A volume in Advances in Cultural Psychology Series Editor: Jaan
Valsiner, Clark University Cultural psychology is currently in a phase
of rapid growth. Innovating Genesis is an example of how the most
central aspect of any science-its methodology-undergoes revolutionary
transformation. Yet in this book we see careful continuity with the past
of the discipline. The orientation to study processes of emergence was
well prepared by the Ganzheitspsychologie tradition in early twentieth
century. If we all have learned something about the world since then it
is the inevitable quality of the whole that transcends its parts.
Scientists have tried to grasp the general notion of such wholes-yet
recurrently regressing to the easy illusion that one can reduce the
complexities of the in vivo events to the scrutinizes in vitro. By
looking to the history of how holistic ideas might help our present
investigations, this book demonstrates how contemporary science has
something to learn from its own history. The editors of this volume have
managed to bring together a creative international team of scholars whom
they have guided to be on target of the content matter of the
book-innovating the genesis of the methods for the study of
psychological emergence.