From: MnFamilyMan@aol.com
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Sent: 01 June 2001 04:43
Subject: Vygotsky's Crisis in Psychology
< Instead, LSV is absolutely convinced that unless Psychologists view
behaviors as developmental in nature they will not be practicing science but
a pseudoscience that is theoretically grounded in philosophy. The main
reason LSV is opposed to philosophically based psychology as opposed to
scientific psychology is that philosophically based psychology is an adult
construct that imposes presupposed 'schemas' onto children and assume levels
are steppingstones for guaranteed success.>
Counterposing science and philosophy in this way seems to me to be a
misreading of 'The Crisis'. For example, LSV writes very specifically on
p.291 (in the English Collected Works):
"...scientific research is at the same time a study of the fact and of the
methods used to know this fact. In other words, methodological work is done
in science itself insofar as this science moves forward and reflects upon
its results. The choice of a word is already a methodological process. That
methodology and experiment are worked out simultaneously can be seen with
particular ease in the case of Pavlov. Thus, science is philosophical down
to its ultimate elements, its words. It is permeated, so to speak, by
methodology. This coincides with the Marxist view of philosophy as "the
science of sciences", a synthesis that permeates science..."
"The experimenters in the natural sciences imagine that they free themselves
from philosophy when they ignore it, but they turn out to be slaves of the
worst philosophy, which consists of a medley of fragmentary and unsystematic
views, since investigators cannot move a single step without thinking, and
thinking requires logical definitions."
It seems to me that 'Crisis' is simultaneously a masterpiece in four areas:
(a) LSV's positive views on psychology;
(b) the philosophy of science;
(c) Marxist philosophy including his attack on the burgeoning Stalinist
abuse of it in science and philosophy;
(d) the critique of psychology as a discipline and the provision of a more
general framework for disciplinary critique.
The way in which these elements are synthesised is very interesting too and,
I think, crucial to the enterprise. Thus the parts on psychology tell us
about philosophy, the parts about methodology tell us about the human mind
and the ways in which it can conceptualise the world and so on. Thus in the
passage above the significance of the word is simultaneously its
significance for science and more generally in human psychology. I don't
think you can separate these things out as you do.
Bruce Robinson
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