Edward S. Reed

James Gibson's Ecological Revolution in Psychology

Revolutions in politics involve changes in the traditional order of a society, and it is an open problem as to how to describe such changes. Is the British upheaval of 1688-89 a revolution? Is the U.S.A.’s Civil War a revolution? Precisely when did the French revolution occur? This list of questions could be extended. But what about revolutions in science, are there changes in the traditional order of a science? If so, can we say more about what that might mean? Currently in philosophy of science, the concept of a scientific revolution has attained great prominence. Unfortunately, the understanding of such revolutions seems to be inversely proportional to the popularity of the concept. The most telling problem in the theory of scientific revolutions is that all the ostensible students of revolutions in fact have studied non-revolutionary science. Kuhn, forexample, is most famous for his concept of ‘paradigm’, which explains normal science so-called, not the structure of scientific revolutions. Similarly, Lakatos speaks of research programmes, thereby denying the existence of ’real saltations’ in the evolution of the sciences. To continue ourgeological metaphor,

Seeing Through History

One of the most formidable problems of social science is reconciling the objective with the subjective. Nowhere is this problem so great as in the study of social change. How can one refute or corroborate hypotheses concerning changes in social structure or relations? Does it suffice to show certain trends in objective conditions (e.g., the transformations of standards and styles of living) or must one also show an awareness of change among those participating in those trends? But what if the subjects of a society in change perceive the matter differently from the observer of that society (as they surely will)? Do we trust the objective or the subjective account-or do we strive to amalgamate both points of view in some more or less happy compromise? In addition to these important methodological questions, there is the burning practical question: in seeking to change a society, to whose visions do we turn? How does one determine whether

An Odyssey in Learning and Perception.

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A three point perspective on pictorial representation: Wartofsky, Goodman and Gibson on seeing pictures

In the philosophical controversy between realism and conventialism, pictorial representation stands as a concrete issue dividing the two positions: is linear perspective an intrinsically realistic mode of representation? or is it a conven? tional system with only apparent realism? Goodman and Wartofsky are the outstanding proponents of the latter view. According to Goodman, realism is a matter of habit and to say that a picture looks like nature often means only that it looks the way nature is usually portrayed. Wartofsky extends Good? mans thesis by arguing that social historical praxis endows representational systems with fidelity. However, while we agree that there are a multiplicity of realistic systems of representation, we do not agree that realism is entirely a matter of habit or social praxis. In this paper we will argue, following Gib? son, that the realism of perspective is due primarily to the visual information it captures.

Book Review : Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse. By LISA JARDINE. Toronto: MacMillan (Canada).

Francis Bacon is an extremely well-researched ’Baconian’ book on Bacon. As such it is an example of the puzzling Baconian method. In the attempt to examine facts without prejudices one may also wish to communicate about one’s examination to others. But is there any way to communicate facts without prejudice? Bacon was one of the first philosophers to be concerned with the inherent prejudices of a language, and even suggested that the natural historian avoid working in his native language in order to avoid its prejudices. I find Jardine’s book even more naive on the question of prejudice than Bacon himself, which is no harsh criticism, for Bacon actually invented the word prejudice; and therefore, I think it useful to compare Jardine as a Baconian to Bacon as a Baconian. Discourse, or rhetoric, teaches the writer how to get across what he wishes to say. What one wishes to say is information and how one gets it across, communication. The mediaeval rhetoricians, within whose problematic Bacon fits, as Jardine argues, treated discovery as a question of discovering arguments. Bacon, as Jardine makes abundantly clear, thought discovery to be discovery of ’forms’, or what we might call ’essences’. Consequently, Bacon limited discovery to the realm of information and rhetoric to embellishments. As a result, he considered rhetoric as a convenient and efficacious communication. Jardine