Jeremy Trevelyan Burman

The misunderstanding of memes: Biography of an unscientific object, 1976-1999

When the meme was introduced in 1976, it was as a metaphor intended to illuminate an evolutionary argument. By the late-1980s, however, we see from its use in major US newspapers that this original meaning had become obscured. The meme became a virus of the mind. (In the UK, this occurred slightly later.) It is also now clear that this becoming involved complex sustained interactions between scholars, journalists, and the letter-writing public. We must therefore read the meme through lenses provided by its popularization. The results are in turn suggestive of the processes of meaning-construction in scholarly communication more generally.

On the Meanings of Self-Regulation: Digital Humanities in Service of Conceptual Clarity.

Self-regulation is of interest both to psychologists and to teachers. But what the word means is unclear. To define it precisely, two studies examined the American Psychological Associations system of controlled vocabulary-specifically, the 447 associated terms it presents-and used techniques from the Digital Humanities to identify 88 closely related concepts and six broad conceptual clusters. The resulting analyses show how similar ideas are interrelated: self-control, self-management, self-observation, learning, social behavior, and the personality constructs related to self-monitoring. A full-color network map locates these concepts and clusters relative to each other. It also highlights some of the interests of different audiences, which can be described heuristically using two axes that have been labeled abstract versus practical and self-oriented versus other-oriented.

Experimenting in Relation to Piaget: Education is a Chaperoned Process of Adaptation

This essay takesas its point of departureCavicchis (2006) argument that knowledge develops through experimentation, both in science and in educational settings. In attempting to support and extend her conclusions, which are drawn in part from the replication of some early tasks in the history of developmental psychology, the late realist-constructivist theory of Jean Piaget is presented and summarized. This is then turned back on the subjects of Cavicchis larger enquiry (education and science) to offer a firmer foundation for future debate. Several of Piagets forgotten works are discussed; their theoretical contributions synthesized to form a single interdisciplinary, crosspollinating narrative describing how it is that both children and scientists grow into the world. (In addition, translated excerpts from two related historical documents have been provided in an appendix, while detailed footnotes add further context and integrate the discussion with current advances in related fields.)

Searching for the structure of early American psychology: Networking Psychological Review, 1909-1923.

This study continues a previous investigation of the intellectual structure of early American psychology by presenting and analyzing 3 networks that collectively include every substantive article published in Psychological Review during the 15-year period from 1909 to 1923. The networks were laid out such that articles (represented by the networks nodes) that possessed strongly correlated vocabularies were positioned closer to each other spatially than articles with weakly correlated vocabularies. We identified distinct research communities within the networks by locating and interpreting the clusters of lexically similar articles. We found that the Psychological Review was in some turmoil during this period compared with its first 15 years attributable, first, to Baldwins unexpected departure in 1910; second, to the pressures placed on the discipline by United States entry into World War I; and, third, to the emergence of specialty psychology journals catering to research communities that had once published in the Review. The journal emerged from these challenges, however, with a better-defined mission: to serve as the chief repository of theoretical psychology in the United States.

Piaget’s neo-Gödelian turn: Between biology and logic, origins of the New Theory

Jean Piaget’s research program—which involved the study of child development as a central feature (viz. “stages”), but which can be understood more broadly as advancing a constructive theory of knowledge (i.e., “genetic epistemology”)—is thought by many contemporary developmentalists to have been guided by a coherent, complete, and unchanging meta-theoretical framework: “equilibration.” While this is correct philosophically, it is incorrect historically. Briefly put: the formal meaning of equilibration changed over time, and thus so too did the entirety of the theory that relied upon it. To focus in on one specific change of particular importance, this article examines how Piaget appealed to the changing ideas of Kurt Gödel and their interpretations by French-speaking logicians. This historical analysis (a Foucauldian archaeology) thereby excavates a “neo-Gödelian turn” in Piaget’s research program. The resulting framework is then sketched in outline: the updated formal meta-theory that made possible “Piaget’s new theory.”

Philosophical histories can be contextual without being sociological: Comment on Araujo's historiography

The future of the History of Psychology is bright, and the recent historiographical debates in this journal play an important role in that. Yet Araujo’s recent contribution could be misunderstood: ignoring context is not the way to do a philosophical history. Instead, philosophical assumptions can be presented as part of the context that informed an historical subject. Hence the necessity, here, of a response: the History of Psychology is becoming disciplined, but slowly. There are still plenty of non-specialists who will misunderstand Araujo’s contribution as a step forward in its rhetoric (many of whom teach the history course in their department). And because even specialists also sometimes dismiss methods-talk as a false step toward methodolatry, there is a danger in leaving such misunderstandings unaddressed. Simply put, then, ideas are never only lights in the attic: as the historian looks in, we must always remember that—at the time—someone was looking out.

Profiles of international archives: Les archives Jean Piaget, University of Geneva, Switzerland.

This research report provides a look behind closed doors at the Jean Piaget Archives in Geneva, Switzerland. It situates the potential visitor, contextualizes the Archives in its own history, and then describes what scholars can expect to find. New details about Piagets views on Equal Rights and Equal Pay are also provided, including a look at how they affected the women who worked his factory (esp. Bärbel Inhelder). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).

Through the looking-glass : PsycINFO as an historical archive of trends in psychology

Those interested in tracking trends in the history of psychology cannot simply trust the numbers produced by inputting terms into search engines like PsycINFO and then constraining by date. This essay is therefore a critical engagement with that longstanding interest to show what it is possible to do, over what period, and why. It concludes that certain projects simply cannot be undertaken without further investment by the American Psychological Association. This is because forgotten changes in the assumptions informing the database make its index terms untrustworthy for use in trend-tracking before 1967. But they can indeed be used, with care, to track more recent trends. The result is then a Distant Reading of psychology, with Digital History presented as enabling a kind of Science Studies that psychologists will find appealing. The present state of the discipline can thus be caricatured as the contemporary scientific study of depressed rats and the drugs used to treat them (as well as of human brains, mice, and myriad other topics). To extend the investigation back further in time, however, the 1967 boundary is also investigated. The author then delves more deeply into the prehistory of the database’s creation, and shows in a précis of a further project that the origins of PsycINFO can be traced to interests related to American national security during the Cold War. In short: PsycINFO cannot be treated as a simple bibliographic description of the discipline. It is embedded in its history, and reflects it.

The mobile frontiers of Piaget's psychology : From academic tourism to interdisciplinary collaboration

Abstract Jean Piaget’s (1896–1980) interdisciplinarity was related to his psychology in several ways. First, he was a simple tourist of other fields: an interested outsider. But as he became increasingly involved in the professionalization of the discipline, he moved through different contexts that constrained the possibilities for successful action in new and different ways. To make these clear, we adopt a little-known aspect of his later epistemological framework: the open hierarchy of levels. This then affords new perspectives of his life, his work, his theory and his location in the history of both Swiss psychology and French psychology. It also outlines his reasoning regarding the necessity of a disciplined approach to interdisciplinary collaboration, institutionalized in the founding of his International Centre for Genetic Epistemology. We therefore come not only to a fuller understanding of how Piaget thought scientific knowledge develops, but also of how the boundaries of scientific disciplines are pushed back.

What is history of psychology?: Network analysis of Journal Citation Reports, 2009-2015

This essay considers the History of Psychology—its interests and boundaries—using the data behind the Journal Impact Factor system. Advice is provided regarding what journals to follow, which broad frames to consider in presenting research findings, and where to publish the resulting studies to reach different audiences. The essay itself has also been written for those with only passing familiarity with its methods. It is therefore not necessary to be an expert in network analysis to engage in “virtual witnessing” while considering methods or results: Everything is clearly explained and carefully illustrated. The further consequence is that those who are new to the History of Psychology as a specialty, distinct from its subject matter, are introduced to the myriad historical perspectives within and related to psychology from the broadest possible perspective. A supplemental set of exemplary readings is also provided, in addition to cited references, drawing from identified sources from beyond the primary journals.