Contextualism and Developmental Psychology

CONTEXTUALISM AND DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

Haytze W. Reese DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY WEST VIKGINIA UNIVERSITY MORGANTOWN. WEST VIRGINIA ? h X h

1. INTRODUCTION 11. THE CONTEXTUALISTIC METAPHOR A. ONGOING ACTS AS METAPHORS B. A RICHER VERSION OF THE METAPHOR C. SUMMARY OF THE VIEW 111. BASIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ONGOING ACT-IN-CONTEXT

A. B. C. D.

CONCRETENESS RELATIVISM PURPOSEFULNESS HOLISM

IV. DISPERSIVENESS OF CONTEXTUALISM A. LIMIT ON DISPERSIVENESS B. CLASSIC FLUXERS: HERACLIIWS AND CRATYLUS C. CONTEXTUALISTIC' FLUX V. THE CONCEPT OF CONTRADICTION IN CONTEXTUALISM A. PART-WHOLE CONTRADICTION B. RESOLUTION OF BLOCKED ACTION C. THE CONCEPT OF NOVELTY D. RELATIONS TO ARISTOTELIAN CATEGORIES VI. TRUTH IN CONTEXTUALISM A. EXPLICATION B. BASIS IN CONTEXTUALISM C. RELATION TO PRACTICE

VII. CAUSALITY IN CONTEXTUALISM A. THE FIVE KINDS OF CAUSES B. BEING AND BECOMING C. CAUSE-EFFECT RELATIONS

187 ADVANCES IN ('IiI1.D DEVELOPMENT A N D BEHAVIOR. VOL. 2.1

Copyright 0 lYOl hy Acrdrniic Pro,. Inc All rights of repnidiiction in any forin ruscrvcd.

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VIII. ADEQUACY OF CONTEXTUALISM A. PRECISlON AND SCOPE B. EMERGENCE C . THE CRlTERlON OF PREDICTABILITY D. IDENTITY CRISIS

IX. IN LIEU OF SUMMARY: AN APPLICATION OF CONTEXTUALISM REFERENCES

I. Introduction My purpose in this article is to explicate the contextualistic world view and some of its implications for developmental psychology. In two papers published in the early 1970s, Willis Overton and I dealt with developmental implications of the mechanistic and organic world views, which were the predominant world views in American developmental psychology when these papers were published (Overton & Reese, 1973; Reese & Overton, 1970). More recently, the contextualistic world view has gained ground, but some of the gains attributed to it have been misattributions because of misinterpretations of the view. Also, some criticisms of the view reflect misinterpretations, one of which was published in a previous volume of Advances in Child Development and Behavior. One misinterpretation is reflected by the application of the label contextualism to all views in which the context of behavior or cognition is mentioned. As will be seen in the present article, contextualism consists of much more than the recognition that behavior or cognition occurs in a context and is influenced by that context. An analogy is the belief that any psychologist who observes behavior is a behaviorist: Actually, all psychologists observe behavior, but only those who consider it to be the subject matter of psychology are behaviorists; those who consider it to be the empirical basis for inferences about cognitive processes are not behaviorists. Another, more profound misinterpretation is that the dispersiveness of contextualism makes this world view unscientific because a dispersive world view cannot satisfy the predictability criterion of science. As will be seen (Section VIII,C), this misinterpretation reflects the use of a mechanistic or an organic definition of science, which is inapplicable to science as defined in contextualism. The contextualistic world view is described herein in Section 11, basic concepts are considered in Sections 111-VII, the adequacy of the view is considered in Section VIII, and a specific application of the view is briefly outlined in Section IX.

11. The Contextualistic Metaphor Pepper (1942) identified the underlying metaphor of contextualism as a historical event unfolding in its context. This metaphor is misleading, however, because it implies completedness and Pepper himself emphasized that the metaphor is

intended to be a living event, an “active present event” (p. 253). not an event frozen in the dead past. The metaphor is an event “alive in its present,” not “a past event” that is “dead and has to be exhumed” (p. 232). Therefore, a more apt designation of the basic metaphor is a concrete act ongoing in a context. This designation avoids the implication of completedness, and in fact Pepper used such acts to illustrate the contextualistic metaphor. Details of the contextualistic model will vary depending on which specific act is selected to serve as the metaphor (just as details of the mechanistic and organic models will depend on which specific machine or developing organ is selected). In any case, however, all acts ongoing in a context have certain features in common (just as all machines or developing organs have features in common), and these common features define the basic concepts, or “categories,” of the world view. (For detailed discussion of the contextualistic categories. see Hahn, 1942, chap. 1; Pepper, 1934b, 1938, chap. 1; 1942, chap. 10; 1945, chap. 3.) A. ONGOING ACTS AS METAPHORS

Pepper (1942) used the ongoing act of writing a sentence as an example of the contextualistic model. The particular sentence might be I will put u period at the end ofthis Sentence (Pepper used a passive form of this sentence). He remarked that this example is peculiarly instructive because it shows that such a trivial act can serve as the key to understanding the entire universe: Everything is like the ongoing act of writing, in context, I will put u period at the end of this sentence. Other ongoing acts that Pepper ( 1934b) used to illustrate the contextualistic metaphor include the returning of a tennis ball (p. 188) and the reading of a specified sentence (the sentence he specified was from William James: “The feeling of the thunder is also a feeling of the silence as just gone” [p. 1861). However. these metaphors are subject to misunderstanding because the role of context is too easily overlooked. As Pepper (1942) said, the contextualistic metaphor ”is not an act conceived as alone or cut off. . . ; it is an act in and with its setting, an act in its context” (p. 232). Pepper avoided the undesired implications of both the metaphor of the historical event and the metaphor of the ongoing act when he used the act of perceiving a particular Japanese print to exemplify the contextualistic metaphor (Pepper, 1938) and when he used the act of reacting aesthetically to a particular stanza from Coleridge’s “Glycine’s Song” (Pepper, 1945). However, these acts are mental and therefore may fail to convey the concreteness of contextualism. B. A RICHER VERSION OF THE METAPHOR

The richness of the contextualistic metaphor is exposed most clearly in an extended ongoing act described by Pepper (1 942):

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Two points might bear commentary: (1) The meadow he is aiming for is an end-in-view, not a telos. An end-in-view is a consciously held purpose (Dewey, 1933, p. 17). It is not a purpose defined as in teleology, in terms of the actual outcome. Rather, it is in the actor’s mind before he or she acts; it is a cognized purpose, antecedent to an act that may or may not attain the intended end. (2) The integration of a separate act into another act indicates that the expectation of stability occurs despite the expectation of change and further indicates that integration occurs despite dispersiveness. (Pepper, 1942, also used this example to illustrate versions of the truth criterion of contextualism; see his pp. 270, 274, 276.) C. SUMMARY OF THE VIEW

Pepper (1934b) summarized the view as follows:

b

[Contextualism] takes for its root metaphor the textured event, with its richly qualitied strands fading into a past that dies and guiding the changing pattern of a present duration into a future that dawns. The event through its texture extends sidewise in its present duration into neighboring contexts which are themselves textures extending into still other contexts. And the texture of each event is internally analyzable into strands, which have individual tensions and references into other textures. This is the basic conceptual equipment of contextualism. (p. 183)

Even more succinctly, the main categories of contextualism are: (1) texture, ( 2 ) in an environment of other textures, (3) analyzable into strands which extend into environmental textures, and (4) which have references (senses of direction) to or from environmental textures or (5) towards consummations yet to come, or (6) from iniriations gone by. The (7) quality of a texture is a (8)fusion of its strands and there is no quality more fundamental than this felt or observed quality of the total texture. (Pepper, 1034a. p. 111)

The italicized terms are technical and need explication, but perhaps this quotation and the preceding one adequately convey the essence of contextualism for the present purposes without detailed explication. (1) The texture of an ongoing act-in-context is the details and relations that make up its “quality.” (2) The enviroiznzent is the context of an act. (3) The sfrunds of an act are its elements, or details (e.g., writing at, the, and end are strands of writing ut [he end; and writing u and t are strands of writing at). (4) The references of an act are its course as it unfolds, its ( 5 ) yet-to-be consutnmution, end, or satisfaction, and its (6) now past inifiatiori.s.(7) The qiiulity of an act is the total, holistic meaning of the act ongoing in a context. or as Pepper (1942) said, “its intuited wholeness or total character.” This quality results from (8) a fusion-an integration-f textures, including environmental textures. Having introduced and defined these technical terms, J will hereafter avoid using them insofar as possible, in order to ease the reader’s burden. (For detailed explication of these and other categories, see Hayes, Hayes, & Reese. 1988; and the references cited above, especially Pepper, 1942, chap. 10.) The metaphor of the hunter, described in the preceding subsection, brings out all the basic features of contextualism. However, like the metaphors of historical events and ongoing acts, it also has a disadvantage; the “act” involved is so complex that the metaphor may have more neutral and negative analogy than positive analogy. (Thepositit~eanulogy is the part of a metaphor or model to which the target domain is mapped; the riegative anulogy is the part that must be ignored; and the rteirfral unalogy is the part that seems to make no difference [Hesse, 19661.) Given this disadvantage, the metaphor of writing a sentence is used for the most part in the following explication of the contextualistic world view. The specific metaphor, mentioned in Section II,A, is the writing of the sentence I will put a period at the end of this sentence. The metaphor is not the sentence, however; it is the writing of the sentence after the writing begins and before it ends.

111. Basic Characteristics of the Ongoing Act-in-Context Four basic characteristics of the ongoing act-in-context as conceptualized in contextualism are concreteness, relativism, purposefulness, and holism. These characteristics are discussed in the present section. A. CONCRETENESS

The basic metaphor of contextualism is an ongoing act. All ongoing acts have

two essential features: They have a content and they occur in a context. Writing

is not an act; but writing something with something on something in some

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situation at some time is an act. Thinking is not an act, and rehearsing is not an act; but thinking something and rehearsing something are acts. All acts-mental as well as physical-are concrete in this sense, and any purported act that has no content or context is an abstraction, a product of analysis rather than of observation. Concrete acts need explanation; abstract “acts” do not need explanation, although the thinking that generates abstract “acts” is concrete in the intended sense and therefore needs explanation. B. RELATIVISM

The basic metaphor of contextualism requires consideration of the context in which an act is ongoing. An implication of this requirement is that acts are expected to vary with context---otherwise the context could be ignored. That is, the meaning of an act or a task is likely to be relative to the context in which the act or task occurs. For example, laughing may indicate joy in some contexts and fear in others, and crying may indicate fear in some contexts and joy in others. Similarly, the meaning of an arithmetic problem may be different in the contexts of the school and the streets, and a person may react differently to the problem depending on its contextually relative meaning. Max Planck made a point that is relevant here: “Everything that is relative presupposes the existence of something that is absolute” (1949a, p. 46). Baumrind (1989) made the same point: “Instability and discontinuity in human development can only be seen against a background of stability” (p. 187). The alternatives to this point are that nothing is relative, which is inconsistent with contextualism (it is consistent with mechanism), or that nothing is absolute, which is also inconsistent with contextualism (it is Cratylus’s total flux, discussed in Section IV,B,3). Thus, if the meaning of an act or a task is relative to a context, the context must be absolute; and if the context is relative to the person’s perceptions, for example, then the person’s perceptions are absolute. The progression could continue, but in contextualism it is worth continuing only so long as it makes a difference in practice (as shown in Section VI,A). C. PURPOSEFULNESS

Pittendrigh (1958) commented: “Biologists for a while were prepared to say a turtle came ashore and laid its eggs, but they refused to say it came ashore to lay its eggs. These verbal scruples were intended as a rejection of teleology [i.e., purpose]” @. 393). However, in common sense, most acts are felt to be purposeful, whether performed by a person or an animal. The riddle, “Why did the chicken

cross the road?” is amusing, perhaps, but not because of any felt incongruity in attributing purposefulness to a chicken. The 19th-century novelist and amateur evolutionist Samuel Butler seems to have had no qualms i n attributing purposes to cats and flies (1894/1925. pp. 83-84). Thus. Romanes’s (1885, chaps. 6, 20) attributing consciousness to animals is much more in keeping with common sense than later scientists’ denial of it. Given that in common sense. purpose is attributed to acts by animals, purpose is even more reasonably attributed to human acts. Therefore, purposefulness is categorical in contextualism-it is a basic characteristic of the commonsense root metaphor of the ongoing act. However, in the commonsense view, purpose is i n both the past and the future. It is in the past in the sense that it is antecedent to an act; and it is in the future in the sense that the act is expected to achieve the purpose. This contradiction is resolved in contextualism by the conception of “the present” as having a .spread that is, the present consists of a range of time rather than a point i n time (Kvale, 1074; Mead, 1932/1959, e.g., p. 1; Miller. 1043: Pepper, 1934b, 1942, pp. 239-242). William James (1890, p. 609), who was one of the early contextualists. conceptualized the present as a duration with “a rearward- and a forward-looking end.” That is, the present includes what might be called the immediate past and the immediate future, although these terms are inappropriate because their referents are actually in the present in contextualism. The purpose of a present act reaches into both the immediate past and the immediate future. The meaning of writing period, for example, in the illustrative sentence includes the writing of will put a and at the end.

D. HOLISM

In contextualism, a whole includes an act and its context. (However, as will be seen in Section III,D,2, both the act and the context-conceptualized as parts of the whole-are abstractions.) This basic concept is revealed clearly in the metaphor of perceiving the Japanese print (mentioned in Section II,A),which shows the inseparability of the act from its context. As Pepper (1938, p. 36) said, this inseparability is a fusion of a “personal texture” and an “impersonal texture.” However, the actor seems more active in the metaphor of writing a sentence, and the arbitrariness of isolating the act from the flow of activity seems clearer.

1. External and Internul Relutions in Holism As Kitchener (1982) demonstrated, the thesis of holism is not that “a whole is more than the additive sum of its isolated parts and their external relations,” but rather that “a whole is more than the additive sum of its isolated parts and their

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external and internal relations” (p. 244; I would have said “conjunction” rather than “additive sum,” in agreement with Bergmann, 1957, pp. 159ff). Elements are externally related if changing the relation does not change the nature of the elements. As an example, Kitchener noted that a book on a table remains a book if it is removed from the table. Elements are internally related if changing the relation changes the nature of the elements. For example, the husband-wife relation is internal because unless the man and the woman are married to each other they are not husband-and-wife. A whole that included only external relations could exist according to the mechanistic world view, but it would be a mere aggregation rather than a true whole as conceptualized in the organic and the contextualistic versions of holism. In the organic and contextualistic world views, internal relations are constitutive, but a whole that included only internal relations could exist only as an ideal (in organicism) or as an abstraction (in contextualism). However, some relations that are external in organicism seem to be internal in contextualism. For example, in contextualism the location of a book can affect its nature (i.e., its meaning). A book on a table is a book (or a weight for pressing flowers, etc.); but a book is a tool, so to speak, if it is being read as part of the action of studying for an examination, and a book being thrown is a weapon if it is part of an aggressive action. In other words, external relations are irrelevant to the ideal nature or meaning of an item, but they are inextricably involved in the real whole that determines the concrete nature or concrete meaning of the item.

2. Legitimacy of Decomposing a Whole Contextualism is holistic, and Pepper characterized the whole-the in a context-as follows:

act ongoing

[The whole] is not literally composed of elements, even though it may be properly described as a configuration of discriminated analytical properties. The properties into which it is analyzed for any purpose have references to other events in the context of the event analytically described. (Pepper, 1960, pp. 58-59)

That is: The parts of the whole can he adequately described only as parts of the whole. The character of the whole enters into its parts, and unless the function of a part in the whole is exhibited in the description of the part. the part is no longer a part of that whole: it is a part of some other whole. (Pepper, 1934a, pp. 111-112)

In the basic metaphor, then, the act ongoing in a context is a totality, but for some purposes it can be meaningfully analyzed into elements, each of which is itself an act ongoing in its own context. Thus, in contrast to organicism, in which

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the whole cannot be meaningfully decomposed into parts because of strong reciprocal interactions, in contextualism parts can always be examined in meaningful ways because each part is itself an act ongoing in a context. This basic concept of contextualism is well illustrated by the act of writing the sample sentence (and some of the other acts cited by Pepper): Writing the word period is a complete act, and within that act writing the syllable per is an act, within which writing the letter p is an act, within which making a downward loop is an act, and so on. Going in the other direction, writing the entire sentence is an act but is also a part of the larger act that includes writing about the act of writing the sentence, which in turn is part of the larger act that includes writing an entire paper, which in turn is part of the larger act that is the writer’s lifetime, which in turn is part of the larger act that includes others’ lifetimes, etc. A concrete example reflecting this principle is found in the Soviet theory of speech: A word in a contcxt means both more and less than the same word in isolation: more, because it acquires new context: less, because its meaning is limited and narrowed by the context. . . . A word derives its sense from the sentence. which in turn gets its sense from the paragraph, the paragraph from the book. the hook from all the works of the author. (Vygotsky. 1934119h3. p. 146; 1934/1986, p. 245)

Thus, although the act ongoing in a context is a whole in contextualism, it is not a fixed entity as in organicism.

3. Arbitrariness of Defining a Whole The whole in contextualism is elusive because it can shift locations and can contract or expand, depending on the interests of the observer. Its definition is arbitrary and therefore, as Hoffman (1985) said, contextualism has “no final or ultimate units for the analysis of anything” (p. 15). A certain arbitrariness is also discernible in mechanism, but with the understanding that a universal whole is nonarbitrary, or at least nonarbitrary in any mechanism in which “isolated systems” smaller than the universal whole are conceptualized as only relutively isolated. Just as an organicist can sometimes adopt a mechanistic model as a “convenient fiction,” that is, as a model that is adequate for some subdomain even though it is paradigmatically false (Overton, 1973; Reese, 1977a), so a mechanist can sometimes adopt the convenient fiction that a particular subsystem is isolated even though it is paradigmatically open. A case in point is Schrodinger’s comment that “a single day of one’s life, nay even any individual life as a whole, is but a minute blow of the chisel at the ever unfinished statue [of evolution]” (1958, p. 11). However, for many purposes, the single day in a life may be itself a virtually finished statue, but only so as a convenient fiction with respect to these purposes.

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a. “Within-Level” Wholes. As indicated in the preceding subsection (111,D,2), wholes can be defined at different levels, or different ranges or magnitudes. The arbitrariness of the definition of a whole is evident within a given level. In the basic metaphor, the writing of an individual letter-p, for example-is an act at the same level as writing any other letter, and each can be focused on as a whole. No one of these wholes is basic with respect to any other, because although one of them might occur earlier in the writing of the sentence than another, when any one is focused on it is the only one that exists as an ongoing act at the time of observance. In other words, unlike organicism, which specifies an organ that is the real whole, contextualism makes the whole a matter of convenience or interest. Real wholes exist in contextualism but the whole does not exist-no delimited all-inclusive whole exists. Reality is a continuous flux of acts ongoing in an endless range of contexts. The whole, for anyone’s purposes, is that part of the flux that he or she wants to describe, and all other acts and ranges of the context can be legitimately ignored. To move from metaphor to a concrete domain, contextualistic holism can be seen in J. R. Kantor’s (1942) belief that the sciences are unitary but separable and equal: It is assumed that nature comprises an intricate manifold of events-fields in which things (particles, waves, organisms, etc.) operate in certain ways and change under certain specific conditions. Each science including psychology isolates some phase of this manifold for its special object of study. . . . It is assumed here that all sciences are coordinate, none being more basic than any other. Whatever hierarchy of sciences one may set up can only be based upon quantity of achievement. AII are natural and each is as fundamental as any other. (pp. 176-177)

According to Miller, G. H. Mead expressed the same view: “There are different (qualitatively different-and lawfully different) levels of reality, none of which has metaphysical priority over any other” (Miller, 1943, p, 46). A more concrete example is found in speech development. Mounoud (1987) noted that syllables can be studied independently of a whole of which they are parts, but that they do not have the same meaning when studied in isolation (i.e., as wholes) as when studied as parts of a whole. He also said that phonemes are considered to be abstract formal units that cannot exist apart from the whole of which they are parts; however, research on phonemic development demonstrates that in fact they can also be studied as wholes.

b. “Between-Level’’ Wholes. As shown in the preceding paragraphs, wholes can differ “within a level,” such as in the writing of any one letter or word versus another letter or word in the basic metaphor. They can also differ “between levels,” such as in writing a letter versus writing a word versus writing a sentence, etc. The range of levels is endless in both directions, and no one act between levels is basic with respect to any other because each is at the same time a constituted

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whole and a constituting part (constituted and constituting are used in weak, nonliteral senses). For example, the writing ofperiod is a whole constituted by part acts such as writing p and at the same time it is a constituting part of writing the sentence. The whole that determines the parts cannot be “more basic” than the parts that determine the whole. (The argument may seem abstruse at this point, or perhaps even specious, but it is obvious and clearly true once the contextualistic metaphor is grasped.) This kind of holism is evident in Kantor’s (1938) concept of a behavior segment: The psychologist is obliged to ccmtruct :I dewiptivr unit simple and stable enough to enable him to understand what is essentially continuous and integrated. Such a descriptive tool he constructs in the form of a behavior segment. Essentially the behavior segment is a n abstraction designed to fixate a dctinite spatio-temporal event. (p, I )

c. The Study of Wholes. The contextualistic conception of the whole avoids a major dilemma of organicism. In organicism the whole is indivisible because it is composed of mutually interpenetrating, reciprocally interacting parts, which are meaningless if examined in isolation (Overton & Reese, 1973) and which may not even be identifiable in isolation (Overton, 1973). Yet examination of the research of organicists reveals clearly that they identify parts and often study the functions of the parts in combination with only a piece of the whole. As Spiker (1966) commented: Frankly, I have never met anyone who could insist with a straight face that he studied his organisms whole. To he sure. some psychologists look at bigger chunks of’the child than do others. But everyone looks at chunks. To he able 10 look at the wholc would require all the knowledge we do not yet have. Even the most avid promoters of the person-as-a-whole approach are forced to deal with manageable chunks when they conduct research. (p. 50)

Thus, organicists are either denying the indivisibility of the whole, and thcrefore denying a basic concept of organicism, or they are admitting that their research strategy is inadequate. This dilemma does not arise in contextualism, in which a whole is always divisible in meaningful ways. Nevertheless, in contextualism the division of the whole is also always artificial, because the value or ”truth” of the division depends on the purpose of doing it (for reasons considered in Section VI).

IV. Dispersiveness of Contextualism Facts can be dispersed and isolated from one another in contextualism. As Pepper (1942) said, “facts are taken one by one from whatever source they come and are interpreted as they come and so are left” (p. 142), and “the universe has

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for these theories the general effect of multitudes of facts rather loosely scattered about and not necessarily determining one another to any considerable degree, . . . Pure cosmic chance, or unpredictability, is thus a concept consistent with these theories” (pp. 142-143). However, the dispersiveness category of contextualism has sometimes been overemphasized (e.g., by Dixon & Hertzog, 1984; Lerner, Skinner, & Sorell, 1980; Overton, 1984). The model is synthetic as well as dispersive. Contextualism avoids utter skepticism, according to Pepper, “by rigorously asserting the reality of the structure of the given event, the historic event as it actually goes on” (p. 235, emphasis added). This principle reflects the holism of contextualism (Section 111,D). The source of the dispersiveness category is not that a “historic e v e n t ” 4 r better, ongoing act-exists by itself, isolated from other acts, because in the root metaphor of contextualism the ongoing act is conceptualized as occurring in a context that includes other acts and that is part of the structure of the ongoing act. Rather, the source of dispersiveness is the categorical necessity of novelty. Anything can happen; we see what we see, whether it is structured or dispersed. This particular act (in the root metaphor) may or may not end, and may or may not be followed by another act, which we may or may not expect. The contradiction between the synthesis and dispersiveness categories is resolved by noting that the synthesis category refers to the act considered as a whole, and the dispersiveness category refers to the relations of this act to other acts, each also considered as a whole. The structure is within the act; the dispersion is between acts. Of course, given the aleatory nature of contextualism (Gergen, 1977, 1980), the structure within an act can disperse. However, this occurrence would be consistent with contextualism and not contradict it; the occurrence would be interpreted as an instance in which certain acts expected to be integrated as parts of a whole turned out to be separate wholes. A. LIMIT O N DISPERSIVENESS

The contradiction between synthesis and dispersiveness in contextualism is resolved pragmatically: Facts come to us in wholes-except when they don’t. Although novelty is categorical in contextualism, it does not demand a ceaseless flux (contrary to Lerner et al., 1980; Overton, 1978; Riegel, 1976). As Pepper (1942) said, “Pure cosmic chance, or unpredictability, is. . . a concept consistent with [contextualistic] theories even if not resorted to or emphasized by this or that writer’’ (p. 143). The unpredictability, or flux, can be down played because, as Pepper said: The categories (of contextualism] must be so framed as not to exclude from the world any degree of order it may he found to have, or to deny that this order may have come out of disorder and may return into disorder again-rder being defined in any way you please, so long as it does not deny the possibility of disorder or another- order in iiuture

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also. This italicized restriction is the forcible one in contextualism. and amounts to the assertion that change is categorical and not derivative in any degree at all. (p. 134)

Hoffman (1985) said, “The categories of contextualism allow for any degree of order or disorder that may be found” (p. 15). Order, structure, and synthesis are accepted when found; and unpredictable change would be accepted if it were found. B. CLASSIC FLUXERS: HERACLITUS AND CRATYLUS

The contextualistic position on flux can be explicated by comparing it with the positions of Heraclitus and Cratylus, two ancient Greek philosophers of flux. Their positions are described after a slight introductory digression and then are compared with the contextualistic position.

1. Introduction Hultsch and Pentz (1980) noted that several approaches to learning and memory reflect the contextualistic perspective. According to Hultsch and Pentz, these approaches share several basic assumptions, including the following: Because of the emphasis on a continuing transaction between the individual and the context, contextually based approaches d o not assume the retrieval of a permanent memory trace. Rather, remembering is a reconstruction of past events. This depends, in large measure, on the degree to which the material has been articulated with past experience during acquisition. In addition, memory also depends on events occurring following acquisition. Thus, the individual continually constructs and reconstructs events as the context changes. (p. 305)

This characterization is accurate but perhaps susceptible to two misunderstandings regarding the continuance of change. First, although continual change and context effects are given in contextualism, theorists who assume continual change and context effects are not necessarily contextualists. Continual change and context effects are espoused in many other systems as well. For example, Spinoza (1677/ 1949) said “we live in constant change” (p. 277, Note to Proposition XXXIX, in Pt. V) and a person “is part of Nature” and therefore cannot undergo only change that is entirely self-generated, that is, cannot undergo change that “can be understood through his own nature alone, and of which he is the adequate cause” (p.193, Proposition IV, in Pt. IV). Second, general knowledge-all of “memory in the wider sense” (Piaget & Inhelder, 1973, p. si-4) not reconstructed each time it comes to consciousness. Rather it exists as a property of the organism, and as such it is permanent. (However, it is not permanent in the sense of fixity or unmodifiability; on the contrary, it is continually being modified by reorganization and updating [Reese, 1977b], or “accommodation” [Piaget & Inhelder, 1973, p. 81.)

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This second possible misinterpretation would be consistent with Cratylus: According to Aristotle, Cratylus “criticized Heraclitus for saying that it is impossible to step twice into the same river; for he thought one could not do it even once” (Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bk. 4, chap. 5 [ lOlOa 11-14]; 1952b, p. 529). (The bracketed material is the number-letter-number designation of page, column, and line in the standard Berlin Greek text, which are given in most editions of Aristotle’s works and can be used to locate the passage in editions other than the one cited here.)

2. Heraclitus’s Position The works of Heraclitus have been preserved only as fragments, and for the most part they are open to diverse interpretations. Heraclitus has been attributed two versions of the “river” statement: (1) “One cannot step twice into the same river” (Kahn, 1979, p. 53) and (2) “As they step into the same rivers, other and still other waters flow upon them” (Kahn, 1979, p. 53), or “Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow” (Kirk, 1951, p. 36). These versions are referred to in the relevant literature as (part of) Fragment 91 and Fragment 12, respectively. The first part of Fragment 12 can be translated “into the same rivers, as they step” or “into rivers, as the same [men] step,” according to Kahn (p. 167). Kahn suggested that the ambiguity was deliberate, “to emphasize a parallel between the identity of the human bathers and that of the rivers; and this parallel would suggest that men too remain the same only as a constant pattern imposed on incessant flow” (p. 167). According to Kahn, Heraclitus “does not deny the continuing identity of the rivers, but takes this for granted” (p. 167). The idea, according to Kahn, is “the preservation of structure within a process of flux, where a unitary form is maintained while its material embodiment . . . is constantly lost and replaced” (p. 168). Or, as Kantor (1963) said, Heraclitus was “impressed by the ubiquity and essentiality of change and transformation, of both the partial and temporary and the complete and permanent form, [and] he assumed that there was a law or principle which governed and ordered such changes” (p. 207). That is, “constancy is found in change” (Reese & Overton, 1970, p. 133). Watts (1742) expressed the same idea in saying that the Thames river is formally the same across time but materially different “because it runs between the same Banks, but. . , perhaps, there is not a Drop of the same Water” (p. 271; long s modernized). Kahn’s interpretation is consistent with that of Kirk (1954): “natural changes occur in the same way that rivers change, i.e. in measures, and thereby maintain in spite of change the unity of the whole [cosmos] and the balance of its essential constituents” (Kirk, 1954, p. 379). However, Vlastos (1955a, 195%) argued that Kirk misinterpreted Heraclitus’s position regarding flux. According to Vlastos, the received opinion is that Heraclitus believed that “every individual thing is changing, but the ‘measures’ of change do not” (1955a, p. 312). According to Kirk, He-

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raclitus believed that some individual things are stable. Vlastos argued that in Plato’s time the “extreme fluxed’ were self-professed followers of Heraclitus, and that although they may have exaggerated his doctrine regarding flux, “on Kirk’s view there would have been nothing in Heraclitus for them to exaggerate, and the nexus of his professed followers with him would be completely unmotivated” (1955a, p. 313).

3. Cratylus’s Position Kahn (1979) interpreted the Cratylus fragment-ne cannot step into the same river once-to mean the same thing as the Heraclitus fragments (p. 168). Guthrie also interpreted them as the same: Cratylus meant, according to Guthrie (1962), “Between the instant when your foot touched the surface and the instant when it reached the bottom the river at that point had already changed” (note 3, p. 450). However, Lenin (1915/1961) seems to have interpreted Cratylus and Heraclitus differently: [Regarding Heraditus’s aphorism] “it is impossible to bathe twice in the same river”actually, however (as had already been said by Cratylus, a disciple of Heraclitus), it cannot be done even once (for before the whole body has entered the water, the latter is already not the same as before). (p. 343)

Kirk (1954, p. 373) and Barnes (1979) also believed that the meanings differed. According to Barnes, Cratylus meant that “everything is always flowing in all respects,” and Heraclitus meant that “everything is always flowing in some respects” (1979, p. 69). According to Hegel (1840/1955), Heraclitus’s principle was “change alone, without remaining like self, maintaining self, and going back within self‘ @. 317). However, according to Barnes’s interpretation, this characterization fits Cratylus’s position rather than Heraclitus’s. Cratylus’s position, as Barnes noted, precludes a statement of itself because “I cannot refer to a unless I can assign some property to it” (p. 69) other than change. Some thing in other words must be undergoing the change somewhere. Cratylus was evidently aware of this implication; according to Aristotle, he “finally did not think it right to say anything but only moved his finger” (Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bk. 4, chap. 5 [1010a 11-14]; 1952b, p. 529). Lenin (1915/1961) interpreted Cratylus’s behavior thus: “Cratylus merely ‘wagged his finger’ in answer to everything, thereby showing that everything moves, that nothing can be said of anything” (p. 343). C. CONTEXTUALISTIC FLUX

Lotze (1884) said that no flux theorist held that “becoming” is accidental or without direction (p. 81), citing Aristotle’s distinction between dynamis and energeia as reflecting this point. However, (1) Aristotle’s distinction between dy-

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namis and energeia is irrelevant, not only because these concepts refer to formal causes-potential and actual form, respectively-rather than causes of becoming (Section VII,B), but also because Aristotle was not a flux theorist. (2) Furthermore, Cratylus was a flux theorist who must have held that becoming is accidental and without direction, because otherwise he would have had to acknowledge consistencies and therefore would have had to deny his notion of total flux. (3) Finally, and most importantly for present purposes, Heraclitus must have admitted both accident and direction in becoming, because without accidents flux would be completely predictable (in principle) and therefore it would be an illusion reducible to consistency, and without direction flux would be completely accidental and consistent with Cratylus’s theory. Butler (1957) saw roots of pragmatism (i.e., contextualism) in Heraclitus, but on a wholly superficial basis: “In both philosophies reality is not described as a substance which has some kind of solidity or dependability; instead it is a constant flux, like the ever-changing waters of a river” (p. 419). He also noted that both views make much of dualisms, but he believed that those of Heraclitus were “somewhat unsubtle and crude as compared to John Dewey’s’’ (p. 419). Interpreted as representing total flux, Cratylus’s position is inconsistent with contextualism. The root metaphor of contextualism is an act being performed in a context; but in any specific instantiation of contextualism at the level of theory or of “theoretical model” (Reese & Overton, 1970), some specific act in some specific context is implicated. Cratylus’s position, as interpreted by Barnes (1979), precludes the existence of such an act and such a context; hence it is inconsistent with contextualism. However, Heraclitus assumed continuity (the same rivers, the same bathers) in the face of discontinuity (other waters) and this position is consistent with contextualism because the paradox it expresses is easily resolved in contextualism: The meaning of an act changes continually as the act goes on in its changing context, but it is still the act. Gergen’s (1980) “radical” contextualism, as Baltes (1987) called it, is also consistent with Heraclitus rather than Cratylus, even though Gergen emphasized the dispersiveness category of contextualism. Gergen said: If the individual is in continuous motion and may at any time move in novel ways, the contours of nature become obscure. When experience furnishes continuous flux, and repetition of experiential pattern is difficult to locate, a form of understanding that itself creates the contours of nature is favored. (p. 53)

Had he agreed with Cratylus, Gergen could not have recognized anything stable enough to be called “the individual”; he would have had to say that repetition of experiential pattern is impossible to locate, rather than only difficult to locate; and he could not have envisioned anything more than an instantly transient understanding of experience-not only because the understanding itself would undergo

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continuous change but a b o because it would have no stable individual in which to reside. The paradox is also easily resolved in organicism: Within-stage development is continuous; between-stage development is discontinuous. Therefore, stages reflect continuity in the face of discontinuity. That both contextualism and organicism are consistent with Heraclitus and not with Cratylus should not be surprising because the Heraclitean contradiction between continuity and discontinuity is the contradiction between being and becoming, which is also a basic contradiction in contextualism and in organicism. Cratylus saw only becoming, hence no contradiction. In short, although Hegel as well as Marx have roots in Heraclitus’s position, as Riegel noted (197.5, p. 239), Riegel erred-along with many other commentators-in attributing to this position the notion of “ceaseless flux.” Riegel (1978) did not err but was misleading about Heraclitus’s position in another respect. He referred to Heraclitus’s “well-known statement, ‘nobody can enter the same river twice,”’ and interpreted it to mean, “As such a person has entered the river once, he or she has already changed and cannot enter it under the same condition again” (p. 28). The problem here is that Riegel seemed to impute change to the person but not to the river. Actually, as Riegel was aware (p. 74), neither the person nor the world is ignored in the dialectical conception, and therefore the river as well as the person has changed before the person can enter it again. Riegel, in fact, did much to popularize the slogan of dialectical developmental psychology: “the developing individual in a changing world” (e.g., Riegel & Meacham, 1976).

V. The Concept of Contradiction in Contextualism The concept of contradiction is basic in the contextualistic metaphor, and it appears in several guises. They are explicated in the present section. A. PART-WHOLE CONTRADICTION

Pepper (1945, chap. 3) discussed four contrasts in contextualism that are categorical (i.e., basic concepts): (1) quality versus relations (quality in contextualism means the intuited wholeness of an event-Pepper, 1938, pp. 22-23; 1942, p. 238); (2) intuition versus analysis; (3) fusion versus diffusion; and (4) unity versus detail. These contrasts are implied in the discussion of the various ongoing acts that illustrate contextualism (Sections II,A and B), but Pepper (194.5) felt that they are especially well revealed by examination of the act of responding aesthetically to the reading of a stanza of lyric poetry (from Coleridge’s “Glycine’s Song,” as

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mentioned in Section 11,A). Pepper (1945) summarized the results of this examination as follows: [An ongoing event] is a unity with details. If we intuit the unity of it,. . .we get the quality of the event by a fusion of its interrelated details. If we analyze it to find the relations of its details, we diffuse the unity and lose the quality of the whole, or at least diminish its vividness in following out the details. . . . There is no such thing as a situation having a quality without interrelated details to make it up. And there is no such thing as an analysis of details unless there is a total situation to be analyzed into its details. (pp. 61-62)

That is, as Kant said, the whole exists on account of its parts, and the parts exist on account of the whole: “The organized being is the being in which all is reciprocally end and means” (quoted in Janet, 1884, p. 48). Thus, the whole and the details, or parts, have contradictory statuses: Each is primary in the sense of being necessary for the existence of the other, but neither can be really basic. This contradiction leads to the contradiction about the division of a whole: A whole is always divisible in meaningful ways, but the division is always artificial (as mentioned in Section III,D,3). One way to express this contradiction is to note that the completion of an act as a whole is an end but at the same time it is not an end because more global acts, which form the context within which the completed act was performed, continue with respect to their own ends. A concrete example is provided by Woodworth’s (1918) characterization of the relation between behavioral parts and wholes: [The typical process of observation] starts with unanalyzed wholes and proceeds as far as necessary in the detection of details. The whole with which it starts is not necessarily the largest whole that can be apprehended; and accordingly the reverse process of combining smaller units that have been observed into larger units also goes on, but the movement from the whole to the part is the more characteristic of perceptual acts. Nor is it by any means absent from motor acts. In learning to use a tool, the start is usually made by a rough approximation to the movement as a whole, and progress consists partly in noticing details in the manipulation which are capable of improvement. A complex motor act, performed at first as a rough whole, may next be analyzed into a sequence of elementary acts, and these separately mastered and then recombined into a smooth, continuous process, as already described, so the act becomes a whole again, but a more skillful whole than at first. (p. 97)

B. RESOLUTION OF BLOCKED ACTlON

Contradiction in contextualism is also evident in the concept of instrumental action. The derivation of the concept in contextualism is discussed next (Section V,B,1) and then the implications of the concept for stagewise development are discussed (Section V,B,2).

I. Instrumental Action The concept of instrumental action is derived from the technical concept of referetices: An instrumcntal action is om undcrtakcn ;I> a nicans to it desired end and as it result of some obstacle that intcnrenes between the beginning of thc action and its cnd o r

satisfaction. . . . An instrumental action . . . is guided on the one side by the supervening terminal action which it serves and on the othcr by the hlocking action which it neutralizes. These two laticr action5 arc in the context of'the instrumental action. hut so closely connected with it as to constitute much of its structure. . . . So close are these connections that. when an instrumental action is thoroughly integrated with its end arid its obstacle. dl three work together as one. (Pepper. 1042. pp. 2W-262)

The contradiction here is not between parts and the whole, but between parts-the obstacle and the end-that are integrated in the instrumental action. That is, an instrumental action implies an end and an obstacle to the end. The contradiction is resolved by successful working of the instrumental action. This principle is important for three major reasons: First, it provides the rationale for the truth criterion of pragmatism (contextualism) and thereby makes this criterion undogmatic. The truth criterion is discussed in Section VI. Second, the principle is also important because it appears in dialectical materialism as the law of the negation of the negation. Finally, the principle implies stagewise development, as discussed in the following paragraphs.

2. Stuges of Developmerit An instrumental act, aimed at a particular goal, ends when the goal is attained; but this ending is followed by the initiation of some other act, such as utilization of an obtained goal-object. 'The ending can be interpreted as the end of a stage, and the subsequent initiation can be interpreted as the beginning of a new stage. However, this stage interpretation implies that each act is a whole and therefore, because the definition of ii whole is arbitrary, the definition of a stage is also arbitrary. This arbitrariness of defining stages of development should pose no problem if the purpose of defining the stages in the particular way is made clear. The issue is not whether these are die stages, hut rather whether these stages promote understanding of the development of a specified phenomenon. This concept of stages differs from the concept of stages in organicism. The word stuge is derived from the same Latin root as .smtion:.mm. to stand. Although these words now have a number of meanings, many of them hint at the original meaning in referring to a place of rest in a journey or a marker indicating the degree of progress made in a journey. The two senses are not identical in that the tirst implies that movement is interrupted by periods of rest and the second implies that movement continues without interruption. Both senses have been used by

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developmental psychologists, who refer to them as discontinuity and continuity, respectively, The first sense is consistent with organicism, the second is consistent with contextualism. An example of stages in the sense of continuous movement or development is the use of intermediate stations to mark the progress of an express train that does not stop at these stations. (I believe that Freud used this example as an analogy of psychosexual stages of development, but I have been unable to locate a source.) Another example is the artificial separation of a behavior segment from the continuous stream of person-environment interaction (Kantor, 1938). The first of these examples illustrates continuous quantitative change and the second illustrates continuous qualitative change (as does the first example when it is an analogy of psychosexual development). An example of stages in the sense of discontinuous movement or development is the change in performance in a jumpwise learning curve, such as was obtained by Voeks (1954) in a study of eyeblink conditioning. In that such curves reflect frequency, magnitude, or some other measure of response strength, they reflect discontinuous quantitative change. Spence (1956, pp. 108-109) argued that such performance curves can reflect quantitative change in an underlying theoretical variable that changes continuously: The jump in performance occurs when the magnitude of this variable becomes greater than a threshold value. Magnitudes below and above threshold are continuous with one another, but being below and being above threshold are discontinuous stages, analogous to the discontinuity in the form of water that occurs when its temperature changes continuously from below to above 32°F. Another example of stages in the sense of discontinuous development is found in insect development: fertilized egg, caterpillar, cocoon, adult (or fertilized ovum, larva, pupa, imago). These stages are qualitatively different. The prenatal and postnatal stages in mammalian development provide another example of discontinuous qualitative change. (For further discussion and other examples, see Overton & Reese, 1981.) C. THE CONCEPT OF NOVELTY

Contradiction is also evident in the conception of novelty, which is categorical in contextualism (Pepper, 1942). As Labouvie-Vief and Chandler (1978) said: If there is any dogmatism to the contextualist’s attitude,. . . it is the assertion that he must embrace any potential theoretical outcome, even the possibility that all his pluralistic multilinear analyses might, after all, eventually converge and expose one organismic scheme. (pp. 203-204)

Quite so, except that this assertion is principled, or categorical, rather than dogmatic.

1. Self-Contradiction of’ lizevituhle No\dt)! The only inevitability in contextualism is novelty. but if this inevitability is changeless. it is self-contradictory. The thoroughgoing contextualist must admit that the inevitability of novelty is itself subject to change, and that discontinuous development, reflecting novelty, may become permanently continuous. However, the permanent absence of novelty would contradict contextualism, and therefore contextualism is self-contradictory. The contradiction is resolved by noting that at present it exists only as a possibility and that contextualism is concerned with the concrete present, not with abstract possibilities. Evidence that novelty is at present only a possibility is reviewed in the next subsection, and then, in Section V,C,3, implications of this principle are discussed.

2. The Ahseizct. of Novelty One kind of evidence for the absence of novelty is the existence of long-lasting continuities. Two examples are cited here. Kojima (1986) noted that from the mid-l7th to mid-19th century in Japan. “the age of six or seven years was seen as a major turning point in the lives of children. At that age. children began to be assigned tasks, and boys and girls began to be treated differently” (p. 320). Plato also recommended separating the sexes after age 6, and changing from what we would call day care to more formal education (Plato, LuMJ.~, Bk. 7 [794]; 1952, p. 716). In another example of long-lasting continuity, Krutch (1 953)noted that the long survival of the ancient Egyptian dynasties does not necessarily mean that the ancient Egyptian civilization was “the most admirable and ‘right”’ (p. 85); but it is certainly a remarkable example of continuity. It endured longer than the Christian era has so far endured. Of course, the civilization developcd in many ways, but the institution of bureaucracy was stable.

3. lmplicutions of the Absence of‘ Novelty Methodologically, the principle that novelty does not exist at present has two implications. First, the presently established empirical laws or principles can be used to predict findings and to explain failures to confirm predictions (as in any other world view) because we are presently in an era in which these laws or principles are true. Second, however, we should be prepared to find novelty and therefore should not cling too devotedly to the presently established laws in the face of contradictory evidence. We should be prepared for a “scientific revolution” (Kuhn, 1970) not merely because of new discoveries but because old facts are replaced by novel facts. According to Pepper (1932), nature contains no “discoverable stubborn facts that remain unchanged whatever the analysis or inter-

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pretation of them” (p. 186). To assume the existence of such facts is to assume indubitables. Bergmann (1957) believed that nature contains some simple characters with which observers can be directly acquainted, without the mediation of analysis or interpretation, but he also believed that this class of characters is “narrowly limited” (p. 19). Aristotle also believed that some facts are directly sensed and true, and that others are generated by analysis or interpretation, with gradations in between. As Aristotle said, “sensations are always true,” “always free from error” (On the Soul, Bk. 3, chap. 3 [428a 11,427b 111; 1952d, pp. 660,659, respectively). However: Perception (1) of the special objects of sense is never in error or admits the least possible amount of falsehood. (2) That of the concomitance of the objects concomitant with the sensible qualities comes next: in this case certainly we may be deceived; for while the perception that there is white before us cannot be false, the perception that what is white is this or that may be false. (3) Third comes the perception of the universal attributes which accompany the concomitant objects to which the special sensibles attach (I mean e.g. of movement and magnitude); it is in respect of these that the greatest amount of sense-illusion is possible. (Ondie Soul, Bk. 3, chap. 3 [428b 16-24]; 1952d. p. 661)

However, contrary to Bergmann and Aristotle, the set of unmediated, error-free observations is probably empty, as indicated by the adaptation-level phenomenon (e.g., Helson, 1964), the transposition phenomenon (e.g., Reese, 1968; Zeiler, 1967), and other phenomena related to simple sensory perception. Kuhn (1977) also considered the error-free class of observations to be nonexistent (pp. 308309); and Kantor (1923) said, “there are no infallible observers or absolutely inerrant scientific methods, and . . . phenomena themselves so far as we can grasp them are not fixed or absolute” (p. 692). “What are accepted as facts at one period of scientific development, at another period lose all claim to such distinction” (p. 692). Thus, although as Bacon and Buffon said, science should be based on experience (Bacon, 1620/1960, p. 67 [Bk. 1,Aphorism LXX]; Buffon, 1791, p. 68), experience should be recognized as fallible (Bacon, idem). (Bacon’s recognition that experience can be fallible has sometimes been overlooked. For example, Skinner cited Bacon’s point that hypotheses and theories should follow data rather than vice versa; but Skinner idolized data in asserting that “the contingencies always come first” [1989, p. 931. The relevant Baconian “idols” are the Idols of the Cave and the Idols of the Theater [Bacon, op. cit., pp. 48, 49; Aphorisms XLII and XLIV].) D. RELATIONS TO ARJSTOTELJAN CATEGORIES

As seen in the preceding three subsections (V,A-C), contradiction has at least three categorical meanings in contextualism. Relations of these meanings to the Aristotelian categories of opposition are analyzed in the present subsection.

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1. Part and Whole The contradiction between parts and the whole is found in Aristotle’s system in the relation between material and formal causality, but the argument for this conclusion is too complex to be explicated here.

2. Blocked Action The contradiction in the resolution of blocked action, or the negation of the negation, is f o u n d - o n close examination-in the Aristotelian concept of contraries.

a. Contraries. According to Aristotle: Things are said to he opposed in four senses: (i) as correlatives to one another, (ii) as contraries to one another, (iii) as privatives to positives, (iv) as affirmatives to negatives. . . . An instance of the use of the word “opposite” with reference to [i] correlatives is afforded by the expressions “double” and “half’; with reference to [ii] contraries by “bad” and “good.” [iii] Opposites in the sense of “privatives” and “positives” are “blindness” and “sight”; in the sense of [iv] affirmatives and negatives, the propositions “he sits,” “he does not sit.” (Categories, chap. 10 [ I Ib 16ffl; 1952a. pp. 16-17)

b. Contraries as Causes. The proposition under consideration here is that

the negation of the negation involves (ii) contraries. Examples of contraries, in addition to bad versus good, are disease versus health, being heated versus being cooled, and being glad versus being vexed (Aristotle, Categories, chaps. 9-11 [1l b 1-14a 251; 1952a, pp. 16-19). Contrary to the proposition, Planty-Bonjour (1967) asserted: Any attempt to reduce dialectical contradiction to the opposition of contraries is senseless: not only because, in Aristotelianism, contraries exclude each other in such a way that if one is present in a subject the other is necessarily absent; hut also because for Aristotle contraries cannot have the property of being causal agents. (p, 113)

Planty-Bonjour’s first point is correct, but only superficially: On the surface, contraries exclude one another in the same substance, but on penetration they are found at the same time in one substance. Examples are (1) the 14th-century Black Death, which was bad because about a third of the human population died but was good because it contributed to the end of feudalism (Mumford, 1961, pp. 345-346); ( 2 ) the treatment of heroin addiction by methadone addiction, which is a disease because it is an addiction but is healthy in comparison with heroin addiction; (3) the heating of refrigerator coils to produce cooling; and (4) being glad at the safe return of a lost child while being vexed that the child had wandered away. A major thrust of dialectic is to penetrate the surface contradiction of contraries.

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Planty-Bonjour’s second point is also correct, but also in a restricted sense. Planty-Bonjour was not denying the possible causal efficacy of the individual poles in a contrary relation; being glad or being vexed, for example, can have causal consequences. Rather, apparently, he was denying that either pole can cause the other. He cited for documentation Aristotle’s statement, “Contraries are not affected by one another” (Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bk. 12, chap. 10 [1075a 301; 1952b, p. 606). Aristotle also said that “contraries are not in any way interdependent” (Categories, chap. 9 [ l l b 341; 1952a, p. 17) and “it is impossible for the contraries to be acted on by each other” (Physics, Bk. 1, chap. 7 [190b 331; 1 9 5 2 ~ p. . 266). However, “Everything. . . that comes to be by a natural process is either a contrary or a product of contrarid-“colours, for instance, from black and white”(Physics, Bk. 1, chap. 5 [188b 25,241; 1952c, p. 264; emphasis added); and The subject [of change] is one numerically, though it is two in form. (For it is the man. the gold-the “matter” generally-that is counted, for it is more of the nature of a “this,” and what comes to be does not come from it in virtue of a concomitant attribute; the privation, on the other hand, and the contrary are incidental in the process.) (Physics, Bk. 1, chap. 7 [100h 24-27]; 1 9 5 2 ~p. 266)

That is, becoming is a change not in substance but in form or in polarity of contraries; and form or polarity cannot change unless the substance lacked the form or had the opposite polarity prior to the change. Without the opposition (the form attained and its prior privation, or the polarity attained and its prior contrary), the final cause of change (to negate the privation or contrary) could not operate. Therefore, as Aristotle said, contrariety is not a cause of change; but it is nevertheless an essential condition for change.

c. Contraries and Blocked Actiort. Application of the foregoing explication to the contextualistic contradiction in the resolution of blocked action (i.e., the negation of the negation) reveals that the contradiction does not resolve itself-it is not self-moving-but rather it is resolved by an agent responding to the contradiction: The agent performs an instrumental action intended to negate the blocking action. The implication of final causality is not a problem for contextualism if “final cause” is interpreted as an intended goal rather than as an attained goal. Aristotle apparently conceptualized final cause in the sense of intended goal; he said, “in those things, the being of each of which implies that of the other, that which is in any way the cause may reasonably be said to be by nature ‘prior’ to the effect” (Categories, chap. 12 [14b 10-151; 1952a, p. 20). One might argue that this solution is merely verbal in that Aristotle distinguished between the meaning of prior referring to causal order and its meanings referring to time, irreversible sequence, and order, among other meanings that are

irrelevant here (Catcgories. chap. 12 [ 14a 26-14b 221; 1952a, pp. 19-20). However, Aristotelianism does not guarantee that the potential form (dynamis) implicit in final causality will be the actual form ( e m ~ g c i aor , erztrlecheia) explicit in formal causality. Similarly. contextualism does not guarantee that any particular instrumental action will succeed i n negating any particular blocking action. In fact, the negation may he accomplished not as intended but by chance, as in Aristotle’s example of collecting money subscribed (negating a debt) as a result of a chance meeting with a subscriber (Physics. Bk. 2, chap. 5 [196b 33-197a 41; 1952c, p. 273).

3. Novelty The contradiction inherent in the contextualistic conception of novelty as categorical is found in Aristotle’s concept of incidental causality, which refers to an outcome that is in principle unpredictable beforc it occurs but is explainable after it occurs. However, in contextualism the explainahility of a past event is limited because, as noted i n Section VII,B. the past is as uncertain as the future in contextualism. Any assertion that an event cannot be predicted but can be understood after i t has occurred is thcrefore true only in the contextualistic sense of true-the explanation works. (The contextualistic truth criterion is discussed in the next section.)

VI. Truth in Contextualism The basic principle of pragmatic truth is that nothing is worth considering true, or real, unless it makes a difference in practice (James, 1907, p. 46). That is, the question, Is it true? is the same as Does it work‘! because the “true” course to anywhere is whatever course gets you there. This is the .‘successful working” theory of truth, which Peppcr (1942) believed reflects an overly narrow interpretation of contextualism. He admitted. however, that his broadened conception (“qualitative confirmation”) of the contextualistic theory of truth “comes dangerously near overstepping the categorial limits of contextualism” (p. 270), and that contextualists rely ultimatcly on successful working (“direct verification”-p. 278).

A. EXPLICATION

The truth criterion in contextualism is effective practice, or successful working. John Dewey (1933) said that meaning depends on use in a context (p. 145): “Things gain meaning when they are used as n1ean.s to bring about consequences

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(or as means to prevent the occurrence of undesired consequences), or as standing for consequences for which we have to discover means” (p. 146). More clearly, perhaps, William James (1907) said: There can be no difference anywhere that does n’t make a difference elsewhere-no difference in abstract truth that doesn’t express itself in a difference in concrete fact and in conduct consequent upon that fact, imposed on somebody, somehow, somewhere, and somewhen. The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this worldformula or that world-formula be the true one. (pp. 49-50)

A concrete example is Kantor’s (1953) description of science as particular individuals doing particular studies of particular objects in particular places at particular times (pp. 9-25; Kantor did not express the point in this way). James said that pragmatism is “a method only” and “has no dogmas, and no doctrines save its method” (pp. 51, 54). However, the method “thickened into a doctrine and thence into a world theory” (Pepper, 1942, p. 268), and in the process the referent or meaning of the concrete criterion changed. Specifically, because the whole is defined arbitrarily, so are concrete fact, conduct, and “somebody, somehow, somewhere, somewhen.” Making a whole at one level the standard for evaluating a whole at another level would be a “category-mistake” (Ryle, 1949, chap. 1). For example, there can be a difference in epistemology that doesn’t make a difference in ontology, and there can he a difference in developmental psychology that doesn’t make a difference in physiological psychology; but there can be no difference anywhere in any domain that doesn’t make a difference elsewhere in the same domain. B. BASIS IN CONTEXTUALISM

The pragmatic truth criterion is undogmatic in contextualism because it is entailed by the contextualistic contradiction of blocked action (described in Sections V,B and V,D,2). Prosch (1964) expressed this notion as follows, explicitly discussing pragmatism: When man is faced with a situation in which his customary or habitual activity is non-effective in reaching its usual end, then this usual ending point of his activity, which he is now unable to reach, begins to glow in his mind as a “goal,” and “end in view.” This “purpose” that he now has forces him to cast about for new means (new activity) likely to accomplish it. If he find these, he has acquired a new set of activities or “principles”; because “principles,” the pragmatists think, are simply activities informed by a sense of direction. If principles are not really held in this form of directioned actions then they are not truly held. They are in such a case only verbally espoused-like the principles involved in the Sermon on the Mount, as far as most Christians are concerned. If a person cannot find new means to reach this blocked goal,

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he will have to discover some other goal which he curl reach. This new goal will then induce him to forge other practical principles. In fact. his recognition that certain new principles are practically possible may be what f i s t opens his eyes to a new goal. (p. 337)

C. RELATION TO PRACTICE

The relation of truth to practice in contextualism can be seen in Ryle’s (1949) analysis of “to know” and “to believe” as examples of dispositional concepts. Ryle said: However often and stoutly a skater avers to us or to himself, that the ice will bear, he shows fhat he has his qualms, if he keeps to the edgc of the pond, calls his children away from the middle. keeps his eye o n the life-belts or continually speculates what would happen, if the ice broke. (p. 45)

(The relation between truth and practice in contextualism can also be seen in the dialectical materialist concept of the practice-theory-practice dialectic, which is described in, e.g., Fundumentals, 1961, p. 114; Mao, 1937/1965.) In brief, as Dewey said, knowledge is belief “held with assurance especially with the implication that the assurance is justified, reasonable, grounded” (quoted from Morgenbesser, 1977, p. xii). A principle of human development expressed by Niemczynski (1983) can be interpreted as reflecting this view. According to Niemczynski, “human strivings can not be considered to be definitely formed as long as the possibility of their concrete realization is not known” (p. 1 1 ) or “as long as the applicability of methods of their realization is not known” (p. 13). That is, persons cannot definitely envision (truly hold) an end unless they have in their repertoires a means to attain it. An end without a known means is abstract (and a means without an end is blind-to paraphrase Hegel’s comment that efficient causes without final causes are blind [Hegel, 1830/1892, p. 3441). Relevant to this point, Rescher (1977, pp. 8&8 1) distinguished between moral defect and rational defect. In science, moral defect would be exemplified by deliberate deception and by reckless speculation if anyone other than the perpetrator is adversely affected; rational defect would be exemplified by faulty arguments and incorrect conclusions from the evidence. Both the ethical and the rational ought demand can, but in different senses. Conformity to the ethical ought can be absolute (in principle), but the nearest approach to the rational oughf is successful practice. Beliefs (theories) guide practice, which in turn leads to improved beliefs. Any skeptical position regarding beliefs, and cognition in general, is purely theoretical, and the contextualistic argument against such a position is that it is irrelevant to practice and therefore irrelevant to truth in any useful sense (Rescher, 1977, pp. 94-95). Practice is based on beliefs-otherwise, practice is blind-and

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therefore practice provides the only rational basis for determining truth; otherwise, truth is an empty abstraction. Furthermore, this practical criterion of the truth of beliefs is not adopted dogmatically but rather is justified by application of the criterion to the method itself A belief leads to practice that is effective (for some purpose), and according to the contextualistic method, the belief is accepted as true. This method has been effective in yielding beliefs that lead to effective practice (Rescher, 1977, pp. 96-97). However, the contextualist accepts the Humean-like argument that the method’s having worked in the past and in the present does not guarantee that it will work in the future. Nevertheless, the contextualist argues further that the past and present successes of the method provide a reasonable basis for presuming that the method will work in the future. The burden of proof therefore falls on the opponents of the method. If they are skeptics, they have no way to prove that the possibility that the method will not be effective means that it should not be used (Rescher, 1977, pp. 104-109). Rescher (1977) noted that the pragmatic method is involved not only in effective practical behavior but also in rational inquiry. “One should be rational ifone is to be effective and efJicient in the realization of one’s chosen objectives (whatever they may happen to be).” Therefore, the reason for using the pragmatic method is itself pragmatic in terms of “prudence and intelligent self-interest” (p. 99).

VII. Causality in Contextualism The treatment of causality in contextualism can be explicated most easily by reference to the Aristotelian categories of causality. This explication is given in the present section, beginning with a summary of the five kinds of Aristotelian causes, continuing with the classification of these as causes of being and of becoming, and ending with an explication of their relation to the concept of contradiction in contextualism. A. THE FIVE KINDS OF CAUSES

Aristotle identified five kinds of causes: material, formal, efficient, final, and incidental (e.g., Aristotle, Physics, Bk. 2, chaps. 3-7 [194b 16-198b 91). All except final causes are accepted in contextualism.

I. Material Causality Material causality is obvious; the performance of an act (in a context) is itself concrete, or material, and requires an actor and a substrate to be acted on. The

contextualistic conception of material causality differs from the organic conception in separating the context from the substrate. In contextualistic psychology, for example, the environment is not merely the source of material for developmentthat is, experiences interpreted as material causes-but rather it is part of the efficient cause of development.

2. Forniul Causality Formal causality is implicated by the holism of contextualism: Each act is understood by looking at its whole-quality (in context). For example, the meaning of the act of writing the illustrative sentence is determined by the sentence as a whole. Writing the word period takes its meaning from the sentence that is being written.

3. EfficientCausality Efficient causality is also clearly implicated: The act is produced by antecedent forces or movements, which change the context and at the same time are guided by it. In psychology, this principle appears as the reciprocal interaction between the individual and the environment, including the social environment.

4. Final Causality The treatment of wholes in contextualism implies the denial of final causality. The whole is a fiction of sorts; consequently, it has no end toward which it must develop. It is like a musical composition: “A composer never completes a work; he eventually abandons it” (quoted by Professor Barton Hudson, personal communication, April 1987; Professor Hudson was unsure of its origin). Endings occur, of course, as when the composer abandons the work and when a writer actually puts a period at the end of the sentence, “I will put a period at the end of this sentence”; but any actual ending is only onc of many endings that could happen (Pepper, 1934b), and nothing in the system compels any one particular ending. For example, in the compound complex sentence that I just wrote, I did not put a period at the end of the sentence I will put u period at the end of this sentence; I put a semicolon. 1 may have intended to put a period there; but if so, my intention changed as the act unfolded (and the sentence became a clause, but this change is irrelevant to the point). Contextualism admits purpose, then, but not teleology. Purpose is not as obvious in the perceiving of the Japanese print as i n the writing of the sentenceanother advantage of the latter metaphor. However, a point that is important to understand is that these are only attempts to exemplify the contextualistic world view, which refers actually to whatever is common to all ongoing acts, or act as

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a “type” in Pepper’s technical sense (Pepper, 1938, chap. 6). The universe therefore has no End, in this world view; it has only a series of endings. However, these endings are interconnected into “larger” endings and are analyzable into “smaller” endings. A corollary is that the universe has a series of beginnings, or in the catchwords of the University of Iowa Alumni Association, “never-ending beginnings” (Iowa Alumni, 1987). Augustine commented, after finishing his studies, “When a man hath done, he beginneth” (quoted by Brown, 1967, p. 10).

5. Incidental Causality Chance, or incidental causality, is accepted as basic in contextualism. In mechanism, incidental causality is merely an appeal to ignorance (e.g., Bergmann, 1957, p. 122; Pauling & Zuckerkandl, 1972); but in contextualism, it is a basic characteristic of the universe. The universe may change in unexplainable ways. This principle is the same as C . S. Peirce’s tychism: “the doctrine that absolute chance is a factor of the universe” (1898/1935, p. 137). A subtlety in this point may need explication. The contextualistic position does not require that the universe change in unexplainable ways; rather, it requires the possibility of unexplainable change. As Pepper (1942, pp. 258-260) commented, no such change has yet been demonstrated-so far, all unanticipated events that have occurred have been explainable after the fact-but the possibility nevertheless remains open. B. BEING AND BECOMING

The contextualistic model includes the two causes of being-material and formal causes-and two causes of becoming-efficient and incidental causes. Incidental causality is important in this model, because it implies that the directionality of development is not fixed. As Labouvie-Vief and Chandler (1978) put it: Organismic models presume that all developmental change is ordered and equivalent to progress, [but] contextual theories regard change as simply that, and make no assumptions that such variations are in the service of achieving a particular goal 111 idealized end state. . . . A contextualist, in a way, is an organicist who has peered into the Platonic cavc and found it empty. (p. 201)

Developmental change is not necessarily equivalent to progress in contextualism because incidental causality precludes inevitability of progress-and inevitability of everything else except novelty itself (Pepper, 1942, p. 260; 1934b). Gergen emphasized this aspect of the model in referring to it as an aleatory orientation (1977) and an aleatoric perspective (1980). (The italicized adjectives are derived from the Latin afea, chance.)

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An intriguing feature of contextualism is that the denial of necessity, which makes future occurrences of events and completions of events possible rather than inevitable, also makes the past possible rather than actual. Although the past was actual at one time. now that it is past it is no longer actual and any specific past is only one of several possible pasts (Pepper, 1935; for relevant discussion see also James, 1890, p. 609: Kvale, 1974; Pepper, 1934b; Riegel, 1972).

C. CAUSE-EFFECT RELATIONS

An especially important difference between integrative and dispersive world views is their perspectives on the one-to-one, many-to-one, and one-to-many conceptions of cause-effect relations.

1. Integrative World Views

a. One-to-one Relations. In integrative world views, the one-to-one conception of cause-effect relations is accepted categorically: One cause can have only one effect because novelty is categorically rejected. h. Muny-to-One Relations. According to the many-to-one conception of cause-effect relations, many causes can have the same effect. This conception seems reasonable; but it is problematic in an integrative view even if each of the many causes has a one-to-one relation to its effect. It is problematic in mechanism because it contradicts the conception of postdiction, or explanation, as formally the same as prediction. That is, in mechanism, given the relevant process laws and assessment of the present state of the system, all future and past states can be equally well predicted and postdicted, respectively. However, in postdiction, many-to-one relations would become equivalent to one-to-many relations, which are denied. (The limitation imposed by the indeterminacy principle is irrelevant to the point because it would affect prediction and postdiction equally.) In organicism, many-to-one relations are rejected as developmental laws because they are inconsistent with final causality. The direction of development is determined by the final cause; that is, the path to the end is a specific sequence of specific stages. Many-to-one relations would allow alternative paths to the end and would therefore leave directionality unexplained.

c. One-to-Many Relations. According to the one-to-many conception of cause-effect relations, one cause can have alternative effects. This conception is inconsistent with an integrative view because it permits novel effects. Novel effects are denied in both mechanism and organicism. Furthermore, in organicism,

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one-to-many relations would allow alternative ends and thus would contradict final causality.

2. Dispersive World Views In dispersive world views, the one-to-one conception is held lightly; it is accepted when found but is accepted only tentatively. In contrast, the many-to-one and one-to-many conceptions are accepted categorically: Many causes can have the same effect and one cause can have alternative effects because novelty is categorical. A given effect could always reflect chance causality-an outcome could result from chance encounters as well as from behavior that had this outcome as the goal. Similarly, a given event could always have a novel result. Another way to express these considerations is to say that many-to-one relations make the past uncertain and one-to-many relations make the future uncertain. Mead (1932/1959) said, “We look forward with vivid interest to the reconstruction, in the world that will be, of the world that has been, for we realize that the world that will be cannot differ from the world that is without rewriting the past to which we now look back” (p. 3). He could have said just that the past changes. Mead also said, “There is a finality that goes with the passing of every event. To every account of that event this finality is added, but the whole import of this finality belongs to the same world in experience to which this account belongs” (p. 3). That is, the past is understandable only in the present, and as the “present” changes, so does the understanding of the past. Kvale (1977) made the same point, citing Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, among others. (For other brief discussions of the uncertainty-and changeability-f the past, see Kaplan, 1964, p. 361; Kvale, 1974, 1977.) Empirical evidence is consistent with these conceptions. One example is research reviewed by Wisdom (1989) on the cycle of violence: Retrospective studies show that criminally violent adults are more likely than other adults to have been exposed to family violence and abuse as children, but that by far the majority of criminally violent adults were not exposed to family violence and abuse as children. Thus, the present (criminal violence) has more than one past. Prospective studies show that children who are exposed to family violence and abuse are more likely than other children to become criminally violent adults, but that by far the majority of at-risk children do not become criminally violent adults. Thus, the one present (family violence) can have more than one future. A final point here is that in contextualism, chance is categorically accepted as the possible cause of these multiple paths, but that a contextualist need not and should not presume that chance has a role unless other possible causes have been tested and found to be irrelevant. In the case of the cycle of violence, some of the moderator variables have been identified (Wisdom, 1989).

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VIII. Adequacy of Contextualism Legitimate criticism of a world view requires evaluation of its adequacy; and in order to compare world views, adeqiiacy needs a universally applicable definition. Pepper (1942, pp. 74-77, 118) defined adequacy in terms ofprecision and scope, which are universally applicable criteria. Precision is the extent to which each phenomenon covered can be given only one interpretation that is consistent with the categories of the world view, or at most only a few alternative interpretations that are consistent with these categories. Scope is the range of phenomena covered. Precision and scope are incompatible, or at least in the extant world views either one is bought at the expense of the other. The different world views differ in both precision and scope; but even so, they can be equivalent in adequacy. Adequacy reflects the trade-off between precision and scope, or, put another way, it is the resolution of the contradiction between precision and scope. A. PRECISION AND SCOPE

Pepper (1942, chap. 7) noted that contextualism is a dispersive theory. As such, it has great scope, but it is threatened by lack of precision; it is “constantly in difficulty with the number of equally consistent interpretations to which a single ‘fact’ is amenable” (p. 144). As Dixon and Hertzog (1984) said, “There are many ways [in contextualism] of analyzing a given event, none of which may be taken to ultimate completion; analysis, like knowledge, is never final” (pp. 3 4 ) . In contrast, mechanism and organicism are integrative theories: “The world appears literally as a cosmos where facts occur in a determinate order, and where, if enough were known, they could be predicted, or at least described, as being necessarily just what they are to the minutest detail” (Pepper, 1942, p. 143). The price these theories pay for precision, however, is lack of scope; this lack is forced on them, in part, by the need to reject as unreal any appearance of chance or unpredictability. B. EMERGENCE

Contextualism is dispersive-that is, it lacks high precision-because of the categorical acceptance of novelty: The appearance of novelty may be real (truly emergent) or unreal (attributable to some as yet unknown efficient cause). Overton (1984) argued that this dispersiveness makes contextualism inherently unsuitable as a basis for science because a central aim of all science is systematic organization of knowledge-“integratiori of disparate and seemingly divergent data sources”

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(p. 217). Lemer and Kauffman (1985) agreed. However, an implicit premise of the is argument is that the appearance of novelty is just that--appearance-and necessarily unreal. This is a categorical premise in mechanism and organicism; but if one starts with the premise that the appearance of novelty may be real rather than mere appearance, then the mechanistic and organic world views are unsuitable because they explain away novelty rather than explain it. C. THE CRITERION OF PREDICTABILITY

A second implicit premise of Overton’s (1984) argument that contextualism is unsuitable as a basis for science is that predictability is a benchmark of science or at least is one of the goals of science. Many philosophers and scientists agree with this premise (e.g., Feigl, 1953; Spiker, 1977). However, Popper believed that the goal of science is satisfactory explanation (1983, p. 134). An explanation cannot be satisfactory unless it explains the facts and meets the falsifiability criterion. In order to meet the falsifiability criterion, the explanation must have testable implications, which may be predictions (Popper, 1983, pp. 117, 288). If novelty is denied, then complete predictability is in principle possible, within the limits of the principle of indeterminacy; and if novelty is accepted, then complete predictability is in principle impossible. Therefore, if one accepts the premise that prediction is the benchmark of science, then Overton’s argument is persuasive and compelling, and indeed no world view that accepts novelty can underlie science. However, if one accepts the counterpremise that prediction is not a necessary benchmark of science, then contextualism becomes a legitimate model for science (and so does formism, which is also dispersive).

1. Relation of World Views to the Predictability Criterion Popper (1983) believed that metaphysics should be eliminated from science insofar as possible because metaphysics is untestable; but he also believed that not all metaphysical elements can be eliminated from science (pp. 179-180). Max Planck (1949b, pp. 82-83) pointed out that the definition of science depends on the world view of the person giving the definition, and he commented that the assertion that science has no presuppositions means that scientists have no irrevocable preconceived opinions as to what is true, not that they have no world view (p. 82). Consequently, one can argue that acceptance of the premise that prediction is the benchmark of science depends on a scientist’s world view. Mechanists and organicists will categorically accept the premise, and reject the counterpremise that prediction is not a benchmark of science; contextualists will categorically accept the counterpremise and reject the premise. Mechanists accept

predictive certainty in the literal sense. Organicists accept it in the sense of determinism but not in the sense of continuity. That is, organicists believe that emergence prevents derivation or deduction of the characteristics of any stage from the characteristics of the preceding stage, but they also believe that finality determines a fixed set of stages in a fixed sequence-each stage is a model that integrates the behaviors that appear therein. and the finalistic theory as a whole is a model that integrates these models (Overton & Newman, 1983). Contextualists deny both the predictive certainty of mechanism and the finality of organicism. Why do scientists who adopt contextualism continue to do science, knowing that n o final answers are possible? Because they believe science is the best way to get temporarily effective answers. a. Predictuhility in Mechanism. Predictability is ohviously an in-principle requirement in mechanism. Popper (1974) said. “We live in a universe of emergent novelty” in that solutions of problems “beget new and deeper problems” (p. 281). However. he was referring to problems for the scientist, which are in the methodological or epistemological domain, not in the ontological domain of the universe the scientist is trying to explain. Popper also said that a universe that includes “world 3.’’ which contains the products of the human mind, must be open, indeterminate, and unpredictable. He used as an example a man drawing a detailed map of the room he is working in, including in the map the map he is drawing, which must also include the map in the map. Each line he adds to his map must be added to the maps within each map. The task is not completable because it involves an infinite series; and the drawing of the lines is increasingly imprecise because the lines become increasingly small. The errors in drawing the line ”in principle will be unpredictable and indeterniinate” (p. 380). Aside from his failure 10 specify the principle involved, Popper made a category-mistake (Ryle, 1949) in interpreting the inability to predict, which is in the methodological domain ( a problem with acquisition of information), as being in the epistemological domain (a problem with knowability) or the ontological domain (a problem with real causality). What emerges and is therefore indeterminate is in the domains of methodology and epistemology, not the domain of ontology. That is, the errors that occurred must have had efficient causes, in the mechanistic world view, but either the causes cannot be assessed (a methodological problem) o r their effects cannot be interpreted (an epistemological problem). To be relevant to the mechanistic world view, issues such as Popper raised must refer to ontology. (Another problem with his example is that it is irrelevant to performance in the real world: In practice. the man would stop drawing the lines before they became too small to see. That is, Popper’s example is not in the domain of practice, it is in the domain of abstract logic, like Zeno’s paradoxes of motion and statements such as

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I will die at the stake if my next statement is a Lie. I will die at the stake. I leave aside the further question as to whether the errors in drawings of tiny lines are really in “world 3.”)

b. Predictability in Organicism and Contextualism. Predictability is also an in-principle requirement in organicism, in which it means derivability from the four basic Aristotelian causes, excluding incidental causes. However, in contextualism the possibility of true novelty requires that predictability is entirely a matter of practice rather than principle: Predictability is admitted (and no doubt enjoyed) when it occurs (Gergen, 1980), but it is also admitted (possibly without enjoyment) when it does not occur. Gergen (1977) pointed out that the weather forecaster has trouble making predictions from physical theory on any given day, and that the psychologist has a worse job not only because the number of relevant variables is large, but also because the list of relevant variables and the relationships among them are subject to change. He also pointed out, however, that even incorrect predictions can be useful if they are used to guide the revising of a theory. Baltes (1987) characterized Gergen’s approach as “radical” contextualism, but it is radical only in that Gergen was in effect exploring the consequences of taking the dispersiveness category of contextualism seriously. The fact that he was able to develop a basis for science in the face of dispersiveness contradicts Overton’s (1984) assertion that the dispersiveness category is incompatible with science. A more conservative conclusion of the line of reasoning Gergen was pursuing is that theory should not only organize knowledge but also should guide the generation of new knowledge. Even though this position was advanced in a Soviet textbook on Marxism-Leninism (The Fundamentals, 1982, p. 181), it is still conservative-and fully compatible with contextualism, formism, and organicism, lacking only the predictability criterion to be fully compatible with mechanism.

c. Predictability and Scope. If scope rather than predictability is taken as the benchmark of science, then mechanism and organicism are found to be lacking and contextualism comes to the fore (Pepper, 1942, chap. 7). Mechanists and organicists prefer precision; contextualists and formists prefer scope. However, none of the four world views should be said to be deficient in precision or scope. Rather, mechanism and organicism have more precision than contextualism and formism, and the latter have more scope than the former. However, on the one hand, mechanism and organicism are not deficient in scope, because scope is secondary to determinateness (precision) in these world views; and on the other hand, contextualism and formism are not deficient in precision, because predictability is secondary to scope in these world views. Thus, attributing deficiency of one or the other kind to a world view must come from use of the categories of a different world view. For example, the failure of physics to explain the beauty of a rose is not a deficiency because this topic is not included in its scope; and the

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failure of psycholinguistics to explain operant conditioning is not a deficiency because this topic is not included i n its scope. Nevertheless, both precision and scope are important for science, and no world view that is truly deficient-n its own ground rules-in either characteristic can serve as a basis for science. As Pepper (1942) pointed out, all four world views mentioned here are relatively adequate for this purpose.

2. Adequacy of the Predictability Criterion Even when predictability is taken to be an important criterion, it does not yield certainty. The 19th-century philosopher of science William Whewell extolled prediction: “It is a test of true theories not only to account for, but to predict phenomena” (1847/1967, Aphorism XII, p. 468). His argument was: “Such a coincidence of untried facts with speculative assertions cannot be the work of chance, but implies some large portion of truth in the principles on which the reasoning is founded” (p. 64). The phrase “some large portion” is a hedge implying that even verified prediction is fallible. The phrase could have been careless (Whewell habitually published his first drafts-Herivel, 1967, p. xxii). but an indication that the phrase was intended is that Whewell used similar phrases-‘% least to a great extent” and “to a considerable extent”--in the same section: “The truth and accuracy of these predictions [i.e., predictions from the “Epicyclicul Theory of the heavens”] were a proof that the hypothesis was valuable and, at least to a great extent, true; although, as was afterwards found, it involved a false representation of the structure of the heavens” (p. 63). And: “Those who can do this [ i.e., “determine effects beforehand”], must, to a considerable extent, have detected nature’s secret” (p. 64). Herschel (1841) agreed with Whewell, without the hedges but with some euphoria: Another character of sound induction5 is that they enable us to predict. We feel secure that our rule is based on the realities of nature. when it stands us in thc stcsd of new experience; when it crnbodics facts as an experience wider than our own would do. and in a way that our ordinary experience would ncccr rcach; when it will hear not stress. but torture. and gives true results in cases s t u d i o d y different from those which led to its discovery. (p. 133)

Nevertheless, the confirmation of a prediction has long been known to be a logical fallacy-the fallacy of affirming the consequent. The procedure is: Prediction: If theory A is true, then observation B is true. Observation: B is true. Conclusion: Therefore, A is true.

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In practice, however, as Whewell’s statements imply, the reasoning is heuristic rather than syllogistic. Polya (1948) said that heuristic reasoning “yields only a plausible indication and not an unfailing certainty,” but “the most important signs of progress are heuristic” (p. 215). For example: If we are approaching land, we often see birds. Now we see birds. Therefore, probably, we are approaching land. Without the word “probably” the conclusion would be an outright fallacy. , , . With the word “probably” the conclusion is reasonable and natural but by no means a proof, a demonstrative conclusion; it is only an indication, a heuristic suggestion. (p. 215)

D. IDENTITY CRISIS

Pepper’s (1942) analysis of contextualism suggests that it has an “identity crisis” in that its categories constantly pull it in two different directions-toward mechanism and toward organicism. Having rejected contextualism as a basis for science, Overton (1984) followed up on this identity crisis by suggesting that self-styled contextualists are actually either mechanists or organicists, and that in order to avoid confusion they should “explicitly acknowledge when they mean mechanistic-contextualistic and when they mean organismic-contextualistic” (p. 219). However, Overton ignored Pepper’s conclusion that contextualism is after all an autonomous world view and therefore he missed the implication that should be drawn: Contextualists should constantly be on guard against slipping over into mechanism and organicism, by testing any new concepts and principles against the categories of contextualism.

IX. In Lieu of Summary: An Application of Contextualism The development of learning, memory, problem solving, and other cognitive processes is more strongly “canalized” during childhood than during adulthood and old age. That is, development in adulthood exhibits more plasticity and stronger environmental influences than in childhood (e.g., Flavell, 1970). Consequently, several investigators have concluded that the contextualistic world view is more appropriate than the mechanistic and organic world views as a model or framework for understanding adult development. Contextualism is more appropriate because of its openness to change and its denial of fixity of antecedentconsequent relations, that is, its insistence on the possibility of many-to-one and one-to-many relations rather than one-to-one or even many-to-one if one-to-many is denied (Labouvie-Vief & Chandler, 1978). (Flavell, 1970, made essentially the same point but without referring to world views as such. Pepper’s, 1942, analysis

was at that time largely unknown i n developmental psychology--or anywhere else.) For the same reasons, the contextualistic world view has also seemed more appropriate than the mechanistic and organic world views as a model or framework for understanding development across the entire life span (Baltes, 1979b, 1987: Baltes & Reese, 1984; Baltes, Reese, & Lipsitt, 1980; Labouvie-Vief & Chandler, 1978: Meacham, 1976; Reese, 1976a, 1976b, I977a, 1982). For example. contextualism can accommodate the change from relative fixity to relative plasticity as a “dialectical leap” from increasing alienation between experience and thinking to a reconciliation of experience and thinking, as Riegel (1978, pp. 108, 199) suggested. The reconciliation, which is a new synthesis, may sound Hegelian-as in the synthesis of the world and thought in the Absolute Idea. However, Hegelians would not agree with Riegel’s interpretation of Piaget’s theory as exhibiting increasing alienation between experience and thinking; they would agree with Piaget that the developmental changes in thinking yield increasing adaptation to experience. The disagreement is based on Riegel’s interpretation of thinking as concrete, which is more Marxist than Hegelian in spite of Riegel‘s attempt to put his interpretation in a Hegelian framework, and Piaget’s interpretation of experience as idealistic. For Piaget, effective experience is not a reflection of the real world; rather, it is a reflection of the mind. That is, although what might be called objective experience is a material cause of thinking for Piaget (Reesc, 1986). experience is effective only after it has been internalized-transfrmed by assimilation or accommodation. Another difference is that Riegel saw the reconciliation as accomplished by a shift from the abstract thinking of Piaget’s formal operational stage to more concrcte thinking (but not a regression to Piaget’s conc’retc op~~rotionul thinking); in contrast, the Hegelian synthesis is accomplished by a shift from concrete experience to more abstract experience. In short, life-span psychological development exhibits a multitude of dialectical contrasts and oppositions, both within and between age periods. The dialectical nature of development is hard to reconcile with mechanism and is more easily and plausibly represented by contextualism than by organicism. REFERENCES Aristotlc. (1952a). (’uir,yoric\ (E. M. Edghill. trans.). I n R . M . Hutchins (Ed.-in-Chief). C;rcrr/ hooks 01’ rlic, Itiwcw wot-/d (Vol. 8. pp. S-21; W. D. Ross. Ed.). Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britmnic;1. Aristotle. (1952b). Me/rrp/tpsics (W. D. Ross. trans.). I n R. M . Hutchins (Ed.-in-Chief). C;t-cwi hook.s o / i / i c ~LVc*.siernw r k l (Vul. 8.pp, 4W-020; W . D. Rosa. Ed.). Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Aristotle. ( 1 9 5 2 ~ )P/i\~sic,\ . (R. P. Hardit! & R. K. Ciayc, trans.). In R. M. Hutchins (Ed-in-Chiet). Grc~ri htdi.s of ilie We.vieni world (Vol. 8, pp. 3 7 - 3 5 ; W. D. Ross. Ed.). Chicago: Encyclopaedia Hritannica

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