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Article ID: CBB001221630

Vygotsky's Crisis: Argument, Context, Relevance (2012)

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 43
Pages: 473--482
Publication date: 2012
Language: English

Publication Date: 2012
Edition Details: Part of a special section: “Assimilating Knowledge---Food and Nutrition in Early Modern Physiologies and Psychology, A Science in Crisis? A Century of Reflections and Debates”

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Marxism Science and politics Jewish civilization and culture Psychology Methodology of science; scientific method 20th century, early Russia Soviet Union Vygotskii, Lev Semenovich Trotsky, Leon

Vygotsky's The Historical Significance of the Crisis in Psychology (1926--1927) is an important text in the history and philosophy of psychology that has only become available to scholars in 1982 in Russian, and in 1997 in English. The goal of this paper is to introduce Vygotsky's conception of psychology to a wider audience. I argue that Vygotsky's argument about the crisis in psychology and its resolution can be fully understood only in the context of his social and political thinking. Vygotsky shared the enthusiasm, widespread among Russian leftist intelligentsia in the 1920s, that Soviet society had launched an unprecedented social experiment: The socialist revolution opened the way for establishing social conditions that would let the individual flourish. For Vygotsky, this meant that a new man of the future would become the first and only species in biology that would create itself. He envisioned psychology as a science that would serve this humanist teleology. I propose that The Crisis is relevant today insofar as it helps us define a fundamental problem: How can we systematically account for the development of knowledge in psychology? I evaluate how Vygotsky addresses this problem as a historian of the crisis.

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Article Sturm, Thomas; Mülberger, Annette (2012) Crisis Discussions in Psychology---New Historical and Philosophical Perspectives. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (p. 425). unapi

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