EPICS · Epistemology in psychological science, the heritage of Giambattista Vico and the cultural psychology.""

Epistemology in psychological science, the heritage of Giambattista Vico and the cultural psychology.

The project “EPICS. Epistemology in psychological science, the heritage of Giambattista Vico and the cultural psychology” had the ambitious goal of developing an innovative theoretical and epistemological reflection about the type of knowledge created by psychological science. In the 2 years of the project, developed at the Niels Bohr Professorship Centre for Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University (www.ccp.aau.dk), it has been possible to trace back historically the ideas of scholars who strived for the foundation for a unified theory of the human psyche, and use such knowledge to propose new directions for innovating epistemology, theory and methodology of qualitative psychology. One of the main issues in psychology has always been how to understand human psyche avoiding reductionism and accounting for the complexity of the relationship with the world. How psychology generalize its knowledge about human experiencing without flattening it to the lower levels of biological organization and taking into account the cultural nature of psyche? The project has tried to answer this question starting from the history of ideas, exploring sometimes neglected aspects of original and fundamental thinkers, such as Giambattista Vico, Carlo Cattaneo, Wilhelm Wundt, William James, Lev S. Vygotsky, Kurt Lewin, and integrating the development of contemporary psychologists like Jerome S. Bruner, Serge Moscovici, Jaan Valsiner. These scholars provide us, indeed, with fundamental hunches on how to gain knowledge of the ever-changing and manifold aspects of psyche so to make psychology a science that develops with its very object of study: understanding the uniqueness of human experiencing, cultural guidance and development, rather than pursuing a normative view of what psyche “should be” and of the “biases” and “gaps” of actual persons with respect to an abstract model. The idea of human being resulting is not that of an information processing unit, or a network of mirror neurons, or an irrational entity which mulishly refuses to follow the rules of logic. It is rather the idea of human beings as active and future-oriented, copying with uncertainties and dilemmas of life, hardly negotiating meaning with their fellows, able to produce along such striving for future both the sublime of art and the evil of war and exploitation. New concepts from venerable ideas Giambattista Vico was an Italian philosopher at the edge between the humanistic tradition and the first signs of the advent of Enlightenment. But at the same time, his privileged position of immersion in the legacy of Southern Italian humanism, in the middle of the battle between Ancients and Moderns, allowed him to assume a different stance with respect to the dominant Cartesian rationalism of the time. He committed himself with the endeavor of developing a philosophical anthropology and a new methodology for the study of the relationship between the development of human mind and the development of civilization. The project has reconstructed Vico’s most important, and sometimes neglected, influences, producing several publications that link directly his ideas to the development of 19th and 20th century psychology. The second scientific objective of the project was to innovate the epistemology of psychology through the development of Vico’s idea in contemporary research. It has been achieved by producing several studies that develop theoretically the relationship between methodology, theory building and generalization in psychology. The first achievement has been to show the relevance of the historical and concrete conditions in which psychological processes take place, but also the need to consider the whole, from its genesis to its transformation in something different, as cognition, affection and action are always parts of it, and they are an action upon the situation. The object of psychological research must then become the uniqueness of experiencing as a developmental process. Psychological phenomena cannot be treated as an alternation of activation and equilibrium states; they are rather a continuous production of novelty from the structural tension of our dealing and making sense of life experiences. Methodologically, this implies that psychology needs to focus on complex products of human activity, that cannot be reduced to simple elements, such as behavior or language. This will reconsider the current methodologies in psychology. Finally, the project resulted in a new research endeavor on imagination, which is one of Vico’s most innovative concepts. The new research project will focus on imagination as a fundamental higher psychological function that is devoted to the semiotic manipulation of complex wholes of iconic and linguistic signs. The project has implemented a scientific network with: Aarhus and South Denmark Universities with research groups on epistemology of psychology; Universities of Sao Paulo (USP) and Salvador (UFBA), Brazil with research groups on epistemology of science; Universities of Tartu and Tallin, Estonia with research group on semiotic; University of Salerno, Italy with research group on social interactions in learning; Trondheim University, Norway; University of Cali, Colombia and Pontificia Universidad Católica, Chile with research groups on history of psychology; Universities of Bochum and Hochschule Magdeburg-Stendal, Germany with research groups on qualitative methodologies. Thanks to the project, the Principal Investigator achieved the associate professorship at Aalborg University, the habilitation as associate professor in Italy and the Carlsberg Foundation Research Grant in 2013. The products and outcomes funded under Epics project include: 25 international publications (10 peer-reviewed articles, 10 peer-reviewed book chapters, 1 peer-reviewed proceeding, 2 edited books, 2 edited special issue); 19 international events (2 organized workshops, 4 organized symposia, 6 conference presentations, 3 lectures, 4 visitings); and outreach activities (1 blog, 1 news article, 1 public lecture, 1 MCAA conference). Contacts: Luca Tateo, Associate Professor Aalborg University (Denmark) Room 4.225,Research Center on Cultural Psychology Department of Communication and Psychology, Kroghstræde 3 • DK-9220 Aalborg Ø http://personprofil.aau.dk/130534 http://aalborg.academia.edu/LucaTateoDissemination activities

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