Firstly, apologies for the lateness of this. I'm dividing my remarks up into
several chunks, both for ease of discussion and as I am behind with the
writing. As we haven't had a structured introduction to 'Crisis' so far,
I'll start with a few general remarks before going on to look at sections
7-12.
There seem to me to be four broad areas covered in 'Crisis':
(a) Substantive issues in psychology: causes and symptoms of the crisis of
the discipline; problems with various schools and proposed resolutions of
the crisis; LSV's suggested ways for psychology to develop out of the
crisis. I am not going to say a lot about this, partly as I expect this will
be the main area Laszlo will take up and partly because I am sure there are
others around better qualified to do so.
(b) Conceptualisations of the development of and structures in knowledge and
science: 'general science'; disciplinary crisis; how ideas expand to
colonise areas far from where they showed their original promise; his view
of what makes science scientific and so on.
(c) General methodological and epistemological considerations: Vygotsky's
critique of empiricism and of eclecticism; his view of the relationship
between prior conceptualisation and empirical science; the status of
experiment; his view of the relationship between theory and practice.
(d) A conscious contribution to dialectical materialism: a critique of
attempts to make science dialectical by the addition of a few phrases or
quotes; a distinction between 'general dialectics' and the dialectic of a
particular area of knowledge; both a reiteration and a reformulation of
Engels; use of elements of both Feuerbach and Hegel; attempts to define what
is distinct about a Marxist psychology.
These four areas are clearly intertwined, particularly given that the
subject matter of psychology itself enters into the other three areas. Mind
is both the object of psychology and its subject (as of any scientific
endeavour) and it is precisely the resulting confusion that LSV sees as
partly responsible for the crisis of psychology (e.g. in subjective
psychology). Further, each area (even including the crisis-hit psychology of
(a), according to Vygotsky) takes in several overlapping disicplinary
divisions.
My main focus will be on (b) and (c), which in turn shed light on the
others. I think it is particularly these elements that make 'Crisis' of
interest well beyond psychology.
Bruce
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