Farewell to Variables

Edited by:
Jaan Valsiner, Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University

A volume in the series: Unifying Science, Culture and Society. Editor(s): Dominik S. Mihalits, Sigmund Freud University. Brady Wagoner, Aalborg University. Jaan Valsiner, Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University.

Published 2023

This book presents a novel perspective on psychology’s methodology—moving it from quantification as a given imperative to science-philosophical look at phenomena-data relationship. The idea for this volume emerged from inquiries into the history of psychology of the 18th-19th centuries where the developmental focus within German Naturphilosophie led philosophers to emphasize the dialectical nature of biological and psychological development. The nature of the natural and social worlds is curvilinear and includes knot-complexes that cannot be investigated in terms of the consensually accepted General Linear Model of the 20th century. In this the new book continues the creative search for new forms of epistemological ways of thinking that was started in 2010 in the volume methodological thinking in psychology: 60 years gone astray. General Liner Model and turned into metaphoric complexes that acquire life of their own in psychologists’ thinking needs to be replaced by qualitative-structural units of thinking about how human psychological organization can be presented.

CONTENTS
Series Editor’s Preface: About Regression and Progress — Or the Problem With Pars Pro Toto, Dominik Stefan Mihalits. Introduction: The Mentality of a Controllable World: Why Variables Were Needed, Jaan Valsiner. PART I: ORGANIZATIONAL FICTIONS: VARIABLES THAT WE CONTROL. Variables as Obstacles to Psychological Science: Finding Humanness Beneath, Between and Beyond Conventional Categories, Nandita Chaudhary, Mila Tuli, and Punya Pillai. A Psychology of the Ordinary: A First Theoretical Sketch, Bo Allesøe Christensen. Don’t Mind the Variables, Svend Brinkmann. The Hidden Assumptions of Variable-based Social Science, Henrik Skaug Sætra. PART II: WAYS OF USES OF THE NOTION OF VARIABLES. Farewell to Variables in Studies of Developmental Psychology: Notes on a Critical and Conceptual Debate, Julio César Ossa, and Jean Nikola Cudina. No Variables in Classroom: Understanding Learning by a Qualitative Analytical Tool, João Roberto Ratis Tenório da Silva. PART III: GOING BEYOND THE VARIABLES: NEW PERSPECTIVES. Mind Is Movement: We Need More Than Static Representations to Understand It, Raffaele De Luca Picione and Sergio Salvatore. Psychology Between Qualitative and Quantitative Phenomena: On the Different Strati of Introspection, Natalie Rodax. New Perspectives in Ecosystemic Psychology: Developmental Mereotopology, Luca Tateo and Giuseppina Marsico. Sayonara Variable, Konnichiwa Equifinality Point: Semiotic Cultural Psychology Teaches Us What Colorful Really Means, Tatsuya Sato, Yuko Yasuda, Misato Fukuyama, Daina Ishii, Ayae Kido, Yasuhiro Omi, and Yoshiyuki Watanabe. General Conclusion: A Respectful Farewell to the Illusion of Quantified Objectivity, Jaan Valsiner.