Psychology is a science of non-existing objects1. All our psychological processes— thinking, feeling, having “personality”, “motivation” or “self-esteem”—are themselves constructions of the human minds and products of the social history of these minds. They are useful fictions—tools that allow us to assume any conceptual position we desire to look at the phenomena of our interest. We started building a conceptual system of the science based on the analysis of singular events—idiographic science—in our introduction to the first volume of our Yearbook (Salvatore & Valsiner, 2009), fol- lowing the lead of Gordon Allport (1962, 1966) and Peter Molenaar (2004). The task was—and is—formidable, since both the common language connotations of the term and the prevailing credo of inductive accumulation of evidence in the contemporary social sciences create confusions on the way of understanding a very simple claim— in the case of self-organizing open systems2 each individual system is unique, and such unique- ness is due to general laws that make it possible. Generality in uniqueness is not a contradiction in terms—but the basic operating principle in all nature, psyche, and society.
YIS:Yearbook of Idiographic Science 3 / Salvatore, Sergio; Valsiner, Jaan; Travers Simon, Joan; Gennaro, Alessandro. - (2011).
YIS:Yearbook of Idiographic Science 3
Sergio Salvatore;Alessandro Gennaro
2011
Abstract
Psychology is a science of non-existing objects1. All our psychological processes— thinking, feeling, having “personality”, “motivation” or “self-esteem”—are themselves constructions of the human minds and products of the social history of these minds. They are useful fictions—tools that allow us to assume any conceptual position we desire to look at the phenomena of our interest. We started building a conceptual system of the science based on the analysis of singular events—idiographic science—in our introduction to the first volume of our Yearbook (Salvatore & Valsiner, 2009), fol- lowing the lead of Gordon Allport (1962, 1966) and Peter Molenaar (2004). The task was—and is—formidable, since both the common language connotations of the term and the prevailing credo of inductive accumulation of evidence in the contemporary social sciences create confusions on the way of understanding a very simple claim— in the case of self-organizing open systems2 each individual system is unique, and such unique- ness is due to general laws that make it possible. Generality in uniqueness is not a contradiction in terms—but the basic operating principle in all nature, psyche, and society.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.