No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
From Selz to Gigerenzer: A thought-psychological research history, which needs a Popperian, fallibilist theory of rationality to effectively develop
Abstract
Two sharply separated traditions in the philosophy of science and in thought psychology began with Otto Selz’s psychology. The first tradition began with Karl Popper; it has been developed by many others. The developers of the second tradition have included Julius Bahle, Adriaan de Groot, Herbert Simon, and Gerd Gigerenzer. The first tradition has ignored empirical studies of thought processes. The second tradition is widely based on Simon’s inductivist philosophy. The first tradition can be improved by integrating empirical studies of rationality into its research. The second tradition can be improved by replacing its inductivist assumptions with a fallibilist framework.
... This unified perspective underscores the importance of leveraging Simon's insights to develop integrative frameworks that enhance decision-making while navigating the complexities of AI integration. Following our cluster analysis, we identify three main topics with the related literature: we coin them as "Rationality and Decision-Making" (e.g., Chen 1991;Foss 2003;Herold 2014;Olsen 2017), "Human Choice and Performance" (e.g., Arrojo 2017;Jones 2002;Navaneethakrishnan 2021;Wettersten 2017), and "Work, Organizations, and Knowledge" (e.g., Barragan 2022;Bertoin 2019;Sarasvathy 2003). Notably, these studies have highlighted the enduring relevance of Simon's work in understanding organizational behavior, developing decision support systems, and designing AI-driven administrative tools (Newell and Simon 1972;Schwarz, Christensen, and Zhu 2022;Simon 1997). ...
... Articles "Human Problem-Solving: Standing on the Shoulders of the Giants" (Navaneethakrishnan 2021), "From Selz to Gigerenzer: A thought-psychological research history, which needs a Popperian, fallibilist theory of rationality to effectively develop" (Wettersten 2017), and "Information and the Internet: An Analysis from the Perspective of the Science of the Artificial" (Arrojo 2017) are the highest in topic 2 (referred to as "Human Choice and Performance"). ...
... The article emphasizes the integration of these diverse influences into a cohesive understanding of problem-solving and discusses future research directions in the field. Second, the article "From Selz to Gigerenzer: A thoughtpsychological research history, which needs a Popperian, fallibilist theory of rationality to effectively develop" by John Wettersten (Wettersten 2017) discusses two distinct traditions in the philosophy of science and thought psychology that originated from Otto Selz's work. One tradition, influenced by Karl Popper, lacks integration with empirical studies of thought processes, while the other, associated with Herbert Simon and Gerd Gigerenzer, is based on inductivist philosophy. ...
Herbert Simon's pioneering developments on bounded rationality and artificial intelligence (AI) have had a profound and lasting impact on public administration. This paper systematically examines Simon's legacy, exploring how his concepts have shaped scholarship in three core areas: decision‐making, human performance, and organizational knowledge. By connecting Simon's insights into contemporary advancements in AI, we highlight several avenues for further research. We uncover opportunities to enhance administrative processes while addressing pressing ethical and operational challenges, such as designing adaptive frameworks that balance innovation with accountability in public administration. Simon's work continues to offer essential guidance for navigating the complexities of governance in the digital age.
... Apperception is a likely candidate to explaining this. This can be observed in the historical background of the heuristics idea that goes back to the work of Otto Selz in the beginning of the twentieth century and its role in looking on decision processes beyond the notion of logical computations (Wettersten 2017). The general aboutness of the heuristics is the arena for apperception to work toward synthesis of decisions. ...
Action research is an approach to research which aims at both taking action and creating knowledge or theory about that action as the action unfolds. It starts with everyday experience and is concerned with the development of living knowledge. Its characteristics are that it generates practical knowledge in the pursuit of worthwhile purposes; it is participative and democratic as its participants work together in the present tense in defining the questions they wish to explore, the methodology for that exploration, and its application through cycles of action and reflection. In this vein they are agents of change and coresearchers in knowledge generation and not merely passive subjects as in traditional research. In this vein, action research can be understood as a social science of the possible as the collective action is focused on creating a desired future in whatever context the action research is located.
Research in cognitive psychology has been by and large dominated by attempts to explain how psychological processes can be explained as products of biological ones; these processes are presumed to be causal. These theories fail to account for and be integrated with theories of non-causal mental activities. In order to bridge this gap a new theory of mental processes is needed. Karl Popper and John Eccles’s three world theory offers a promising path. According to this view there are biological entities, rational thought processes and ideas’. It is a revision of a view that Popper adopted as a member and student of the Würzburg School, which held that there are biological entities, causal psychological processes and ideas’. By going back towards the original and redoing it as a four world theory, by adding to it non-causal rational thought processes, the unfortunate widespread influence of associationist psychology and inductivist methods may be overcome and new social aspects of cognitive psychology may be opened.
Karl Bühler hat zur Entwicklung von Karl Poppers Forschungsgebieten drei wichtige Beiträge geleistet. Erstens hat er Popper in die laufende Forschung der Mitglieder der Würzburger Schule eingeführt, und die Richtung dieser Forschung hat in wichtigen Punkten Popper ein Leben lang beeinflusst. Dabei hatte er sich zunächst die nicht-assoziative Psychologie der Schule zu eigen gemacht. Dann griff er auf die Denkpsychologie von Otto Selz zurück und entwickelte davon ausgehend sein eigenes Forschungsgebiet der Methodologie. Zweitens betrafen die damals behandelten Probleme auch methodologische Fragen: Wie ist die Beziehung zwischen Logik und Psychologie? Wie ist eine deduktivistische Methodologie möglich? Drittens hat Bühler ihn eine Zwei-Welten-Theorie gelehrt. Heinrich Gomperz war der erste, der Popper darauf hinwies, dass er bereits davon ausgegangen war, dass Ideen unabhängige Entitäten sind. Diese Entitäten hat er dann viel später mit John Eccles als Teile der dritten Welt bezeichnet. Auch als Gesprächspartner war Gomperz für Popper wichtig, insofern als Popper versuchte, eine klare Theorie über die Beziehungen zwischen Psychologie und Logik und danach zwischen Psychologie und Methodologie zu finden. Und Gomperz war es auch, der Poppers Augenmerk auf die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie lenkte und ihm den großen Unterschied zwischen Platon und Sokrates klarmachte.
How does man know anything and, in particular, how can we account for creative thought? Campbell posits 2 major conditions: mechanisms which produce wide and frequent variation (an inductive, trial and error, fluency of ideas) and criteria for the selection of the inductive given (the critical function). The ramifications of this perspective are explored in terms of organic evolution and human history, and in terms of psychology and epistemology. This exposition is offered as a pretheoretical model.
A description of a theory of problem-solving in terms of information processes amenable for use in a digital computer. The postulates are: "A control system consisting of a number of memories, which contain symbolized information and are interconnected by various ordering relations; a number of primitive information processes, which operate on the information in the memories; a perfectly definite set of rules for combining these processes into whole programs of processing." Examples are given of how processes that occur in behavior can be realized out of elementary information processes. The heuristic value of this theory is pertinent to theories of learning, perception, and concept formation.
In this new millenium it may be fair to ask, "Why look at Wundt?" Over the years, many authors have taken fairly detailed looks at the work and accomplishments of Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920). This was especially true of the years around 1979, the centennial of the Leipzig Institute for Experimental Psychology, the birthplace of the "graduate program" in psychology. More than twenty years have passed since then, and in the intervening time those centennial studies have attracted the attention and have motivated the efforts of a variety of historians, philosophers, psychologists, and other social scientists. They have profited from the questions raised earlier about theoretical, methodological, sociological, and even political aspects affecting the organized study of mind and behavior; they have also proposed some new directions for research in the history of the behavioral and social sciences. With the advantage of the historiographic perspective that twenty years can bring, this volume will consider this much-heralded "founding father of psychology" once again. Some of the authors are veterans of the centennial who contributed to a very useful volume, edited by Robert W. Rieber, Wilhelm Wundt and the Making of a Scientific Psychology (New York: Plenum Press, 1980). Others are scholars who have joined Wundt studies since then, and have used that book, among others, as a guide to further work. The first chapter, "Wundt before Leipzig," is essentially unchanged from the 1980 volume.
We respect Herbert A. Simon as an established leader of empirical and logical analysis in the human sciences while we happily think of him as also the loner; of course he works with many colleagues but none can match him. He has been writing fruitfully and steadily for four decades in many fields, among them psychology, logic, decision theory, economics, computer science, management, production engineering, information and control theory, operations research, confirmation theory, and we must have omitted several. With all of them, he is at once the technical scientist and the philosophical critic and analyst. When writing of decisions and actions, he is at the interface of philosophy of science, decision theory, philosophy of the specific social sciences, and inventory theory (itself, for him, at the interface of economic theory, production engineering and information theory). When writing on causality, he is at the interface of methodology, metaphysics, logic and philosophy of physics, systems theory, and so on. Not that the interdisciplinary is his orthodoxy; we are delighted that he has chosen to include in this book both his early and little-appreciated treatment of straightforward philosophy of physics - the axioms of Newtonian mechanics, and also his fine papers on pure confirmation theory.
1. GENERAL The term "diagnostics" refers to the general theory of diagnosis, not to the study of specific diagnoses but to their general framework. It borrows from different sciences and from different philosophies. Traditionally, the general framework of diagnostics was not distinguished from the framework of medicine. It was not taught in special courses in any systematic way; it was not accorded special attention: students absorbed it intuitively. There is almost no comprehensive study of diagnostics. The instruction in diagnosis provided in medical schools is exclusively specific. Clinical instruction includes (in addition to vital background information, such as anatomy and physiology) specific instruction in nosology, the theory and classification of diseases, and this includes information on diagnoses and prognoses of diverse diseases. What is the cause of the neglect of diagnostics, and of its integrated teaching? The main cause may be the prevalence of the view of diagnostics as part-and parcel of nosology. In this book nosology is taken as a given, autonomous field of study, which invites almost no comments; we shall freely borrow from it a few important general theses and a few examples. We attempt to integrate here three studies: ll of the way nosology is used in the diagnostic process; of the diagnostic process as a branch of applied ethics; ~ of the diagnostic process as a branch of social science and social technology.
The usual approach to studying cognition in evolutionary psychology is in terms of information-processing mechanisms selected to solve domain-specific problems. But there are also important selective forces operating widely across domains, leading to common design features in many cognitive systems. In particular, the costs of gathering information, and of using too much information, can be reduced by decision mechanisms that rely on very limited information—or even a lack of information—to come to their choices. The pressures to use small amounts of appropriate information may also have produced particular patterns of forgetting in long-term memory and particular limits of capacity in short-term memory. Finally, selection for being able to think about past sets of events can help explain why different representations of the same information, for instance samples versus probabilities, can produce widely varying responses from people. Thus, an evolutionary perspective that takes into account environmental considerations can not only uncover domain-specific cognitive mechanisms, but also shed new light on topics of central interest to traditional cognitive psychologists, including decision making, memory, and representations of information.
This chapter shows how a set of broad forces operating on multiple domains can impact the design of specific cognitive systems. It focuses on three topics of central interest to cognitive psychologists: decision making, memory, and representations of information. The chapter illustrates how considering broad selective pressures arising from the constraints of information gathering in the external world can help one to uncover some of the classes of decision mechanisms that people use. In the context of memory systems shaped by such selective pressures, the chapter demonstrates that an evolutionary perspective stressing both benefits and costs of particular abilities can lead to an appreciation of the positive functional roles of cognitive limitations. It argues that the selective forces exerted by the patterns of interaction with the environment can help to explain why different representations of the same information interact with the evolved machinery to produce widely varying responses.
Man is a rational animal. He applies his reason to the solution of problems. Sometimes he makes mistakes. Is a mistake a sign of failure to be rational? If truth is manifest and reason is our means of apprehending it, then mistakes do seem to imply failure to be rational. If truth is hidden, or, if reason is not easy to employ, then mistakes are not necessarily a sign of failure to be rational. The doctrine that truth is manifest and reason our unproblematic means of apprehending it suggests that all and only what is discovered by reason should be believed. Sextus Empiricus would class this as a form of dogmatism; a more recent label is justificationism. The view that truth is elusive and reason fallible easily leads to the suggestion that we should permanently suspend judgement: Sextus would class this as scepticism; more recent labels are fallibilism and comprehensively critical rationalism. Or perhaps this is not quite right. Justificationists often want to justify a little more than what can be discovered by reason to be true, they often want to add the categories of what reason shows to be likely, plausible, the best available, etc. Similarly, fallibilists are uninterested in belief, but they want all assertion bracketed by the meta-idea of tentativity.
The North American psychologist who wants to put Wilhelm Wundt’s singular achievement into a broader historical perspective faces a peculiar difficulty. He will not find it easy to arrive at a fair and accurate characterization of Wundt’s position on any of the fundamental issues of psychology, for to do that he would have to cut through a veritable thicket of misleading information whose roots run very deep. Although some paths have recently been hewn through the thicket (Blumenthal, 1975; Mischel, 1970), a great deal of clearing remains to be done.
The agreement that social psychology has become cognitive seems to be unanimous. The present article inquires into the meaning of what has been called the Cognitive turn. Two central concepts of cognitive science, psychology, and social psychology are then analyzed historically and systematically. They are:
1.
Schema as the conceptual prototype for cognitive structures, introduced into psychology at the turn of the century.
2.
Inference as the construct for a cognitive process, which (as unconscious inference), was one of the first to be studied at the historical beginnings of psychological science, and which is still a favorite key term in cognitive theories and research.
With respect to both concepts the authors try to demonstrate how a historical attitude, prevailing in psychology, leads to the repeated loss of theoretical knowledge and a conceptual refinement, which had already been attained by former students of cognitive structures and processes. The neglect of conceptual clarification, resulting in the fuzziness and ambiguities of two key concepts of cognitive psychology, is presently enhanced by a process which is described as the cognitivization of (social) psychology. Reinforced by a “computerization” of the cognitive, due to a domineering information-processing model of the mind, the cognitization of psychology is criticized as a cognitive encapsulation, which tends to keep the historical and social reality of man outside psychological theorizing and research.
The early research of Karl Popper both in psychology and in philosophy of science is described; its basis for his later breakthroughs in the philosophy of science is explained. His debt to Otto Selz’s thought psychology is thereby detailed. Otto Selz’s philosophy of science is then explained, and its conflict with Popper’s early as well as his later views is portrayed. These studies of the conflicting views of Popper’s early views and Selz’s philosophy of science provide the basis for demonstrating the mistakes that Michel ter Hark has made in claiming that the alleged originality of Popper’s views occurred only in the 1970s and are little more than a rehash of Selz’s alleged evolutionary epistemology.
Many health decisions appear so complex and inscrutable that laypersons may feel the best solution for making a right decision to be "trust your doctor." Although applying this heuristic may have been rational in the past when access to information was limited, in today's modern world full of advanced science, statistics, and books, it may not always be rational. Using the dualmode model of trust (Siegrist, Earle, & Gutscher, 2003), this chapter defines requirements in which the "trust-your-doctor" heuristic would and would not be socially rational and subsequently investigated whether these requirements are met in the current environment of health decision making. This chapter focuses on decisions about cancer screening because these do not involve hurry or pain, and evidence on the effectiveness of several screening tests exist. The investigation makes obvious that mere trust in doctors is often not justified, given that many doctors do not know basic facts about screening and some of their decisions are not free of conflicting interests. When investigating the alternative strategy of patients searching for health information on their own, however, the chapter finds it to be unjustified as well, because healthrelated pamphlets and web sites designed for patients often provide misleading and unbalanced information about screening. To solve this dilemma, the chapter suggests different ways of how to redesign the health environment so that applying the heuristic "trust-your-doctor" when making health decisions can become socially rational again. © 2013 by Ralph Hertwig and Ulrich Hoffrage. All rights reserved.
This book invites readers to discover the simple heuristics that people use to navigate the complexities and surprises of environments populated with others. The social world is a terrain where humans and other animals compete with conspecifics for myriad resources, including food, mates, and status, and where rivals grant the decision maker little time for deep thought, protracted information search, or complex calculations. The social world also encompasses domains, however, where social animals such as humans learn from one another how to deal with the vagaries of a natural world that both inflicts unforeseeable hazards and presents useful opportunities and dare to trust and forge alliances with one another to boost their chances of success. According to the book's thesis, the undeniable complexity of the social world does not dictate cognitive complexity as many scholars of rationality argue. Rather, it entails circumstances that render optimization impossible or computationally arduous: intractability, the existence of incommensurable considerations, and competing goals. With optimization beyond reach, less can be more. That is, heuristics-simple strategies for making decisions when time is pressing and careful deliberation an unaffordable luxury-become indispensible mental tools. As accurate or even more accurate than complex methods when used in the appropriate environments, these heuristics are good descriptive models of how people make many decisions and inferences, but their impressive performance also poses a normative challenge for optimization models. In short, the homo socialis may prove to be a homo heuristicus whose intelligence reflects ecological rather than logical rationality. © 2013 by Ralph Hertwig and Ulrich Hoffrage. All rights reserved.
The previous paper has created some controversy, and has been labelled both absurd and obvious. We would not deny the charge of obviousness. For if the basic question here is how to understand beliefs that are prima facie irrational, then our suggestion — that first there had to be prior agreement on criteria of rationality of belief — was hardly startling. We by-passed detailed discussion of such criteria because this would take us into one of the most extensive debates in contemporary philosophy (for example, the entire vast literature on induction consists of attempts to state criteria for rational belief or rational choice between beliefs). Our heart would not have been in a summary of this literature because we thought it pointless. Unless beliefs are a sub-class of actions (which, we hinted in a footnote, they are), then it is not at all clear whether a belief can be rational or irrational, any more than whether it can be red or not red, lazy or energetic. To be more precise, it is quite generally agreed that the act of believing in a belief, or of holding on to a belief, may or may not be rational; not really the object of the act — the belief itself, the doctrine, the theory in question. While it makes sense to claim that Catholics, alchemists, phlogistonists, and Newtonians are rational or irrational, then, it is loose to claim Catholicism, alchemy, phologistonism and Newtonianism to be so.
The problem of how to handle interesting but ignored thinkers of the past is discussed through an analysis of the case of Ludwik Fleck. Fleck was totally ignored in the ‘30s and declared an important thinker in the 70s and ‘80s. In the first case fashion ignored him and in the second it praised him. The praise has been as poor as the silence was unjust. We may do such thinkers more justice if we recognize that intellectual society is fickle, that we cannot make amends in many cases, but that we can do such thinkers justice by treating them critically ‐ even if this means explaining away any impact they might have had. If we wish to be autonomous and independent of fashion, we must abandon efforts to use the making of amends the occasion for making intellectual society seem fairer than it is.
Scitation is the online home of leading journals and conference proceedings from AIP Publishing and AIP Member Societies
"More information is always better, and full information is best. More computation is always better, and optimization is best." More-is-better ideals such as these have long shaped our vision of rationality. Yet humans and other animals typically rely on simple heuristics to solve adaptive problems, focusing on one or a few important cues and ignoring the rest, and shortcutting computation rather than striving for as much as possible. In this book, we argue that in an uncertain world, more information and computation are not always better, and we ask when, and why, less can be more. The answers to these questions constitute the idea of ecological rationality: how we are able to achieve intelligence in the world by using simple heuristics matched to the environments we face, exploiting the structures inherent in our physical, biological, social, and cultural surroundings.
[Claire Poppe - STS 901 - Fall 2006]
Fleck focuses on the cognitive and social structures idea and fact development and acceptance.
- All ideas stem from "proto-ideas" - hazy, unspecific, unscientific concepts accepted as truth in their time period and existing in a socio-cognitive system.
- The social structure involved in cognition is conceived as the relationship between:
1) the knowing subject (individual)
2) the object to be known (objective reality)
3) the existing fund of knowledge (provided by the thought collective).
- The thought collective is a community of persons mutually exchanging ideas; it is the bearer of collective knowledge and the historical developer of knowledge. The individual's role is to decide whether results fit within the conditions specified by the collective. In this, he/she is influenced by the "thought style," an ambiguous cloud which directs perception and limits the options for interpretation without the perceiver being aware that they are being influenced.
- A scientific fact is a signal of resistance opposing free, arbitrary thinking. Facts are 1) in line with the interests of the collective, 2) accepted by the general membership of the collective, and 3) expressed in the style of the collective.
- Truth is only true within a single collective. It changes as collectives gradually change with the incorporation/adaptation or rejection of challenges to the thought style.
- Within a thought collective, there is a hierarchy consisting of two different groups:
a) Esoteric: a small group of experts with specialized knowledge who develop exoteric, popular knowledge
b) Exoteric: a larger, more "popular" group that creates public opinion, though not the entire public
- Categories of science from more exoteric to esoteric, more concrete to more flexible:
a) Popular science: attractive, lively, readable, artificially simplified science in which facts are reality and truth is objective
b) Vademecum science: a closed, organized system of the "commonly held" view of science where facts become fixed
c) Journal science: a personal, cautious and modest system open to contradictions and explorations
My aim in the present essay is to argue that individualism need not be psychologistic, and to defend institutionalistic individualism, which I consider to be Popper’s great contribution to the philosophy of the social sciences.
Standard versions of the sociology of rational practice assume justificationist theories of rationality: all rational beliefs are justified and rational individuals do not believe any non-justified statements. This theory appears to some to offer the possiblity of finding “deeper” insights into social behavior: some actions presented by actors as “rational” can, in fact, be explained as non-justified and, therefore, as mere consequences of prestige and/or power conflicts. When, however, it turns out that no theories can be justified, then all theories are irrational. This leads to relativism. The possibility, that we may profitably construct alternative theories of rationality is, in contrast, raised nearly uniquely by fallibilist theories of rationality. In order to take advantage of this, an alternative to the dominant methodological individualist theory of rational action is needed and possible. According to this alternative, rational action consists of problem-solving within institutional contexts without justification. Such a non-relativist sociology of rational practice can be enlightening and useful. Differing institutional contexts offer differing standards of rationality.
Journal of the History of Ideas 66.4 (2005) 603-631
Seven essays that Popper wrote from 1925 to 1932–33 show Popper's transition from a fresh student of pedagogy into a serious philosopher of science ten years later. His first essay was published in 1925, and in 1934–35 he presented a revolutionary philosophy. These essays led first to Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie (written between 1930 and 1933 but first published in 1979) and culminated in Logik der Forschung.
In his first published essay Popper argued that each student should be treated as an individual as much as possible. It is evident that Popper held this attitude throughout his life, but this essay plays no interesting role in his intellectual development.
In his second essay Popper developed an idea that was important not only for his pedagogy, but also for his psychology and his theory of the open society: because humans tend quite naturally to be dogmatic, they have to learn to overcome dogmatism in order to be rational. Following a perspective heavily indebted to Eduard Burger, Karl Bühler, and Charlotte Bühler, Popper proposed that all aspects of learning begin with the beliefs and attitudes that one learns at "home." Teachers, Popper says, should not ignore the cultural background of their students. This background derives from their home, from their parents or village, and so forth. Teachers should accept the students' dogmatic acceptance of the views and attitudes of home as a necessary, even useful stage in any child's development. The teacher's central task is to help children move away from this dogmatic stage to broader perspectives. How to do this well, he says, poses a, if not the, central pedagogical problem. He discusses the movement from home to aesthetics, to art, to ethics, to law, to the theory of knowledge and science, and to culture. In each case he finds something in the heritage of home that each child possesses, which may be used as a starting point to expand the child's horizons.
The problem of how teachers can sympathetically help children move away from the views of their home to broader perspectives is severe, Popper thought, due to the innate need of children to think dogmatically. When children learn the culture of their home they are given certainties that they cling to. As individuals mature, dogmatic thinking has to be overcome: a crucial task for teachers is to help children to set aside their innate dogmatic attitude to engage in critical thinking.
At this time Popper was groping for a good philosophical approach. He said that the concept of "Heimat" had to be analyzed because, even though it was at the center of pedagogical concerns, it was a confused concept. This analytical method was quickly abandoned. It is only a historical curiosity that shows how far he had to go in order to develop a new philosophical method. Yet his use of it did bring him to adopt, or he used it to defend, views that he held throughout his life.
In the same year (1927), in Gewohnheit und Gesetzerlebnis in der Erziehung, Popper turned to the task of providing a psychological explanation of the child's need for dogmatism. This third essay was submitted to the Pedagogic Institute, but only became available after Popper's death. Popper was ambivalent about it. When I visited him at his home in Penn in 1973 or 1974, I asked him for a copy. It was then listed in his bibliography, but there were no copies at the University of Vienna. His wife began to say she knew where it was, but he interrupted her before her sentence was completed. But he did not throw it away. The reason for his reluctance to show scholars his essay is now clear: the essay endorses a philosophy of science—Hans Vaihinger's—with a strong inductivist component, even though its methodology is deductivist. He tried to apply this method in his own psychological investigation of dogmatism in children.
Dogmatism was, he thought, a psychological complex that would...
I. C. Jarvie interprets Popper’s philosophy of science as a theory of the institution of science, explains how the social aspect of his theory developed, and suggests that an updated version of Popper’s social theory should be used to study both scientific and nonscientific societies today. Although (1) Jarvie’s description of the emergence of Popper’s theory suffers because he takes no account Popper’s research conducted before Logik der Forschung (1994), (2) his portrayal of Popper’s framework overlooks important problems, and (3) his program is by no means new, his essay throws light on the relation between Popper’s philosophy of science, his social theory, and his social studies of science.
Extremists who have been well educated in science are quite common, but nevertheless puzzling. How can individuals with high levels of scientific education fall prey to irrationalist ideologies? Implicit assumptions about rationality may lead to tremendous and conspicuous developments. When correction of social deficits is seen as a pressing problem, it is quite common that individuals conclude that some religious or political system contains the all-encompassing answer, if only it is applied with sufficiently high standards. Implicit assumptions about rationally high standards often demand consistency, system and justification. The strict application of these standards to political and/or religious systems leads quite readily to extremism. J. L. Talmon has shown how the rationality of the Enlightenment led to intolerance, dictatorship and torture. The Enlightenment view of rationality can also encourage irrationalist ideologies and extremism: it leads individuals to conclude that various religions and/or political systems contain all encompassing answers, if only they are systematic, coherant and justified. Alternative theories of science and rationality, which view rationality as critical, partial, and progressive, and which seek to improve imperfect standards, can help avoid the unintended support of extremism rendered by established views of rationality. Unfortunately such theories meet enormous resistance: they call into question well-established canonical doctrines.
This is an experimental study of the thought processes in practical and technical problems and exercises involving mathematical proof. The author describes the processes by which the premises or the conclusion, or both, change their structure in consequence of their opposing claims, and undergo mutually adequate reorganization. Other subjects treated are the processes of solution, and especially its subordinate and previously overlooked phases; delimitation of evaluation and the Gestalt continuation of Selz's anticipation of resonance theory of search; and a structural analysis of phenomenal causality. Duncker also contributes to the theory of endowment and attempts a theory of insight, of which he distinguishes two varieties, hitherto usually confused. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)