In Between Psychology Table Topic for Scientific Investigation, and the Re-Discovery of the Role of Unconscious P.N

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related, revolutions in American psycho logy: the recovery of the mind as a respec In between psychology table topic for scientific investigation, and the re-discovery of the role of unconscious P.N. Johnson-Laird mental processes. Bruner began by setting a new fashion in In Search of Mind: Essays in Autobiography. By Jerome Bruner. the study of perception, the so-called Harper & Row: 1984. Pp.306. $19.25, £14. "New Look". He and his colleagues carried out a series of experiments showing THE imaginary line that divides the two less trust in the testimony of his father. that people's desires, attitudes and expec cultures runs through the middle of Bruner with hindsight also offers a tations can affect the way they see the psychology. On one side lies a science that Freudian interpretation of his experiment, world. For example, children over aims to explain the mechanisms underlying though it may be significant that he later estimate the size of coins, and children behaviour and the mind. Its practitioners ran into trouble at college for refusing to from poor homes make a greater error than propose explicit theories, often modelled in attend compulsory chapel. those from affluent ones. Other studies the form of computer programs or axiom Few people of Bruner's generation showed that an emotionally charged word atized within a formal calculus, sometimes takes very much and attempt to test them in longer to recognize than a more controlled experiments on neutral word - as though the human beings or animals. On the perceptual system defends the other side is a more diffuse and perceiver from the unpleasant older subject, sometimes called ness associated with the word. "humanistic" psychology. It Such a result still strikes some assumes that the most important psychologists as too paradoxical aspects of mental life may not be to be believed - how could a open to scientific explanation. Its word be threatening unless it practitioners are committed to was recognized? - but it would human values, to the "growth" hardly have surprised of individual personalities, and to Helmholtz, who believed that the healing of sick or disturbed perception was an unconscious minds. process culminating in conscious For once, the grass looks paler ness. The "New Look" gave rise on the other side ofthe fence. The to a long methodological scientists perceive their wrangle, but it established humanistic colleagues as ideal Bruner's reputation. Never one istic and soft-headed social to present a stationary target, he workers, whose ideas take far too turned to the study of thinking, much for granted, and who seem and started a new fashion for uninterested in submitting them experiments on how people form to experimental test. The concepts defined in terms of the humanists see their opposite conjunction or disjunction of numbers as hard-nosed but short properties. When he and George sighted scientists wedded to the Miller set up the Harvard Center experimental investigation of for Cognitive Studies at the trivial phenomena such as the beginning of the 1960s, the mind distribution of reaction times to had finally been given back to simple visual stimuli. In fact, the American psychologists as a line of demarcation is not a sharp necessary topic for scientific one, but a shifting boundary investigation. between two regions in imminent Despite his central role in these danger of total dislocation. What affairs, Bruner retains some scep is remarkable about Jerome tism about a full-blooded Bruner, the author and protag scientific approach. He writes: onist of this book, is that he I think I am suspicious of 'formal' straddles the divide. models of human behaviour - Bruner tells the story of how a bright probably set out to be psychologists. He theories couched exclusively in mathematical middle-class New York Jewish boy, who tells us that he "landed in" the discipline terms or in abstract 'flow diagrams'. I have was blind for the first two years of his life, because of the place (Duke University), the always been sympathetic to the metaphors of grew up to become a world-famous people (Berlin-trained Gestalt psycho computation and information processing, but resistant to getting trapped in their necessary psychologist. His very first experiment was logists) and the times (the 1930s). The measurement constraints. Perhaps I feel that an unwitting childhood replication of initial brush with Gestalt psychology con such systems of measurement trap you on their Edmund Gosse's attempt to demonstrate tributed to his later success, because the flypaper while you are still wanting to fly. Their the consequences of idolatry. Gosse knelt United States was then dominated by the precision exacts a very high price in the and worshipped a chair in the expectation intellectual isolationism of the Behav abandonment of imagination . . . of being on the receiving end of a thunder iourists. They were so hard-headed about Here, Bruner's insight into himself may bolt. Bruner questioned the existence of scientific psychology that they took the have deserted him. It is a fallacy to assume God, and adopted a more direct procedure. mind to be a ghost in the machine, which that theories modelled in the form of In the middle of a thunderstorm, he could be exorcised by the proper study of computer programs demand any more challenged the Almighty to strike him nerve, muscle and behaviour. Bruner never precise constraints on empirical measure down. Gosse reports that his religious faith succumbed to Behaviourism, and he was to ments than those couched in the vernac survived unscathed but henceforth he put take a central part in the two major, and ular. The real constraint of computer © 1984 Nature Publishing Group ~7~~------SPRINGBOQKS,------~N~M~u~~~vo~L~.~~~~~~R=IL~•=~ programs is that they do not allow the video screen of a professor of computer theorist to take too much for granted; this Through to another science, Dewdney himself, and his team of constraint can liberate the imagination. students. The progressive encounters The truth is that Bruner has no taste for this dimension which intermesh the world of the observers sort of theorizing, perhaps because he lacks Thomas Banchoff and the world of the observed lead to an the necessary background. Indeed, at one amazingly rich description of Arde, a two point, he refers to himself as a "non The Planiverse: Computer Contact with a dimensional planet, complete with a well scientist". Two-Dimensional World. developed technological society, worked The danger of a dislocation between By A. K. Dewdney. out in fascinating detail. But this is no Bruner's scientific and humanistic tenden Poseidon, New York: 1984. Pp.267. video game and still less a dry treatise on cies reaches a maximum in his essay on Hbk $16.95, pbk $9.95. To be two-dimensional science. It is simul consciousness. He distinguishes its published in the UK on 11 May by taneously a fine tale of adventure, as we evolutionary origin as a "tool" for solving Picador, hbk £7.95, pbk £2.95. accompany Yendred on his trek in search problems from its "ornamental" role as a of higher meaning for existence, and the vehicle for "making visible the unseen, story of Dewdney and his students as they making possible the unimagined". He ONE hundred years ago Nature published a become caught up in the experience and are draws a parallel distinction between two review of Flatland: A Romance of Many themselves educated through their contact modes of discourse- the formal scientific Dimensions, Edwin Abbott Abbott's with Arde. mode, and the narrative mode of the poet classic tale of A Square, a two-dimensional The original reviewer of Flatland found and myth-maker. The essay itself jumps creature who encounters a visitor from the some parts of the book tedious, as A from one mode to the other, its very form third dimension. Now there appears a new Square went on at length about the physio buckling under the pressure. book, The Planiverse by Alexander logy and psychology of perception, or After the triumphs of the "New Look" Keewatin Dewdney, hailed by the pub described his society's blinkered view of and the study of thought, which were both lishers as a worthy successor to Flatland. women's education (an effective satirical to launch a thous~nd experiments into the For those of us who received our first device by Abbott, a distinguished school literature, Bruner shifted his attention to challenge to think about lower and higher master well known for his liberal leadership schools, and to the reform of the curri dimensions from Abbott's little volume, in the cause of education for women). culum. His best ideas were thwarted by this claim must be viewed with scepticism. Similarly some readers of The Planiverse politicians, but he nonetheless served to Yet the claim is correct. will find parts of it slow going, even though shape certain aspects of the educational Dewdney's volume is a fable for our own the author has relegated many technical system in the United States. Subsequently, time that will delight anyone who likes a asides to special boxes or to an appendix. he returned to the laboratory to investigate good story and who enjoys a mind Yet the pace of the book gives assurance children's cognitive development. As he stretching experience. Subtitled Computer that each new chapter will present some candidly admits, his work here was too Contact with a Two-Dimensional World, thing quite different, as the author strives close to Piaget's, and it was less well the book introduces us to "Yndrd" to include material of interest to a wide received. At the beginning of the 1970s (Yendred), a creature we meet only on the range of readers - biology, astronomy, after the Harvard Center had been disbanded, Bruner, always ready to move, Yendred and his father go fishing came to England to the Watts professor ship of psychology at Oxford. One of the most absorbing essays in the book describes his life in universities, and compares Harvard and Oxford to the latter's disadvantage. In retrospect, one can see that although the Oxford intel lectual milieu suited him, the department of psychology did not. It lay entirely on the scientific side of the border, whereas he retained his scepticism. Ultimately, bored by "Bruner-bashing" seminars, he returned to the United States. Although Bruner has written a number of widely praised books, this one is his best. Its success rests on two factors. One is Bruner's talent for being at the centre ofthe cognitive revolution. The other is his skill in re-creating on paper his own personality and cast of mind - a vivid, and very unEnglish mixture of passion, restlessness, gregariousness and intellectuality. He is "When the mast had been put up and all the gear and tackle made ready, we realized indeed an intellectual first, a psychologist that the boat had no bow or stern as such. Being completely symmetrical about its mast, second and a scientist third. His book is bow and stern could be determined only by which direction the boat was moving. This bound to be widely read by psychologists; it ceased to puzzle us when we realized that a two-dimensional boat could not 'turn around'. should be read by anyone who wants to "The mast of the boat has two sections, a stout lower section inserted in a well-braced understand what has happened to Ameri framework, and a graceful upper section resting on this and held in place by two wedges or can psychology in the past half century. 0 pegs. Two long ropes dangled from the top of the mast. There were lockers for food, tackle, and line, as well as two holds for the catch. At either end of the boat were oars. One of these was soon being pumped by Yendred's father; the other was folded up to be used by Yendred on P.N. Johnson-Laird is Assistant Director of the their return. Ingeniously designed, the blades of the oars were hinged so that when the rower Medical Research Council's Applied Psy pulled down on the handle and the blades stroked toward the rear, they formed a rigid paddle. chology Unit, Cambridge. His most recent When the rower pushed up on the handle, the blades moved forward, folding out of the way so book, Mental Models, was published by as not to counteract the boat's forward motion." (From The Planiverse.) Cambridge University Press late last year.