In The Psychologizing of Modernity, Mark Jarzombek examines the impact of psychology on twentieth-century aesthetics. Analysing the interface between psychology, art history and avant-gardist practices, he also reflects on the longevity of the myth of aesthetic individuality as it infiltrated not only avant-garde art, but also history writing. The principal focus of this study is pre-World War II Germany, where theories of empathy and Entartung emerged; and post-war America, where artists, critics and historians gradually shifted from their reliance on psychology (...) to philosophy, and, most recently, to theory. Included are discussions of writers such as Heinrich Wölfflin, Ludwig Volkmann, John Dewey, Vincent Scully and Richard Arnheim, among others. The Psychologizing of Modernity is a broad and erudite study of the evolution of modern aesthetic thinking in the fields of art and architectural history. (shrink)

The examination of the notion of science from a sociological perspective has begun to transform the attitudes to science traditionally upheld by historians and philosophers.

This first volume contains discussions of the brain, methods for analyzing behavior, thought, consciousness, attention, association, time, and memory.

Here the distinguished philosopher Ian Hacking uses the MPD epidemic and its links with the contemporary concept of child abuse to scrutinize today's moral...

True to his longstanding bias against grand unifying theories, Hacking chooses to pursue these questions by focusing on a specific case of memory-thinking: the history of multiple personality. His excavation of the contemporary terrain leads him, however, to the surprisingly grand conclusion that the various sciences of memory—including neurological studies of localization, experimental studies of recall, and studies in the psychodynamics of memory—all emerged in connection with attempts to “scientize the soul,” as a result of which spiritual battles have been (...) recast as scientific controversies “where we suppose there is such a thing as knowledge to be had”. (shrink)

William James. The Correspondence Of William James. Edited by, Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley. Forewords by, John J. McDermott. 9 volumes to date. Charlottesville/London: University Press of Virginia. Volume 1: William and Henry, 1861–1884. Introduction by Gerald E. Meyers. lxiv + 477 pp., illus., apps., index. 1992. $45. Volume 2: William and Henry, 1885–1896. Introduction by Daniel Mark Fogel. lxii + 514 pp., frontis., index. 1993. $45. Volume 3: William and Henry, 1897–1910. Introduction by Robert Dawidoff. lviii + (...) 517 pp., frontis., index. 1994. $45. Volume 4: 1856–1877. Introduction by Giles Gunn. lxvi + 714 pp., frontis., illus., index. 1995. $55. Volume 5: 1878–1884. Introduction by Linda Simon. lxvi + 677 pp., frontis., index. 1997. $60. Volume 6: 1885–1889. Introduction by Linda Simon. liv + 746 pp., frontis., index. 1998. $60. Volume 7: 1890–1894. Introduction by Robert Coles. lxii + 745 pp., frontis., index. 1999. $65. Volume 8: 1895–June 1899. Introduction by Edward H. Madden. lxvi + 762 pp., frontis., index. 2000. $80. Volume 9: July 1899–1901. Introduction by Donald McQuade. lviii + 752 pp., frontis., index. 2001. $85. (shrink)

What accounts for the prestige of quantitative methods? The usual answer is that quantification is desirable in social investigation as a result of its successes in science. Trust in Numbers questions whether such success in the study of stars, molecules, or cells should be an attractive model for research on human societies, and examines why the natural sciences are highly quantitative in the first place. Theodore Porter argues that a better understanding of the attractions of quantification in business, government, and (...) social research brings a fresh perspective to its role in psychology, physics, and medicine. Quantitative rigor is not inherent in science but arises from political and social pressures, and objectivity derives its impetus from cultural contexts. In a new preface, the author sheds light on the current infatuation with quantitative methods, particularly at the intersection of science and bureaucracy. (shrink)

In this book Harry Heft examines the historical and theoretical foundations of James J. Gibson's ecological psychology in 20th century thought, and in turn, integrates ecological psychology and analyses of sociocultural processes. A thesis of the book is that knowing is rooted in the direct experience of meaningful environmental objects and events present in individual-environment processes and at the level of collective, social settings. Ecological Psychology in Context: *traces the primary lineage of Gibson's ecological approach to William James's philosophy of (...) radical empiricism; *illuminates how the work of James's student and Gibson's mentor, E.B. Holt, served as a catalyst for the development of Gibson's framework and as a bridge to James's work; *reveals how ecological psychology reciprocally can advance Jamesian studies by resolving some of the theoretical difficulties that kept James from fully realizing a realist philosophy; *broadens the scope of Gibson's framework by proposing a synthesis between it and the ecological program of Roger Barker, who discovered complex systems operating at the level of collective, social processes; *demonstrates ways in which the psychological domain can be extended to properties of the environment rendering its features meaningful, publicly accessible, and distributed across person-environment processes; and *shows how Gibson's work points the way toward overcoming the gap between experimental psychology and the humanities. Intended for scholars and students in the areas of ecological and environmental psychology, theoretical and historical psychology, cognitive science, developmental psychology, anthropology, and philosophy. (shrink)

The development of science studies has an important message for political theory. This message has not yet been fully articulated. It seems that the science studies field is often considered as the extension of politics to science. In reality, case studies show that it is a redefinition of politics that we are witnessing in the laboratories. To the political representatives should be added the scientific representatives. Thanks to a book by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, it is possible to reconstruct (...) the origin of this divide between the two sets of representatives. A definition of modernism is offered. Then the article explains how to interpret the shift to "nonmodernism, " that is, a historical period when the two branches of politics get together again. (shrink)

The British Psychological Society having established a ‘Philosophy and History’ section, a fresh look at the nature of the History of Psychology is called for. In this paper, I would like to make a contribution to this by raising some conundrums which have yet to be adequately addressed. First, though, what has happened in the History of Psychology so far? Psychologists have been writing histories of their discipline since the turn of the century; Baldwin's History of Psychology appeared in 1913, (...) for example, and the first volume of G. S. Brett's trilogy of the same title in 1912, a year which also saw Dessoir's Outlines of the History of Psychology translated into English. This early work was clearly aimed at providing a respectable genealogy for the nascent discipline; only about a fifth of Baldwin's work actually deals with experimental or empirical Psychology dating from later than the mid-nineteenth century, while Brett treats scientific approaches virtually as a coda to a survey of the history of the philosophy of mind. Psychology is presented as the legitimate heir to the main western philosophical tradition, sired on it, so to speak, by physiologists such as Helmholtz, Muller and Broca. In 1929, E. G. Boring published the first edition of his A History of Experimental Psychology, which dominated the field for decades along with Gardner Murphy's Historical Introduction of Modern Psychology of 1928, a lighter weight work but with a somewhat broader range, which served as an introductory text. Both went into subsequent editions, the latter as recently as 1972 . The series The History of Psychology in Autobiography, begun in 1930 and now in its seventh volume , contains professional autobiographies by the ageing eminent of varying levels of self-disclosure, wit and informative value. It is not, however, until the 1960s that a self-conscious sub-discipline calling itself ‘History of Psychology’ emerges within Psychology, being pioneered by the late R. I. Watson in the United States. New histories begin appearing, including Kantor's very positivistic The Scientific Evolution of Psychology Vol. 1 of 1963 and Hearnshaw's A Short History of British Psychology of 1964. In 1965, the Journal for the History of the Behavioral Sciences was started, formally signalling the arrival of the new sub-discipline on the scene. Subsequent events warrant a more critical appraisal. (shrink)

This article examines how experimental psychology experienced a revolution as cognitive science replaced behaviorism in the mid-20th century. This transition in the scientific account of human nature involved making normal what had once been normative: borrowing ideas of democratic thinking from political culture and conceptions of good thinking from philosophy of science to describe humans as active, creatively thinking beings, rather than as organisms that simply respond to environmental conditions. Reflexive social and intellectual practices were central to this process as (...) cognitive scientists used anti-positivist philosophy of science simultaneously to justify their own work as valid and also as a model of human thinking. In the process, the normative philosophy of science or ‘good academic thinking’ that cognitive scientists used to reshape the discipline of psychology and characterize themselves became, at the same time, the descriptive model of human nature. (shrink)

Book reviewed:Bruce Mazlish, The Uncertain Sciences.

This book offers a powerful interpretation of the philosophy of William James. It focuses on the multiple directions in which James's philosophy moves and the inevitable contradictions that arise as a result. The first part of the book explores a range of James's doctrines in which he refuses to privilege any particular perspective: ethics, belief, free will, truth and meaning. The second part of the book turns to those doctrines where James privileges the perspective of mystical experience. Richard Gale then (...) shows how the relativistic tendencies can be reconciled with James's account of mystical experience. An appendix considers the distorted picture of James's philosophy that has been refracted down to us through the interpretations of his work by John Dewey. (shrink)

A lively and accessible history of Modernism, _The First Moderns_ is filled with portraits of genius, and intellectual breakthroughs, that richly evoke the _fin-de-siècle_ atmosphere of Paris, Vienna, St. Louis, and St. Petersburg. William Everdell offers readers an invigorating look at the unfolding of an age. "This exceptionally wide-ranging history is chock-a-block with anecdotes, factoids, odd juxtapositions, and useful insights. Most impressive.... For anyone interested in learning about late 19th- and early 20th- century imaginative thought, this engagingly written book is (...) a good place to start."—_Washington Post Book World_ "_The First Moderns_ brilliantly maps the beginning of a path at whose end loom as many diasporas as there are men."—Frederic Morton, _The Los Angeles Times Book Review_ "In this truly exciting study of the origins of modernist thought, poet and teacher Everdell roams freely across disciplinary lines.... A brilliant book that will prove useful to scholars and generalists for years to come; enthusiastically recommended."—_Library Journal_, starred review "Everdell has performed a rare service for his readers. Dispelling much of the current nonsense about 'postmodernism,' this book belongs on the very short list of profound works of cultural analysis."—_Booklist_ "Innovative and impressive... [Everdell] has written a marvelous, erudite, and readable study."-Mark Bevir, _Spectator_ "A richly eclectic history of the dawn of a new era in painting, music, literature, mathematics, physics, genetics, neuroscience, psychiatry and philosophy."—Margaret Wertheim, _New Scientist_ "[Everdell] has himself recombined the parts of our era's intellectual history in new and startling ways, shedding light for which the reader of _The First Moderns_ will be eternally grateful."—Hugh Kenner, _The New York Times Book Review_ "Everdell shows how the idea of "modernity" arose before the First World War by telling the stories of heroes such as T. S. Eliot, Max Planck, and Georges Serault with such a lively eye for detail, irony, and ambiance that you feel as if you're reliving those miraculous years."—Jon Spayde, _Utne Reader_. (shrink)

A number of writers have picked out the way knowledge in the human sciences reflexively alters the human subject as what separates these sciences from the natural sciences. Furthermore, they take this reflexivity to be a condition of moral existence. The article sympathetically examines this emphasis on reflexive processes, but it rejects the particular conclusion that the reflexive phenomenon enables us to demarcate the human sciences. The first sections analyse the different meanings that references to reflexivity have in the psychological (...) and social sciences, in philosophy and in material life, and they link these meanings to the post-positivist philosophy of the social sciences. The discussion considers the problems raised (most influentially in the human sciences by Foucault) by being reflexive about reflexivity itself. They put a large question mark against hopes for a revived philosophical anthropology. Whatever the philosophical arguments, however, there is clearly a reflexive practice in the humanities and human sciences which there is not in the natural sciences. This leads to the argument that there are different forms of knowledge for different purposes and that it may therefore be divergence of purpose, not reflexivity itself, that creates differences among the sciences. It is the fact and purpose of human self-reflection that marks out the human sciences. If this is so, then it explains why an apparently circumscribed question about the classification of knowledge turns out to be inseparable from ontological and moral questions about human identity. (shrink)

The ArgumentPsychology has been frequently subjected to the criticism that it is an unreflexive science — that it fails to acknowledge the reflexive properties of human action which influence psychologists themselves as well as their subjects. However, even avowedly unreflexive actions may involve reflexivity, and in this paper I suggest that the practices of psychology include reflexive ones. Psychology has an established tradition of silence about the self-awareness and sell-consciousness of its actors, whether those actors are experimenters, theorists, or participants (...) (subjects) in research, yet this silence has been established and maintained through sophisticated exercises in self-regard — through sustained reflexive work. Historical analysis reveals some of the ways in which psychologists recognized and then neglected, covered over, or denied reflexivity. Study of those instances where psychologists have engaged in self-conscious reflection or have attended to the sell-consciousness of research subjects indicates both the dangers of reflexivity to governing investigative practices and the resilience which psychology has built against reflexive work. Canonized procedures for scientific work reproduce selves of experimenters and subjects alike, selves who acknowledge only part of their reflexive engagements. Historians of psychology have a special opportunity (and obligation) to explore the reflexive dynamics of investigative practices, and, hence, to theorize aboutscientists, along with their actions and interactions, just as we theorize about science, its products, and its evolution. (shrink)

Book reviewed:Bruce Mazlish, The Uncertain Sciences.

The Divided Self of William James. RICHARD M. GALE.