Visions of Aesthetics, The Environment ...

Visions of Aesthetics,

The Environment &

Development:

The Legacy of

Joachim F. Wohlwill

Edited by Roger M. Downs Lynn S. Liben David S. Palermo The Pennsylvania State University

Copyright © 1991 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers 365 Broadway Hillsdale, New Jersey 07642

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Visions of aesthetics, the environment and development: the legacy of Joachim Wohlwill/ edited by Roger M. Downs, Lynn S. Lihen, David S. Palermo. p. em.

Papers from a conference entitled "The Legacy of Joachim F. Wohlwill" held at University Park,

Pain 1988. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 0-8058-1000-5 1. Environmental psycho1ogy--Congresses. 2. Aesthetics--Psychological aspects--Congress. 3. Developmental psychology--Congresses. 4. Wohlwill, Joachim E--Congresses. 1. Wohlwill, Joachim F. n. Downs, Roger M. m. Lihen, Lynn S. IV. Palermo, David Stuart, 1929 RF353.V57 1991 155--dc20 91-3359 CIP

Printed in the United States of America 10987654321

10

Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Developmental Theory and Research Strategies

;'

Willis F. o\rerton

Temple University

In this chapter I will look at what is meant by the term "development" and how developmental psychology goes about its main task of understanding and explaining development As we examine these issues we will see that different groups of psychologists are often not in agreement and the reason for this is that these groups begin their understanding from different sets of basic assumptions or what we may call world views. In his last paper, Wohlwill (in press) explored relations between world views, and methods in developmental research and theory. In that paper WohlwiII argued for a partial isomorphism between the realms. The present chapter further examines the degree of isomorphism. It might be discouraging to allow the word to go out that psychologists do not completely agree about such basic issues as the nature of their field of study and how to understand and explain this field. Indeed, one might even wonder if developmental psychology can be a legitimate science if such basic disagree ments occur. However, this attitude will be present only if one holds the rather anachronistic belief that the job of science in general, and developmental psychology in particular, is to produce hard, unalterable facts. A more contem porary narrative, and the one that frames this chapter, is the view that science aims to produce an organized body of knowledge, and science itself is a human activity that necessariIy includes a good deal of creative thinking as well as observing and experimenting (Overton, 1984, in press-a). Because thinking is of critical importance in science, it should not be surprising nor disappointing to learn that different groups of scientists will think about their field in different ways. Remember that for some time many physi cists argued that light was made up of waves, and other physicists argued it was made up of energy packets or particles. Eventually all scientists may come to

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believe that one way of thinking about important featur~s of their field is better than some other way in the sense that one way apgtars to produce a better organized body of knowledge. And this decision will be based partially on the observations and experiments that scientists do. However, until that time is reached it is important to recognize that different ways of thinking, or what we may call conceptual systems, that are based upon different assumptions or world views strongly influence the ways scientists understand their field and how they try to describe and explain it.

THE CONCEPT OF DEVELOPMENT If you ask people what they mean by development everyone will say that development concerns change. We talk about the development of various art forms, the development of societies, of different economic systems, of religion, of philosophy, of science, and so on, and in all of these, the focus of our attention is the changes that the area goes through. In developmental psychology we fmd the same situation. As a branch of psychology, the particular content that we consider is behavior and the processes such as thinking and perceiving, and the feelings that are implied by the behavior. As a developmental psych ology, the focus is upon the changes that occur in these behaviors and processes. All of this seems quite straightforward Developmental psychology is about changes in behavior and the processes implied by the behavior. Generally, developmental psychology explores these changes as they occur across the entire lifespan from conception to death or within certain periods such as changes in infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and the late mature years. Although the focus on change is straightforward and noncontroversial, major problems arise when we consider whether every type of change should be accepted as developmental and if not, what the nature of the change we call developmental is. Probably everyone would agree that we would not want to call the kind of change of behavior that occurs when we become fatigued or tired developmental. But what about changes that are very transitory or changes that are easily reversed? For example, if someone is struck on the head, he or she may change from a conscious to an unconscious state, but is this development? Or, I can train my dog to fetch a stick and then train her not to fetch a stick, is this development? The answer to these and other questions about the nature of development is that it depends on whom you ask. That is, some developmental psychologists will have a concept or defmition of development that answers these and other questions one way, and other developmental psychologists will have

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a definition that answers these another way. Thus, once we move beyond the agreement that development means change we find ourselves in the controversy over the nature of the change. In order to elaborate this very basic controversy, I first present two different definitions of developmental that are more or less accurate reflections of the way different groups of developmental psychologists actually think about develop ment. For reasons that will become clearer later, I will call the frrst definition an organismic defmition and I will call the second a mechanistic definition. After constructing these definitions I examine how they imply different approaches to our understanding of the study of development Then I discuss why different developmental psychologists view one or the other as being more appropriate to the ultimate goal of producing an organized body of knowledge. An organismic defmition stales that development refers to changes in the form or organization of any system, with these changes being directed toward defined endstates or goals. A mechanistic defmition states that development refers to changes that are a function of (i.e., are caused by) antecedent variables (e.g., environmental factors, biological factors). These definitions are general in the sense that they apply to any content such as behavior, art, societies, and so forth. To make them specific to developmental psychology we would simply insert the phrase "system of behavior" in place of "system" in the organismic definition, and "changes of behavior" in place of "changes" in the mechanistic definition. The frrst implication of these defmitions is that the organismic group focuses on change in the form or organization of the systems of behavior, whereas the mechanistic group focuses on the particular behavior. This means that the organismic group uses the behavior to infer the mental processes, or what are sometimes called structures or rules. These structures are assumed to be required for the behavior of interest The organismic group also considers how these structures change. For example, Piaget examined the behavior involved in what is called "conservation" (e.g., making the judgment that two pieces of clay are still equal in weight even after the shape of one has been changed). From this behavior he inferred that the child has an underlying system of logic that permits such judgments. In doing this, Piaget also examined how this underlying logical system changes from an inferior, inefficient form to a superior, efficient form (see Overton, 1990). Other organismic theorists such as Heinz Werner, John Bowlby, Donald W. Winnicott, and Erik: Erikson have taken the same approach, although their interest has been in other types of behavioral systems. The mechanistic group, on the other hand, believes that we should focus only on the behavior and its visible changes, and examine these rather than making infer

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ences about mental processes. Most psychologists who take what has been called a learning theory, a behavioral, or a cognitive-behavioral position, adopt this mechanistic approach. Good examples of this view are found in the writings of psychologists such as B. F. Skinner, Jacob Gewirtz, Sidney Bijou, and Donald Baer. Thus, we see a frrst difference in how the groups understand the change that is development For one group, it is primarily the change of underlying mental structures (i.e., the organization of processes); for the other it is the change of specific behavior. A second, and perhaps more critical, implication of the two defmitions is that the kind of change that is acceptable as developmental for the organismic group is change that is directional in nature. The mechanistic group does not consider this to be a necessary feature of their approach. This means that from the organismic perspective the change must have specified order to it, it must progress toward an ultimate level or end for it to be considered developmental. In fact, this group argues that the only way we can know development is by creating principles or rules of order conceptually. Once the rule of order is constructed we can then identify a change within the context of a rule. It is for this reason that the organismic group sometimes claims that development is a rational a priori concept (Le., a theoretical construction that is created and does not come directly from observation). This is a rather difficult idea; the following example may clarify it. Suppose we plant a seed. You and I know in advance that it is a carrot seed and we already have a rule that says if the conditions are correct the seed will go through a series of transformations until it reaches its final mature form. Thus, we have a rule about the end state (a ripe carrot), and the prior forms of this are ordered as s~ baby carrot, immature carrot, and so on, in a direction toward the end. But suppose we did not have this rule and had only observation. Then we might plant our seed and come back a few days later to be surprised to fmd a different thing (a baby carrot) in the hole. Then if we again covered the hole and came back at yet a later time, we would find another entirely different thing, and so on. Thus, if we use only observation the best we can establish, the organismic group would say, are differences. They maintain that we must create a rule that gives the end, and hence the direction, before we can know development. Examples of this approach can be found in the work of all the organismic theorists. Piaget took mature logical thinking in specific domains of content such as thinking about space, time, number, and causality as the end state. This established the direction in which development would proceed. Then he ordered the prior ways (forms) of 'thinking in terms of how closely they approximated this end The infant lacks symbOls, and hence true thought, and therefore is very

~.

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far from this end The toddler has symbols but not a representational logic and so is closer to the end. The child has an incomplete logic and so is closer yet (see Overton, 1990). Freud did the same kind of thing, but he was interested in psychosexual maturity as the end state. Therefore, given this end and the direction it establishes, Freud ordered approximations to it as the oral period, the anal period, and so on. The general idea, quite simply, is that you cannot have a theory (explanation), unless you have something to have a theory about. The "something" here is that mature form of the phenomenon at interest. This presents the criterion for ordering earlier forms of the phenomenon. An important related implication of this idea that direction is necessary to the definition of development is that it also excludes several types of change. From this perspective changes that are very transitory, cyclical, or easily reversed would not be developmental because they are not progressive in a clearly defined, linear manner toward an end or criterion state. Every night I go from a conscious state to an unconscious state, and every morning I go back again to a conscious state. This cycle is not development Behavioral theories sometimes maintain that any behavior that is learned can also be unlearned (Le., extin guished). Such learning would not be development. In discussing the idea of direction we should consider briefly the role that the concept of age plays in developmental psychology. In fact neither group believes that age contributes very much to our understanding (Wohlwill, 1973). Both groups recognize that age is nothing but time, and time in and of itself adds little to our understanding of development Both groups use age as a simple device to mark when a particular event, such as the beginning of language or fear of strangers, generally occurs. But neither group believes that age should be a part of the defmition of development As we will see, the mechanistic group believes that the things that cause the behavior to change, rather than age, are what is important. The organismic group, on the other hand, holds that although age is a rough and ready rule of order, it is too general to give precise meaning to any specific development The second implication of our two definitions, then, is that the kind of change the organismic group accepts as developmental must have a specified direction to it. This is a point of controversy because the mechanistic group contends that a specified direction is not necessary. They present two arguments. On the one hand, they say that it is not appropriate to introduce a rule of order because this is not something we can actually see. Again, as with the earlier implication, the mechanistic group prefers to stay as close to the observable behavior as possible and avoid Bl~g inferences. The organismic group believes that such inferences are n~ for understanding. Second, the mechanistic group believes that e.Jen if those inferences about direction (and also

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about mental structures and processes) are allowed, they will ultimately be replaced by a complete knowledge of the causes (the antecedent variables). Think of the development of a statue for example. The organismic group would say that to understand the development of the initial block of marble through its various transformations, we must have the rule that it is going to become the finished form of the statue, such as the statue of a man or the statue of a horse. The rule then will define what are and what are not events that can be causally related to the development of this form. If we consider the blows of a hammer as potential causes then a very hard blow that splits the marble into thousands of tiny pieces will not be a cause of the development of the statue, whereas other blows that perhaps yield some feature of an arm or a leg will be considered causes. The mechanistic group argues that once all the causes are known the direction is no longer important The organismic group argues that direction can never be eliminated, and this is partially because it defmes what can and cannot be considered as causes. This discussion of causes leads to a third implication of the two definitions of development Although the role of cause will be more thoroughly considered when we focus specifically on what explains development, here we may note that the mechanistic group, but not the organismic group, includes the idea of cause as a major part of the definition of development. Recall that the mechanistic group defines development as changes of behavior that are a function of (i.e., caused by) antecedent variables. This means that any change that is caused or produced by specific events, such as rewards or punishments, can be thought of as development Further, as we will see later, because mechanists believe that specific events must cause all change, it follows that any kind of change can be considered development Thus, the mechanistic group does not believe it is necessary to distinguish between the change that OCCW"S in an experiment when, for example, we train people to remember lists of words (i.e., change from recall of a few to recall of many words), and change that is directional and nonrever sible. From this perspective, ,when we apply the term "development" becomes a matter of convenience rather ~. necessity. The only difference, this group would maintain, between the be.ral changes that occur in an experiment and other behavioral changes that occur across the lifespan has to do with the particular topic or content that interests the investigator; either or both could be labeled developmental or not if the experimenter found it convenient The organismic group argues against this view partially because they believe it reduces "development" to a meaningless concept and also because they believe that the study of true developmental change (as they define it) adds a unique dimension to our understanding of behavior. They believe, as we will see, that development concerns directional changes that can never be characterized


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completely by antecedent causes. In this section we have seen how starting from an agreement that develop ment refers to change, the organismic and mechanistic groups construct different definitions of development, which leads to very different controversial implic ations concerning the nature of development, as well as to different approaches to the study of development Many other inferences could also be drawn. For example, we might note that the mechanistic group tends to employ procedures for training in many of their investigations because they believe that these procedures will best demonstrate the antecedent causes that produce the develop ment. On the other hand, the organismic group tends to use procedures designed to assess the underlying mental structures and changes of these structures. Thus, specific scientific procedures are related to these different understandings. However, at this point it is best to leave these implications and to tum instead to the question of why these groups came to have such different understandings or concepts of development, and therefore why each group believes that its approach will best lead to the ultimate goal of producing a systematic body of knowledge. To answer these questions, we must rettnn to the ideas of conceptual systems and world views mentioned earlier. The different concepts of develop ment and their implications do not arise because people observe different things in the world. They arise because people have different sets of basic beliefs or assumptions about the nature of the world. A set of interrelated assumptions about the nature of the world is called a world view. A particular world view determines a good deal about the kinds of concepts we have and so, world views determine our conceptual systems. Because world views consist of beliefs or assumptions, they cannot be tested in the sense of performing an experiment to see if they are true. Rather, these assumptions act like rules that guide the way we understand and the way we observe. Think for a moment of what it would be like if some of us wore lenses that were both rose-tinted and distorted the view so that everyone looked rather fat, while others wore lenses that were both blue-tinted and made everyone l~ rather thin. If we also imagine that without any lenses at all we could see on1¥ extremely blurred images, then we have a rough sense of the way in which different world views and their conceptual systems o p e r a t e . : . ! ' In the next section I briet1'J· describe the history of two very basic and different assumptions that came to form central parts of what have been called the organismic world view or model and the mechanistic world view or model. We will see how much philosophical concepts influenced psychology as it came to consider the nature of development. Further on I will have more to say about

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world models and how they operate, and more about other basic assumptions, and how they influence the explanation and investigation of development.

BEING AND BECOMING

The ideas or assumptions that I examine here concern the question of whether it is best to think of the world and all the things in the world as ultimately stable and fIXed or as ultimately active and changing. This is an important question because the answer that one chooses will lead to different problems that have to be solved. For example, if you choose stable and fIXed as the answer, then you must solve the problem of why some things apPear to be active and changing. Similarly, if you choose active and changing, then you must solve the problem of why some things apPeaf to be stable and fIXed. Although we will deal with the issue at the very abstract general level of philosophical ideas, the same issue confronts modem physicists (and developmental psychologists, 100). Some physicists believe that the physical world is built from basic elementary particles (stable and fixed) called quarks. Other physicists believe that ultimately the physical world is composed of energy (active and changing) and the particles themselves grow out of this energy like soap bubbles produced by the agitation of a soapy film. In the time of ancient Greek philosophy, the problem was to discover the nature of the real. That is, given the many appearances that confront our senses and observations, what is reality (see Wartofsky, 1968, for an extended discus sion)? The Greeks were trying to discover some regularity, some order and organization in the often chaotic and contradictory world of what we see, hear, feel, smell, and taste. The idea of discovering order and organization in our world of commonsense experience later became the main task of science (see Overton, 1984, in press-a). Tht~uilding of a systematized body of knowledge is the construction of order and organization. The difference between philoso phers and empirical scientists is that the latter introduced empirical methods (i.e., methods of observation and experi~tion) to support rational speculation. But more will be said of this later. ".. In an attempt to confront the issue of apPearance and reality, the philosopher Thales chose water as being the real and maintained all the things of the world were appearances that were ultimately reducible to this single fixed element. In similar fashion, Anaximenes chose air as the specific fixed substance of reality and later, Democrites, the father of what has been called atomism (see discussion of Newton later in this chapter), proposed that the world was composed of fixed little physical bodies (atoms) and spaces (voids). In each of these pre-Socratic


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metaphysical proposals, a single fIXed substance was put forth as the ultimate building block of the many appearances that we experience in the world From this position the static state of being is basic, and change or becoming must be understood as appearances that result from forces or specific causes operating upon the primary substance. This tradition did not, however, go unchallenged even during the pre Socratic period. Anaximander rejected Thales' idea that a fixed substance was the basis of all things and instead proposed that reality was to be found in an indeterminate stuff that was self-activity. For Anaximander, any fixed elements grew out of this activity. Thus, here we find that activity is basic and stability secondary. Heraclites elaborated this theme and proposed that change (fIre) was basic. If this were the case, then the stable things we experience are only stages in the process of change. Here becoming or change is seen as basic and being or fIXity is like a photographic snapshot that captures a moving object in a single stopped frame. "Being" is found in "Becoming." Constancy is found in change. The problem here is not to discover causes that produce the change because change is imminent and necessary. The problem rather, is to discover rules (laws) that will establish a stable direction and stable states within the context of this imminent and necessary change. If we stop here for a moment and reflect upon the two definitions of devel opment presented earlier it should be fairly clear how the formulation of the different concepts would be influenced by these different philosophical assump tions. The mechanistic concepts of development as changes that are caused is influenced by the "Being" position that ultimately everything is stable and fIXed and, hence, change is the problem to be addressed. The organismic concept of development as directional change reflects the "Becoming" position that change is necessary. Here stable direction and stable states are the issues to be explored. Before proceeding, it might also be helpful to clarify what is meant exactly by the "Becoming" position's assertion of change that is necessary. The distinction between the necessary and accidental w3fJIrst articulated by Aristotle. Change that is accidental is change caused by fonwtous or contingent events. Necessary change is free of causal ev~-and is natural to the entity being considered. For example, a plant goeS"'ifil51gb a sequence of changes that are as necessary to the essence of the plant as are any other intrinsic features. That is, the changes must occur or the plant would be something other than itself. On the other hand, the plant has a history in the sense that accidental events such as favorable or unfavorable nutrients or good or bad weather may occur. These accidental events are not related to the necessary changes, but they may cause changes in the rate or ultimate level of the plant's growth. From this it should

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be clear that the mechanistic group, starting from the "Being" assumption, asserts that there are no necessary changes but rather that all change and hence all development is accidental. The organismic group, starting from the "Becoming" position, affrrms necessary change and asserts that this is the proper under standing of development. From this position accidental changes are not denied, though contingent causes are considered to affect rate and terminal level of development rather than development per se (Overton, in press-a; Overton & Reese, 1981). The two philosophical traditions of "Being" and "Becoming" were further elaborated across the centuries (see Allport, 1955; Nisbet, 1969). In the 17th centmy Leibnitz further expanded the "Becoming position" through his concept of the monad. The monad was considered to be the basic irreducible feature of all matter. It differed from the atom, however, in that it was thought of as inherently active and continuously changing. Because of the existence of constant change, knowledge of the world could not be obtained by attempting to reduce the events of experience down to some stable and fIxed feature. The approach to be taken was to discover, by a rational, logical method, the rules according to which the change operated. Although the concept of the monad did not survive, it served to establish the basic idea and set the stage for the 18th centmy expansion of the idea to an understanding of man, society, and nature. In 1725 Giambattista Vico attacked the static view of human natUre and proposed the changes of society to be the reflection of the imminent and necessary development of the human mind In his General History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens Immanuel Kant (1755) (cited in Toulmin & Good fIeld, 1965, p. 130) applied the idea to the material world and maintained that the world was continuously evolving in a systerjatic and ordered fashion. And from . _ ' Gottfried Herder extended the idea 1784 on, in a series of four VOIUm~J..oJwm of "Becoming" to include all n~ animal species and human society alike (Toulmin & GoodfIeld, 1965). In the late 18th and early 19th centuries the most influential fIgure to advance the idea of "Becoming" was Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). For Hegel, history was a necessary, dynamic unfolding, and he proposed that this necessary change was dialectical in nature. The essence of the dialectic process is that ideas generate their contmdictions, and in the conflict between an idea (called the thesis) and its contmdiction (the antithesis) a new idea (the synthesis) emerges. The synthesis then acts as a new thesis and the process continues toward (direction), but never reaching, the end of the "absolute idea." The process as applied to individual minds, to society, and to history is then a kind of law or rule of necessary change (i.e., development). The dialectic was later elaborated


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in a somewhat different form by Karl Marx and today it is found in either its Hegelian or Marxian form in the developmental psychological writings of Piaget, Heinz Werner, Donald W. Winnicott, Klaus Riegel, and various soviet psycho logists (see Overton, in press-a, in press-b; Overton & Reese, 1981; Riegel, 1978). In the 19th century the position of "Becoming" flourished in the works of social theorists such as Comte, Marx, and Spencer and in the writings of bio logists such as Wolff, Goethe, and von Baer. Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) is particularly worth noting because he appears to be the fIrSt person to attempt to translate the idea of "Becoming" from the status of a philosophical principle to that of a scientific principle (Nisbet, 1969). For Spencer, the necessary order of development was a process of differentiation whereby organisms and society advance from homogeneity of structure to heterogeneity of structure. Much later Heinz Werner (1948, 1957) incorporated this principle into his theory of psycho logical development and referred to it as the orthogenetic (normal development) principle. This principle, which serves to order the process of becoming in developmental phenomena (see fmal explanation later in this chapter) states that the pattern of any development is from an initial state of globality and lack of differentiation to a state of increased differentiation, articulation, and hierarchic integration. While the "Becoming" position was in the process of elaboration and expansion, so too was its rival, the position of "Being." Being emphasizes stability, fIXity, and accidental change. Aristotle was influential in establishing this idea in Western culture through his iJjsistence on the fIXity of organic species, and his view that species, from the ~ most simple to the most complex, form a fIXed series or a "Ladder of ~ ' This nonevolutionary idea came to be called the "Great Chain of Bei ,_. d its impact was felt across history (Lovejoy, 1936). But probably the greatest influence on the establishment and elaboration of the "Being" position was provided by the work of Sir Isaac Newton. In his Mathematical Principles ofNatural Philosophy Newton (1687/1947) held that ultimately all bodies are composed of extended, impenetrable, and inert fixed atoms. The power of the atom lay in its being inactive and unchanging. Change was understood not as transformation of a body-atoms always maintain their own identity unlike Leibnitz's monads-but as motion, and this was caused by forces acting upon the body. This led directly to a program for understanding the world that was quite unlike that of the "Becoming" position. Here the task was to take the world of experience (Le., the appearance) and reduce it through analysis to its smallest stable units (Le., atoms), and then find the forces (causes)

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that operate upon the units. Finally, the regularities that exist between the forces and the atoms were to be described, and inductive generalizations from the descriptions were to lead to laws. Although this gets ahead of the story a bit, I must note briefly the very different meaning that the scientific concept of "law" has in the "Becoming" and "Being" positions. Within the "Becoming" position "law" is a rational and logical rule created by the investigator to bring order and organization into the world of constant change. In the "Being" position "law" is a descriptive generalization of a fixed existing relationship betWeen cause and effect (see, Overton, in press-a). It is an interesting, and not unimportant, fact that Newton in his own work actually left room for a "Becoming" position. That is, although he maintained that his physical laws adequately described the current state of nature, he explicitly rejected the idea that they reflected how nature came to be this way (Prosch, 1964). In the 18th and 19th centuries, philosophers who elaborated and eXPanded on Newton's ideas ignored this feature, however, and focused on the attempt to understand nature, man, and society from the vantage point of the "Being" position. The most important elaboration of the Newtonian position began with the British Empiricist movement This group was concerned, not with change, but with an attempt to establish the fixed elements that were the essential compon ents of any accidental change. In particular, they proposed to show that the apparent natural activity of mind was, in fact, a product of the material world described by Newton and hence reducible to the same fixed origin. John Locke (1632-1704), a great admirer of Newton, started the'movement with his famous statement, "there is nothing in the intellect which is not fIrst in the senses" (Locke, 1690/1959; cited in Cassirer, 1951). This statement of the tabula rasa (the mind as a blank slate) was only partially developed by Locke, however. Further elaboration was provided first by Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753), and most significantly by David Home (1711-1776). In the 19th century the issue moved from a focus on mind per se to a focus on behavior or action with the emergence of the Utilitarian or Philosophical Radicalism movement (Halevy, 1955) defined by the work of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), James Mill (1773-1836), and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). As Halevy has noted, this movement was "an attempt to apply the principles of Newton to the affairs of politics and morals" (1955, p. 6). The frrst step in this process· was to show that complex ideas could be reduced to simple ideas and these to sensations derived from the material world The accidental causes that produced the apparent complexity out of the simple elements were described by


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the principle of association. This included association by similarity, contiguity, and intensity; associationism has continued to be an important feature of the "Being" position to the present day. In the late 19th century and into the 20th, the "Being" position formed the basis for the emerging new experimental psychology, with its emphasis on analytic reduction of consciousness into atomic sensations. However, it is worthy of note that the founder of psychology proper, Wilhelm Wundt (1832 1920), acknowledged that the experimental method was not adequate to the whole of psychology (Boring, 1957). Wundt reflected his belief in the signifi cance of the "Becoming" position in his statement, "the fundamental character of mentallife...in all its phases...is process; and active, not a passive existence; development not stagnation. The understanding of the basal laws of this develop ment is the final goal of psychology" (Wund!, 1907, p. 454). However, in later years when psychology tmned its attention more specifically to the investigation of changes across the lifespan, the founder of modem behaviorism, J. B. Watson, was able to ignore this reservation and construct his developmental psychology totally within the "Being" framework. In Watson's view, as in the view of later behavioral theorists such as Skinner and other learning theorists, the changes were changes of behavior or, more specifically, the elementary responses that constitute behavior, and these were understood to be strictly determined by those chance causes called stimuli, whether the stimuli were of the external or internal variety (see Cairns & Ornstein, 1979). At the same time, and running parallel to this position, James Mark Baldwin (1861-1934) was elaborating a develop mental psychology within the "Becoming" frainework, which would be followed by similar theories by Werner, Piaget, Erik Erikson, and Lawrence Kohlberg, all emphasizing the significance of imminent, necessary, and directional change.

ORGANIZATION: NECESSARY OR ACCIDENTAL At this point I have outlined the history of two deep-seated and diametrically opposed assumptions that came to form the core of the organismic ("Becoming') and mechanistic ("Being") world views. In one, activity and change are basic, and stability is the problem. In the other, stability and fIXity are basic and change is the problem. There is a further set of assumptions that must be considered before one can clearly grasp the nature of these world views and their effect on developmental psychology. The basic issue to be considered is the nature of the organization or the form of a thing. And here again, as in the issue of "Being" versus "Becoming," the problem revolves around the question of

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whether organization is necessary or accidental. The reason this is important is that, as you will recall, the organismic definition of development makes changes in the form or organization of behavior its primary focus while the mechanistic definition refers to changes in actual behavior. The frrst philosopher to seriously consider the question of forms or organ ization was Plato (469-399 B.C.). He argued that the ultimate reality consists of forms or ideas, and these immaterial features are known by reason and not by perception. Now, although we can say that the form or organization of a thing is its pattern or regularity, this is a rather difficult concept; a contemporary example may be helpful for clarification. Think of the concept of "grasping" as in grasping an object. There are many ways we may grasp an object. We may grasp it with one fmger, one hand, both hands, both feet, and so on. But in none of these behaviors do we actually see "grasping." We simply see a finger, a hand, or whatever make contact with and cwve around an object Grasping is the inferred form or organization that gives meaning to all of these specific behaviors. It is necessary to the understanding of the event or object, but it is produced by reason and not by perception. Aristotle (385-322 B.C.) also believed that form or organization was a necessary feature for understanding. He argued that the form is what is unique to the object or event in question, what makes it what it is and makes it distinctive from other things or events. For example, if we did not understand the form of a statue then it would have no meaning as a statue but would be merely a piece of marble. Further, if we did not understand the form of marble it would have no meaning as marble but would be merely stone and if we did not understand the form of stone..., and so on. Aristotle also disagreed with Plato's position that ideal forms existed apart from the objects themselves. The important point for our purposes is that he agreed that they were necessary and that rational thought (Le., the activity of the mind to form abstractions) rather than simply observation was an important ingredient in their discovery. Organization and Explanation A further and related position that Aristotle articulated concerned the nature of explanation. You will recall that earlier I suggested that a major task for developmental psychology is to explain development. In Aristotle we fmd the basic program for explanation that was to be elaborated and argued about down to the present day (see Overton, in press-a). Aristotle proposed that complete explanation inVOlved the discovery of four distinct causes. (In present day terminology only the frrst two are called causes).


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The material cause is the substance that the object is composed of. A present day example from psychology would be the physiological, neurological, or genetic features of the organism as they determine behavior. Efficient cause is the agent that moves the object Here, the stimulus, situational variables, or environmental variables offer contemporary examples. Notice that when I described the "Being" position, it was material and efficient cause that fonned the exclusive focus of that framework. Material and efficient causes constitute the "fIXed" elements as well as the "uniform" elements of the mechanistic approach. They also constitute what in experimental methodology are called the antecedent variables or the independent variables. The third type of cause that Aristotle argued was required for complete explanation returns us directly to our discussion of organization. Formal cause is the pattern, organization, or form of an object Thus, as mentioned earlier, when Piaget inferred from behavior an underlying structure or rule such as a "scheme," an "operation," or a "logical grouping," he was proposing not total explanation, but rather the formal or pattern explanation. Similarly, Noam Chomsky has taken the behavior called language and has attempted to infer its underlying structures, rules, or forms. Also, when Werner discusses "different iated and integrated systems," or contemporary object relations theorists like Sullivan, Fairbairn, Bowlby, and Winnicott discuss "relational structures" (see Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983), they are all using a formal or pattern explanation. It is very important to point out that for the "Becoming" position, the discovery, through rational thought, of the inherent and necessary form or pattern of our subject matter is the solution to the problem of fmding stability in the face of the flux of activity. This position claims that behavior per se is too unreliable, too chaotic to provide the appropriate basis for understanding. And it is for this reason that the organismic group incorporates into its defmition of development the phrase "in the form or organization of a behavioral system." On the other hand, from the "Being" position, behavior or the response is the ultimate stable element and consequently the focus of the mechanistic definition. The fourth cause is called the final cause. This is the end toward which an object develops. This principle, also a type of pattern explanation, has already been discussed in connection with the "Becoming" position, and, with the organismic definition of development as changes directed toward specified ends. Several points should be emphasized with respect to formal and fmal causes. First, with respect to final cause, it should be explicitly understood that this pattern explanation involves a teleology, a goal orientation. However, it must also be recognized that· there is a profound distinction between objective and subjective teleology, and this distinction becomes critical at this point. Objective

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teleology involves the construction by the scientist of a principle that is designed to explain the phenomena under investigation. Subjective teleology involves subjectively held "purposes," or "aims," or "goals." Consider the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This final explanatory principle states that all events and objects in the universe are moving toward (direction) randomness. This principle is not the subjectively held purpose of a rock, nor of a building, nor of the cosmos. It is simply a rule, created by scientists, designed to bring order to the phenomena of interest, to explain (see Overton, in press-a). Second, formal and final causes do not "do" or "produce" anything in the sense that "cause" is usually thought of as producing an effect That is, they are not material or efficient causes. In this sense they are both pattern explanations. Instead they are principles that make the object or event intelligible or under standable. They give meaning to the event Third, the difference between formal and fmal explanation is that the formal explains a momentary organization or pattern and the final explains an organi zation of change. To illustrate, again consider Piaget's theory. Piaget describes several types of structures (i.e., the sensorimotor scheme, the operations, the logical groupings, and the logical group), to explain (formal) the mental organi zation that underlies the flux of behavior. These forms are themselves then ordered according to the principle of mature logical thought (fmal explanation) which presents the end and hence organizes the prior fonns with resPect to their distance from this end. (To be technically correct we should say that Piaget's equilibration principle, stating that organisms develop toward the highest state of equilibrium possible, is the final explanation. However, this would involve us in a rather complex description of the meanings of "highest," "state," and "equilibriumIt). As a final point we should again note that the creation of both formal and final explanations involve primarily a rational rather than a purely observational approach. On the other hand, material and, particularly, efficient causes are more susceptible to direct observation. Rationalism-Constructivism and Realism-Empiricism The fact that both reason and observation seem to be involved in the way we know and explain events fonned the cornerstone for a philosophical debate that was to influence sttongly the issue of whether organization is to be understood as necessary or accidental. The debate centers on the problem of epistemology (the theory of knowledge) and, thus, on the relationship between the knower (e.g., you and me) and what is known (e.g., that grass is green, that DNA forms the building block of organic life).


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At the time of Plato and Aristotle there was no mdical split between knowledge that derives from reason and knowledge that derives from observ ation, as we can see from the four explanatory principles proposed by Aristotle. Later in history such a split did occur and it led to the two epistemological positions called rationalism and realism-empiricism. Rationalism (also called interpretationism) claims that our minds possess a necessary organization (some type of a priori knowledge). Thus, in any type of observation we do, or explanation we make, concerning the actual world of commonsense experience, this organization necessarily intervenes and shapes our perceptions, experience, and knowledge. Thus, we can never have pure observation, but always observations guided and transformed by basic categories, concepts, or some type of organization. This leads to a constructivist theory of knowledge that maintains that the knower actively constructs the known world. To take an example outside the realm of philosophy, Piaget, Werner, and contempomry object relation theorists assert that the infant knows its world only through its own actions. Thus, what you and I know as a cup is for the infant only a pattern of gmspable or suckable activity. The infant's pattern of activities (structures of gmsping and sucking) are the only mechanisms for knowing, and thus, the world is known according to this active organization (Piaget calls this "assimilation"). You and I also construct the known world through our organized activity. However, our activity has developed to a level described as "con ceptual" and we, thus, know the thing as "a cup." Realism-empiricism claims that the world has an immutable existence of its own independent of the knower, and the knower comes to understand this world simply through observation. This position is aptly captured in John Locke's assertion mentioned earlier, that "There is nothing in the intellect which is not frrst in the senses." And the debate was set by Leibnitz's challenging reply, that there is "nothing in the intellect but the intellect itself' (cited in Cassirer, 1951). A contempomry non-philosophical example of realism- empiricism is provided by Eleanor Gibson's (1969, 1983) developmental psychological claim that the external world provides fully sufficient information for the acquisition of our perceptions and thoughts, that the acquisition of knowledge occurs through learning. During the time immediately following Aristotle and up through the time of Descartes (1596-1650), mtionalism was accepted as the primary approach for understanding the world. For Descartes it was through reason that the nature of the world was discovered. Beginning with innate ideas you deduce the true nature of the world. Thus, reason was the approach, and deduction the method. At the time, this view was enhanced by the contempomry "queen" of the

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sciences, mathematics, in which axioms and deduction playa key role. At the same time, the natural sciences were beginning to emerge in the works of Copernicus (1473-1543), Bacon (1561-1626), Kepler (1571-1630) and Galileo (1564-1642). Their successes fostered the realist-empiricist view in which observation was the approach, and induction (i.e., the generalization from particular observations) the method. Sir Francis Bacon was particularly important to the realist-empiricist movement because, in addition to describing a set of observational methods, he strongly argued against the acceptance of formal and final types of explanation. For Bacon, the acceptance of these types of explanations would divert invest igators from seeking knowledge through observation and experimentation. If this attitude were to prevail-and it did in empiricism and later in those forms of science called positivism and conventionalism (see Overton, 1984)-then not only would all knowledge be a product of observation, but organization could no longer be considered a necessary feature of objects and events. Organization, like "Becoming," would have to be considered as mere appearance produced by accidental causes only. The greatest advance in realism-empiricism was provided by the work of Newton. It will be recalled that Newton proposed that all bodies are ultimately composed of extended, impenetrable, and inert atoms. This position is called materialism because it states that the ultimate reality is static matter. Material ism is often associated with empiricism. It contrasts with a position called idealism which states that ideas or forms yield the ultimate reality. From Newton's position, momentary organization (formal explanation) and the organi zation of change (fmal explanation) could be eliminated from scientific consider ation as irrelevant. Instead, what has been called mechanical explanation, was introduced. This has already been alluded to. It consists of: (a) taking the subject matter (Le., the commonsense understanding of some domain), and reducing it through analysis to its smallest invariant stable part, its atom (the atom of physics, the element of chemistry, the genes of biology, the response of psychology); (b) 'fmding, through direct observation, the forces (Le., efficient or material causes) that operate upon the atom (the stimulus that determines the response in psychology); and (c) discovering through induction the laws (Le., the observed regularities) according to which the forces and atoms (stimuli and responses) operate. Thus, from an ontological belief in materialism (see Overton, in press-a) and an epistemological belief in realism, momentary organization and organization of change were banished from Newtonian science as unnecessary concepts. Uniformity, not organization, was taken as basic, and the apparent organization that we seem to discern in experience became a problem to be


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explained by the operation of efficient and/or material causes. I mentioned earlier that the work of the British Empiricist movement from Locke to Berkeley and Hume elaborated Newton's position concerning fIXity. The movement was also an attack on the ideas of necessary organization and rationalism, and it was a defense of mechanical explanation. In the elaboration of mechanical explanation, the experiment ultimately emerged as the sole tool for determining which of all the potential efficient and/or material causes were, in fact, the actual causes of the observed effect. The experiment is defined by the manipulation of some antecedent or independent variable (e.g., environmental, genetic, or neurophysiological stimuli) assumed to be the cause, and the observation of whether this actually affects the consequence or dependent variable (Le., the behavior). Empiricism was further articulated across the 19th and 20th centuries. As a set of rules designed to distinguish science from non-science, empiricism came to be known as positivism and later as conventionalism (see Overton, 1984; in press-a). Because the major assumption of all types of empiricism is that all knowledge must ultimately derive only from observation and methods based on observation (mechanical explanation and the experiment), it is not surprising that this group would assert that science, if it is to yield valid knowledge, must conform to this assumption. The importance of this major point for our purposes is that it explains why the group we called mechanistic believes that its understanding of development will lead to the ultimate scientific goal of producing a systematic body of knowledge. The mechanistic group accepts the assumption of empiricism and hence, from their viewpoint, observation (changes in behavior that are a function of, Le., caused by, antecedent variables) is the only appropriate approach that can be taken if we are to have valid general systematic knowledge. Contemporary arguments in favor of this view are presented by empiricist philosophers of science such as Braithwaite, Hempel, Nagel, and Popper. In the field of develop mental psychology Brainerd (1978) presented an interesting set of contemporary arguments for empiricist mechanical explanation. He claimed that Piaget's theory fails to be explanatory because it fails to specify antecedent variables (efficient or material causes). This is, of course, because from an empiricist perspective Brainerd cannot accept Piaget's concepts of organization (structure and direction) as types of explanation. Although empiricism grew in stature from the time of Newton, rationalism, or what today is usually called interpretationism, did not die. In fact, rationalism continued to be elaborated, and running a parallel course, it formed the chief rival to empiricism's understanding of explanation, knowledge, and science. While later forms of rationalism rejected Descartes' "innate ideas" and even the

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fixed categories of mind proposed by Kant, rationalism maintained its central tenet that the active organization of mind participates in the construction of the world as it is known. It will be recalled that Leibnitz, starting from the idea that reality is activity and change, proposed that understanding involved discovering the rules (i.e., the organization), according to which change operated. "Dis covery" here does not mean "fmding" in the sense of observing. Rather it means "to think up" or "construct" All knowledge from this perspective necessarily involves interpretation. For early rationalists, discovering formal and fmal explanations in the sense of constructing them was sufficient. Later, however, it came to be recognized that having the rules established rationally, inferences could be drawn from them, and these inferences could be tested in the world of observation. An important consequence of this is that it leads to a view of science that is both rational and empirical. Here reason establishes the necessary organization of the subject matter and observation establishes the plausibility of this organization. Thus, for example, a developmental theorist like Piaget may propose that a particular logical structure best represents the nature of the child's thought processes between 6 and 10 years of age (called the concrete operational structme); the formal explanation is constructed or discovered by reason. That is, out of the flux of activity we call the behavior of the child, Piaget proposed a necessary organization that establishes a momentary stability. Following this, it is possible to do observational tests to decide whether the structure is a good representation of all the kinds of thinking that the child does. If it is not, then someone can propose a better organization. If the representation is good then it is possible to go on and do experiments to decide such questions as whether there are environ mental events (efficient causes) that help or hinder the child in demonstrating this organization in a variety of situations, or whether there are environmental factors that affect when the child begins to exhibit this organization. Similar questions can be addressed concerning genetic and neurophysiological events (material causes). Notice that within this rationalist example, the experimental method or mechanical explanation as well as observation generally play a significant role but they do not yield a full explanation. For rationalism then, both reason and observation are significant components of science. This is quite different from the empiricists' insistence on observat ional methods as the sole soW'Ce of knowledge. For the rationalists, observation has meaning only in the context of reason; this point is made with force in the contemporary philosopher Hanson's (1958) aphorism, "all data are theory laden." Now we see why the group we earlier called the organismic group believes its understanding of development will lead to the ultimate scientific goal of producing a systematic body of knowledge. The organismic group accepts the

10. THEORY AND RESEARCH STRA1EGIES

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assumption of rationalism and hence, from their viewpoint, necessary organiz ation provided by reason (changes in the form or organization of any system of behavior, with these changes being directed toward defmed end states) must be considered if we are to have valid systematic knowledge. Other contemporary arguments in favor of this type of rationalist approach are presented by philoso phers of science such as Feyerabend, Hesse, Kuhn, Polanyi, Toulmin, Wartofsky, Lakatos, Laudan, and Putnam (see Overton, in press-a). It was Kant who most influentially articulated the view that both necessary organization and experience or observation are required for complete under standing. Kant was concerned with the question of how it is possible for us to have the knowledge we seem to have. He argued that sense experience although important, was not sufficient. Mind, he proposed, has an inherent organization that he referred to as the categories of understanding and forms of perception, and this organization is actively imposed upon sense experience to form objects as we know them. Thus, knowledge is partially an active construction of the necessary organization of mind, and partially a reflection of that which exists external to our minds. Whereas Kant primarily focused upon momentary organization (formal explanation), Hegel advanced the proposal that the organization of mind itself changes according to the dialectic principle (fmal explanation, or the pattern of change). According to this view, as later, more advanced forms of organization emerge they incorporate and integrate the earlier forms (e.g., you can still act in a sensorimotor fashion despite the fact that you currently possess advanced forms of mental organization). A further point that derives from the Hegelian position is that later forms exhibit a novelty not present in the earlier forms and is not explained by ante cedent conditions (efficient or material causes). A physical example of this is found when we combine hydrogen and oxygen to fonn water. Water may then be considered a later form and it exhibits certain novel properties-such as its appearance and the fact that when it is shaken it will go up one side of a glass and down the other-that were not present in the earlier forms. These novel properties are called "systemic properties" because they are characteristic of the whole system and not the parts (i.e., hydrogen or oxygen). They simply emerge when the parts are brought together. Thus, the whole or system is here different than the sum of its parts. In developmental psychology, Piaget's theory is again illustrative. The infant has an action (sensorimotor) organization. As the action systems (early patterns that will be parts of later patterns) become integrated a new system emerges (called "operations"). This new system has the novel property called "thinking." Later yet, operations become integrated and another

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new form emerges (called concrete operational groupings) and this system has the novel property called "reversibility." Thus, the child advances from the absence of thinking, then to thinking, and then to thinking that allows him to reverse his thought. This is quite a different view from a Newtonian type position that would claim complete reduction is possible. The Newtonian view as applied to developmental psychology is illustrated by the view that thinking is really just silent speech, and speech is really just sounds. Consequently, all one needs to know from this perspective is how environmental factors caused the initial sounds (the atoms) to be shaped into speech, and how environmental factors caused speech to become silent speech. Following Hegel, other philosophers such as Cassirer and Merleau-Ponty along with biologists such as Ludwig von Bertalanffy elaborated on the assump tion of necessary organization in both its momentary and change form (see Overton, 1975). Recently, the science of nonlinear systems or "chaos theory" (Gleick, 1987; Prigogine & Stengers, 1984) has provided further important elaborations of this concept At this point, however, we have sufficiently examined both this view and the view that organization is accidental, to illustrate the significance of these basic ideas, the conflict between them, and some of the contradictory implications they have for understanding and explanation in developmental psychology. I have briefly described, and given a rather schematic history of the basic assumptions that form, the core of the organismic and mechanistic world views. On the organismic side we have assumptions of necessary activity, change, and organization. On the mechanistic side we have assumptions of stability, fixity, and uniformity. It should be noted that each set of assumptions tends to coalesce to form an integrated unit For example, not only do we fmd historically that the same individuals who asserted the "Becoming" position also asserted the signifi cance of necessary organization but also, and more importantly, the logic of the situation is that the "Becoming" position requires an idea like necessary organiz ation and necessary organization requires a "Becoming" position. The same holds for "Being" and uniformity. Such logical consistency is an important feature of world views. It should also be noted that each set of assumptions tends to influence the generation of other ideas that are consistent with the fabric of the particular set. Activity, change, and organization entail a particular epistemology (Le., rationalism-constructivism), particular types of explanation (i.e., the four causes), a particular understanding of science in general (Le., rationalist and empirical), and a particular understanding of developmental psychology specifically (i.e., the organismic definition and its implications). On the other hand, stability, fixity, and uniformity entail a realist-empiricist epistemology, mechanical explanation,


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science as ultimately observation only, and developmental psychology as under stood by the mechanistic definition and its implications. This formative influence on ideas is another important characteristic of world views.

WORLD VIEWS AS MODELS Models

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To further clarify the nature of world views and how they influence concepts, theories, and methods in developmental psychology, I will now consider world views as models. A model is a representation. It is something that stands for or represents something else. Except in the trivial case where, for example, we construct an airplane model for the sheer enjoyment of doing so, a model is constructed in order to give us a better understanding of the thing it is a model of. Sometimes models are actually built with material, like an airplane model. However, the models I will be discussing are generally constructed in thought. To illustrate the nature and purpose of models, consider the problem that exists when we try to understand something that we have not encountered before. After thinking about the novel event for a while we often say, "maybe this is very much like a ." Then we consider the similarities and differences between the novel event and the representation we thought up. If the similarities help us in making sense out of the novel event then we treat the representation as a model of the novel event. The model then guides our thinking and observ ation about other features of the novel event that we have not yet explored. Some specific examples may be helpful here. One example comes from physics. At one time physicists did not understand the nature of the atom (see Guillemin, 1968). Then one physicist, J. J. Thompson, suggested that the atom be thought of "like plums in pudding," where the electrons would be thought of as being embedded in the nucleus of the atom. It turned out that although physicists tried this idea out, plums in pudding was not a very successful model because it dido't work very well when physicists began to explore some other features of the atom. Later Rutherford proposed that physics think of the atom as being "like the solar system," with the atom's nucleus being analogous to the sun and the electrons being analogous to the planets revolving around the sun. This idea worked much better in the sense that it answered some important questions about the atom and led to other important questions to be explored. Thus, for years the solar system acted as a model for the atom. In a similar fashion physics has also used physical waves like those in the ocean as a model to understand the nature of light

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In the realm of the social sciences, Black (1979) presents an interesting example by considering marriage as the event that is not well understood. Black proposes that we think of marriage as a zero-sum game. A zero-sum game is defined as (a) a contest, (b) between two opponents, (c) in which one player can win only at the expense of other. When this game is used as a model for marriage we would come to understand marriage as (a) a sustained struggle, (b) between husband and wife, (c) in which rewards such as power, money, and satisfaction of one person can be gained only at the expense of the other. Whether this is a good or poor model is best left for the reader to decide. Other examples used in psychology itself (Overton, 1976) have included the model of the eye as a camera or a processor, the brain as a telephone switch board or a computer, memory as a set of storage bins, images as a cathode-ray tube, the understanding of disturbed people as if they had a medical (Le., physical) disease, and the understanding of basic emotions as if they were a part of a hydraulic system that could be dammed up. Models and Metaphors Models, then, serve to make something that is problematic or poorly understood, better understood. In essence, a model makes the statement, "If you examine the thing this way you will come to have a better understanding of it." The key to the nature and operations of models is to recognize that they are elaborated metaphors. Metaphors consist of the application of concepts appropriate in one domain to a second domain. Thus, for example, we might talk about the "foot" of the mountain. Here "foot," a part of the human body, is applied as a metaphor to a part of the mountain. In proposing the metaphor we assume an identity of form or structural correspondence between the two spheres (i.e., both the human foot and mountain foot represent the base of the object). In more complex cases metaphors generate a whole series of implications and these implications constitute the model (Black, 1979). Schon (1963) has presented an illustration of the process by which complex metaphors are elaborated into models. He took as the problematic area that needed understanding the international relations that existed between the United States and Russia in the late 1940s. In an effort to understand this problem the concept "war" was applied to it in a metaphorical fashion. Thus, the situation was understood as a kind of war-a cold war. Now the concept "war" like other concepts does not stand in isolation. Rather, it implies other concepts such as "enemy," "army," "platoon," "weapons," "win," "surrender," and so forth. The process of elaborating the metaphor or constructing the model consists of trans posing concepts from their original domain to specific features of the new

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domain. For example, the U.S. and Russia were clearly the "enemies"; economic aid became a "weapon"; propaganda became "ammunition"; Korea became a "battle" in the cold war; people proclaimed their desire to "win" the cold war; and we frequently heard that we would never "surrender" to the "forces" of Russia. Three important points should he made about this process of model con struction. First, the concepts are transposed as analogies not as identical elements. Thus, we come to think of the international situation as if it were a war, not as an actual war, or we think of marriage as if it were a zero-sum game, not as an actual game. In other words, models are representations of the event, not descriptions of the event (Reese & Overton, 1970). Second, the Problem area has a unique structure of its own and as a consequence not all of the concepts appropriate to the metaphor domain will he appropriate as components of the model. For example, there was no "signed declaration" for the cold war. Finally, the construction of the model does not happen all at once. Frequently some implications of the metaphor become transposed only after some new problem in the original domain arises. For example, understanding the events in Korea as a cold war "skirmish" occurred several years following the original construction of the model. The significance of this point is that it illustrates that models rather than heing a simple representation, are systematic programs that influence the continuing exploration of an area, even as new problems arise in that area.

World Models World views are models like other models in all their essential components, but they also have two unique features: their abstractness and their scope. World models are the most abstract of all models. Unlike more concrete models, such as the brain as a computer, which provide rather specific images of our problem atic, to-he-understood domain, world models provide the most general and hence the most basic concepts or categories for understanding. These general concepts then influence more specific areas of understanding such as what questions are and are not meaningful, the types of theories that are constructed (Overton, in press-a), the meaning of basic tenns of the subject matter, the forms of explan ation that are acceptable, and general methodological approaches that are most appropriate (Overton, in press-a). Thus, world models exist in the abstract area of philosophy but they influence the way scientists, including developmental psychologists think about and investigate their particular subject matter. World models have the title '''world'' precisely because they are unlimited in their scope. That is, any world model asserts that its concepts provide the basis

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for understanding all essential features of the world. These include concepts of the nature of reality, of knowledge, of truth. They also extend to the concepts of the essential nature of man, society, the cosmos, and science, including the sPeCific sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and history. Because of their unlimited scope, different world models act as rivals for understanding. Each provides an abstract but integrated program. We might say that the instructions that come with this program state, "If you, the user of this program-whether you are a biologist, psychologist, historian, or interested in some other field of understanding-follow the guide lines suggested by this program in a consistent fashion you will ultimately arrive at a more systematic and adequate understanding of your field than could be attained through the use of any of our competitors' programs." The unlimited scope of a world model and consequently the rivalry between world models leads to another point that has often been misunderstood. World models are incompatible and irreconcilable. To try to pick and choose different parts of world models (called "eclecticism") ruptures the integrative consistency of each model and results in confusion. We often hear the admonition that we should avoid mixing metaphors because such mixtures are confusing; world models are metaphors. If the user of a world model becomes dissatisfied with the way the program is working, then two courses of action are open. The user may switch to another model or construct a new world model. There is nothing sacred about world models. They are the products of human activity and can be abandoned or constructed at will. However, any new world model will ultimate ly be judged, like others, on the basis of its consistency, its precision, and its scope in leading to greater understanding of its subject matter. The problematic effect of trying to mix models is illustrated in the fact that because world models exert a determining influence on lower levels of models and theories, different world models often produce different meanings in the basic terms through which we understand our particular subject matter. For example, the philosopher Feyerabend (1971) suggested that the basic terms of physics such as "time," "length," and "velocity" all change their meaning depending upon whether they are considered within a classical Newtonian model or a relativity model. Thus, according to the classical model, "mass" is an inherent and unchanging property of a body. But from a relativity position "mass" is a property of a relationship between a body and a frame of reference. The same effect occurs in developmental psychology: One of the basic terms in developmental psychology is "experience" as in the question, "How does experience affect development?" However, from one world model (organismic) "experience" is defined as the activity that the person engages in, while from another world model (mechanistic) "experience" refers to the forces (stimuli) that


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act upon the person. Similarly, "imitation" is a basic term in developmental psychology. Here, the organismic model defmes "imitation" as an act that reflects the current mental organization of the individual and conforms to the demands of the environment, and the mechanistic model defmes "imitation" as a response that matches the environment. Other examples include terms such as "play," "thinking," "language," "stage," "concept," "conservation," and "aggress ion". The significant point here is that given the fact that world models determine meaning, an eclectic mixing of models must result in an Alice in Wonderland type of situation where terms mean whatever anyone wants them to mean. It is difficult to imagine how out of such chaos a systematic body of knowledge would ever be created. The issue of mixing models has also comes up in the context of the fact that world models influence general research strategies. This influence will become clearer further on when I describe the two world models that seem to be of the greatest significance to psychology today: the organismic and mechanistic models. At times critics have maintained that both models are required in psychology because, whereas the organismic model provides the important assertion that man is organized, active, and changing, the mechanistic model provides the actual experimental and observational methods for measuring these events. This position is based on a confusion between the use of versus the role of experimental and observational methods. As noted earlier, both models use the experimental and observational methods described by Wohlwi11 (1973) and others. However, according to the organismic position their role is to make increasingly plausible rationally constructed organization (both momentary and change types), and to answer questions about rate of organizational acquisition and the access and implementation of this organization. From the mechanistic position, on the other hand, the methods are employed to yield a total explan ation. Thus, to engage in empirical research and to employ multiple experi mental and observational methods suggests neither a particular world model nor a mixing of models. The issue of models enters when the question is about the role played by empirical method in the general scheme of explanation. To summarize the discussion to this point, the assumptions described earlier form the core concepts of the two world views that have had a major impact on psychology: the organismic and mechanistic. World views are models. They have their origin in metaphor and they are general in abstractness and scope. Because of their unlimited scope, they influence lower level or'more restricted models and concepts. Ultimately, they influence the types of theories that are formulated, research strategies, and the meaning of the key terms of our subject matter. Different world models rival each other by providing programmatic

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guidelines directed at yielding a "besttt understanding of a specific field of inquiry. Given this background we can now examine the models and their implications for development psychology.

ORGANISMIC AND MECHANISTIC WORLD MODELS The basic metaphor for the organismic model is the living organism, such as a plant. The metaphor for the mechanistic model is a simple machine such as a wind-up watch. The organismic model is the older of the two, originating in early form in the time of ancient Greek thought The mechanistic model emerged primarily through the work of Newton in the late 17th century. If we consider a plant from a relatively naive commonsense perspective it seems to have certain characteristics. For one, the plant has a unique form, pattern, structure, or organization that is not characteristic of any of its parts (e.g., its cells), nor a product of the parts simply added together. The organi zation is a feature of the whole organic unity. Further, the meaning of a part is never complete except in relation to the whole. That is, the parts have no independent existence outside the organization in which they function. A second characteristic is that the plant is inherently active in the sense that it draws some things into itself (e.g., carbon dioxide), from the environment, rejects others (e.g., dust), gives back to the environment (oxygen), and is generally self-regulating or self-maintaining. Finally, the plant changes. This change appears to be as intrinsic to the plant as is its structure. Further, the change is both directional, rather than random, and irreversible. The plant also goes through phases in its directional change and during these phases the structure of the plant changes qualitatively. In addition to these characteristics, the plant may also require nourishment by external factors and it may be subjected to harmful accidental factors acting upon it, but both sets of factors affect rate of activity and rate of change and not the inherent characteristics of the plant Given this image of the plant, it is not difficult to see how the basic categories of necessary organization, activity, and change were metaphorically drawn out to form the organismic world model. Nor is it difficult to see how external factors came to be understood as efficient causes that affect rate of activity and rate of change. If we now consider the machine, a contrasting set of characteristics becomes apparent. The machine exhibits a uniformity of its parts. The apparent organi zation that seems to make the thing a watch can be broken down or reduced to these uniform parts. Although the parts operate together they maintain their identities either in or out of the watch. Thus, the whole is an additive sum of


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its parts. Secondly, a machine is inherently at rest. Any activity is a product of external factors (e.g., winding the watch sets the gears in motion). Finally, a machine does not change. A machine does not go through phases in which its features become transformed. Any apparent changes (the hands on the watch move around the dial) are quantitative in nature and they, like activity, are the product of external factors. Again, as with the living organism and the organismic model, it is easy to see how this image led to the mechanistic model with its basic categories of uniformity, stability, and fixity and how external accidental factors form the almost exclusive explanatory focus. (See Table 10.1 for a schematic represent ation of the nature and influence of world models.) Epistemological Models

Because world models assert that they provide the basic features for under standing all facets of the world we may next examine their influence on the theory of knowledge, that is, on epistemology. Given the view that the knower, like any other component of the world, is active and possesses an inherent organization the organismic categories lead directly to constructivism and the position that the knower actively constructs the known. The mechanistic categories of stability and uniformity, lead to realism-empiricism and the position that the knower comes to reflect or acquire a copy of reality and this is the known. Models or Man

These epistemological positions also suggest another area of particular import ance to psychology that is directly affected by the world models. This is the image or model that we have of the nature of man. A constructivist position concerning knowledge is possible only if we start from the assumption that man possesses an inherent activity and an inherent organiz~on such that the organi zation is applied to the world of experience in the creation of knowledge. On the other hand a realist position is possible only if we basically view man as a kind of a neutral mirror (or Locke's blank slate) that reflects an external reality. More generally, when the categories of the organismic world model are extended to create a model of man, there results what has been called the "active organism" model (Overton, 1976). This model presents the following represent ation of man: Man, like other components of the universe, exhibits an inherent organization. Properties of this organization includt: psychological functions, such as representation, perception, and attention. Man, too, is inherently active;

TABLE 10.1

World Views: Theory and Research

MEI'APHOR Living organism (e.g., a plant)

Machine (e.g., a watch) WORLD VIEWS

Organismic

Mechanistic

1. Organization

1. Uniformity

2. Activity

2. Stability

3. Change (dialectic)

3. Fixity

4. Accidental Factors (a minor focus)

4. Accidental Factors (exclusive focus)

EPISTEMOWGY Constructivism-Rationalism

Realism-Empiricism

Knower actively constructs the known

Knower comes to reflect or acquire a copy of reality (the known)

MODELS OF HUMAN Active Organism

Responsive Organism

1. Inherent organization and psychological functions

1. Uniformity: organization as appearance

2. Inherently active

2. Inherently at rest

3. Qualitative change of organization

3. Quantitative change

(continued)

TABLE lO.l--continued

World Views: Theory and Research

RESEARCH SJRATEG1ES 1. Elementarism

1. Holism Understanding in context of the organic whole

2. Structure-Function Analysis a. Establishing the organization of a system explains behavior (fonnal explanation)

Understanding through reduction to elements

2. Antecedent-Consequent Analysis a. Establishing contingent factors explains behavior (contingent explanation)

b. Establishing contingent factors explains rate of behavior (contingent explanation)

3. Necessary Change a. Establishing the order of organizational change explains development (fonnal explanation)

3. Accidental Change a. Establishing contingent factors explains development (contingent explanation)

b. Contingent factors explain rate of development (contingent explanation)

4. Discontinuity-Continuity Emergent systemic properties and levels of organization

4. Strict Continuity Strict additivity

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man, not the environment, is the source of acts. Finally, psychological growth or development in the sense of necessary, directional, qualitative change of organization, and hence change, also in the form of psychological functions (i.e., change in the way we represent things, the way we perceive, etc.), is a reality, not an appearance. The extension of the mechanistic categories on the other hand result in a model of man called the "responsive organism" model (Baer, 1976). Here man, like the machine, exhibits a uniformity of structure (Locke's tabula rasa). Man possesses no inherent organization or inherent psychological functions. If we seem to detect such organization or functions they are to be treated either as epiphenomena, or as appearances that are ultimately understood as the product of external factors. Also, man like the machine, is understood to be inherently at rest; activity is the product of efficient and material causes. Finally, psycho logical growth or development, like organization, is to be treated as appearance. Only behaviors change, and they do so in a quantitative manner. It should be noted that these models of man are still quite abstract in nature. They do not constitute a psychological theory, nor are they specifically psycho logical concepts. However, the influence of these often implicit images of man form the basis for, and have a significant impact on, the formulation of theories and concepts. Let us consider some examples. We have already seen how the organismic position claims that the psycho logical function "thinking" is an emergent property of a particular organization, and how the mechanistic group reduces the apparently novel thinking to speech and this to sounds, thus arriving at their reality (Le., the observable response). Skinner (1971) presented a similar mechanistic analysis of attention, which he suggested is not a function of man but merely a set of behaviors determined by environmental factors. With respect to organization per se, it is instructive to note that during the years when the mechanistic model exerted its greatest influence on psychology (until the early 196Os) it was generally accepted that the newborn infant exhibited only a bundle of uncoordinated responses. Any organization was thought to be a product of learning or biological maturation (efficient/material cause). However, as the organismic model gained stature in the field-primarily through the theories of Piaget and Werner-investigators such as William Kessen, Marshall Haith, Arnold Sameroff, and Robert Fantz began to examine successfully the idea that the infant possesses not discrete responses but well organized behavioral systems (Kessen, 1969). Today, in fact, the whole field of infancy research is framed by the view that inherent organization is basic not only to the organism but to the organism-caregiver unit (Sameroff & Emde,


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1989). It is doubtful that such heretical research would ever have been under taken had not the categories for its understanding (organismic, active-organism model) been available. In a similar fashion, over the past 20 years many investigators in the field of infancy have moved from the perspective that the neonate is a kind of tabula rasa to the view that the neonate is a highly competent organism demonstrating relatively efficient sensory and behavioral systems as well as specific preferences for various features of its environment. At issue here is not which view is right or wrong, but that each view, and the research that is generated depends on logically prior categories (models of man) that give it meaning. Motivation provides an example relevant to the issues of both activity and change. The concept of motivation has played a critical role in the mechanistic understanding of man both because it answers the question why man, although inherently at rest, exhibits activity and how apparent psychological changes are reducible to a basic unchanging reality. Biological needs or drives are the basic material elements (material cause) to which later behaviors are reduced. Thus, for example, adult wishes, desires, and needs are seen to "serve as a facade behind which the functions of innate drives are hidden" (Dollard & Miller, 1950, p. 32). From this perspective the development of social phenomena such as the formation of the emotional bond between infant and primary caretaker (called "attachment") is explained by (reduced to) the basic need for food and the mother's close association with the giving of food. This explanation is quite different from one prOposed by the more organismically oriented ethological theory of Bowlby, who views attachment as a more adaptive goal directed development (Ainsworth, 1969). From a mechanistic framework drives themselves are said to cause behavior to occur. However, drives are not inherently active; drives operate only as the result of intense external stimuli or some peripheral stimulus deficit (e.g., depriving the organism of food), and then they operate only until the noxious stimulus is removed or the deficit is restored. It should be noted that some mechanistic psychologists, particularly those who take an operant or experimental analysis of behavior approach, such as Skinner and Gewirtz, maintain that the concept of drive is itself an unnecessary device. In essence, they maintain that any such material cause can itself be reduced to external factors. Thus, Skinner stated, "the experimental analysis of behavior goes directly to the antecedent causes in the environment" (1974, p. 30) and "a person does not act upon the world; the world acts upon him" (1971, p. 220). From the active-organism orientation the question, "What makes man active?", makes no sense. Just as it is a kind of axiom in the mechanistic

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perspective that man is inherently at rest, it is an axiom in the organismic perspective that man is inherently active. Thus, the activities involved in curiosity, exploration, manipulation, and so on, require no reduction to primary drives or to environmental causes. It may be true that the organism is more curious about some environmental event than another or explores one event more than another, and these facts deserve investigation. However, investigations of these features have a very different purpose than that of trying to fmd the cause of the behavior. The spontaneous activity of the organismic perspective is also not simple random activity. It is not a kind of Darwinian random variation with environ mental selection. Rather, it is an activity that is based upon the inherent organization of the organism. Here we see how the categories of activity and organization themselves form an integrated unit The organism actively imposes its organization upon the world. Piaget describes this by saying the organism assimilates (transforms) the world according to the nature of its structures. Therefore, what is for you or me a cup (Le., we assimilate the event to a particular abstract category), is for the infant a "graspable" or a "suckable" (i.e., assimilation to a sensorimotor organization). At this point inherent change enters the organismic integrated triad of activity, organization, and change, because in the process of transforming the event to conform to the organization, the organi zation itself becomes transformed somewhat in conformance to the demands of the event (Piaget's "accommodation"). As the result of this continuing process new psychological organizations that exhibit novel systemic properties are constructed (Piaget's sensorimotor-action systems, operations-thinking, concrete operations-reversible logical thought, formal operations-propositional logical thought). Here then, adult behavioral systems are not facades that can be reduced to material needs or drives or to environmental effects as in the mechan istic motivational-environmental scheme. Here the organism develops itself throughout qualitatively different phases by actively applying its inherent organization to the environment. Of course if there were no environment or no biological base, development would stop (its rate would be zero), but neither biology nor the environment-the two traditional rivals in the nature-nurture debate (Overton, 1973; Lerner, 1978}--explain development from this perspect ive. The fmal cause (organization of change) explains development As a last example, which also includes the issues of organization, activity, and change, I now examine how each model deals with the problems of how we have concepts and whether our concepts change across the lifespan. This is a complex topic and I address only the essentials of it (see Lakoff, 1987; Overton, 1985; and Scholnick, 1983 for an elaboration). A concept concerns meaning or understanding. It is distinct from the thing or event, which is the referent or


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example of the concept The labels are not the concepts but the meanings we apply to the labels are. The mechanistic perspective generally defmes a concept as a common response made to dissimilar objects. For this group, meaning is acquired from the environment. The organism is exposed to a number of environmental events, some of which are examples of the concept (e.g., different dogs), and some of which are not (e.g., cats and ducks). When the organism makes the appropriate response "dog" to the appropriate example he or she is reinforced. When the inappropriate response is made no reinforcement is given. Thus, following the responsive organism model, meaning is a response and it is detennined by stimuli (reinforcement). Several points should be noted. First, notice how faithfully this view of meaning and, hence concepts, follows the realist epistem ology mentioned earlier. Concepts-and knowledge--are acquired from the environment. No inherent activity or organization is required. Second, it will be recalled that earlier I said that each model influences general research strategies. In the present case concepts are viewed as being based upon discrim inations and generalizations that the organism makes. Given this perspective it is quite reasonable that researchers in this group would consttuct and employ a research strategy, called the discrimination learning paradigm, that allows us to detect whether discriminations have been made. That is, the research strategy is not designed to explore whether the organism contributes something of itself to meaning. This is not a criticism of the model; it merely points to the fact that models influence the very nature of the data that is produced (Overton, 1984; in press-a). It also shows that at times the isomorphism between theory and research described by Wohlwill (in press) is quite complete. A final point concerning the mechanistic perspective on concepts is that, from this perspective, concepts do not change qualitatively across the course of the lifespan. That is, the toddler does not have one concept of an event, the child another, and the adolescent a third. Rather, concepts change quantitatively in the sense that they become more accurate retlections (better discriminations) of the environmental event. The organismic perspective offers a very different definition of a concept than that given by the mechanistic group. For the organismic group a concept is a rule for ordering experience. The nature of the rules are characterized by the organization of the organism. Hence, meaning is an active construction based on the type of organization or rule the individual possesses at any given time. When exposed to a number of events (e.g., some dogs, some cats, some other animals) and asked to select the dogs, the very young child who possesses only an action organization (rule of action) may pick those examples that he or she has actually played with. This may include some dogs, some cats, and

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possibly even a chicken, but the action role is the child's concept of "dog." At a later time the child, possessing logical organization, may apply a logical role such as the role that "a dog is a member of a class of domestic animals." Palermo (1982) presents an interesting discussion of this approach to concepts and its implications. However, for our purposes the significance of this view of meaning and concepts is that it is a consistent elaboration of the organismic model and its constructivist epistemology. Also, the research strategy generally employed within this perspective is one that permits the demonstration of the contribution that the organism makes rather than assessing discriminative responding. In contrast to the mechanistic perspective, the organismic approach to concepts also implies that a given concept (not the label) will change qualita tively as the person's psychological organization changes. Take, for example the concept of space, a topic that has received significant attention in developmental psychology (see, e.g., Liben, Patterson, & Newcombe, 1981). With this concept, as with others, the organismic position first distinguishes the behavior per se (e.g., the ability to manipulate objects in space or to move about in space) from the concept or role that orders the behavior. Having made this distinction, the organismic position then suggests that the nature of the organism's psychological organization limits the type (not the content) of spatial knowledge or spatial concepts the individual can possess. Thus, concepts of space differ qualitatively depending on the general psychological organization of the individual. Finally, and of greatest importance, the organismic position maintains that the psycho logical organization, and hence the concepts, are ordered in a developmental progression. The direction of change is toward those concepts that are more adaptive (intellectual maturity) in the sense that more advanced concepts deal not just with spatial issues of moment (e.g., Is the boy across the table to the left or right of the girl next to him?) and not just to Euclidian features of nonperceptible space (e.g., Is the airport north or south of the city?), but also with all sorts of abstract and imagined spaces (e.g., consider Einstein's idea of space that curves and ultimately bends back on itself). Thus, from this perspective the child of 5 or 6 years has a concept of space, but this concept is qualitatively different and less advanced developmentally than the 10-year-old's concept of space, and this in tum is qualitatively different and less advanced than the adult's concept. Concepts are a reflection of psychological organization and because, as this group would claim, organization is not caused by accidental events, these different developmentally ordered concepts of space or any other concepts can never be reduced to simply learned behaviors. Never being instructed about Einstein's space would, of course, preclude the individual from knowing it. However, instructing the individual who does not yet have a psychological


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organization capable of assimilating this content. results-at best-in rote verbalizations rather than concepts as the organismic group dermes concepts. There are many other available examples of how the world models and their associated models of man exert an influence upon specific components of our psychological understanding. We could consider mechanistic versus organismic influences on symbolization. representation. language. perception. and memory to mention a few areas. However. in each case the pattern of understanding would be the same as that presented in the earlier examples. One area that demands at least a brief mention is infonnation processing. Our examples of a mechanistic orientation in developmental psychology have generally been drawn from the work of learning theories. Over the past several years. however. the infonnation processing model has had an important impact on developmental psychology (Siegler. 1981; Siegler & Shipley. 1987). The infonnation process ing model represents man as a computer. From this view man is understood as a manipulator of symbols. The novelty of this approach over other mechanistic approaches is that it seems to accept the view that man is active and possesses an inherent organization. On close inspection this novelty is more apparent than real. That is. as Beilin (1983) suggested. the organization does not reflect the organic unity described earlier but is rather a unity of simple elements. Further. the organization itself is not inherently active. The activity is more like forces applied to the parts of the watch (or the electrical energy that activates the software of the computer). The significance of this is that from the organismic perspective man creates his symbols. while from an information processing approach man manipulates them. Finally. from an information processing perspective there is little if any organismically defined change or development. Generally. the organism gets more efficient or accurate at processing information as it uses different strategies (programs that have been written for the machine). but the basic psychological organization does not change in any qualitative fashion (see Liben. 1987a, 1987b for an elaboration of this issue). In the next and concluding section. I consider several corollary tenets that derive from the basic categories of each world model. These corollaries have been termed "corollary model issues" (Overton & Reese. 1973; Reese & Overton. 1970; see Table 10.1) when the focus has been on the world views themselves. They have been called "positive heuristics" when the focus has been upon the role they play in a general scientific research program (Overton. 1984; in press a). They are less general than the models themselves and they form the basis for the types of theories. the general research approaches. and the specific features of procedures that are applied to understand and explain the specific subject matter that constitutes developmental psychology. Although they are less general than the models. these corollary issues are still logically prior to the particular

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theories, procedures, research, and content of developmental psychology. They constitute the general methodological rules of how the game of developmental psychology is to be played, not the particular moves of the game. As general methodological rules they, like the models themselves, are not open to being experimentally tested. They are not true or false. They ultimately prove to be useful or not useful depending upon how well the theories, research, and procedures they generate successfully produce a systematized body of knowledge about the developing organism. In order to focus attention on their role in the research process, these corollaries will here be called "research strategy issues." The relations between world models and research strategies is further explored by Wohlwill (in press).

RESEARCH STRATEGY Holism Versus Elementarism The corollary of holism derives directly from the organismic categories of considering organization as an active organic unity in which the whole is characterized by systemic properties that do not describe the parts. Holism asserts that parts of an organic unity get their very meaning from these systemic properties. Consider, for example, a human biological system, such as the visual system. It should frrst be noted that vision is not a property of any of the parts of the system: the retina does not have vision, nor does the optic nerve, nor the occipital lobe of the brain, and so forth. Vision is a property of the total,intact active organization. Further, the parts themselves derive their meaning from the context of this whole system in which they operate. The optic nerve is differ entiated from other tissues precisely because it functions as part of the visual system. In psychology, behavior represents the ultimate parts and, according to this holistic assumption of organicism, specific behaviors get their meaning and hence can be understood only in the context of the system of which they are a part. Think, for example, of the behavior of moving your hand until it makes contact with your dog. Depending upon the system of which this behavior is a part, you may be showing your dog affection or you may be punishing your dog. In essence holism warns that it is inapPropriate to reduce systems (e.g., "thinking," "language," "perception") to simple behaviors or to assume that the simple behaviors are the sum and substance of the system. This position does not argue that analysis is unimportant. It argues that the best research strategy is to analyze in terms of the function or end that the behavior serves in the


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system. This position leads to the next organismic corollary, structure-function analysis, which I will describe shortly. Before leaving holism it should be mentioned that, in addition to influencing the research strategy, any theory will in some way translate its corollaries into its theoretical concepts. With respect to holism in an organismic theory, an example of this translation is found in Piaget's (1970) statement concerning the "structures" in his theory: Wholeness is a defining mark of structures....all structuralists...are at one in recognizing the contrast between structures and aggregates, the former being· wholes, the latter composites fonned of elements that are independent of the complexes into which they enter. (p. 6)

The corollary of elementarism derives directly from the mechanistic cate gories of uniformity and stability where apparent organization is understood as an aggregate composed of elements that maintain their identities in or out of the complex. Elementarism asserts that elements or parts constitute the real. As already mentioned, in psychology behaviors represent the ultimate parts. Elementarism then argues that the best research strategy is to reduce any complex phenomenon to these fIXed elements. It will be recalled from our earlier discussion that this reduction is the first step in what has been called mechanical explanation. Structure: Function Analysis Versus Antecedent-Consequence Analysis As already mentioned, the best research strategy according to the organismic position is to begin from the definable functions of any system or subsystem. Following the specifIcation of function, the investigator seeks to discover (i.e., rationally represent) the organization or structures that serve the function. This approach is familiar in organismically oriented biology (Mayr, 1982). The biologist acts as if each organ or structure has a function. He defines the function and inquires into the operation of the structure in serving this function. For psychology, the approach is similar but the structures are psychological, not physical or physiological. Psychological structures refer to the relatively stable organizational properties or patterns of specific behavioral systems. In essence, then, having defined the function the investigator seeks to discover (rationally) the organization or, as I called it earlier, the formal cause. Here we can take Chomsky's (1975) work on language as an example both of the research strategy and the theoretical incorporation of the corollary. In its general features Chomsky's approach begins with a definition of the ~unction of

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language as communication and representation. (Note that this excludes some behaviors that, on the basis of material identity, would be judged as language, e.g., the "language" of the bees and the mimicry of certain birds do not have a representational function.) Given this defining context, Chomsky then examines specific behaviors (written and spoken language acts) and draws inferences in the form of a relatively small number of rules that he believes adequately character ize both the behavior he has examined and all other language behaviors. These rules or structures, he would assert, capture the essential organization of language. Further, the rules describe the psychological organization of the language producer (Le., man) because man must in some sense-not conscious ly-possess the rules in order to demonstrate the behavior. The reader might wonder about several features of this approach. First, it might be asked whether the approach isn't overly speculative because the rules are really made up by the investigator. The answer is that yes, it is speculative or as I said earlier, it is a rational construction. However, speculation is modulated and made increasingly plausible by later empirical tests undertaken to determine whether the rules are, in fact, a good representation of the organi zation of behavior. Second, there is a question of whether this approach doesn't demonstrate circular reasoning because the rules are inferred from the behavior, and the rules are said to determine the behavior. The answer is that any vicious circularity is avoided if the investigator can show that the rules determine many other behaviors (e.g., other sentences) beyond the few that were used to make the inferences about the rules. In fact, demonstrating this and also demonstrating that the rules would not lead to impossible behaviors (e.g., groups of words that are not acceptable as sentences in a language), is one way of testing whether the rules are a good representation. Third, one might wonder whether the approach isn't descriptive rather than explanatory because the rules describe behaviors. The answer is that if there were a different rule for each behavior it would be descriptive. Explanatory power in the formal, causal sense comes from establish ing a small set of rules that account for a wide range of behaviors (see Liben, 1987a). A final question is whether experimental methods play any role in this approach. I just pointed out that empirical tests are employed to decide whether the proposed organizations, structures, or rules, are good or poor explanatory representations. Usually these tests employ correlational methods to decide whether different sets of behaviors exhibit sufficient coherence to warrant the inference that they are reasonably represented by the proposed organization. However, this still leaves open the question of whether actual experiments are conducted within this approach. An experiment (Le., the manipulation of an independent variable and the observation of the effect of the manipulation on the


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dependent variable) is the method for establishing material and efficient causes. But inherent organization is not the simple product of material and efficient causes; it is the formal cause. Thus, with respect to the momentary organization that we are discussing, the approach does not use experiments to establish the organization. As mentioned earlier, experiments are used in this approach but their role is that of determining how various situational factors (efficient causes) or biological factors (material causes) influence the way in which the organi zation is demonstrated in overt behavior (Overton & Newman, 1981). For example, we may know that an individual possesses the necessary structures for language and then we may want to investigate what kind of situational factors will increase the rate at which he or she actually speaks the language. Here an experiment would be appropriate. Similarly, we may have----on the basis of prior empirical investigation-knowledge that 17-year-olds possess the competence or necessary structures of logic to reason at a formal logical level. At this point an experiment would be appropriate to determine whether, for example, certain sit uational factors increase the rate of successful logical reasoning (Overton, 1990). The mechanistic corollary ofantecedent-consequent analysis derives from the model categories of uniformity and stability and it represents the second and key step in what was earlier described as mechanical explanation. Once the pheno menon of interest (e.g., language) has been reduced to its elements (i.e., sounds), the rest of the explanation consists primarily of establishing the material and efficient causes or antecedents of those behaviors or consequences. This, of course, is done by performing experiments in which the assumed antecedent is the independent variable, and the consequence is the dependent variable. Explanation is complete when the regularity between antecedent and consequent is reliable to the point that we inductively understand it to be scientific law. Earlier I mentioned that basic terms may have different meanings within each model and I gave a few examples. Now it is important for purposes of clarity to recognize that the mechanistic group often uses the basic terms "function" and "structure," but that their meanings are specific to the mechanistic categories. For philosophical reasons that I will not describe here mechanists often prefer to avoid using the label "cause" at all and in its place they sub stitute "function" as in the statement "behavior is a function of environmental variables." In a similar fashion this group sometimes refers to an antecedent consequence analysis as a "functional" analysis of behavior and assert that they are concerned with "functional" explanations. It follows that this group frequent ly refers to itself as "functionalists" (see Beilin, 1983; Zimmerman & Whitehurst, 1979). However, the term "function" here differs significantly from its organ ismic meaning.

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The mechanistic group also employs the basic tenn "structure," but even in those cases where they do not immediately and explicitly demonstrate a reduction of structure to its elements, the promise that they will someday do so is asserted. For example, in the area of personality theory, although Mischel (1973) accepts "self-regulating systems and plans" (i.e., structures) as significant explanatory constructs (fonnal causes), he goes on to assert that such constructs "cannot be adequately understood without linking them to cognitive social learning con ditions (efficient causes) through which they developed and are maintained" (p. 278). (See, also, the earlier example with respect to infonnation processing approaches.) Necessary Versus Accidental Change The foregoing research strategy issues do not in themselves address the problem of change that is the primary focus of developmental psychology (see Wohlwill, 1973). Rather they establish the necessary features of general methodological approaches to psychology and provide the basis for considerations of develop ment. A number of theories have, in fact, been constructed on the basis of only these two sets of corollaries, and these exhibit little interest in issues of develop ment per se. Chomsky's work is an example of an organismic theory which ignores the issue of change (Overton, 1985), and various contemporary cognitive infonnation processing approaches (see R. Lachman, J. Lachman & Butterfield, 1979) typify nondevelopmental mechanistic approaches. As already discussed, the organismic model asserts that change and hence development is necessary, intrinsic, directional, and irreversible. What this means as a research strategy is that the investigator must defme the end or function of change, hence establishing the direction, and then discover (ration ally) the organization or rules according to which the change occurs (i.e., establish the final cause). Notice that this approach is identical to that taken with respect to a structure-function analysis, but here the focus is on the organization of change rather than on momentary organization. Also here the momentary structure-function organizations are the part-systems that change in accordance with the rules of the overall organization of change. Piaget's equilibration process, Werner's orthogenetic principle, and Erikson's epigenetic ground plan, are all examples of such developmental rules. For Piaget, there is a necessary sequence of structures that proceed from biological structures to schemes, operational structures, to concrete operational structures, to fonnal operational structures, all in accordance with the rules described by the equilibration process, always moving toward the end of intellectual maturity. For Werner all develop ing systems move toward increased differentiation and integration.


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The reader may again wonder about the speculative nature of having the investigator involved in more rational construction of rules. But here, as with the momentary structure-function analysis, the speculation is later empirically assessed by conducting investigations to determine whether the rule of change is a good representation of the changes of the structures of behavior. Both cross sectional and longitudinal investigations can be used to examine whether the sequence is universal as, for example, Piaget claims, and correlational techniques can be employed to assess the changes in behavioral coherence across the sequence. Experiments can also be conducted within the context of the rationally constructed rule of necessary change. For example, one might do an experiment to determine whether a group of children who are exposed to a poor educational environment are slowed down in the rate in which they show changes of organi zation. Or training studies might select variables under the hypothesis that certain factors will speed up the rate of change. But it is most important to be aware that the variables chosen (efficient or material causes) for these or any other experiments can never be used to explain the change itself (Overton & Newman, 1981), for then they explain rate of change, the rule explains the development, and the rule cannot be tested by experimentation. The mechanistic model asserts that fixity is basic and as a consequence change is produced by extrinsic, contingent factors. Thus, the mechanistic group would claim that rules of change, like momentary organization, can be reduced to specific behaviors, and full explanation is found by observing the antecedent causes that produce behavior change. Thus, from this perspective, cross-sectional and longitudinal research is purely descriptive whereas the experiment provides the full explanation of change. To fmd that education or training has an effect on behavior explains development from the mechanistic perspective. Discontinuity-Continuity Versus Strict Continuity The final corollary we will consider here (see Overton & Reese, 1973, for others) involves the issue of whether change entails qualitative as well as quantitative features. The issue here concerns the debate over whether, with change, later types of organization exhibit novel features that cannot be reduced to earlier organization and ultimately to behavior per se (discontinuity), or whether they are reducible (continuity). As a corollary of world views, it is completely irrelevant whether observed behavioral change is gradual or abrupt, small or large (Overton & Reese, 1981; Reese & Overton, 1970; Werner, 1957). As already discussed, from the organismic model and its holistic corollary, any momentary organic system has systemic properties that are characteristic of

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organization as a whole, and not of any of the individual parts. From a psycho logical point of view, functions such as representation, symbolization, thinking, and language are all examples of systemic properties of active behavioral systems, just as the function vision was a systemic property of a particular biological system. Further, as just described with respect to organismic change and earlier with respect to Hegel's contribution to this view, less advanced momentary structure-function relations become transformed and integrated with later ones and thus, as each new organization progresses, further novel systemic properties emerge. The effect of this is that the later level of organization cannot be completely analyzed into or reduced to earlier levels or simple behavior. Language, for example, is a system of signs and symbols. Certainly early speech sounds may be significant precursors to later language, but, from the organismic perspective, language can never be completely analyzed into these simple elements. Similarly, as discussed earlier, Piaget's later levels of organization (Le., structures) cannot be completely reduced to the behaviors of infancy any more than a single level can be completely reduced to contemporary specific behaviors. The impossibility of complete reduction across the progressive levels of organization is called discontinuity. Discontinuity entails qualitative change, that is, the novel systemic pro perties, but this does not mean that it denies that any quantitative change is possible. Recall that from an organismic position, analysis of the parts of any system is appropriate as long as it occurs in the context of the whole. Similarly analysis of the behaviors and systems that are precursors to later levels of organization is appropriate as long as it is explicitly recognized that they are precursors to and not the ultimate elements of the later organization. Thus, for example, it is appropriate to analyze the quantitative nature of the movement from early speech sounds to mature language, while recognizing that early speech sounds are precursors to language rather than elements, because they do not serve the representational function of language. The organismic position, therefore, maintains that development involves both discontinuity and continuity. As with other corollaries discontinuity between levels of organization is translated into any theory constructed within an organismic framework. The specific theoretical concept that is used to demonstrate a model commitment to discontinuous levels of organization is the "stage." Stage then in any organismic theory refers to a level of organization that exhibits novel or emergent systemic properties that are not completely reducible to specific behaviors. Because a "stage" reflects model assumptions it is not, in itself, open to empirical tests of truth or falsity. If one is working within an organismic framework it is simply meaningless to ask the question, are there really stages of development? This,


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in fact, is a mechanistic question because it implies stages are things to be observed (the realism of the "really" question) rather than fonnal explanatory constructs. However, although the "stage" is not open to empirical test, the specific representation of a stage (i.e., the particular structural description) that is provided by the theorist can be assessed empirically. That is, the organism ically oriented investigator cannot ask, "Are there really stages?," but he or she can ask, "Are the specific stages such as those described by Piaget, or Werner, or Erikson good representations?" The specific procedures for this assessment were presented earlier under the strategies of structure-function and necessary change research. The mechanistic corollary of strict continuity derives from the position of reductionism and accidental change. Simply stated the mechanistic position is that all change is to be understood as additive. Later apparent organization is reducible to earlier behavior. On occasion the mechanistic group will use the concept "stage," but here as in other cases I have presented, the tenn has a different meaning than the one that derives from the organismic framework. For the mechanistic group, a "stage" is at best a descriptive device used to give a summary statement about a group of behaviors: Like organization, it is not necessary to explain "stage," and ultimately the concept will be eliminated when the organization is fully reduced to behaviors, and the effective antecedent causes of the behaviors have been discovered.

CONCLUSIONS In this chapter we have seen how in both an historical and a contemporary fashion coherent systems of thought that derive from world models influence our understanding of the nature of development and the ways we explore the actual features of development. World models influence the definition of the basic terms of our subject matter. They influence research strategies and they influence theories. Theories built upon the same model may be considered a family of theories. Within a family there may be differences in what subject matter the theories focus upon (e.g., Piaget's focus on intellectual development and Erikson's focus on social-personality development). Or within families there may be specific areas of disagreement (e.g., Chomsky vs. Piaget concerning how much structure should be assumed to be present; Overton, 1985). However, a given family will have special deep-seated characteristics in common that differentiate them from other possible families. In closing, it is important to emphasize that as one reads the literature of developmental psychology, often the influence of world models is not clearly

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evident. Individual research projects are generally initiated because of a felt need to answer some very specific questions or to examine some currently "important" topics. Research, by its very nature, leads to new problems to be examined as well as to tentative solutions to old problems. However, all research activity must ultimately be judged in the context of how well it furthers our understanding of development, and the criteria for this judgement are found in models of understanding and explanation.

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