Abstract
This review of Mammen’s new book (2017), provides a brief summary of the first part, stressing the main points of the author’s constructive critique of the unfortunate issues psychology inherited from the atomistic mechanism of classical physics. Driving the discussion on the ontological level, Mammen briefly shows how nowadays natural sciences provide the main components psychology needs to overcome the everlasting crisis of psychology since its constitution as a science: discontinuity, contextuality, etc. Making of the relation between subject and object the foundation of any science, Mammen contributes to a new ontology specific to human study with elements of last century mathematics, notably the axiom of choice, bridging the rift between natural and human sciences with a continuum from inert matter to more or less advanced life forms. Mammen’s constructive proposal opens the building site of a new foundation for life sciences, avoiding both simplistic mechanism and nihilist post-modernism.
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Notes
According to Nietzsche, philosophical systems have become impossible at the end of the XIXth century, due to the emergence of too much scientific knowledge (see for instance Bouveresse 2012). Former student of Schopenhauer who was the creator of one of the last philosophical system aiming at a universal scope, Nietzsche may nevertheless have be right on the fact that building a theoretical system providing account of the whole has henceforth become a collective work of scientists, rather than the making of a single philosopher.
Obviously, more scholars have assumed a different ontology to the classical mechanism, be it for providing explanations of complex phenomenon, or for theoretical reasons. Piaget’s genetic epistemology, for instance, so often understood as an example of the dualism between subject and object and a kantian scholar, has laid his work on an organic paradigm (Kohler 2010), in common with Baldwin and Wallon, for quoting only these two, which is ontologically far from mechanism. Despite studying the development of the notion of causation by children, Piaget does not use it ontologically to explain the acquisition of knowledge, but rather refers to « loops » (in French: « cercle », e.g. Piaget 1927) in his explanation of the epigenetic development of knowledge and in his theorisation of the subject-object dynamics. Yet, if the critique of positivsm and logical-empiricism is quite easily found in his work (e.g. Piaget 1967), his use of the logic of materialist dialectics is discrete, due to political surveillance of scholars in Switzerland at the time, and only explicitly appears in a book published the year of his passing (Piaget 1980). Many more examples of theories taking distance with the classical mechanism can be given in current psychology, yet mostly such movement towards new fundamentals are only partial and also partly implicit. Among recent work, the development of a process ontology rather than a substance ontology by van Geert (2018; Den Hartigh et al. 2016) in the domain of complex dynamic systems is worth mentioning, for it shares several common points with Mammen’s contribution.
This is congruent with Van Geert’s critique of the substance ontology, in favour of an ontology of processes (see previous footnote).
Mammen speaks of a « humanistic two-front war » (2017, p.8) between the religious conception of the soul, and the disappearance of humanism in the mechanical conception of the material world. These two radically opposed conceptions were yet not so parted in a way, as we found much later when opening Newton’s secret chest: It was at least united in the person of Isaac Newton, for whom providing a perfectly harmonious mathematical account of the universe contributed to a scientific proof of the existence of God (Verlet 1993). This is only more grist for the mill of Mammen’s interpretation of history of science, who is stressing the actual loss of the human in the humanism emerging from the Renaissance, despite the rationalist effort, from Descartes to Kant, in establishing principles independant from God and avoiding the pitfall of a mechanistic conception turning humans into mere material objects.
The ethymology of religion - to relate to God(s) – is filled with the fundamental use of language, that is to relate words with its referents.
Interestingly, Mammen’s proposal would justify a new distinction in the field of sciences, between inert sciences and life sciences – which is sometimes used – rather than the old and quite obsolete natural sciences versus human sciences. Indeed, it has become quite obvious todays that human being is just a part of Nature, the old border between culture and nature is hardly meaningfull, at least for a cultural psychologist (see for instance Cousins 2014; Kohler 2014).
This title cannot be properly translated into English: I made my best in avoiding the term « process », « progress » or anything else reducing the subtle theoretical account « cheminement » refers to. As far as I know, this book has not yet been translated into English, despite the annnounced translation under the title “Children’s Journey’s Discovery” in: Inhelder, B. & de Caprona, D. (1997). What subject for psychology? The Genetic Epistemologist, The Journal of the Jean Piaget Society, 25, (2). Retrieved from http://www.piaget.org/GE/1997/GE-25-2.html.
Mammen also points out this inevitable death later in his text (p.31), and relates it to reproduction, yet not to the entropy principle. Later in the book (pp.83–84), the importance of time is repeated for studying dynamic processes, yet time in not expressed in the axioms and theorems, and the distinction between numerical and qualitative identity is provided for argument. The exact place of time in the theoretical construction deserves, at my opinion, a more explicit presentation.
I nevertheless experienced some perplexity when facing statements such as « … was wisely rejected in Christian theology as heresy » (Mammen 2017, p.27), or « The truth is... » (p.40). Like Gandalf in The Hobbit (Tolkien 1937/2008, p.7), in reponse of Bilbo’s « Good morning! », it makes me wish to ask: « What do you mean? », « Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on? ». And in this case, I particularly fear a response like the one provided by Biblo: « All of them at once » …
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Kohler, A. A Relational Ontology for Psychology: Life as an Asymmetric Subjet-Object Choosing Relation. Integr. psych. behav. 53, 189–198 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-018-9460-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-018-9460-8