). Streitschriften. Leipzig: S. Hirzel.
Lotze, H. (1885). Kleine schriften. Vol. 1. Leipzig: S. Hirzel.
Lotze, H. (1886). Kleine schriften. Vol. 2. Leipzig: S. Hirzel.
Lotze, H. (1887). Microcosmus. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Scribner & Welford.
Lotze, H. (1888). Logic: Of Thought, of Investigation, and of Knowledge. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Lotze, H. (1899). Microcosmus: An Essay Concerning Man and His Relation to
the World. Vols. 1–2. Edinburgh: T & T Clark.
Löwy, I. (1990). Variances in meaning in discovery accounts: the case of contem-
porary biology. HSPS, 21, 1, 87–121.
Löwy, I. (1992). The strength of loose concepts—boundary concepts, federative
experimental strategies and disciplinary growth. History of Science, 30, 90,
part 4, 376–96.
Löwy, I. (1996). Between Bench and Bedside. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Magnus, R., and Kull, K. (2012). Roots of culture in the Umwelt. In J. Valsin-
er (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology. New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.
Mah, H. (1990). The French revolution and the problem of German modernity:
Hegel, Heine and Marx. New German Critique, 50, 3–20.
Maimon, S. (2010). Essay on Transcendental Philosophy. London: Continuum
Books.
Makari, G. J. (1994). In the eye of the beholder: Helmholtzian perception and
the origins of Freud’s 1900 theory of transference. Journal of American
Psychoanalytic Association, 42, 549–80.
Malter, R. (1981). Main currents in the German interpretation of the critique of
pure reason since the beginnings of neo-Kantianism. Journal of the History
of Ideas, 42, 3, 531–51.
Mancini, S. (1999). Civilizations as ‘aesthetic absolute’. A morphological approach
to Mittel-Europa. Diogenes, 47, 2 (No. 186), 64–82.
Marcuse, H. (1960). Actuality of dialectic. Diogenes, 8, 80–88.
Marková, I. (1982). Paradigms, Thought, and Language. Chichester: Wiley.
Marková, I. (1990). A three-step process as a unit of analysis in dialogue. In
I. Marková and K. Foppa (Eds.), The Dynamics of Dialogue (pp. 129–46). Hemel
Hempstead: Harvester.
Marková, I. (2003). Dialogicality and Social Representations. Cambridge:
301
Marsico, G, and Iannacone, A. (2012). The work of schooling. In J. Valsiner (Ed.),

The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology. New York, NY: Oxford
University Press.
Marti, E., and Rodriguez, C. (2012). After Piaget. New Brunswick, NJ:
Martin, E. (1998). Anthropology and the cultural study of science. Science, Tech-
nology & Human Values, 23, 1, 24–44.
Maruyama, M. (1963). The second cybernetics: deviation amplifying mutual
causal processes. American Scientist, 51, 164–79.
Maruyama, M. (1988). This week’s citation classic: Maruyama (1963). Current
Contents: Social & Behavioral Sciences, 20, 8, 12.
Maruyama, M. (1992). Entropy, beauty, and eumorphy. Cybernetica, 35, 3,
195–206.
Marx, O. M. (1990). German romantic psychiatry. Part I. History of Psychiatry,
1, 351–81.
Maslow, A. (1966). The Psychology of Science. South Bend, IN: Gateway
Editions.
Massimi, M. (2004). What demonstrative induction can do against the threat of
underdetermination: Bohr, Heisenberg, and Pauli on spectroscopic anomalies
(1921–24). Synthese, 140, 243–77.
Masur, G (1952). Wilhelm Dilthey and the history of ideas. Journal of the History
of Ideas, 13, 1, 94–107.
Matsuzawa, T. (2001). Primate foundations of human intelligence: a view of tool
use in nonhuman primates and fossil hominids. In T. Matsuzawa (Ed.), Primate
Origins of Human Cognition and Behavior (pp. 3–25). Tokyo: Springer.
Matsuzawa, T. (2006). Sociocognitive development in chimpanzees: a synthe-
sis of laboratory work and fieldwork. In T. Matsuzawa, M. Tomonaga, and
M. Tanaka (Eds.), Cognitive Development in Chimpanzees (pp. 3–33). Tokyo:
Springer.
Matusov, E. (2007). In search of ‘the appropriate’ unit of analysis for sociocultural
research. Culture & Psychology, 13, 3, 307–33.
Matusov, E. (2008a). Applying a sociocultural approach to Vygotskian academia:
‘our tsar isn’t like yours and yours isn’t like ours’. Culture & Psychology, 14,
1, 5–35.
Matusov, E. (2008b). Dialogue with sociohistorical Vygotskian academia about a
sociocultural approach. Culture & Psychology, 14, 1, 81–93.
Märtsin, M. (2010). Identity in dialogue: identity as hyper-generalized personal
sense. Theory & Psychology, 20, 3, 436–50.
McCabe, D. P., and Castel, A. (2008). Seeing is believing: the effects of brain
images on judgments of scientific reasoning. Cognition, 107, 343–52.
McCrae, R. R. (2010). The physics and chemistry of personality. Theory &
Psychology, 19, 5, 670–87.
McTaggart, J. E. (1893). Time and the Hegelian dialectic. Mind, 2 n.s., 490–504.
McTaggart, J. E. (1896). Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
McTaggart, J. E. (1897a). The conception of society as an organism. International
Journal of Ethics, 7, 4, 414–34.
McTaggart, J. E. (1897b). Hegel’s treatment of the categories of the subjective
notion. Mind, 6 n.s., 342–58.
302
Bibliography
McTaggart, J. E. (1902). Hegel’s treatment of the categories of quality. Mind, n.s.,

503–26.
Mecacci, L. (2003). Psicologia Moderna e Postmoderna. Bari-Roma: Editori
Laterza.
Mellor, F. (2007). Colliding worlds: asteroid research and the legitimization of
war in space. Social Studies of Science, 37, 4, 499–531.
Merz, M., and Knorr Cetina, K. (1997). Deconstruction in a ‘thinking’ science:
theoretical physicists at work. Social Studies of Science, 27, 73–111.
Mey, G., and Mruck, K. (Eds.) (2005). Qualitative social research: methodologi-
cal reflections and disciplinary applications. Special Issue of Historical Social
Research, 30, 111, 1–331.
Micale, M. (1985). The Salpetriere in the age of Charcot. Journal of Contemporary
History, 20, 703–31.
Michelet, C. L. (1840). Anthropologie und Psychologie oder der Philosophie des
subjektiven Geistes. Berlin: Sanderschen Buchhandlung.
Michell, J. (1997). Quantitative science and the definition of measurement in
psychology. British Journal of Psychology, 88, 355–83.
Mikulak, A. (2011). Mismatches between ‘scientific’ and ‘non-scientific’ ways of
knowing and their contributions to public understanding of science. IPBS:
Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 45, 201–15, doi: 10.1007/
s12124-011-9157-8.
Milgram, S. (1974). The Obedience to Authority. New York, NY: Harper.
Miller, G. (2008). Growing pains for fMRI. Science, 320, 1412–14.
Milosz, C. (1951). The Captive Mind. New York, NY: Vintage International.
Misra, G., and Gergen, K. (2001). On the place of culture in psychological sci-
ence. In A. K. Dalal and G. Misra (Eds.), New Directions in Indian Psychology.
Vol. 1. Social Psychology (pp. 405–24). New Delhi: Sage.
Mitroff, I., and Mason, R. O. (1981). Creating a Dialectical Social Science.
Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Moghaddam, F. (1997). The Specialized Society: The Plight of the Individual in an
Age of Individualism. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Moghaddam, F. (2004). From ‘Psychology in literature’ to ‘Psychology as literature’.
Moghaddam, F., and Lee, N. (2006). Double reification: the process of universal-
izing psychology in the three worlds. In A. Brock (Ed.), Internationalizing
the History of Psychology (pp. 163–82). New York, NY: New York University
Press.
Moghaddam, F., Slocum, N., Finkel, N., Mor, T., and Harré, R. (2000). Toward a
cultural theory of duties. Culture & Psychology, 6, 3, 275–302.
Mohl, R. (1855). Die Geschichte und Literatur der Staatswissenschaft. Erlangen:
Ferdinand Enke.
Molenaar, P.C.M. (2004). A manifesto on psychology as idiographic science: bring-
ing the person back into scientific psychology, this time forever, Measurement:
Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives, 2, 201–18.
Molenaar, P. C. M. (2007). Psychological methodology will change profoundly
due to the necessity to focus on intra-individual variation. IPBS: Integrative
Psychological & Behavioral Science, 41, 1, 35–40.
Mollaret, P. (2009). Using common psychological terms to describe other people.
303
Moore, W., and Tumin, M. M. (1949). Some social functions of ignorance. Ameri-
can Sociological Review, 14, 787–95.
Morawski, J. G. (1996). Principles of selves: the rhetoric of introductory text-
books in American psychology. In C. F. Graumann and K. J. Gergen (Eds.),
Historical Dimensions of Psychological Discourse (pp. 145–62). New York, NY:
Moreira, T. (2006). Heterogeneity and coordination of blood pressure in neuro-
surgery. Social Studies of Science, 36, 1, 69–97.
Moreira, T., May, C., and Bond, J. (2009). Regulatory objectivity in action: mild
cognitive impairment and the collective production of uncertainty. Social
Studies of Science, 39, 5, 665–90.
Moreno, J. L. (1947). Sociometry and the social psychology of G.H. Mead.
Sociometry, 10, 350–53.
Morgan, G. A. (1933). Wilhelm Dilthey. Philosophical Review, 42, 4, 351–80.
Morgan, M. (1996). Reading the rhetoric of “crisis”. Theory & Psychology, 6,
2, 267–86.
Morgan, P. (1992). Republicanism, identity and the new European order: Georg
Forster’s letters from Mainz and Paris, 1792–1793. Journal of European
Studies, 22, 71–100.
Mos, L (1998). On methodological distinctions: nomothetic psychology or his-
torical understanding? Theory & Psychology, 8, 1, 39–57.
Moscovici, S. (1961). La psychanalyse, son image et son public. Paris: PUF.
Moscovici, S. (1972). Society and theory in social psychology. In J. Israel and
H. Tajfel (Eds.), The Context of Social Psychology (pp. 17–68). London:
Academic Press.
Moscovici, S. (1976). Society Against Nature: The Emergence of Human Societies.
Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
Moscovici, S. (1988). Notes towards a description of social representations.
European Journal of Social Psychology, 18, 211–50.
Moscovici, S., and Markova, I. (1998). Presenting social representations: a
conversation. Culture & Psychology, 4, 3, 371–410.
Motokawa, T. (1989). Sushi science and hamburger science. Perspectives in
Biology and Medicine, 32, 489–504.
Mounin, G (1981). A semiology of the sign system chemistry. Diogenes, 29,
216–28.
Mueller, G. E. (1958). The Hegel legend of “thesis-antithesis-synthesis”. Journal
of the History of Ideas, 19, 3, 411–14.
Muirhead J. H. (1927). How Hegel came to England. Mind, n.s., 36, 144,
423–47.
Müller-Freienfels, R. (1935). The Evolution of Modern Psychology. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Münsterberg, H. (1899). Psychology and history. Psychological Review, 6,
1, 1–31.
Mussmann, J. G. (1827). Lehrbuch der Seelenwissenschaft und rational;en und
empirischen Psychologie als Versuch einer wissenschaftlichen Begründung.
Berlin: Molluschichen Buchhandlung.
Myers, G. (2003). Discourse studies of scientific popularization: questioning the
boundaries. Discourse Studies, 5, 2, 265–79.
304
Bibliography
Nandy, A. (2001). The politics of application and social relevance in contempo-

rary psychology. In A. K. Dalal and G. Misra (Eds.), New Directions in Indian
Psychology. Vol. 1. Social Psychology (pp. 393–404). New Delhi: Sage.
Neumann, M. (2008). Der Deutsche Idealismus im Spiegel seiner Historiker.
Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
Neyland, D. (2006). Dismissed content and discontent: an analysis of the strate-
gic aspects of actor-network theory. Science Technology Human Values, 31,
29–51.
Nicolin, G. (Ed.) (1970). Hegel in Berichten seiner Zeitgenossen. Hamburg: Felix
Meiner.
Nielsen, K. H. (2009). In quest of publicity: the science-media partnership in the
Galathea Deep Sea Expedition from 1950 to 1952. Public Understanding of
Science, 18, 464–80.
Nishida, K. (1990). An Inquiry into the Good. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Nye, M J. (1993). From Chemical Philosophy to Theoretical Chemistry. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
Nye, M. J. (2000). Physical and biological modes of thought in the chemistry
of Linus Pauling. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B, 31, 4,
475–91.
Oddie, G. A. (2006). Imagined Hinduism: British Protestant Missionary Construc-
tions of Hinduism, 1793–1900. New Delhi: Sage.
Oe, K. (1995). Japan, the ambiguous, and myself. Nobel Prize Lecture, December,
7, 1994. In K. Oe (Ed.), Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself (pp. 106–28). Tokyo:
Kodansha International.
Ohnuki-Tierney, E. (1987). The Monkey as Mirror: Symbolic Transformations in
Japanese History and Ritual. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ohnuki-Tierney, E. (2002). Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Omi, Y., and Komata, S. (2005). The evolution of data analyses in Japanese
psychology. Japanese Psychological Research, 47, 2, 137–43.
Ortega y Gasset , J. (1946). Wilhelm Dilthe y and idea of life. In
J. Ortega y Gasset (Ed.), Concord and Liberty (pp. 131–82). New York, NY:
W. W. Norton.
Overton, W. F. (1998). Relational-developmental theory: a psychological perspec-
tive. In D. Görlitz, H.-J. Harloff, G. Mey, and J. Valsiner (Eds.), Children, Cities,
and Psychological Theories (pp. 315–35). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Oyewumi, O. (1997). The Invention of Women. Mineapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press.
Paranjpe, A. (1998). Self and Identity in Modern Psychology and Indian Thought.
New York, NY: Plenum.
Paranjpe, A. (2002). Indigenous psychology in the post-colonial context: an
historical perspective. Psychology and Developing Societies, 14, 1, 27–43.
Paranjpe, A. C. (2006). From tradition through colonialism to globalization. In
A. Brock (Ed.), Internationalizing the History of Psychology (pp. 56–74). New
York, NY: New York University Press.
Paranjpe, A. (2010). Theories of self and cognition: Indian psychological perspec-
tives. Psychology and Developing Societies, 22, 1, 5–48.
305
Paranjpe, A. (2011). Indian psychology and the international context. Psychology

and Developing Societies, 23, 1, 1–26.
Pascual-Leone, J. (1984). Attentional, dialectic, and mental effort: toward
an organismic theory of life stages. In M. L. Collins, F. A. Richards, and
C. Armon (Eds.), Beyond Formal Operations (pp. 182–215). New York, NY:
Praeger.
Pascual-Leone, J. (1988). Affirmations and negotiations, disturbances and con-
tradictions, in understanding Piaget: is his later theory causal? Contemporary
Psychology, 33, 5, 420–21.
Pascual-Leone, J. (1995). Learning and development as dialectical factors in
cognitive growth. Human Development, 38, 338–48.
Pascual-Leone, J., and Irwin R. R. (1994). Noncognitive factors in high-road/
low-road learning: I. Modes of abstraction in adulthood. Journal of Adult
Development, 1, 2, 73–89.
Pascual-Leone, J., and Johnson, J. (1999). A dialectical constructivist view
of representation: role of mental attention, executives, and symbols. In
I. E. Sigel (Ed.), Development of Mental Representation: Theories and Applica-
tions (pp. 169–200). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Paul, D. (2004). Spreading chaos: the role of popularizations in the diffusion of
scientific ideas. Written Communication, 21, 1, 32–68.
Paulsen, F. (1902). Immanuel Kant: His Life and Doctrine. New York, NY: Charles
Scribner’s Sons.
Peirce, C. S. (1935). Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (CP 7.218—1901
On the Logic of drawing History from Ancient Documents especially
from Testimonies). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press [original
from 1901].
Peirce, C. S. (1997 [1903]). Lecture five: the normative sciences. In
C. S. Peirce (Ed.), Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking
(pp. 205–20). Edited by P. Turrisi. Albany, NY: SUNY Press [Harvard Lectures
on Pragmatism—CP 5.188–89].
Pérez, L. (2008). Technology, curiosity and utility in France and in England in the
eighteenth century. In B. Bensaude-Vincent and C. Blondel (Eds.), Science and
Spectacle in the European Enlightenment (pp. 25–42). Aldershot: Ashgate.
Piaget, J. (1928/1995). Genetic logic and sociology. In J. Piaget (Ed.), Sociological
Studies (pp. 184–214). London: Routledge.
Pizarroso, N., and Valsiner, J. (2009). Why developmental psychology is not de-
velopmental: moving towards abductive methodology. Paper presented at The
Society of Research in Child Development, Denver, CO, April, 3.
Plattner, S. (1998). A most ingenious paradox: the market for contemporary fine
art. American Anthropologist, 100, 2, 482–93.
Polanyi, M. (1962). Personal Knowledge. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Poli, R. (1998). The Brentano puzzle: an introduction. In R. Poli (Ed.), The Brentano
Puzzle (pp. 1–14). London: Ashgate.
Porter, T. M. (1986). The Rise of Statistical Thinking 1820–1900. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Porter, T. M. (1992). Quantification and the accounting ideal of science. Social
Studies of Science, 22, 633–52.
Porter, T. M. (1995). The Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science
and Public Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
306
Bibliography
Porter, T. M. (2003). The social sciences. In D. Cahan (Ed.), From Natural Phi-
losophy to the Social Sciences (pp. 254–90). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Pozzo, R. (1993). Analysis, synthesis and dialectic: Hegel’s answer to
Aristotle, Newton, and Kant. In M. J. Petry (Ed.), Hegel and Newtonianism
(pp. 27–39). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Preda, A. (2005). AIDS, Rhetoric, and Medical Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Prenkert, F. (2010). Tracing the roots of activity systems theory: an analysis of
the concept of mediation. Theory & Psychology, 20, 5, 641–65.
Raggio, O. (2001). Immagini e verità. Pratiche sociali, fatti giuridici e techniche
cartografice. Quaderni storici, n.s., 108, 3, 843–76.
Rees, A. (2007). Reflections on the field: primatology, popular science and politics
of personhood. Social Studies of Science, 37, 6, 881–907.
Reinhold, E. (1839). Lehrbuch der philosophisch propädeutische Psychologie und
der formalen Logik. Jena: Friedrich Wauke.
Reinhold, K. L. (1790). Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie. Leipzig: Georg
Joachim Göscher.
Restivo, S. P. (1978). Parallels and paradoxes in modern physics and eastern
mysticism. Social Studies of Science, 8, 143–81.
Ribot, T. (1886). German Psychology of To-day. New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s
Sons.
Richards, G. (1987). Of what is history of psychology a history? British Journal
for the History of Science, 20, 201–11.
Richards, G. (1992). Mental Machinery: The Origins and Consequences of Psychological
Ideas. Part I 1600–1850. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Richards, G. (1995). ‘To know our fellow men to do them good’: American Psy-
chology’s enduring moral project. History of the Human Sciences, 8, 3, 1–24.
Richards, R. J. (1980). Christian Wolff ’s prolegomena to empirical and rational
psychology: translation and commentary. Proceedings of the American Philo-
sophical Society, 124, 3, 227–39.
Richards, R. J. (2002). The Romantic Conception of Life. Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press.
Richards, R. J. (2008). The Tragic Sense of Life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Rickman, H. P. (1979). Wilhelm Dilthey: Pioneer of the Human Studies. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
Rieber, R. (2001). The problem of psychosocial stress and the crisis in psychology.
Riegel, K. (1975). Toward a dialectical theory of development. Human Develop-
ment, 18, 50–64.
Riegel, K. (1976a). Psychology of Development and History. New York, NY:
Plenum.
Riegel, K. (1976b). The dialectics of human development. American Psychologist,
31, 689–700.
Riegel, K. (1978). Psychology Mon Amour: A Countertext. Boston, MA: Houghton-
Mifflin.
Riegel, K. (1979). Foundations of Dialectical Psychology. New York, NY: Academic
Press.
307
Rollinger, R. D. (2008). Austrian Phenomenology: Brentano, Husserl, Meinong

and Others on Mind and Object. Heusenstamm-am-Frankfurt (Main):
Ontos Verlag.
Rollinger, R. D. (2009). Brentano’s psychology and logic and Twardowski’s
theory of presentations. Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and
Communication, 4, 1–23, doi: 10.4148/biycic.v4iO.130.
Rommetveit, R (1985). Language acquisition as increasing linguistic structuring
of experience and symbolic behavior control. In J. Wertsch (Ed.), Culture,
Communication and Cognition: Vygotskian Perspectives (pp. 183–204).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rosa, A. (1994). History of psychology as a ground for reflexivity. In A. Rosa
and J. Valsiner (Eds.), Explorations in Socio-cultural Studies. Vol. 1. Histori-
cal and Theoretical Discourse ( pp. 149–68). Madrid: Fundacion Infancia y
Aprendizaje.
Rosenbaum, P. J., and Valsiner, J. (2011). The un-making of a method: from rat-
ing scales to the study of psychological processes. Theory & Psychology, 21,
1, 47–65.
Rosenkranz, K. (1843). Psychologie oder die Wissenschaft vom subjektiven Geist.
2nd ed. Königsberg: Verlage der Gebrüder Bornträger.
Rosenkranz, K. (1872). The science of logic. Journal of Speculative Philosophy,
6, 97–120.
Ross, D. (1993). An historian’s view of American social science. Journal of the
History of the Behavioral Sciences, 29, 2, 99–112.
Royce, J. (1897). Review of studies in the Hegelian Dialectic by John Ellis Taggart.
Philosophical Review, 6, 1, 69–76.
Royce, J. (1983/1900). The Spirit of Modern Philosophy. New York, NY:
Dover Publications.
Rusnock, A. A. (2002). Vital Accounts. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Rychlak, J. F. (Ed.) (1976a). Dialectic: Humanistic rationale for Behaviour Devel-
opment. Basel: Karger.
Rychlak, J. (Ed.) (1976b). A teleological critique of modern cognitivism. Theory
& Psychology, 5, 4, 511–31.
Safford, J. L. (1987). Pragmatism and the Progressive Movement in the United
States. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Salvatore, S., and Valsiner, J. (2010). Between the general and the unique: over-
coming the nomothetic versus idiographic opposition. Theory & Psychology,
20, 6, 817–33.
Salvatore, S., Valsiner, J., Strout-Yagodzinsky, S., and Clegg, J. (Eds.) (2009).
YIS: Yearbook of Idiographic Science 2008. Vol. 1. Rome: Fireira Publishing.
Santayana, G. (1971). Lotze’s System of Philosophy. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.
Sato, T., Hidaka, T., and Fukuda, M. (2009). Depicting the dynamics of living
the life: the trajectory equifinality model. In J. Valsiner, P. Molenaar, M. Lyra,
and N. Chaudhary (Eds.), Dynamic Process Methodology in the Social and
Developmental Sciences. New York, NY: Springer.
Sato, T., Yasuda, Y., Kido, A., Arakawa, A., Mizoguchi, H., and Valsiner, J.
(2007). Sampling reconsidered: idiographic science and the analyses of per-
sonal life trajectories. In J. Valsiner and A. Rosa (Eds.), Cambridge Handbook
308
Bibliography
of Socio-Cultural Psychology (pp. 82–106). New York, NY: Cambridge

University Press.
Sato, T., Fukuda, M, Hidaka, T., Nishida, M, and Akasaka, M. (2012).
The authentic culture of living well: pathways to psychological well-being.
In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Scaff, L. A. (1988). Culture, philosophy, and politics: the formation of the socio-
cultural sciences in Germany. History of the Human Sciences, 1, 2,221–43.
Schelling, F. W. J. (2001). Schelling Werke. Vol. 7. Stuttgart: Frommann-
Holzboog.
Schelling, F. W. J. (2004). First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature.
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press [original 1799].
Schilling, G. (1851). Lehrbuch der Psychologie. Leipzig: Friedrich Fleischer.
Schmid, C. C. E. (1791). Empirische Psychologie. Jena: Verlag der Cröckershen
Handlung.
Schrader, A. (2010). Responding to Pfiesteria piscicida (the Fish Killer): phan-
tomatic ontologies, indeterminacy, and responsibility in toxic microbiology.
Social Studies of Science, 40, 2, 275–306.
Schummer, J. (1996). Zur Semiotik der chemischen Zeichensprache: Die
Rapräsentation dynamischer Verhältnisse mit statischen Mitteln. In
P. Janisch and N. Psarros (Eds.), Die Sprache der Chemie (pp. 113–26).
Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
Schummer, J. (2006a). The philosophy of chemistry: from infancy to maturity. In
D. Baird, E. Scerri and L. MacIntyre (Eds.), Philosophy of Chemistry: Synthesis
of a New Discipline (pp. 19–39). Dordrecht: Springer.
Schummer, J. (2006b). Gestalt switch in molecular image perception: the aesthetic
origin of molecular nanothechnology in supramolecular chemistry. Founda-
tions of Chemistry, 8, 53–72.
Schummer, J., and Spector, T. (2007). The visual image of chemistry: perspectives
from the history of art and science. Hyle, 13, 3–41 [reprinted in: J. Schummer,
B. Bensaude-Vincent and B. Van Tiggelen (Eds.): The Public Image of Chemistry,
Singapore: World Scientific, 2007, pp. 213–57].
Schwarz, M. (2009). Is psychology based on a methodological error? IPBS: In-
tegrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 43, 2, 185–213, doi: 10.1007/
s12124-009-9089-8.
Scribner, S (1985). Thinking in action. In R. Sternberg and R. Wagner (Eds.),
Practical Intelligence. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Shapin, S. (1994). A Social History of Truth. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Shapin, S. (2008). The Scientific Life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Shapin, S. (2010). Never Pure. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Shapin, S., and Schaffer, S. (1985). Leviathan and the Air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle,
and the Experimental Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Sherif, M. (1936). The Psychology of Social Norms. New York, NY: Harper &
Brothers.
Simão, L. M., and Valsiner, J. (Eds.) (2007). Otherness in Question: Labyrinths of
the Self. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Siegfried, J (Ed.) (1994). The Status of Common Sense in Psychology. Norwood,
NJ: Ablex.
309
Simmel, G. (2007). The dialectic of the German spirit. Theory, Culture & Society,
24, 7–8, 61–65 [original 1916].
Simon, H. A. (1982). Models of Bounded Rationality: Economic Analysis and
Public Policy. Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Simon, H. A., and Newell, A. (1957). Heuristic problem solving: the next advance
in operations research. Address at The 12th National Meeting of Operations
Research Society of America, Pittsburgh, PA, November 14.
Simons, K. (2008). The misused impact factor. Science, 322, 165.
Sinha, D. (1987). Psychology in India: a historical perspective. In G. H. Blowers and
A. M. Turtle (Eds.), Psychology Moving East: The Status of Western Psychology
in Asia and Oceania (pp. 39–52) Sydney: Sydney University Press.
Sinha, D. (1989). Research in psychology in the developing world. Psychology and
Sinha, D., and Tripathi, R. C. (1994). Individualism in a collectivist cul-
ture: a case of coexistence of opposites. In U. Kim, H. C. Triandis,
C. Kagitçibasi, C.-C. Choi, and G. Yoon (Eds.), Individualism and Collectivism
(pp. 123–36). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Smedslund, J. (1994). What kind of propositions are set forth in developmental
research? Five case studies. Human Development, 37, 280–92.
Smedslund, J. (1995). Psychologic: common sense and the pseudoempirical. In
J. A. Smith, R. Harré, and L. van Langenhove (Eds.), Rethinking Psychology
(pp. 196–206). London: Sage.
Smedslund, J. (1997). The Structure of Psychological Common Sense. Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Smedslund, J. (1998). Social representations and psychologic. Culture & Psychol-
ogy, 4, 4, 435–54.
Smedslund, J. (2009). The mismatch between current research methods and
the nature of psychological phenomena. What researchers must learn from
practitioners. Theory & Psychology, 19, 778–94.
Smith, B. (1977). A dialectical social psychology? Personality and Social Psychol-
ogy Bulletin, 3, 719–24.
Smith, J., and Dunworth, F. (2003). Qualitative methodology. In J. Valsiner and
K. J. Connolly (Eds.), Handbook of Developmental Psychology (pp. 604–21).
London: Sage.
Smith, L. D., Best, L. A., Cylke, V. A., and Stubbs, D. A. (2000). Psychology
without p values: data analysis at the turn of the 19th century. American
Psychologist, 55, 2, 260–63.
Smith, P. D. (1997). German literature and the scientific world-view in the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries. Journal of European Studies, 27, 389–415.
Smith, W. (2009). Theatre of use: a frame analysis of information technology
demonstrations. Social Studies of Science, 39, 3, 449–80.
Smythe, W. E. (2005). On the psychology of ‘As If ’. Theory & Psychology, 15, 3,
283–303.
Sovran, T. (1992). Between similarity and sameness. Journal of Pragmatics, 18,
4, 329–44.
Stam, H J. (2000). Logic or psychologism: Smedslund’s psychologic and health.
Journal of Health Psychology, 5, 2, 161–64.
Star, S. L. (2010). This is not a boundary object: reflections on the origin of the
concept. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 35, 5, 601–07.
310
Bibliography
Star, S. L., and Griesemer, J. R. (1989). Institutional ecology, ‘translations’ and

boundary objects: amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Ver-
tebrate Zoology, 1907–39. Social Studies of Science, 19, 387–420.
Steinmetz, G. (1997). German exceptionalism and the origins of Nazism:
the career of a concept. In I. Kershaw and M. Lewin (Eds.), Stalinism and
Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison (pp. 251–84). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Steinthal, H. (1855). Grammatik, Logik und Psychologie: Ihre Principien und ihr
Verhältniss zu Einander. Berlin: Ferd. Dümmler’s Verelagsbuchhandlung.
Stoeffler, F. E. (1973). German Pietism during the Eighteenth Century. Leiden:
E. J. Brill.
Stone, R. (2011). Activists go warpath against transgenic crops—and scientists.
Science, 331, 1000–01.
Stout, G F. (1889). Herbart compared with English psychologists and with Beneke.
Mind, 53, 1–26.
Strum, S. C., and Fedigan, L. M. (Eds.) (2000). Primate Encounters: Models of
Science, Gender, and Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Stumpf, C. (1919). Erinnerumgen an Franz Brentano. In O. Kraus (Ed.), Franz
Brentano: Sur kennis seines Lebens und seine Lehre (pp. 87–149). München:
C. Beck.
Stumpf, C. (1873). Über den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung.
Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel.
Sturm, T. (2001). Kant on empirical psychology. In E. Watkins (Ed.), Kant and the
Sciences (pp. 163–84). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Sturm, T. (2009). Kant und die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. Paderborn: Mentis
Verlag.
Sturm, T., and Wunderlich, F. (2010). Kant and the scientific study of conscious-
ness. History of the Human Sciences, 23, 3, 48–71.
Sully, J, (1876). Physiological psychology in Germany. Mind, 1, 1, 20–43.
Taiana, C (2006). Transatlantic migration of the disciplines of the mind:
examination of the reception of Wundt’s and Freud’s theories in Argentina.
In A. Brock (Ed.), Internationalizing the History of Psychology (pp. 34–55).
New York, NY: New York University Press.
Takasaki, H. (2000). Traditions of the Kyoto School of field primatology in Japan.
In S. C. Strum and L. Fedigan (Eds.), Primate Encounters: Models of Science,
Gender, and Society (pp. 151–64). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Tauber, A. (2005). The reflexive project: reconstructing the moral agent. History
of the Human Sciences, 18, 4, 49–75.
Teo, T. (2001). Karl Marx and Wilhelm Dilthey on the socio-historical
conceptualization of the mind. In C. D. Green, M. Shore, and T. Teo (Eds.),
The Transformation of Psychology (pp. 195–218) Washington, DC: American
Teo, T. (2005). The Critique of Psychology: From Kant to Postcolonial Theory.
New York, NY: Springer.
Teo, T. (2007). Local institutionalization, discontinuity, and German textbooks
of psychology, 1816–1854. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences,
43, 2, 135–57.
Teo, T. (2008). From speculation to epistemological violence in psychology. Theory
& Psychology, 18, 1, 47–67.
311
Teo, T., and Febbraro, A. R. (2003). Ethnocentrism as a form of intuition in

psychology. Theory & Psychology, 13, 5, 673–94.
Thorngate, W. (1986). The production, detection, and explanation of behavioural
patterns. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The Individual Subject and Scientific Psychology
(pp. 71–93). New York, NY: Plenum.
Timms, E. (2006). Between Berlin and Vienna: approaches to Austro-German
intellectual history. European History Quarterly, 36, 1, 101–07.
Titchener, E. B. (1921). Brentano and Wundt: empirical and experimental
psychology. American Journal of Psychology, 32, 108–20.
Titchener, E. B. (1922). A note on Wundt’s doctrine of creative synthesis. American
Journal of Psychology, 33, 351–60.
Tobin, R. D. (2001). Doctor’s Orders: Goethe and the Enlightenment Talk.
Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press.
Toda, M., and Higuchi, K (1994). Common sense, emotion, and chatting—and
their roles in interpersonal interaction. In J. Siegfried (Ed.), The Status of Com-
mon Sense in Psychology (pp. 208–44). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Toomela, A. (2007). Culture of science: strange history of the methodological
thinking in psychology. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science,
41, 1, 6–20.
Toomela, A. (2008). Variables in psychology: a critique of quantitative
psychology. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 42, 3,
245–65.
Toomela, A. (2009). How methodology became a toolbox—and how it escapes
from that box. In J. Valsiner, P. Molenaar, M. Lyra, and N. Chaudhary (Eds.),
Dynamic Process Methodology in the Social and Developmental Sciences
Toomela, A., and Valsiner, J. (Eds.) (2010). Methodological Thinking in Psychology:
60 Years Gone Astray? Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Tripathi, R. C. (2010). Review of handbook of Indian psychology. Psychology and
Troeltsch, E. (1920). Der historische Entwicklungsbegriff in der modernen
Geistes- und Lebens-philosophie: I. Lotze, v. Hartmann, Eucken, Dilthey.
Historische Zeitscrift, 122, 3, 377–453.
Troitskii, M. (1883). Nemetskaia psikhologia v tekuchchem stoletii. Vol. 2.
Moscow: A. Gatschuk.
Turner, R. S. (1993). Consensus and controversy: Helmholtz on the visual percep-
tion of space. In D. Cahan (Ed.), Hermann von Helmholtz and the Foundation
of Nineteenth-Century Science (pp. 154–204). Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
Turtle, A. (1987). Introduction: a silk road for psychology. In G. H. Blowers and
A. M. Turtle (Eds.), Psychology Moving East: The Status of Western Psychology
in Asia and Oceania (pp. 1–21) Sydney: Sydney University Press.
Vallerani, M. (2001). I fatti nella logica del processo medieval. Quaderni storici,
n.s., 108, 3, 665–94.
Valsiner, J. (1984). Two alternative epistemological frameworks in psychol-
ogy: the typological and variational modes of thinking. Journal of Mind and
Behavior, 5, 4, 449–70.
Valsiner, J. (1986a). Between groups and individuals: psychologists’ and
tlaypersons’ interpretations of correlational findings. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The
312
Bibliography
Individual Subject and Scientific Psychology (pp. 113–52). New York, NY:
Plenum.
Valsiner, J. (Ed.) (1986b). The Individual Subject and Scientific Psychology. New
York, NY: Plenum.
Valsiner, J. (1987). Culture and the Development of Children’s Action. Chichester:
Wiley.
Valsiner, J. (1988). Developmental Psychology in the Soviet Union. Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press.
Valsiner, J (1997). Culture and the Development of Children’s Action. 2nd edition
New York, NY: Wiley.
Valsiner, J. (1998). The pleasure of thinking: a glimpse into Karl Bühler’s life.
From Past to Future: Clark Papers on the History of Psychology, 1, 1, 15–35
[re-printed in J. Valsiner (Ed.), Thinking in Psychological Science (pp. 69–95).
New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007].
Valsiner, J. (2000a). Culture and Human Development. London: Sage.
Valsiner, J. (2000b). Thinking through consequences: the perils of pragmatism.
Revista de Historia de la Psicologia, 21, 4, 145–75.
Valsiner, J. (2001). Contemplating self: from India to contemporary self-psychology.
Culture & Psychology, 7, 1, 115–18.
Valsiner, J. (2002). Talking and acting: making change and doing development.
Narrative Inquiry, 12, 1, 177–88.
Valsiner, J. (Ed.) (2005a). Heinz Werner and Developmental Science. New York,
NY: Kluwer Scientific/Plenum Publishers.
Valsiner, J. (2005b). Transformations and flexible forms: where qualitative psy-
chology begins. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 4, 4, 39–57.
Valsiner, J. (2007a). Culture in Minds and Societies. New Delhi: Sage.
Valsiner, J. (2007b). Looking across cultural gender boundaries. IPBS: Integrative
Psychological & Behavioral Science, 41, 3–4, 219–24.
Valsiner, J. (2009a). Integrating psychology within the globalizing world. IPBS:
Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 43, 1, 1–16.
Valsiner, J. (2009b). Baldwin’s quest: a universal logic of development. In
J. W. Clegg (Ed.), The Observation of Human Systems: Lessons from the History
of Anti-reductionistic Empirical Psychology (pp. 45–82). New Brunswick, NJ:
Valsiner, J. (2009c). Cultural psychology today: innovations and oversights. Culture
& Psychology, 15, 1, 5–39.
Valsiner, J. (2009d). The plasticity of meaning. Presentation at the Second
Workshop Perception sémiotique et socialité du sens Colloque du programme
PerSemSoc—Paris, November, 17.
Valsiner, J. (2010a). A persistent innovator: James Mark Baldwin reconsid-
ered. Introduction to J. M. Baldwin, Genetic Theory of Reality (pp. xv–lix).
New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Valsiner, J. (2010b). Climbing the sacred mountain of knowledge: psychology at
its eternal crossroads. Keynote address at The XIV Congreso Colombiano de
Psicología, Ibagué, April, 29.
Valsiner, J., Branco, A. U., and Melo Dantas, C. (1997). Co-construction of
human development: heterogeneity within parental belief orientations. In
J. E. Grusec and L. Kuczynski (Eds.), Handbook of Parenting and the Trans-
mission of Values (pp. 283–304). New York, NY: Wiley.
313
Valsiner, J., Molenaar, P. C. M., Lyra, M. C. D. P., and Chaudhary, N. (Eds.) (2009).
Dynamic Process Methodology in the Social and Developmental Sciences. New
York, NY: Springer.
Valsiner, J., and Sato, T. (2006). Historically structured sampling (HSS):
how can psychology’s methodology become tuned in to the reality of the
historical nature of cultural psychology? In J. Straub, D. Weidemann,
C. Kölbl, and B. Zielke (Eds.), Pursuit of Meaning (pp. 215–51). Bielefeld:
Transcript.
Valsiner, J., and van der Veer, R. (2000). The Social Mind: Construction of the Idea.
New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
van der Veer, R. (1999). Piaget in the plural: the story of his reception on Latin
America. Culture & Psychology, 5, 2, 217–22.
van der Veer, R., and Valsiner, J. (1991). Understanding Vygotsky: A Quest for
Synthesis. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Van Dijck, J. (2006). Picturizing science: the science documentary as multimedia
spectacle. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 9, 1, 5–24.
Veit-Brause, I. (2001). Scientists and the cultural politics of academic disciplines
in late 19th century Germany. History of the Human Sciences, 14, 4, 31–56.
Verhofstadt-Denève, L. (2000). Theory and Practice of Action and Drama Tech-
niques. London: Jessica Kingsley.
Verhofstadt-Denève, L. (2003). The psychodramatic social atom method: dialogical
self in dialectical action. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 16, 183–212.
Verhofstadt-Denève, L. (2007). Existential-dialectic psychodrama: the theory
behind practice. In C. Baim, J. Burmeister, and M. Maciel (Eds.), Psychodrama:
Advances in Theory and Practice (pp. 111–26). New York, NY: Brunner.
Verhofstadt-Denève, L. (2011). Subgroup conflicts? Try the psychodramatic
“double triad method”. International Journal of Group Therapy.61.
Vickers, B. (1984). Analogy versus identity: the rejection of occult symbolism,
1580–1680. In B. Vickers (Ed.), Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renais-
sance (pp. 95–163). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vidal, F. (1991). Piaget Before Piaget. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Volkelt, H. (1924). Die Völkerpsychologie in Wundts Entwicklungsgang. In
A. Hoffmann (Ed.), Wilhelm Wundt—Eine Würdigung. Part 1 (pp. 63–91).
Erfurt: Verlag Kurt Stenger.
von Grunebaum, G. E. (1962). Byzantine iconoclasm and the influence of the
Islamic environment. History of Religions, 2, 1, 1–10.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1971). The Psychology of Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1982a). Istoricheskii smysl psikhologicheskogo krizisa. In
L. S. Vygotsky (Ed.), Sobranie Sochinenii. Vol. 1. Moscow: Pedagogika.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1982b). Myshlenie I rec’. In L. S. Vygotsky (Ed.), Sobranie sochinenii.
Vol. 2. Problemy obshchei psikhologii. Moscow: Pedagogika.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1986). Thought and Language. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Psikhologia iskusstva. Moscow: Pedagogika (in Russian).
Wagner, P. (2000). “An entirely new object of consciousness, of volition, of
thought,” The coming into being and (almost) passing away of “society”
as a scientific object. In L. Daston (Ed.), Biographies of Scientific Objects
(pp. 132–57). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
314
Bibliography
Wagoner, B., and Valsiner, J. (2005). Rating tasks in psychology: from static
ontology to dialogical synthesis of meaning. In A. Gülerce, A. Hofmeister,
I. Staeuble, G. Saunders, and J. Kaye (Eds.), Contemporary Theorizing in Psy-
chology: Global Perspectives (pp. 197–213). Toronto: Captus Press.
Waitz, T. (1849). Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturwissenschaft. Braunschweig:
Friedrich Wieweg &Sohn.
Watson, G. (1934). Psychology in Germany and Austria. Psychological Bulletin,
31, 10, 755–76.
Watzlawik, M. (2009). Der Weisheits letzter Schluss? IPBS: Integrative Psychologi-
cal & Behavioral Science, 43, 3, 214–20.
Weimer, W. (1974). The history of psychology and its retrieval from historiogra-
phy: I. The problematic nature of history. Science Studies, 4, 235–58.
Weininger, S. J. (1998). Contemplating the finger: visuality and the semiotics
of chemistry. HYLE—International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry, 4,
1, 3–27.
Weininger, S. J. (2010). Affinity, additivity and the reification of the bond. In
U. Klein (Ed.), Tools and Modes of Representation in the Laboratory Sciences
(pp. 237–51). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Werle, J. M. (1989). Franz Brentano und die Zukunft der Philosophie. Amsterdam:
Rodopi.
Werner, C. M., and Altman, I. (1998). A dialectical/transactional framework of
social relations: children in secondary territories. In D. Görlitz, H.-J. Harloff,
G. Mey, and J. Valsiner (Eds.), Children, Cities, and Psychological Theories
(pp. 123–54). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Whewell, W. (1834). Review of Mrs. Somerville on the connextion of the physical
sciences. The Quarterly Review, 51, 54–68.
Williams, C. E. (1976). Writers and politics: some reflections on a German tradi-
tion. Journal of European Studies, 6, 75–99.
Williams, R. C. (1971). Concerning the German spiritual art: Vasilii Kandinsky.
Journal of European Studies, 1, 325–36.
Windelband, W. (1875). Die Erkenntnisslehre under dem volkerpsychologischen
Gesichtspunkte. Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, 8,
166–78.
Windelband, W. (1876). Über das gegenwärtigen Stand der Psychologischen Forsc-
hung. Speech at the entrance into professorship at University of Zürich, May
20. Leipzig: von Breitkopf & Härtel.
Windelband, W. (1880). Die Blüthezeit der Deutschen Philosophie. Leipzig:Breitkopf
& Härtel.
Windelband, W. (1904). Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft. Strassburg: Heitz &
Mündel.
Windelband, W. (1905). Über Willensfreiheit. Tübingen: Mohr.
Windelband, W. (1998). History and natural science. Theory & Psychology, 8, 1, 5–22
[original speech in1894, German published version Windelband, 1904].
Wolff, M. (1981). Der Begriff des Widespruchs. Königstein: Hain.
Woodward, W. R. (1978). From association to Gestalt: the fate of Hermann Lotze’s
theory of spatial perception, 1846–1920. Isis, 69, 4, 572–82.
Woodward, W. R. (1996). Inner migration or disguised reform? Political inter-
ests of Hermann Lotze’s philosophical anthropology. History of the Human
Sciences, 9, 1, 1–26.
315
Wotiz, J. H. (Ed.) (1993). The Kekulé Riddle. Clearwater, FL: Glenview Press.
Wozniak, R. H. (1996). Qu’est-ce que l’intelligence? Piaget, Vygotsky, and the 1920s
crisis in psychology. In A. Tryphon and J. Vonèche (Eds.), Piaget–Vygotsky the
Social Genesis of Thought (pp. 11–24). Hove: Psychology Press.
Wuchty, S., Jones, B. F., and Uzzi, B. (2007). The increasing dominance of teams
in production of knowledge. Science, 316, 1036–39.
Wundt, W. (1862). Beiträge zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmung. Leipzig and
Heidelberg: C. F. Winter’sche Verlagshandlung.
Wundt, W. (1863). Vorlesungen über die Menschen- und Thierseele. Leipzig:
Leopold Voss.
Wundt, W. (1868). Lehrbuch der Physiologie des Menschen. 2nd ed. Erlangen:
Verlag von Ferdinand Enke.
Wundt, W. (1874). Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie. Leipzig:
Engelmann.
Wundt, W. (1877). Philosophy in Germany. Mind, 2, 8, 493–518.
Wundt, W. (1879). Ueber das Verhältniss der Gefühle zu den Vorstellungen.
Vierteljahresschirft für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, 3, 129–51.
Wundt, W. (1880). Nochmals: Die Priorität des Gefühls. Vierteljahresschirft für
wissenschaftliche Philosophie, 4, 128–36.
Wundt, W. (1896a). Ueber due Definition der Psychologie. Philosophische Stu-
dien, 12, 1–66.
Wundt, W. (1896b). Ueber naiven und kritischen Realismus. Philosophische
Studien, 12, 307–98.
Wundt, W. (1907). Metaphysik. In P. Hinneberg (Ed.), Die Kultur der Gegenwart
(pp. 103–37). Berlin: B. Teubner.
Wundt, W. (1920). Erlebtes und Erkanntes. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag.
Yahil, L. (1991). National pride and defeat: a comparison of Danish and German
nationalism. Journal of Contemporary History, 26, 453–78.
Yeo, R. R. (1986). Scientific method and the rhetoric of science in Britain,
1830–1917. In J. A. Schuster and R. R. Yeo (Eds.), The Politics and Rhetoric of
Scientific Method (pp. 259–97). Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Yurevich, A. (2009). Cognitive frames in psychology: demarcations and ruptures.
IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 43, 2, doi: 10.1007/
s12124-008-9082-7.
Zeeman, E. C. (1966). Mathematics and creative thinking. Psychiatric Quarterly,
40, 1, 348–56.
Ziliak, S. T., and McCloskey, D. (2008). The Cult of Statistical Significance. Ann
Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Zittoun, T. (2006). Transitions. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishers.
316
Index
(Compiled by Maaris Raudsepp)
A vs. non-A 212, 217, 220-222 guidance 25

abduction (retroduction) 20, 21, 193 tension 128, 219
abductive 7, 19, 177, 273, 306 aggregate(d) 74, 194, 197, 198
abstract 1, 14, 30, 63, 118, 130, 134, 142, agency xiv, 1, 127, 160, 166, 178, 268
173, 185-187, 192, 202, 222, 226, agent xiv, 1-3, 54, 60, 68, 69, 90, 156,
231, 233, 268, 269, 292 157, 192, 221, 236, 259, 264,
abstracted 21, 22, 57, 202, 268 267, 311
categories 24, 186 alchemy 11, 32, 173, 183, 186, 189, 190,
abstractive generalization xvii, 63, 192, 203
202, 231 alchemist 11, 183, 189-191, 194
abstraction(s) 1, 22-25, 27, 63, 91, 96, alienated 93, 100, 272
102, 106, 146, 154, 166, 178, 183, alienation/alienate xvi, 55, 168, 272
185-187, 211, 227, 231, 233, 267, of the evidence from direct
268, 281, 306 experiences xvi
action-network-theory ANT (Latour) from the phenomena 43, 235, 237,
47, 266-268, 270, 281 275
constrained CANT 266-268 guided 55
activation vs. inhibition 58 amateurs xv, 63, 272, 311
coactivation 209, 210 ambiguity 57, 230, 256, 273
activity analogy – homology 10
based approaches 142 anonymous xiv, 37, 53, 235
scientific 8, 53 ANOVA (analysis of variance) 48, 196,
theories 142, 258 203, 206, 235
systems 307 anthropomorphism 10, 255
administration 15, 262 antinomies 84, 92, 209
administrative xviii, xx, 36, 42, 43, 50, articulation 25, 142, 144, 147, 294
68, 69, 107, 109, 118, 121, 140, 141, art 19, 76, 104, 113, 139, 154, 193,
245, 262, 271-273, 276, 281 205, 206, 221, 228, 247, 285, 306,
symbolic viruses 276 309, 315
adventure(s) 48, 50, 79, 220 of science 140
adventuresome-ness 222 artist(s) 20, 40, 87, 140, 154, 174, 203, 235
aesthetic 25, 38, 109, 110, 114, 154, 219, artistic
221, 222, 301, 309 act of scientific discovery 19
aesthetics 113, 114, 130, 134, 293 generalization 135
affective xix, 3, 25-27, 33, 76, 105, 130, freedom 154
205, 209, 210, 212, 215, 219, 221, atmosphere vii, 84, 221, 252, 271
224, 289 attachment vs. dis-attachment 185,
field 25, 26 223, 224
317
Aufheben, Aufhebung (Hegel) 98, Buddhist 245, 251, 259

209, 226 bureaucratic 35, 38, 140, 217, 237,
Austrian 110, 148, 162, 283, 308 262, 272
authoritarian 111, 243
authoritarianism philosophical 178 catalyst 42, 87
autonomy 38, 62, 70, 155, 240, 262, catalytic 104, 221
270, 276 catalyze 221, 253
average 74, 94, 187, 198, 225 catharsis 25, 219
averaged knowledge 182 Catholic 80, 82, 87, 102, 110, 134, 181,
axiom(s) 7, 13, 14, 15, 18, 85, 95, 96, 239, 245, 246
149, 176, 196, 206, 217, 230, 252 causal 57, 90, 131, 157, 183, 223, 302,
meta-axiom 252 306
axiomatic 7, 13-16, 18, 19, 85, 86, 102, attribution 57-59
117, 152, 198, 201, 206, 212, 225, system 58, 59
250, 254, 261, 263, 281 causality
in terms of interaction 185
barricades 75, 113 linear 67, 97
battlefield 40, 53, 70, 93, 100, 128, 137 logic of 57
behavorism 37, 41, 44, 89, 122, 136, systemic 58, 59, 67
160, 163, 164, 175, 178, 179, 253, systemic temporarily autophagous
275, 278 74
blind spot(s) xv, 191, 206, 223, 256 chemistry ix, xvii, 2, 11, 46, 62, 63,
blinders 104, 117, 130, 136, 169, 172, 173,
conceptual 201, 256 182-194, 197, 201-203, 237, 276,
cultural 250 285, 288, 289, 298, 302, 304, 305,
ideological xii 309, 315
intellectual 224 certainty vs. uncertainty xix, 5, 106
border ix, 6, 7, 8, 11, 25, 61, 62, 63, classification(s) 112, 143, 197, 232
75, 93-95, 105, 107, 109, 110, 114, cognitive ix, xi, 11, 19, 24, 31, 66, 67,
173, 225, 230, 231, 239, 254, 266, 209, 210, 302, 304, 306, 316
267, 271 approach 42, 90
Grenze 93, 94 capacity 252, 257, 262, 268
-land 148, 225, 272 dissonance 193
of the known and unknown xiv, 8, independence 278
11, 153, 272 resistance 15
zone 68 science 90, 142, 153, 279
boundary xiii, 10, 46, 66, 76, 173 collective 2, 34-36, 38, 47, 55, 62, 118,
concepts 301 126, 153, 163, 167, 232, 253, 252,
of culture 255 268, 304
maintenance tool 63 actions xiii
managers 66 actualization 55
object 66, 71, 72, 310, 311 authorship xi
between science and society 66, 68, mind of the discipline 192
70 nature of empirical science 36
transition 67 responsibility 251
work (Gieryn) 69, 70 self 167
workers 70 self-regulation 163
zone 10, 70 commoditization of the risk xix
bounded indeterminacy (dependent common sense 5, 6, 13, 57, 71, 73,
independence) 23 176, 177, 184, 187, 198, 257, 265,
bricolage 48 269, 310
318
Index
idea 39 of knowledge 64
mental economy 5 of science 64
notion 177 contextual 142
reality 40 contextualized 133
terms 184 contradiction(s) xx, 9, 30, 61, 89, 175,
word 184 207, 210.235, 306
communicative 32, 36, 53, 57, 60, 64, dialogical 212
189, 278 (oppositional relatedness) 91, 199,
meta-communicative 60 207, 208, 212, 213
competence control 26, 30, 37, 41, 63, 72, 79, 171,
cultural 288 286, 308
general 55 administrative xviii, 50
vs. ignorance xiv, 54 bureaucratic 272
vs. performance 188 counter- 272
conceptual engineers 265
apparatus 278 hierarchical 118
arrogance 280 institutional xv, 50
basis 229 and prediction xvii, 178, 191, 199,
black box 37 220, 224, 247, 256
benefits 185, 223, 224 religious 82, 179
breakthrough 253 self- 247
confusion 173 social 33, 101, 192, 206, 268
construction 166 systemic 199
domain 166 zone 241
hurdles 191 convergence 59, 66
issues 105 vs. divergence 60, 61
plans-making 262 corporational
problems 102 objectivity 34, 35
question 188 social organization 36
relationships 176 creationism vs. evolution 2, 76, 135
scheme 99, 192 creative
solution 209 activity of imagination 19, 150
spaces 267 alternative 255
stumbling block 147 arrogance vii
system 186 extension 266
thinking 266 faculty 193
conditioned vs. unconditioned state 248 force 145
conditional reflex (Pavlov) 259 ideas 13, 240
configurational memory 18, 19 moments 209
conflict(s) 38, 60, 85, 111, 114, 210, 229, potential 256
247, 314 solution 164
consent synthesis 182, 312
informed 252, 268, 300 thinking 316
enforced 275 “crisis talk” xvi, 132, 151, 155, 159, 163,
mutual 146 164, 166, 167, 281
constraints xv, 13, 19, 21, 23, 33, 83, Christian 245
123 cultural
consumerism 64, 234, 235 analysis xi
consumers 39, 40 anthropology 126
of knowledge 48, 49, 53, 73 as semiotically mediated xii
consumption xiv, 40, 102, 234, 244 areas 239, 242
319
assumptions 252 curiosity 33, 190, 306

background/context 82, 87, 243 culture of 189, 194
capital 50 cyclical (nonlinear) 249
conditions 247
construction 11, 147 data vii, ix, xviii, 6, 16, 30, 36-39, 48, 62,
context 87, 243, 245 65, 74, 76, 85, 89, 124, 138, 154,
elements 117 160, 191, 192, 196, 200-203, 208,
filters 238, 243, 258 213, 220, 226, 235, 237, 255, 267,
foci 114 268, 273, 275, 289, 305, 310
group 245 distance from the phenomena 17, 43
habits 269 transformation of phenomena into
-historical 44, 47, 90, 121, 158, 232, data 202
233, 243, 253, 255 decontextualized approaches 142
history 31, 87, 110, 153, 226, 232, deconstruction vs. reconstruction xiii,
251, 252, 255, 280 163, 303
human beings 257 deduction 19, 21, 101, 193
human thinking xii deductive 14, 16, 19, 101, 176, 177, 187,
identity 258 248, 273
knowledge xii definite and indefinite subfields xix
level 250 demand structure of the environment
limits 280 236
morphology 127 democracy 54, 178, 244
nature of higher psychological of the literature 55
processes 280 democratic xiv, xv, 6, 29, 37, 89, 178,
patterns 125 208, 262, 264, 278
phenomena 115, 126, 145 Denkstil (Fleck) 206, 224, 277, 292
prisms 250 desubstantialization 63
psychology of science ix, xiii determinacy 95, 141
quest 155 developmental 156, 158, 84, 294, 298,
sciences 127 305, 306, 310
tool 54 cultural construction 11
tradition 80 ideas 103, 191
transfer 242-244 perspective(s) 87, 125, 197, 209, 247
variation 279 phenomena 147, 206
culturally organized processes 105, 227
environment xi science(s) xix, 106, 147, 177, 191,
personality 145 202, 286, 290, 299, 308, 312, 313,
culturally guided 250 314
culture 126, 279, 280, 283, 285, 289, dialectical 98, 101, 112, 208, 227, 284,
292, 297, 298, 301, 303, 309, 310 289, 294, 299, 303, 306, 307, 310,
as a component of the psyche 280 314, 315
as a holistic system 127 changes 210
-based species 264 discourse 209
European 238 dynamics 226
German 80, 140, 283 feelings-in-action 214
in terms of semiosis xii formal models 206
Mediterranean 148 ideas 99, 193, 211, 217
of modern students 242 interactions 206
patterns 127 leap 159
psychological 175, 278 logic 92
transfer models 242, 258 method 98, 99, 206
320
Index
nature of human reasoning 104 diversion points 218

notions 223 diversity 81, 89, 198, 222, 231, 232
operation of the human psyche 213 dogma 15, 37, 88, 89, 299
perspective 89, 98, 204, 205, 207, 208, dogmatic 8, 18, 184
211, 224, 241 dogmatism 79, 84
philosophy 86, 87 dogmatization 37
principles 205 dominance xvi, 36, 37, 41, 80, 98, 99,
processes 209, 210, 213, 227 106, 123, 126, 129, 141, 142, 146,
relations 209, 211 152, 164, 200, 207, 217, 233, 240,
scheme 91, 99, 210 258, 270, 316
synthesis ix, 91, 207, 209, 210, 216, double bind 204
219 dualism(s) 91, 92, 118, 122, 144, 145,
system 208 163, 164, 167, 292
tensions 213 duality 72, 92, 116, 126, 213, 258
theory 205, 211 drama 45, 81, 100, 213-215, 314
thinking/thought/reasoning ix, 91, dynamic 84, 85, 90, 92, 102, 105, 116,
92, 102, 105, 207-209, 217, 219, 226 146, 147, 151, 156, 157, 191, 193,
transformation ix 200, 202, 207-209, 211, 213, 219,
turn 95 220, 227, 253, 255, 280, 283, 286,
unit of analysis 205 290, 299, 308, 312, 314
dialectics xii, 91, 97, 99, 100, 103-105, forces 1
134, 154, 159, 195, 204, 205, 207, indeterminacy 23
210, 211, 217, 226, 227, 232, 235, interdependence 225
284, 288, 293, 298, 299, 307 meanings 157
dialogical 8, 213 perspective ix, 211, 227
contradictions 212 process 1, 43, 206, 223, 227, 232
perspectives/approach 89, 207 reality 23
processes 213 relations 90
self 219, 289, 314 semiotic fields 25
synthesis 315 structures ix
dialogicality 67, 301
dialogue 88, 93, 113, 135, 175, 215, 239, economy
246, 289, 301, 302 cognitive 11
self-dialogue 219 mental 5
differentiation 46, 75, 152, 173, 227 educated
and hierarchical integration 142, guessing 8
147, 227 intuition 203
social 64, 269 emancipation 76, 257, 287
theory (Werner) 227 empirical
discursive as experiential 21, 133, 147, 193, 225
frame 181 data 36, 89, 154, 160, 192
freedom spaces 2 psychology 131, 132, 311
genres 167 science 19, 36, 76, 100, 111, 132, 168,
logic 92 176, 194, 195, 197, 202, 204
practices 48 enculturation of natural objects 132
strategies 31, 166 Enlightenment xiii, 77, 79, 80, 87, 119,
struggle 192 145, 194, 240, 285, 294, 306, 312
theoretical frameworks 275 environment 18, 57, 58, 63, 85, 86, 89,
tools for social guidance 3 90, 104, 112, 134, 156, 158, 314
turn 141 demand structure of 236
disinterest 68, 74 living through 176
321
organism-environment relations 102, vs. revolution 2, 236

177, 227, 278 vs. creationism 2, 76, 135
person-environment unity 115 exceptionalism
equality 87, 231, 267, 268 American 74, 181
vs. inequality 232 German (Sonderweg) 129, 181, 311
equifinality (Driesch) 155, 156, 177, 257 national 181
Trajectory equifinality model TEM exclusion 44, 110
(Sato) 227, 308 category 143
equilibrium 213, 215, 219, 228 of knowledge use 273
epics 44 of outlayers 198
episodic 13, 57, 58, 190, 204, 205, 215, exclusive (vs. inclusive)
222 categorization 100
epistemic language use 160
culture 292 opposition(s) 19, 164, 250, 251
market (Rosa) 38-42, 47, 48, 50, 175 separation 96, 97, 139, 142, 197, 212,
positions 64 249, 250
product 39 thinking 217
epistemogenesis 40, 41, 48 experience(s) ix, xii, xvi, 6, 8, 10, 14, 18,
epistemological 16, 32, 36, 50, 102, 132, 21-26, 32, 39, 40, 48, 51, 65, 75, 76,
142, 144, 197, 277, 311, 312 81, 86, 87, 99, 104, 113, 115, 116,
blinders 200 118, 124, 131, 138, 139, 141, 142,
blindness 206 146-148, 168, 179, 201, 202, 210,
challenges xi, 49 211-213, 215, 219, 227, 290, 293,
cycle 202, 203 296, 297, 308
difficulty 105 experiencing 22, 83, 146, 148, 152, 212,
impasse 171 215
limitations 251 experiential 18, 21, 133, 147, 193, 197,
practices 61 225, 226, 280, 294
synthesis 14 experimentum crucis (critical experi-
work ix, 36 ment) 197
ethnocentrism 242, 312 experts 8, 29, 73, 193, 258, 269, 270
eugenic ideologies 77 expert
Eurocentric 188, 233, 240, 248, 281 advice xiv, 269
evidence xvi, 3, 8, 18, 30, 31, 35, 37, 41, opinions 8
49, 53-55, 59-61, 65, 66, 73, 74, solution 269
139, 153, 193, 200, 202, 220, 237, explanation 20, 37, 42, 59, 63, 65, 99,
267, 273 114, 117, 122, 132, 147, 211, 227,
anecdotal 3, 54, 140 249, 278, 312
as a cultural tool 54 export
empirical 21 intellectual xvi
epidemiological 65 of psychology 237, 240-244
experimental 21, 35 externalization 25
historical 15 extinction of the data 273
objective 34
psychological 27 fabrications 72
scientific 6, 11, 49, 65, 73, 74 fact(s) 20, 21, 30-33, 50, 54, 65, 67, 101,
evidence-based medicine (EBM) xvi, 43, 117, 122, 124, 128, 130, 132, 149,
54, 74, 284, 288, 289 160, 175, 179, 180, 200, 202, 216,
evidence-based philosophy 154 231, 250, 290, 292
evolution 63, 91, 155, 253, 255, 263, factory
273, 294, 304, 305 of knowledge 270
322
Index
models in science 36, 37, 55, 270 abstractive xvii, 63, 102, 202, 231
psychology as a xi, 49 artistic 135
rules 48 epidemiological 74
type of objectivity 112 hyper- 24-26
false conscience 6 inductive 14, 19, 21, 130, 177, 186,
fashion (of ideas) xii, 13, 102, 135, 193, 187, 192, 197, 202, 273, 281
230, 235, 280 meta-analytic strategies of 194
feeling(s) 25-27, 92, 104, 114, 116, 120, over- 25
130, 133, 140, 182, 210, 213-216, qualitative 92
219, 221, 253, 277 through the essence 198
(aesthetic) 205, 221 generality 18, 138, 145, 148, 161, 186,
(Gefühl) 133, 148, 285, 296, 316 199, 225
general 26 generative 24, 156, 227, 276
higher 25 genetically modified 173, 234, 258
in Indian psychology 248 genetics 57, 172, 286
nebulous 25 the Gestalt 19, 138, 150, 163, 315
figure and ground 218 Gestalt
flow of living 144, 146, 147 qualities (Ehrenfels) 19, 27, 149, 150,
forgetting ix, xii, 13, 45, 46, 49, 93, 263, 291
288 perspectives 149
fragmented -maker 150
discipline 165 globalization 229-234, 242, 244, 256,
knowledge 43, 244 257, 272, 283, 284, 289, 305
psychology 37, 261, 277 glory 33, 38, 172
specialization 55 goal orientations 60, 61, 72, 73, 263, 286
ways of looking 229 the goal-in-itself (Driesch) 155
free artisans 271
freedom vii, 2, 23, 46, 60, 84, 102, 154, habitus 50, 292
155, 186, 193, 225, 229, 232, 236, harmony 253, 254
244, 248, 259 Heimweh – Fernweh (Ernst Boesch) 75,
French Revolution xvi, 79, 83, 84, 100, 286
101, 103, 118, 119, 154, 245, 301 hero scientist xv
fuzzy aboutness of human reasoning 25 myths 2, 31
figure 67
Gegenstand 84, 92, 95, 103-105, 151, heterogeneity 74, 81, 246, 251, 265, 279,
209, 219, 272, 286 304, 313
Geist 90, 91, 96, 121-123, 127, 136, 137, amplification 251
140-144, 150, 152, 308 heterotopias 50
general heterotopic domain 41
as aggregate 197, 198 hierarchical
knowledge x, xix, 2, 20, 21, 47, 138, control 118
139, 161, 168, 191, 197, 203, 206, differentiation 147
250, 277 integration 25, 142
vs. particular 199 model 255
vs. precise 185 nature of psychological functions 247
science 161, 162, 176, 193, 255 organization 36, 211
vs. specific 198 order 47, 51, 118, 202
general linear model GLM 206 structure of social relations 253, 267
generalization 14, 21, 22, 24, 47, 48, view of nature 117
56, 57, 139, 144, 154, 156, 176, higher
199, 237 affective fields 26
323
feeling 25 idealist(ic) 80, 93, 97, 106, 117, 118, 120,

forms of gestalten 150 121, 123, 127, 139, 157
level process 92 idea-scape 164
levels of psychological order 115 ideological(ly) ix, xii, xviii, xix, 10, 29,
level structure 210 30, 35-37, 44, 75, 80, 89, 93, 99,
meaning 152 101, 110, 118, 119, 121, 122, 126,
qualitative stages 147 128, 129, 130, 136, 149, 160, 162,
nervous activity 161 191, 195, 233, 262, 264
primates 254 ideologized beliefs 73
psychological functions/processes idiographic vs. nomothetic 138, 139,
47, 124, 125, 158, 159, 225, 247, 143, 152, 196-198, 257, 290, 296,
279, 280 299, 303, 308
psychological phenomena 17, 128 ignorance xiv, xix, 54, 68, 69, 129, 224,
stages of development 152 263, 304
states of consciousness 247 “impact factor” 9, 43, 50, 273, 275, 281,
higher-order 310
beings 137 impasse 156, 163, 171, 176, 177, 198, 200
qualities 19, 150 improvisation 23, 24
psychological phenomena 25, 114, inclusive (vs. exclusive) separation 96,
128 140, 142, 196, 197, 249-251
Hindu independent scholars 103, 264
deity 184 indeterminacy 23, 95, 309
religious thought 184 bounded 23
hinduism 250, 305 Indian psychology (IP) 247-249, 259,
historical 285, 288, 289, 306, 312
analysis of the social sciences 181 indigenization 245
focus viii indigenous 278, 292
myopia 276 psychology 240, 244, 245, 247, 285,
perspective 3, 35, 47, 90, 285, 305, 288, 296, 305
310 induction 19-21, 193, 287, 288, 291,
historicism 145 299, 302
holism 150 inductive
holistic 27, 116, 125, 127, 132, 142, analysis 24, 206
146, 148, 149, 161, 168, 203, 226, empiricism 182
290 generalization 14, 19, 21, 130, 177,
homogeneous 198, 245, 268 187, 192, 197, 202, 273, 281
homogenization 231 inference 19, 21, 206
homology 10 knowledge construction 123, 177
hyper-generalized 25, 27 model of science 16, 123
affective domain 27 strategies 186
catalytic signs 221 inequality 232
feeling 25, 219 informal intellectual networks 272
field sign of affective tone 26 infinity xx, 95, 96, 139, 152
meanings 26, affirmative 95-97
meaning fields 221, 252 bad and good 95
personal sense 222, 302 of human experiencing 152
sign 26 ingroup vs. outgroup 100, 276
hyper-production (of ideas) 9 inhibition vs. dis-inhibition
(excitement) 58, 221
idea vs. opinion 7, 10 the initiated 63
idea-makers vs. idea controllers 9 the uninitiated 132
324
Index
intellectual laypersons xv, 3, 4, 57, 63, 64, 68, 69

cargo 239 causal attribution 58, 59, 67
immune deficiency syndrome IIDS interpretation of corrrelational
201 findings 312
passions 8, 76 logic 57, 59
intellectualism 179 thinking 58
intelligence xii, 39, 40, 61, 72, 183, 185, leap
275, 281, 302, 309 cognitive 20
intentional 2, 247, 256 dialectical 159
intentionality 166 in faith 180
interactivity between opposites 240 in logic 20, 21
interdependence 158, 225, 253 qualitative 219
internalization 25, 104 to a new state 210, 215, 224
intersubjective 202 learning-by-support (vs. learning-via-
intersubjectivity 180 outcomes) 253
intervention in the phenomenon 48, Leben 141, 142, 146
150 liberation 119, 179, 192, 248, 278
IP (Indian psychology) 247-249, 259, psychology 244, 245, 292
285, 288, 289, 306, 312 liminality of psychology 137
irreversible time 18, 22, 23, 138, 157, limitation 233, 251
211, 216 limiting and directing agents (Driesch)
Islamic 245, 314 156, 157
life-world(s) 75, 233
knowledge linear
descriptive vs. evaluative 61 causal logic 57, 58, 67
field of xv, xix, 15, 103, 172 progress model xii, 13, 73, 248
fragmentation of xi, 102, 244, 266 regression 48
generalized xvi, xviii, 62, 67, 138, 176 representations 48
meta-knowledge 76 linearity 48
vs. non-knowledge xiii, xiv, xix lived experience 142, 146
producers of 29, 39, 48, 53, 63, 234, logic
270 crisp vs. fuzzy 25
secularization of 81, 238 dialectical 92
scientific xii, xv, 1, 21, 33, 36, 55, 56, loyalty xvii, 234, 279
61, 68, 69, 81, 82, 202, 224, 250, Lutheran 104
265, 267, 272
sociomorally exaggerated 69 macrogenesis xviii
knowing vs. not-yet-knowing 8, 272 mainstream 86, 111, 164, 167, 169, 197,
known 201, 252, 263
vs. not-yet-known xiv, 41, 224 materialist(ic) 88, 91, 99, 100, 101, 110,
unknowable, nonknowable xiv 117-123, 139, 142
mathematization 62, 63, 130, 300
laws 62, 145, 146, 147, 156, 199, 223 meaning
of nature 101, 117 Bedeutung, Sinn 157, 286
general 127, 196, 199, 225 construction 60, 297
natural 132, 138 field 221, 252
in society xvi, 145 general 71
“law of large numbers” 38, 196 making 10, 11, 36, 37, 96, 130, 158,
law-like regularities 199 203, 216, 219
lay public, xiv, xv, xvi, 9, 53, 58, 66-69, measurement 15, 17, 18, 27, 35, 50, 69,
71, 184, 185, 189, 190 124, 131, 132, 160, 224, 286, 303
325
mechanical xviii, 114, 136, 142, 156, operators 221, 222

176, 186, 234, 248 order 82
mediation 90, 97, 157, 211, 307 moralistic 29, 179, 265
semiotic xii, 11, 90, 162 morality 181, 247
membrane 67, 68, 122, 217 music(al) 6, 18, 23, 24, 80, 82, 104, 109,
metaphor(s) 10, 11, 38-40, 42, 50, 97, 114, 140, 141, 146, 149, 242
205, 226, 258, 292, 294, 300 mutual limiting 106
vs. simile 10, 11 myth(s) viii, 2, 15, 29, 31, 33, 44, 118,
metaphoric 10, 11, 176 125, 128, 130, 131, 134, 189, 192,
metaphysics 1, 31, 104, 110, 123, 136, 236, 259, 300
143, 288, 295 mythical 55
metaphysical 99, 122, 182, 295 mythological 76, 258
postmetaphysical 295
meta-analytic 194 national identity 80, 93, 133
meta-level viii, xviii, 3, 110, 118, 136, natural kind 22
153, 167, 222, 224, 262, 276 Naturwissenschaften vs. Geisteswissen-
meta-scientific viii, 3, 42 schaften xiii, xviii, 105, 128, 137,
meta-theoretical 159, 203, 255 139, 142-145, 151, 172, 176, 298
methodology 191, 312, 314 negation of the negation (Hegel) 97,
abductive 306 98, 215
as the unity of the whole knowledge negotiation(s) xiii, xvi, 3, 6, 31, 32, 35,
making process 280 49, 50, 53, 60, 67, 72, 89, 118, 120,
cycle 39, 195, 202-204, 266, 278 160, 163, 166, 208, 220, 228, 252,
psychology’s 49, 137, 162, 303 254, 258, 263-265, 270, 306
qualitative 16, 310 neurosciences xiii, 85, 89, 136, 162,
scientific 9, 246 172, 279
methodological 137, 151, 165, 192, 200, neurotic empirical science 204
202, 215, 303, 304, 309, 312 Newtonian
discourse 165 and cultural directions 125
fit 43 and Goethean perspectives 127, 136,
guidance promoters 49 159
imperatives xviii science 100, 111, 123, 125, 126, 148,
principle 102 158
thought disorder 18 nomothetic 138, 139, 143, 152, 196-198,
microgenesis xviii, xx, 290 296, 299, 304, 308
middle class 80, 100, 234 nondemocratic (hierarchical)
migration(s) 191, 201, 232, 238, 239, orders 51
241, 311, 315 nonlinear 48, 186, 206, 249
mindscapes 41, 128, 137, 160, 265 nonliving 266-268
Möbius loop/process 218-221, 228 norm vii, 15, 18, 36, 40, 276
monastic model of knowledge normal 35, 156
construction 36 case 14
moral distribution 38
community 79 science vii, 14, 37, 41, 76, 86, 173,
concepts 187 265
crisis 269 state 153, 190, 243
discourses xvii, 31 normative 38, 39, 154, 169, 206, 252,
duty 201 306
guidance 192 novelty 13, 23, 40, 96, 99, 102, 161, 177,
imperatives (demands, rules) xv, 38, 199, 208, 209, 215, 216, 219, 221,
84, 181, 182, 191, 192, 251 227, 261, 279
326
Index
obedience 243, 303 inside to outside 169

obedient 14 to the other (Hegel) 93
objective previous 210, 212
data 200 mutually constituted 226
evidence 34, 55 nomothetic vs. idiographic 308
facts 30, 54 tensional 220
finding 55 oppositional 142, 199, 208, 209, 258
ideological opposition 122 order vs. nonorder 83
knowledge 30, 31, 36, 100, 140, organism-environment relations 102,
145, 252 177, 278
messages 29 organizing principle 250
perspective 9 organon model (Bühler) 56, 57
picture 275 ornaments 49
procedure 8, 9, 31, 76, 162 orthodoxy 13, 15, 18, 77, 99, 101, 159,
quantities 122 252
research 34, 35 vs. axiomatic thinking 7
side of science 110, 165 orthogenetic principle (Werner ja
subjectively objective 29 Kaplan) 25
truth 31 otherness xx, 3, 103, 309
objectivity xix, 9, 29-31, 33-38, 49, 54,
61, 76, 112-114, 122, 136, 156, participation 102, 111, 167, 196,
200-203, 257, 288, 290, 296, 304, 262
306 partitions 62, 76
regulatory 35, 288 passion(ate) 8, 29, 75, 81, 89, 92, 140,
perspectival 36, 37 173
aperspectival 34, 36, 38 peer review(ed) 37, 43, 55, 74, 273
omniscopus language use 220 personal cultural systems 224
open systems 118, 199, 253 pessimistic optimism 166
operators phenomenological 117, 203, 209, 253,
field o. 63 299
moral o. 221, 222 physics xvii, 33, 63, 169, 172, 173, 183,
operationalist mindset 16 190, 192, 197, 199, 201, 230, 248,
opinions 5-11, 13, 29, 73, 182, 291, 302, 307
224, 276 Pietist 104, 148
polls 6, 7 play vii, 8, 24, 47, 48, 51, 163, 214,
opposites ix, xix, 87, 139, 164, 198, 199, 262
208, 213, 281, 310 poetic(al) xviii, 50, 79, 84, 86, 87, 114,
binary 164 122, 133, 141, 146
fixed 11, 164, 208 poetics of crisis 165
interactivity between 219 polyphonic 73
tension between 206, 209, 218, 219, popularization 4, 61, 64, 66, 67, 72, 74,
224 194, 231, 269, 275, 304
unity of 102, 128, 136, 207, 217, 218, popularizing xviii, xix, 3, 65, 67
222, 223, 229, 230 population
opposition ix, 16, 54, 99, 100, 101, 106, based vs. individual case based
114, 122, 137, 142, 143, 159, 182, perspective 54
216, 220, 247, 251 (and sample) 74, 187
dialectical 224 positioning 54, 62, 136, 164, 218, 219,
exclusive 139, 251 229
(in Gegenstand) 104 the powerful vs.the powerless xiv, 53,
(generating novelty) 221 233, 256, 259
327
pragmatism empirical 131, 132, 293, 311, 313

American 20, 162, 177, 179, 296, 299, environmental 207
306, 308, 313 experimental 45, 123, 125, 128, 129,
social 172 141, 147, 239, 283, 289, 312
pre-adaptation 254 Euro-American 245, 246
precise imprecision 17 European 182, 257, 281
pretend play 48 evolutionary 39, 236
primate research, primatology 250, general xii, xix, 162, 279, 300
253-255, 283, 290, 307, 311 German 46, 307
promoters 49, 154, 221, 226 gestalt psychology 283, 291
promoter signs 57, 221, 222 humanistic 169, 235, 287, 293, 294
Protestant 80, 82, 83, 104, 110, 130, 134, introspective 297
245, 305 Japanese 305
protest narratives 163 liberation 244, 245, 292
prototype 198, 206 mainstream 197, 201
pseudo-concepts (Vygotski) 184, 194 Marxist 168
pseudo-empirical 18, 176, 177, 198, materialistic 119
206, 310 medical 113, 119, 152
pseudo-empiricism (Smedslund) 176, personality 207
199, 211, 272 philosophical 245
pseudo-evolutionary 278 physiological 123, 125, 311
pseudo-homogeneous class 198 pragmatic 134
pseudo-science 53, 69 quantitative 312
psychoanalysis 160, 163, 168, 181, 239, qualitative 16, 313
253, 259 scientific 168, 197, 236, 240, 261,
psychodrama 47, 214, 215, 314 274, 279, 286, 288, 296, 303, 312,
psychometric imperative 199, 201, 204 313
psycho-logic (Smedslund) 176, 177 social xiii, 97, 163, 175, 207, 287, 293,
psychological functions 192, 210 297, 304, 310
affect-laden 192 soul 163
elementary 148 Soviet 2, 173, 182, 262
divisions of 148 thinking 163, 310
dynamic features of 157 universal 247
higher and lower 47, 124, 125, 158, Western/Occidental 242, 247, 248,
159, 216, 247, 279 259, 285, 295, 310, 312
new 191 the public xv, xvi, 29, 31, 33, 64-66, 69,
quantification of 61, 132 70, 72, 73, 172, 189, 194, 285
psychology public
American 182, 283, 296, 304 communication of science xiv, xv
applied 159, 237 silence (vs. public talk) 69, 106,
associationist 163 236
clinical 207, 264 purity
cognitive 11, 294 in chemistry 187, 188
critical 164, 169 of thought 186
cross-cultural xii, 250, 280, 288, of the soul 187
296 of psychology 151, 236
cultural xii, 163, 247, 283, 285, 288,
295, 296, 309, 313, 314 qualitative 16, 17, 24, 43, 76, 92, 94, 98,
culture-inclusive xix 114, 181, 182, 191, 201, 202
developmental 163, 201, 207, 284, breakthrough 219, 227
288, 296, 298, 299, 306, 310, 313 empiricism 47
328
Index
data derivation 202 reflexivity 48, 70, 91, 92, 95, 142, 153,
force q.phenomena into the 265, 308
quantified straitjacket 201 self- xvi, 92, 163, 228, 281
methodology 16 reflexive state xix
methods 19, 143, 266 reification 171, 198, 242, 303, 315
perspective(s) ix, 16, 127 relational 208, 211, 224, 288, 305
quantity (Mass) 98 research participant 233, 267, 268
stages of development 147 resistance 15, 209, 213, 220, 263
transition to a new level 207 responsibility 178, 244, 251, 278, 309
wholes 18 reversibility of reactions 188
quality and quantity (Hegel) 93, 94, 97, revolutionary 14, 76, 87, 110, 111, 154,
122, 127, 134 164, 265, 281
quantitative 6, 16, 18, 64, 94, 97, 98, promoters 221, 222
102, 114, 150, 157, 181, 182, 202, romantic 85-87, 127, 159, 193, 298, 302,
206, 219, 226, 273, 289 307
approach 16, 43 science 81, 82
data 38 rupture(s) 30, 77, 87, 103, 110, 191,
imperatives ix 221, 316
methods 19, 143, 201, 266
perspectives 16, 38 “schools” in science xiii, 37, 44, 110,
psychology 17, 266, 312 112, 163, 167, 182, 252, 261, 278,
science 127, 303 281
quantification 19, 38, 62, 76, 92, scientia non grata 151
94, 181, 201, 202, 206, 275, 287, semiosis xii, 9, 224
306 semiotic
as the guarantor of objectivity 201 approach 291
axiom 18 cultural psychology ix
imperative 15, 17, 18, 37, 201 demand setting 60, 165
of psychological functions 61 device 60
quasi- framing 215
chaos 179 guidance 226
general 205 inhibitor 222
monastery 83 field 25, 30
moral 201 means 215, 261
outsiders 172 mechanism 221
religious 76, 179 mediators 166
return 280 messages 215
meta-semiotic 30
reasoning 39, 272 organizers 30, 33, 221
dialectical 226 paraphernalia 236
human 25, 104 processes 22
scientific 20, 59, 267, 302 regulation 222, 252
rebellion 252, 259 subject 199
rebels systems 186, 187, 221, 276
well-behaving 250, 252 vehicle 35
disconnected 259 semiotically
reduction (to a lower level) 132, 141, marked 252
144, 156, 208, 217, 224, 263 mediated xii, 25
reductionism 115, 132, 173 organized 30
reductionist 126, 127 reconstructed 23
anti-reductionist 313 viewed 179
329
semiotics 113, 190, 194, 315 social representation(s) xv, 3, 30, 35, 37,
serving 53, 57, 65, 72, 77, 130, 140, 176,
the powerful xiv 181, 193, 244, 291, 292, 301, 304,
the interests of all mankind 246 310
the society 256 social revolutions xvii
signs ix, xii, 16, 23, 25, 27, 32, 54, sociobiology 255
74, 115, 116, 130, 157, 161, 167, socioculturalism 37, 44, 89, 163, 175,
194, 202, 216, 221, 223, 224, 270, 275
295 sociocultural 47, 244, 280, 283, 302,
catalytic 221 308, 309
hyper-26 soul 84, 111, 113, 115, 119, 121, 123,
hyper-generalized 26 124, 128, 136, 137, 140, 142, 152,
iconic or indexical 215 154-156, 163, 175, 183, 187, 253,
inhibitor 226 261
local (Lokalzeichen)(Lotze) 113, 115, Soviet xx, 2, 15, 44, 50, 89, 93, 104, 105,
116 145, 160, 173, 182, 195, 207, 241,
sign 262, 313
meta-level 222 spectacle(s) 72, 145, 189, 231, 285, 294,
systems 13, 186, 291, 304 306, 314
with infinite borders (SWIB) 27 spiritual 99, 105, 112, 127, 130, 137,
single 154, 178, 247, 315
case (cf. idiographic) 22, 38, 135, 138, spirituality 246, 247
152, 161, 198, 280 stability ix, 23, 73, 115, 153, 256, 298
event 196 standardized
research participant xix equipment 35
specimen 197 instruments 225, 240
systemic subject 161 measures 18, 50
singularity (of life events) 161 methods 195, 196, 199, 200, 225
social scales 203, 226
canalization viii, xviii, 9, 30, 197 tests 275
context xvii, 31, 36, 47, 154, 158, 239, static (vs. dynamic) 1, 2, 22, 23, 85, 92,
270 95, 124, 142, 156, 193, 200, 206,
framing 85, 237 224, 233, 259, 283, 315
institutional demands 38 statistically aggregated/analyzable data
regulation 15, 178, 276 74, 201
social guidance statistically valid generalizations 237
device 6 statistical 130, 154, 171, 192, 194, 197,
of knowledge making 54, 182, 236, 200, 206, 306
268, 275, 276 analysis 16, 39, 203
of genetic science 234 imperative 206
of psychology 44, 70, 168, 172, 180, inference 38, 50, 55, 181, 201
196, 204, 206, 223, 224, 238, 275, methods 77, 154, 181, 200, 202, 206,
278 236
of science viii, xi, xvii, xviii, 3, 27, 64, significance 48, 171, 316
67, 72, 88, 103, 120, 127, 128, 166, statistics 130, 181, 182, 201, 291, 294
171, 224, 233, 239, 261, 263, 269, strategy of categorical organization and
272, 276 segregation (CAS) 44, 45
of social sciences 233 of disciplinary reclassification
social psychology of scientific institu- (DRC) 45
tions xiii of symbolic power cleaning
social presentation(s) xi, xiii, 262, 265 (SPC) 45
330
Index
of natural decay (ND) 45 thesis – antithesis – synthesis 97, 106,

of selective maintaining (SM) 218, 222, 304
45, 47 antithesis 86, 91, 97, 142, 218-220,
stratified whole 148 291
subconsciousness, coconsciousness a third way 112, 114, 136
(Driesch) 156 telos 155, 248
subjective 9, 29, 34, 36, 95, 96, 100, 11, tension 19, 29, 75, 82, 83, 86, 105, 139,
124, 130, 140, 146, 151, 157, 202, 210, 213-216, 219, 220, 270
203, 257 affective 219
affirmative infinity 96 harmonious 218
objective-subjective contrast between opposites 91, 92, 206, 209,
34, 140 212, 218, 219, 224
reality 210, 300 within the dual structure 92
subjectively objective 29 non(dis)harmonious 218, 219
subjectivistic 157 testing (psychological) 17, 61, 179, 244,
subjectivity xiii, 9, 29, 34, 118, 130, 203, 256
256, 286 tourist 41, 48
suggestion trafiquants de science (Comte) science
posthypnotic 53, 72, 220, 221, trafficker xv, xix
285 trajectory 146, 198, 207, 219, 221,
social 154 329
summativity of responses 17 equifinality model (TEM) (Sato)
survival 53, 111, 233, 235, 236, 253 227
fight for 255 transformation 2, 22, 33, 58, 65, 100,
symbolic xx, 42, 43, 45, 46, 50, 54, 67, 182, 187, 192, 211, 212, 223, 227,
120, 121, 151, 167, 180, 221, 231, 231, 263, 269, 275, 284, 288, 292,
237, 252, 270, 275, 276, 288, 289, 298
294, 305, 308 dialectical ix
synthesis 92, 97, 98, 115, 125, 163, 204, historical ix
207, 209-211, 215, 218, 219, 226, of ideas xvi, 278
290, 314, 323 into new forms 2, 98, 104
abductive 177 of science 67
as the core of development 210 of psychology 290, 311
creative 182, 312 qualitative 191, 206
dialectical ix, 91, 207, 209, 210, 216, phenomena into data 202
218, 219 of the whole into a new state 206
dialogical 315 structural ix
epistemological 14 transitive vs. intrasitive 250, 259
in affective processes 205 transposable wholes (Ehrensfeld) 18
intellectual 87, 91
of novelty 99, 102, 209, 210, 227 “umbrella” 46, 176, 196, 203, 248
of elements into wholes 125 Umwelt 253, 288, 301
(of knowledge) 145, 155, 168 uncertainty 1, 65, 72, 160, 191, 222,
synthetic 19, 22, 99, 112, 115, 159, 194, 283, 304
201, 206 of the future xix, 19, 23, 150, 155
unidirectional
thanksgiving to the research culture transfer model 242, 243,
participants 252 258
theatre 24, 25, 159, 214, 236, 310 model of science communication 66
theatrical 39, 72, 215, 236 unit
themata 142 of analysis 205, 301, 302
331
of investigation 124 of thought 212

of social capital 275 wholes 114, 205
unity 143, 213, 268
bad infinity/good infinity 95 values 25, 38, 56, 75, 145, 175, 181, 212,
construction/destruction 226 245, 263, 284, 288, 292, 302, 305,
dialectical 95 310, 313
duties/rights xv value orientations 253
external limits/inner freedom 84 values-free 212
in diversity 89, 198 variability 74, 95, 199, 225
general/unique 158, variational and typological modes of
of the human and animal worlds thinking 312
251
knowledge/non-knowledge xiii well-structured vs. ill-structured
of knowledge 140, 160, 197 problem (Simon) 209, 226
of knowledge-making process 203, the will 76, 81, 144, 179, 225
280
of the living world 126, 254 Yin and Yang 216, 218
nature and human beings 142
opportunities and suspicions 230 zone
of opposites ix, 86, 102, 128, 207, dominance z. 152
208, 217, 218, 222, 223, 229, of excluded middle 143
230 of freedom of movement ZFM xi
of the person 142 of promoted action ZPA xi
of the psyche 249 of proximal development ZPD xi, 51,
quality and quantity 94, 122 226
self/non-self 91, 93 of talkability 70
in sciences 111, 250 of promoted talking 71, 262
of species and their settings 253 taboo zones 70
332

Valsiner - A Guided Science - History of Psychology in The Mirror of Its Making PDF

Cargado por

Información del documento

Título original

Derechos de autor

Formatos disponibles

Compartir este documento

Compartir o incrustar documentos

Opciones para compartir

¿Le pareció útil este documento?

¿Este contenido es inapropiado?

Copyright:

Formatos disponibles

Valsiner - A Guided Science - History of Psychology in The Mirror of Its Making PDF

Cargado por

Copyright:

Formatos disponibles

Copyright © 2012 by Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright

This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2011020483

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Introduction: What Kind of Knowledge—And

Part I. Societies and Sciences: Presentations

1. The Eternal Freedom Movement of Ideas 5

2. Axiomatic Bases for Experiential (Empirical)

3. Objectivity and Social Forgetfulness 29

4. Pathways to Evidence: Negotiation

Part II. The Mirror in the Making: Psychology

5. From Enlightenment to Struggle: Psychology

6. The Birth of a Troubled Wissenschaft:

8. Psychology in a Perpetual Crisis 153

Part III. Facing the Future—Transcending the Past 171

9. Learning from the Fate of Psychology 175

10. Pathways to Methodologies: Semiotics of

11. Globalization and Its Role in Science 229

General Conclusion: Science under the Inﬂuence:

Index (Compiled by Maaris Raudsepp) 317

This book represents my thinking about the development of

Wagoner and Nandita Chaudhary on various drafts of the chapters.

epistemological work, on the other, permeate through the whole book.

interdisciplinary scholarship means precisely that—doing it in

(Valsiner, 1997)—were present somewhere in the back of my mind

Scientists form social groups—“schools” or clubs or “laboratories”—

ambivalent relation both in history of societies, and of persons.

It is taken for granted that the rapid advances of scientiﬁc research,

other hand, within the pool of potential consumables, some results of

salvation, psychology promised (and still promises) cure of many ills

some circumstances. Yet it can also lead to ideas—and practices—that

6. An interesting retrospect of the symbolic realities of a young scientist living

We start here with a seeming paradox—what a society is is actu-

it was produced through an open inquiry. The making of knowledge

anecdotal evidence” on the work of their colleagues. Such clashes

opposite—the prism of valuations by “laypersons” is being made into

in everyday life to ask another person “what is your opinion of X?” as

comes. Opinions—without becoming ideas—cannot generate new

The diﬀerence between these two kinds of opinions is that between

Figure 1.1 Classical category formation (A) that supports opinions,

says nothing about the future breakthroughs of ideas, but temporarily

Scientiﬁc ideas as directed toward horizons of knowledge

So the dialogical nature of knowing and not-yet-knowing makes the

. . . students of primate societies had a rather complex path to negoti-

The easy move in human thinking between analogy and homology is

A woman in love is never satisﬁed if her lover remembers with only

This simile, by a Kerala woman writer, speciﬁes a ﬁeld of meanings

eternity—orthodoxies. In contrast, an axiomatic system that allows for

Kuhn here, self-admittedly, speaks of scientists within his “normal

The “normal scientist” a la Kuhn is an obedient member (Milgram,

famous “guru” ﬁgures, and myths about science as prestigious nonrisky

numbers” to psychological phenomena. Such activity, substantiated by

Qualitative and quantitative approaches are clearly diﬀerent in the

This very realistic account of the research practices of contempo-

The quantification imperative in psychology grew out of the

A clinical, or experimental, psychologist who could use this

. . . systemic structures within psychology prevent the vast majority

absence of any evidence that the relevant psychological attributes

Michell’s “diagnosis”—systemically sustained methodological

. . . in order to apprehend a melody, it is not suﬃcient to have in one’s

sounding. Rather—leaving aside the initial tone—the impression of

That configurational temporal memory is a generalizing one,

Table 3.1â•… Strategies of sciences relating to their histories-in-the-making