In section 8, Vygotsky moves from attacking eclecticism within psychology to
attacking its borrowings from other sciences. This quickly shifts into a
general discussion of scientific method in which he blasts empiricism and
the notion that science can be directly based on sensuous experience.
Instead he proposes the notion of consciously mediated activity as the basis
for scientific method. (Is this his first use of the idea of mediation?)
The problem he is dealing with is essentially that which, according to
Wartofsky, faced the late Feuerbach:
"The appeal to scientific explanation is an appeal to what can be known by
the observation of nature. But scientific observation is no longer merely
'looking and seeing', Sensibility, therefore cannot be naïve empirical
observation. But how do we go from the 'direct evidence' of the senses to
science, from seeing, touching, smelling to chemistry, physics, biology?
What is the nature of inference, of judgement, of speculation, of thought in
science? What, in effect, is a scientific sensibility?"
Here psychology as discipline, psychology as theory of mind, philosophy of
science and epistemology all come together in 'Crisis'.
Vygotsky starts by reiterating his previous points about the need for
theoretical presuppositions that 'fully determine the whole method of
processing the empirical data. And the facts gathered in observation, too,
are interpreted in accordance with the theory which this or that author
holds. Here is the best refutation of the sham natural-science empiricism.
Thanks to this, it is impossible to transfer facts from one theory to
another.' (270) 'Facts obtained by means of different principles of
knowledge are _different_ facts.' (278)
There can be no way to avoid this by going directly to the gathering of data
and their classification. This is only a principle of 'objective observation
i.e. a good technical rule'.
The wish for a more direct access to facts is based on a fundamental error
(271):
'… it is a gross mistake to suppose that science can only study what is
given in immediate experience. How does the psychologist study the
unconscious; the historian and the geologist, the past; the
physicist-optician, invisible beams, and the philologist—ancient languages?
The study of traces, influences, the method of interpretation and
reconstruction, the method of critique and the finding of meaning have been
no less fruitful than the method of direct “empirical” observation. Even in
the experimental sciences the role of immediate experience becomes smaller
and smaller… the whole point is that scientific knowledge and immediate
perception do not coincide at all.'
There is therefore a need for a conscious reconstruction of the matter given
to us in sense experience and that requires two things: a pre-existing
conceptual framework and instrumentation that enables us to escape from the
dictates of sense experience. This is the essence of Vygotsky's 'indirect
method' which enables us to see knowledge acquisition as labour, as
mediated activity using both mental and embodied tools.
' How do the sciences proceed in the study of what is not immediately given?
Generally speaking, they reconstruct it, they re-create the subject of study
through the method of interpreting its traces or influences, i.e.,
indirectly… Is childhood, the child’s mind, really inaccessible for us, does
it not leave any traces, does it not manifest or reveal itself? It is just a
matter of how to interpret these traces, by what method. Can they be
interpreted by analogy with the traces of the adult? It is, therefore, a
matter of finding the right interpretation and not of completely refraining
from any interpretation.' (272)
'To separate the fundamental psychological concept from the specific sensory
perception is psychology’s next task… When we accept this, the question of
the nature of interpretation, i.e., the indirect method, arises… The
methodology of the scientific instrument has long since clarified a new role
for the instrument which is not always obvious. Even the thermometer may
serve as an example of the introduction of a fundamentally new principle
into the method of science through the use of an instrument. On the
thermometer we read the temperature. It does not strengthen or extend the
sensation of heat as the microscope extends the eye; rather, it totally
liberates us from sensation when studying heat. … The use of a thermometer
is a perfect model of the indirect method… We interpret the indications of
the thermometer, we reconstruct the phenomenon under study by its traces, by
its influence upon the expansion of a substance… To interpret, consequently,
means to re-create a phenomenon from its traces and influences relying upon
regularities established before... There is no fundamental difference
whatsoever between the use of a thermometer on the one hand and
interpretation in history, psychology, etc. on the other. The same holds
true for any science: it is not dependent upon sensory perception.' (273-4)
Instrumentation in psychology should therefore liberate the science from
introspection. 'For psychology the need to fundamentally transcend the
boundaries of immediate experience is a matter of life and death.' (274)
The role of instrumentation in the creation of scientific facts through
'indirection' (enrollment in networks) has more recently been emphasised by
sociologists of science such as Latour. It is worth noting that, despite
recognising the constructed nature of the scientist's view of reality and
even stating that 'as methods for judging scientific truth, direct evidence
and analogy are in principle completely identical' (275), Vygotsky remains a
realist. 'Traces' do enable us to 're-create' the phenomenon. 'The reply
that the indirect method is inferior to the direct one is in scientific
terms utterly false. Precisely because it does not shed light upon the
plentitude of experience, but only on one aspect, it accomplishes scientific
work: it isolates, analyzes, separates, abstracts a single feature.'
(Vygotsky perhaps also comes here by an unmarked route to Marx's notion of
scientific method rising from the abstract to the concrete.) What would now
be called the socially constructed nature of science does not prevent us
from learning about the world - rather the opposite, absence of a
consciously constructive method leaves us without a secure foundation for
our methodology.
In the next few pages, Vygotsky brings together psychology, epistemology and
scientific method in an attempt to show that 'the fact that scientific
knowledge transcends the boundaries of perception is rooted in the
psychological essence of knowledge itself.' (275) In other words, the
inadequacy of direct experience for science flows from the nature of human
cognition. 'The whole mind is built like an instrument which selects and
isolates certain aspects of phenomena… Our senses give us the world in the
excerpts, extracts that are important for us… [The mind] is an organ of
selection, a sieve filtering the world and changing it so it becomes
possible to act. In this resides its positive role - not in reflection… but
in the fact that it does not always reflect correctly, i.e. subjectively
distorts reality to the advantage of the organism... If we were to see
everything we would be confronted by chaos.' (274)
(Interestingly, recent research in brain science has suggested that this
capacity for abstraction may be a direct function of brain structure.)
The escape from direct perception and the continuous flow of sensory
experience in a 'Heraclitean stream' is thus both a concept _in_
psychology - a feature of mind - and _for_ psychology - a necessity if
psychology is to develop a scientific method consciously adequate for its
object. ' Psychology must still create its thermometer.' (278). Vygotsky
ends the section with a discussion of how 'foreign principles' from other
sciences should and should not be brought into psychology.
Apologies for the lateness and length of this chunk, but there's a lot to
talk about (and a few aspects I've left out altogether!). I hope to finish
sections 9-12 in one further email, but will see how it goes.
Bruce
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