Psychology between ecological laws and the scientific revolution
pp. 37-46
in: Leendert Mos (ed), Recent trends in theoretical psychology, Berlin, Springer, 1988Abstract
In view of the limited accessibility of mental life to introspection, psychology has frequently resorted to technological metaphors. These metaphors are related to the scientific revolution and the root metaphor "the world is a machine'. It implies that stimuli in the environment are to be described in physical terms and that "enriching' processes take place in the mind. Recently, this approach has been challenged by, for example, ideas about ecological relevance, naive explanations in psychology, and the Gibsonian movement. It is argued that several fields of psychology show a development reminiscent of the Aristotelian tradition and the ancient metaphor "the world is a humanlike organism'. Apart from that, there is a revival of other general metaphors such as contextualism and realism. This simultaneous use of scarcely compatible ontological positions describes a part of psychology's disunity. Psychology appears not to optimize the accumulation of knowledge since it either advocates a complex, enriching mind or a complex, enriched environment.
