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Ballantyne, P.F. (Dec. 7, 2004). Multiple levels of investigation and the recurring 'crisis of relevance' in psychology. Presentation to the Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

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Multiple levels of investigation and the recurring 'crisis of relevance' in psychology

Presentation to the Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University,

Paul F. Ballantyne, Ph.D.

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Abstract

Three of the methodological foundations of general psychology are presented in historical context and found to be problematic. Their implications for empirical practice have contributed to successive periods of crisis in psychology. These respective disciplinary shortcomings can be corrected by a consistent application of integrative levels theory to the varied subject matter of psychology. Each of the resulting corrective solutions can and must be subjected to empirical corroboration. Revised textbooks, however, will also play an important role in this enterprise of keeping psychology relevant.

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INTRODUCTION

In disciplines like physics, biology and anthropology it is widely recognized that some sort of nonreductive "multiple levels" approach to the relationship between the various sciences (the unity of the sciences) is necessary. This progressive viewpoint also seems to be gaining ground in psychology. Your own departmental "Chair's message", for instance, makes specific reference to a "multiple levels" of investigation approach to psychological processes. The journalistic 'W-Fives' of the approach (who, what, where, when, why), however, and especially the "hows" of implementing it are not often spelled out in great detail.

Today's talk, therefore, was formulated with two goals in mind:

The first goal is to emphasize the necessary philosophy of science basis of a multiple levels approach to psychological subject matter. Namely, commitment to an integrative levels ontology and to a Standard view of science. Ontology is the philosophical term for what exists, what there is (e.g. material objects, minds, persons, etc.). Let's note upfront too that the "Standard view" is not to be read as positivism, dogmatism, reductionism, operationism, or eclecticism. A truly relevant (and democratic) psychology can not be attained using any of those.

The second goal is to highlight some of the outstanding implementation issues which will remain the focus of my ongoing History &Theory research over the next few years. These issues are ones of what a relevant 21st century psychology might look like and how to implement alternative positions which seem to address the problems of contemporary general psychology. The term general psychology refers here to that which constitutes the content of introductory psychology texts.

So, lets run through the levels account, the Standard view of Science, and then move on to the issue of relevance in psychology.

LEVELS OF ANALYSIS

Sociological	Law1.........L(n)	Sociology
Psychological	Law1........L(n)	Psychology
Biological	Law1.......L(n)	Biology
Chemical	Law1......L(n)	Chemistry
Physical	Law1.....L(n)	Physics

The levels of analysis approach provides a basic argument for a nonreductive relationship between the sciences. That argument runs as follows: An adequate examination of the cosmos entails a search for numerous principles which are layered (nested) one within the other by virtue of the evolutionary, developmental nature of matter itself. This sort of cosmological ontology allows us to better recognize the local nature of the scientific laws we seek to discover.

Does anybody know who proposed just this sort of hierarchy of science in 1945? It was a molecular biologist called Alex Novikoff in a little article "The concept of integrative levels and biology" (Science 101). Novikoff argued that development of matter must be viewed as "continuous because it is never-ending, and as discontinuous because it passes through a series of different levels of organization -physical, chemical, biological [, psychological] and sociological" (Novikoff, 1945, p. 209). The higher levels, although dependent upon the prior lower ones, are not entirely explicable in their terms, since they contain properties not before seen in those lower levels. These novel properties imply the presence of new laws, which, in conjunction with the older laws, govern those novel properties. As one reviewer put it:

"The laws of nature are local: they correspond to the structures and relations existing in... the part of the universe under consideration. (The laws of biology do not exist in the sun and they were nonexistent on earth some billions of years ago). More than that: It is possible that the [so-called] 'eternal' laws of nature and the 'universal constants of physics' are functions of space and time..." (Bitsakis, 1987, p. 403).

Ever since the time of Hegel, it has been recognized in philosophy that some sort of new logic is necessary to understand the transitional phases of this processual, and qualitatively shifting universe. The old logic of exclusionary categories (a.k.a., Aristotelian/Formal logic) emphasized logical contradiction (i.e., an object or event within a process is either A or non-A with no middle being allowed by definition). One can under this logic observe that a developmental sequence (from a to b to c, etc.) has occurred, but that logic is inadequate to the task of explaining the transitions because (according to it), all events within a process must be either a, b, or, c and nothing else.

A dialectical logic, however, would allow us to recognize that the transitional forms of an ongoing process -i.e., the ones falling between a and b; b and c; etc.- are both what they are and what they are becoming at the same time. This kind of contradiction in the transitional forms is called objective contradiction -i.e., contradiction within the transitional object, event, or process under study.

In physics, explicit recognition of both the local nature of scientific laws and of objective contradiction was forced upon the discipline once evidence of special cases of astronomical bodies called black holes was found. These bodies are both heavy and small. Within them, therefore, neither the Einsteinian laws governing large heavy bodies, nor Quantum mechanical laws governing minute particles seem to apply. Since the 1970s, a new domain of research has been produced which is attempting to find laws which might govern those specific cases. There are, it is true, certain overzealous "String theorists" around who refuse to confine themselves to discussions about special cases or even to an underlying (sub-quantum) level of analysis; and whom all too quickly made spurious pronouncements about their search for a grand unified theory of everything. They would do well, however, to review John Somerville's classic "The Nature of Reality: Dialectical Materialism" (1967) before engaging in what surely amounts to a counterproductive holdover of Aristotelian either/or thought. Stated simply, no cosmological theory (no matter how mathematically ''elegant'') which also attempts to negate the qualitative differences between levels of analysis will ever succeed in matching up with the nature of reality (cf. Greene, 1999).

To give a somewhat simpler example from biology bearing on the issue of ''objective contradiction;" consider the coelacanth. Here we have a primitive fish which has some external features of both fish and reptiles.  The original discoverer of this living fossil had no doubt that it "walked about on the bottom of the ocean" yet this was (by way of direct observation) eventually disproved. They do, however, use quadrupedal motion of these appendages to swim. After much consideration of the other transitional organisms (from the fossil record), it was eventually discovered that such creatures probably used *flims* to pull themselves through swampy environments. In other words, nature is much more transitional than our all to often relied upon 'cut and dry' Aristotelian categories (fins vs. limbs). So, we must remain vigilant against their overuse or overextension. They need to be checked against nature.

The various sciences tell us, on the basis of investigations pursued at every level, that reality is pervasively characterized by motion, quantitative change, qualitative development, and evolution. If this is the sort of integrative and dialectical approach which has been systematically adopted and applied with profit in other disciplines, is it not reasonable to expect there would be some evidence of its adoption and application in general psychology? While isolated examples of such an application can be found, I haven't seen a single introductory textbook which has explicitly adopted this approach as a guiding principle.

In terms of the revision of its long-standing ontological assumptions about subject matter and in terms of its reception of integrative alternatives, psychology has lagged behind other disciplines. More specifically, in general introductory psychology there are three such assumptions which are in urgent need of explicit revision and replacement:

(1) the "continuity view of mental evolution" as first put forward in Darwin's portrayal of the 'emotional states' of animals, as applied in early comparative psychology, and as it survives in the muted 'eclectic schemes' put forward in psychology textbook chapters on "learning" and motivation;

(2) the various so-called "interactionist" accounts of human intellect utilized in mental testing debates (i.e., genes plus or genes times environment) rationales;

and (3) the "isolated individual" assumption. One of the oldest of all in psychology and one that was successively formalized and applied into the Stimulus-Organism-Response scheme (R.S. Woodworth 1930s-1960s) as well as in the later S-M-R or Independent-Internal-Dependent "variable models" of research (initially adopted during the late-1960s through 70s but still with us in the less progressive byways of "cognitive" psychology as well).

More on each later but do note that my intent is to preview some integrative levels alternatives to them and at least hint at what the implications might be for subsequent empirical practice. Further, it's hoped that by presenting these alternatives the last line of the "Abstract" (above) which mentions "keeping psychology relevant" will become more clear. Two quick answers to the question: 'Keeping psychology relevant to what?' should suffice for now. Firstly psychology as a discipline can not be relevant (i.e., pertinent) unless it deals with human interests and concerns (including: emotions, motives, sexuality, values, religious experience, meaning, addiction, drug use, economic and power relations). Secondly the intellectual tools we bring to bear on already obtained results, as well as the empirical methods we select and the places we look for further results should be sensitive to... To what??... the nested structure and development of the subject matter under investigation (perception, emotion, learning, memory, motivation, personality).

In other words, our investigative tools must be sensitive to and aimed at providing a vertical-evolutionary as well as a horizontal-developmental account thereof. Do note that the primary training vehicle for mid-20th century experimental psychologists -namely the S.S. Stevens Handbook of Experimental Psychology (1951)- included chapters on phylogenetic, as well as ontogenetic analysis (see Nissen; Carmichael in that volume). It was, however, almost entirely devoid of content dealing with the equally important socio-historical levels of mental development. As a consequence there was a problem with all successive accounts in dealing with the transition between animal and human mentality. Before launching into the issue of relevance, however, let's establish more common ground by considering that other tricky philosophy of science preliminary (the relationship between empirical practice and the production of, or comparison between theories).

STANDARD VIEW OF SCIENCE

When philosophy of science is mentioned at all, psychologists tend to recognize the names of anti-objectivist theorists like Thomas Kuhn and Sigmund Koch more than figures like Alex Novikoff, Israel Scheffler, or Frank Cunningham -who all side with the realist materialist Standard view of science which has served us rather well since the time of Francis Bacon. Bacon's own view of science was one of a "work to be done" in the service of humanity rather than an argument to be held.

Psychologists who have a little more sophistication in such topics, however, might call upon the name of Karl Popper as a figure who asserted that science can empirically falsify hypotheses -though not prove them per se (his view not mine). Similarly, experimental psychologists would surely recognize the name of S.S. Stevens as the originator of the operational definition approach (which takes the same narrow individualist position as Popper on these matters of empirical method).

Scheffler	Davydov	Ilyenkov
Theoretical	Substantial General	Concrete Conception (Explanation)
Empirical		Concrete Description
	Abstract General	Initial Generalization
		Initial Abstraction

Israel Scheffler's basic account of the Standard view of science, however, -that scientists gather facts, come up with observational laws (descriptions of regularities in those facts), and somehow produce theories to explain them- suggests that science is a systematic collective enterprise aimed at formulating the truth about the natural world. "Nature" is understood broadly to include some sort of nested structure as defined above.

It affirms the objectivity (i.e., reciprocity) of scientific endeavor by way of utilizing a direct realist correspondence view of truth. This is an important point because there is a Reductio ad absurdum lurking beneath anything short of this view. Scheffler's account of science is the necessary basic methodological position which must be adopted if one is to engage in scientific discovery or justification in an internally coherent, practical manner. Do note the term "objective" is being used here in the sense of "corresponding to objects" rather than in the old positivist sense of value neutrality.

According to the Standard view, direct observation of empirical facts in the world yield patterns or regularities which we call observational laws (descriptions of those patterns or regularities). The most basic observational laws make direct reference to perceived objects, events, and processes.

In turn, observational laws raise other questions, like why the observed regularities were found. Scientific theories are "why" questions which are indirectly testable by yielding deductive consequences which will either occur if the theory is true to the world or not occur if the theory is incorrect. Furthermore, any two empirically falsifiable theories regarding the same domain of subject matter may be compared to see if either is superior in accounting for the "relevant empirical facts" (Scheffler's term).

For example, various catastrophic and so-called evolutionary theories were vying for supremacy prior to the time Darwin came along. One of the main reasons Darwin eventually succeeded in gaining the approval of the biological community (for his natural selection mechanism of organic evolution) was that, in contradiction to the widely speculative Lamarck, he provided a selective and careful Baconian-style elaboration of available (but non-contentious) empirical evidence. Darwin's Descent of Man (1872) also started up the investigative cycle regarding hominid evolution again by posing questions regarding whether upright posture or a large brain evolved first; and relatedly whether Neanderthals were a side branch. Scientific hoaxes like the Piltdown man can slow the attainment of answers to such questions but ultimately, access to the facts (in that case access to the long-hidden away fake), eventually settle the issue.

With regard to the issue over the genesis of organic evolution, the triumph of Darwin over Lamarck is a very good example of Scheffler's central point about progress in science: Science (and we might add even psychological science) is cumulative at the observational level despite its apparent lack of cumulativeness at the theoretical level.

"When one hypothesis is superseded by another, the genuine facts it had purported to account for are not inevitably lost; they are typically passed on to its successor, which conserves them as it reaches out to embrace additional facts.... Thus it is that science... strives always, and through varying theories to save... phenomena while adding to them.... Throughout the apparent flux of changing scientific beliefs, then, there is a solid growth of knowledge. Underlying historical changes of theory, there is, moreover, a constancy of logic and method, which unifies each scientific age with that which preceded it and with that which is yet to follow" (Scheffler, Science and Subjectivity, 1967, p. 9).

So, what we want to do is zero in on the "constancy of logic and method" which has been good for science as a model for how to improve the current standards of general psychological discourse and investigation. Was the truth contained in the old Linnean classification of animals according to surface characteristics or the active adaptation of organisms (suggested by Lamarck) thrown out by Darwin's theory? No! But the basis for making such classifications was improved upon. The same goes for the DNA and blood work studies which followed after Darwin's own time. So, with each true theoretical advance in biological science, our knowledge of what the relevant facts are progresses with as little loss on the observational level as possible.

Let's consider this claim for a moment. If our historical attention is drawn solely to the theoretical level (as Kuhn has done) we may be seduced into his mistaken belief that scientists of different eras were living "in different worlds." Relatedly, Sigmund Koch's attempt to throw off the shackles of the logical positivist appeal to merely physicalist language while retaining its underlying Humean subjectivism (a sense data theory of knowledge) led him to give up the search for a methodologically unified psychological discipline and to propound a belief in a pluralism of perpetually conflicting "psychological studies" which are "often incommensurable".

Incidentally, with regard to what can be done with such a Standard view of scientific discovery, when it is applied to the history of theories in psychological discourse, I suggested that by carefully expanding Scheffler's Standard view of Science it is possible to come up with a methodology for assessing the respective maturity of competing empirical and theoretical positions in given areas of psychology (Ballantyne, 1995). The area of personality research was selected as a mere matter of convenience but it was claimed that the same sort of analysis could be applied to learning, memory, and motivation as well.

End of preliminaries. Let's talk more about Relevance!

I've claimed that the implications of the above named assumptions for empirical practice have contributed to successive periods of crisis in psychology. Let's go through these by starting with my own mini-crisis of relevance and drawing in others as needed for the sake of argumentation.

As a theoretically naive laboratory technician in the area of physiological psychology, one of my earliest theoretical questions concerned how relevant the research I was carrying out was to human affairs. I recognized that empirical inquiry is a "division of labor" requiring different sorts of pursuit and also that the animal models of epilepsy we were using surely had more bearing on the matter at hand than say attempting to have human patients with such disorders 'change their mental attitude' but that is about as much of the big picture as I had at the time.

I was also particularly disturbed by the brands of eliminative materialism being floating around by theorists like Paul and Patricia Churchland at the time. They argued that psychology would soon be replaced with neuroscience. Yet initially, I didn't have a sound counter-argument to that position. Nor did I find out until much later that this mini crisis of relevance was a recurring theme in the history of psychology which occurred not only to Alexander Luria during the 1920s, but also to experimental psychologists of the 1960s-1970 era, and again in psychometrics during the 1980s-1990s.

It was just at this personal low point that somebody suggested I read Luria's The Working Brain (1973). Here was a progressive plan for reworking the reductionist assumptions of neuropsychology according to the principles of the "functional system" approach to higher mental processes. I rather quickly recognized that Luria's new approach was at odds with many of the fundamental assumptions of the contemporaneous neuropsychology textbooks (Kalat; Kandel et al.; or Kolb & Wishaw).

Luria considered higher mental processes not as a mechanical or physiological expression of the "functioning of brain or nervous tissue" but as an integrative organ of the mind. The mind itself was to be understood as a system -the study of which included a unit of analysis which went far beyond both the brain and the individual thinker.

Furthermore, I recognized that in order to test the hypotheses which it seemed to pose (about the origins and qualitative development of higher mental processes), a lot of time (too much from my perspective) would have to pass until the requisite technological equipment like PET and MRI scans became more available to researchers.

I did start to wonder how this sort of sociohistorical unit of analysis might be applied to other areas of general psychology. It was also possible to find out more about what had motivated Luria to produce this integratively situated account of higher mental functions.

Luria's crisis of relevance:

In this regard, we can turn to his autobiographical statements about the situation in Russian psychology during the 1920s:

"I found little of value in the dry, pre-Revolutionary academic psychology that then dominated the universities, which was strongly influenced by German philosophy and psychology.... To learn about immediate experience, they collected introspective accounts... in laboratory settings under highly controlled conditions. These... statements about... sensations were then analyzed to discover the basic elements of mind and the ways in which these elements combine."

"The approach led to endless arguments, in part because there was no general agreement on what the basic mental elements are, no matter how carefully the experiments were conducted...."

"I was depressed by how dry, abstract, and removed from reality all those arguments seemed. I wanted a psychology that would apply to real people as they lived their lives, not an intellectual abstraction in a laboratory.... I wanted a psychology that was relevant, that would give some substance to our [ongoing] discussions about building a new life."

"Dissatisfied with the competing arguments over mental elements, I looked for alternatives in the books of scholars which were critical of laboratory-based psychology. Here I was influenced by... the German Neo-Kantians, ... like Rickert, Windelband, and Dilthey."

The laboratory psychology of Luria's era is dealing with arid abstractions which don't seem to have much touch with human life. While that era of experimental endeavor was Wundtian, and later American psychology became more behavioristic, etc., there was a similar crisis (called the crisis of relevance) -in the 1960s-70s or so- which also claimed that the new psychology was out of touch with real human concerns.

So, under those conditions, Luria initially turns to the Neo-Kantians:

"Dilthey was especially interesting because he was concerned with the real motives that energize people and the ideals and principles that guide their lives.... He contended that a real understanding of human nature was the foundation for what he referred to as the... 'social sciences.' This... was not the psychology of the textbooks but a practical psychology based on an understanding of people as they live and behave in the world. It... described human values but made no attempt to explain them [away] in terms of their inner mechanisms, on the grounds that it was impossible to achieve a physiological analysis of human behavior."

Some of this sounds very appealing (real existence, real values, etc.), and North Americans went through this sort of reanalysis in the 60s & 70s all over again with Humanistic psychology.

"While I was attracted to these ideas, the problems of implementing them became apparent to me as I read Windelband and Rickert's critiques of Dilthey. They raised the issue of whether psychology was a natural science like physics or chemistry or a human science like history. ...[T]hey made a distinction between the laws of the natural sciences and the human sciences."

"The laws of natural science [like physics and biology] were generalizations applicable to a multiplicity of individual events. Laws describing the acceleration of falling objects [Galileo] in general also describe any particular falling object. Such laws were referred to as 'nomothetic,' in contrast to 'ideographic' ... in which events and people were studied as individual cases, not as examples of some scientific or natural law...."

This is just what happened with the phenomenological movement of the (70s-80s), -and 'what did they call themselves?.... The "human science" movement. So does history repeat itself or what? There are surely differences, and each time this "crisis" happens we learn more, but the similarities are striking as well.

What Luria is faced with is an apparent either/or. Either we are going to have laws, be nomothetic, and therefore also be abstract and irrelevant (removed from everyday life) or we are going to deal with the really gutsy stuff (which includes values) but it's only going to be descriptive not explanatory, ideographic not nomothetic (particular and not general) etc.

But what Luria feels is that this is an unacceptable choice. He suggests that maybe the contemporary analysis of the issues had separated something that shouldn't be separated.

"Although I was excited by Dilthey's ideas.... I was convinced that his descriptive approach was insufficient. I wanted a psychology that would overcome this conflict.... that would simultaneously describe the concrete facts of the mental life of individuals and generate general explanatory laws."

He wants to have his cake and eat it too. Well...., so do we!

"While I was struggling with this conflict, I came across the early writings of the psychoanalytic school.... Many of Freud's ideas seemed speculative and somewhat fantastic... but the study of emotional conflicts and complexes using the method of associations seemed promising. Here, I thought, was a scientific approach that combined [an]... explanation of concrete, individual behavior with an explanation of the origins of complex human needs in terms of natural science" (In Luria, 1979, The Making of Mind, pp. 21-23).

It's interesting to see that when caught in this dilemma, Luria turns to Freud. What Freud was trying to do was to provide a generalized set of concepts so that any person can understand and account for the origin or inner-workings of their own specific personality characteristics. The 'origin' of psychic conflicts was to be found in the cultural repression of sexual urges during the period and the resolution of conflicts was to be through building up the ego to counteract the superego. Freud also recognized that the way those characteristics are expressed in any particular human being might not match up with the way they are expressed in anyone else. Note that even the Freudian slips were viewed as lawfully related to the unconscious (they were not viewed as mistakes, statistical outliers, or unlawful anomalies).

As Luria was developing his own position, and looking around for alternatives, the other person he turns to is James: especially The Varieties of Religious Experience "which I thought a brilliant example of concrete forms of psychological processes." In the Jamesian concept of self, we have another rather transparent example of how acceptance of motion, change, and development gives us a much better feel for the process we are trying to conceptualize.

James contrasts his views on self with Hume's old logical analysis -which had resulted in the so-called paradox of identity: 'How can one be both the same person you were at 10 years old and yet a different person now?' While this was a logical paradox for Hume, it wasn't for James. James moves beyond the traditional static-logical account toward a dynamic-experiential analysis of selfhood. "Each of us when he awakens says, Here's the same old self again, just as he says, Here's the same old bed, the same old room, the same old world." (James, 1890, "The Consciousness of Self," Vol. 1, pp. 334-335). Selfhood is being considered here as an issue of 'continuity and change' not 'identity vs. difference' as in the old Aristotelian manner. The acceptance of motion, time, and qualitative development are central ingredients of the Jamesian approach to psychology and to self.

So, the point of mentioning all of this is to simply point out that many people have found themselves struggling with this dynamic between subjectivity and objectivity, continuity and discontinuity, identity and difference, abstract and concrete, general and particular, appearance and underlying essence, and we might add higher and lower psychological processes.

Similarly, in Munn, et al.'s (1969) "learning continuum" the dark areas represent the role of conditioning and simple "habit formation," and the light areas represent "insight & intellectualizing." This sketchy account of the learning process is also accompanied by a disclaimer: "The figure is hypothetical only and shows relative proportions rather than absolute amounts..." Certainly sequence and order are being captured in such schemes, but how might we best understand that sequence?

Is there not a way to portray such mental development as something more than a mere continuous additive accretion? Fortunately for us, one of Luria's important students, A.N. Leontiev (1903-1979), devoted a whole book to addressing this very issue.

In reading through his Problems of the Development of the Mind (1959/81) one starts to get a glimmering of what a general theory of mental evolution (comparative in its explanatory power with Darwin's theory of organic evolution) might look like. Not only does it provide a developmental stage theory of expanding qualitatively different capacities but it indicates what those capacities are directed at, and still more importantly it specifies the respective means of transition between those stages.

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Leontiev's stages of animal and human psyche

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After considering the phylogenetic development of irritability (chemical processes on cell membranes) and sensory psyche (in which the properties of objects but not objects per se are reflected), Leontyev moves on to the level of perceptual psyche which entails a perception of objects (p. 182). The psyche of most mammals remains at this stage. But there is one other higher stage of animal psyche called animal intellect. He then goes on to outline its nature and the implications for our understanding of the learning process of apes.

In this work, Leontyev makes many important distinctions not the least of which are: (1) a "general law of animal psyche" which states that animal actions always remain within the realm of biological and or bio-social relations (p. 197); and (2) a distinction between animal adaptation and human appropriation. The latter entails the individual human's use of and/or reproduction of historically provided material and intellectual tools of thought (p. 296).

Point-counterpoint 2: the rectangular "interactionist" metaphor of human intellect and its alternative

Interactionism has been defined as the view that "Heredity and environment always interact and life is the maturation of an individual in an environment" (Engle, 1957, p. 269). A clear exposition of interactionist assumptions about human intellectual capacity is found in the diagrams in successive versions of Psychology by R.S. Woodworth (1934 onward) and by Indian University psychologist T.L. Engle (1945 through to the mid-1960s).  These diagrams utilize a revealing rectangle metaphor of intellectual capacity.

While this common sense view of intellect with rectangles was (and is still) prevalent, it was also seriously flawed.  One indication of these flaws (during the 1950s) was the clear bows to eugenics that view of intellect implied. This was certainly true in the case of both Woodworth and Engle. Other interactionists rejected the innatist bias of traditional interactionism and would, instead, stress the environmental plasticity of IQ scores.  It should be noted, however, that in the rectangular metaphor itself, the H 'factor' is considered as apriori.  That is, it is assumed that 'superior or inferior' heredity is somehow there (i.e., provides a given apriori base) before the child is placed into differential environments (within which mental growth 'somehow' takes place).  This assumption was shared by both predeterminist and situationist interactionist accounts.

During the PhD years at York I outlined how Interactionist rationales have guided the production, implementation, and interpretation of past and ongoing standardized testing programs. An eight chapter work was produced comparing the track record of this 'mental bell curve approach' with that of a succession of examples of those who took a third path -which I call "Transformative."

Vygotsky & Luria's cultural-historical account mentality, for instance, was highlighted not only as a means to (1) better understand the origins of the "Flynn effect" of rising average test scores; but also as (2) an indication that we must explicitly adopt a heretofore underutilized transformative (Neo-Vygotskian) account of human mentality if we are ever to improve upon contemporary standards of ability testing.

Point-counterpoint 3: the isolated individual assumption

R.S. Woodworth produced a succession of works to remedy what he viewed as a falsely constrained disciplinary situation regarding the subject matter of psychology. He begins in 1921 with an expanded S-R analysis -where he argues (like Dewey, 1896) that these functional categories of analysis should not be regarded as separate disjointed events occurring in a sequence- and his efforts culminate in 1934 with a full-fledged swing away from S-R toward a 'dynamic' S-O-R account, accompanied by a complementary experimental methods rationale.

This transition toward a relatively fuller S-O-R account takes place gradually for him between 1921-1934. Woodworth's new S-O-R account, however, reaches its height in the 1934 edition with an explicitly stated continuously environmentally interactionist, and dynamic (i.e., developmentally 'changing'), S-O-R account of subject matter. In the following two diagrams, W=world; S=stimulus; O=organism; and R=response:

 

While this was a progressive step, the main question which concerns us (at our present historical juncture) is whether the "continually interacting" (i.e., reciprocal) relationships depicted in these S-O-R diagrams really solved the problems indicated above, or whether they were just as 'inadequate to that task' as Woodworth's initial 'expanded S-R account' had been.

To make a long story short, Woodworth's S-O-R diagrams (despite their recognition of central processes, final causality, and reciprocity with the environment), are too individual rather than socio-historical in their analysis of human psychological functions. His dynamic psychology had been designed to conceptually capture and empirically measure the growth (i.e., numerical transitions) of an organism's psychological functions without sufficiently recognizing the further empirical imperative -to acknowledge and measure the normal development (i.e., qualitative transformations) of psychological processes specific to human beings. He did say that one must 'know your organism' but something is still missing in the account.

This individual unit of analysis was then carried forward into subsequent portrayals of psychology as "the study of variables."

Our main concern, is whether the combined unit of analysis and experimental rationale being depicted is: indicative of the best aspects of Woodworth's overall analysis; in any way an improvement over Woodworth's analysis; and a sufficient encapsulation of what experimental methods are intended to do. Part of an answer to these questions can be found if we attempt to confine ourselves to combining the progressive aspects of the Woodworth and Munn, et al. depictions. The best we could do is to overlay Woodworth's (1934) 'rolling-hills' W-S-O-R-W diagram (see figure 2, 1934) -intended to indicate temporal shifts (i.e., change)- along the axis of spatial movement of the central male figure. [I drew this into the above diagram by hand.]. Yet, as we have already argued above, even this effort on the part of Woodworth fell short of the mark of depicting truly developmental analysis. A revised diagram along this combined line would certainly imply that experiments provide empirical snapshots of a shifting succession of S-O-R loops (a la Woodworth's 1934 argumentation), but no depiction of mental development per se would be provided (a la the intent of Woodworth's 'dynamic' psychology). In other words, Woodworth fails us on this count and so do the depictions contained in Munn et al. (1969, 1972). Both depictions of psychological subject matter are stuck inn the rut of their own problematic assumptions (not the least of which is the assumption of an individual organism-environmental "interaction" as opposed to the actual socio-historically contextualized 'transformative mental development' across the normal life course of human beings).

Fortunately, we are not in fact limited to merely combining Woodworth with the Munn et al. 'dynamic interactionist' accounts. We can, for instance, turn to the developmental/educational psychology tradition for depictions of the horizontal and vertical mental developmental ingredient which is missing from all of the above diagrams and textual analysis:

The point of all of this is that if experimental methods work together with other empirical methods, and if we are to avoid the mistakes and overstatements of Woodworth himself, then what should really be depicted in such (albeit "simplified") diagrams is the way in which experimental/empirical methods are used to study the horizontal scope, ontogenetic timing, and vertical levels of various 'dynamic' mental processes. Our task in producing such a diagram will involve carefully combining the theoretical insights of Dewey (1896) with the disciplinary intent of Woodworth (1934) as well as with the sincere efforts at depiction of methods made by successive generations of both experimentally minded textbook writers (including Munn et al. 1969, 1972) and developmentally minded textbook writers (e.g., Lindgren, 1956) respectively.

My own first attempt to do so looks like this:

It is important to note that the "ZPD" (Zone of Proximal Development) designation -i.e., the difference between what the individual organism can do by itself and what it does with the presence, help, or guidance of another- has been expanded beyond Vygotsky's original human (societal-cultural) usage to better account for the role of guiding or leading actions (e.g., of animal caregivers) and for joint actions (e.g., between older and younger members of a social group) as the means of transition from guided orientation to individual adjustment to social cooperation on up to societal appropriation where cultural/historically contextualized forms of "joint activity" (i.e., teaching and leading in the specifically human form) take over (see also Cole, 1996).

My motive for providing the above diagram is to indicate (though not prove) that this is a conceptual lexicon which all well-meaning contemporary researchers can live with; and which may actually promote efficient communication of the experimental results of research between those with specialties in different aspects of the discipline.

 

SUMMARY

Specific reference to Alexander Luria's account of the (1920s era) "crisis of relevance" in Russian psychology and its similarity to the late-1960s through 1970s recurrence thereof in North America was made as an indication that the issues involved still have not been explicitly resolved. Three of the ongoing problematic assumptions of American general psychology (as I view them and as I encountered them) have been pointed out and integrative solutions to them have been previewed. Along the way, some of the disciplinary implications for research practice and for the pedagogical practice in 21st century psychology were also raised.

If a multiple levels approach to the investigation of psychological subject matter is to succeed in keeping psychology relevant, it will do so by way of: an appeal to the nested structure of nature; a Standard view of scientific inquiry; and a sensitivity to the transformative structure and functions of psychological processes.

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Ballantyne, P.F. (Dec. 7, 2004). Multiple levels of investigation and the recurring 'crisis of relevance' in psychology. Presentation to the Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

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Paul F. Ballantyne, Ph.D.
pballan@comnet.ca

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