Ecological Psychology in Context: James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the Legacy of William James's Radical Empiricism

by Heft; Harry

• ISBN13: 9780805823509
• ISBN10: 0805823506
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-07-01
• Publisher: Psychology Pres

Summary

In this book Harry Heft examines the historical and theoretical foundations of James J. Gibson's ecological psychology in 20th century thought, and in turn, integrates ecological psychology and analyses of sociocultural processes. A thesis of the book is that knowing is rooted in the direct experience of meaningful environmental objects and events present in individual-environment processes and at the level of collective, social settings. Ecological Psychology in Context: *traces the primary lineage of Gibson's ecological approach to William James's philosophy of radical empiricism; *illuminates how the work of James's student and Gibson's mentor, E.B. Holt, served as a catalyst for the development of Gibson's framework and as a bridge to James's work; *reveals how ecological psychology reciprocally can advance Jamesian studies by resolving some of the theoretical difficulties that kept James from fully realizing a realist philosophy; *broadens the scope of Gibson's framework by proposing a synthesis between it and the ecological program of Roger Barker, who discovered complex systems operating at the level of collective, social processes; *demonstrates ways in which the psychological domain can be extended to properties of the environment rendering its features meaningful, publicly accessible, and distributed across person-environment processes; and *shows how Gibson's work points the way toward overcoming the gap between experimental psychology and the humanities. Intended for scholars and students in the areas of ecological and environmental psychology, theoretical and historical psychology, cognitive science, developmental psychology, anthropology, and philosophy.

Author Biography

Harry Heft is Professor of Psychology at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. He received his PhD from The Pennsylvania State University and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association

Table of Contents

Foreword	xiii
Preface	xv
Introduction	xxi
PART I: Ecological Theory and Philosophical Realism
Prologue: Intimations of an Ecological Psychology	3	(10)
William James's Radical Empiricism: A Foundation for Ecological Psychology	13	(46)
A Psychology of Adaptation	15	(10)
A World of Experience	25	(6)
The Historical Context for Radical Empiricism	31	(6)
Cognition from a Radical Empiricist Perspective	37	(15)
Experience and Activity	52	(7)
Edwin B. Holt and Philosophical Behaviorism	59	(50)
Edwin B. Holt: A Brief Biography	61	(7)
A Universe of Neutral Being	68	(5)
The Program of the New Realists	73	(9)
Cognition and the Environment	82	(8)
Holt's Psychology of Learning and Development	90	(9)
A Return to Philosophical Psychology	99	(1)
A Forgotten Psychologist of ``The Old Days''	100	(5)
PART II: The Ecological Approach and Radical Empiricism
Prologue: Three Generations of Psychologists	105	(4)
Perceiver-Environment Relations	109	(34)
Animal-Environment Mutuality and Levels of Analysis	109	(5)
Phenomenology and Ecological Psychology	114	(9)
Perceiving Affordances	123	(12)
The Experience of the Body in Perception	135	(8)
Relations and Direct Perception	143	(30)
Relations in Pure Experience and in the Ambient Array	144	(10)
Direct Perception	154	(8)
An Ecological Solution to James's ``Two Minds'' Problem	162	(11)
The Stream of Experience and Possible Knowledge	173	(36)
Perceptual Systems and the Detection of Information Over Time	174	(19)
An Ecological Approach to the Problem of Possible Knowledge	193	(10)
PART III: Ecological Psychology and the Psychological Field
Prologue: Field Theory and Collective Social Processes	203	(6)
Gestalt Psychology and the Ecological Approach	209	(26)
William James, Gestalt Psychology, and the Origins of Ecological Psychology	210	(1)
Gibson's Early Excursion into Field Theory	211	(3)
The Geographical and the Behavioral Environment	214	(5)
Perceived Meaning	219	(6)
Thing and Medium	225	(7)
Conclusion: Gestalt Psychology and Ecological Psychology	232	(3)
Ecobehavioral Science: The Ecological Approach of Roger Barker	235	(38)
Levels of Organization Among Natural Processes	237	(8)
The Need for an Ecobehavioral Science	245	(7)
Behavior Settings: Higher Order Ecological Units	252	(9)
The Realization of Ecobehavioral Science	261	(8)
Environmental Structure or Scripts?	269	(4)
Ecological Psychology and Ecobehavioral Science: Toward a Synthesis	273	(54)
Causality and the Ecological Approach	274	(8)
Environmental Meaning and Ecological Theory	282	(10)
Affordances in Places and Affordances of Places	292	(9)
The Foundational Role of Ecological Psychology in Ecobehavioral Science	301	(8)
The Structure of the Environment and Dynamic Systems	309	(15)
Coda: The Intersecting Career Paths of Gibson, Barker and Heider	324	(3)
Ecological Knowledge and Sociocultural Processes	327	(46)
Ecological Knowledge	328	(2)
The Ecology of Culture	330	(9)
Tools, Artifacts, and Representations	339	(13)
Distributed Cognition	352	(17)
Summary and Conclusion	369	(4)
PART IV: Conclusion
The Scope of Ecological Psychology	373	(24)
The Reciprocal and Nested Focus of Ecological Psychology	373	(5)
Radical Empiricism and Ecological Psychology	378	(8)
Ecological Psychology as an Essential Part of a Human Science	386	(8)
Ecological Psychology and Its Prospects	394	(3)
References	397	(20)
Author Index	417	(6)
Subject Index	423