Rebels within the Ranks: Psychologists' Critique of Scientific Authority and Democratic Realities in New Deal America / Edition 1

by Katherine Pandora

Overview

This book examines the work of social and personality psychologists who, in the 1930s, criticized the increasingly restrictive vision of scientific life being promoted by neobehaviorist social scientists. This critique has been overlooked by historians who have concentrated on the rise of neobehaviorism, rather than the challenges advanced by such "rebels within the ranks" as Gordon Allport, Gardner Murphy, and Lois Barclay Murphy. All three contributed to ongoing public and professional debates about democracy and the authority of scientific knowledge in New Deal America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521524940
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/22/2002
Series:	Cambridge Studies in the History of Psychology
Edition description:	FIRST/REPRINT
Pages:	276
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.75(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. The Deep Context of Dissent: Jamesian Philosophy and Social Gospel Theology; 2. Challenging the Rule of the Game; 3. Defying the Law of Averages: Constructing a Science of Individuality; 4. The Pursuit of 'Impure' Science: Constructing a Science of Social Life; 5. Natural History and Psychological Habitats; 6. Exploratory Relativism and Patterns of Possibility; Conclusions; Endnotes.

Editorial Reviews

"Pandora has written a beautifully nuanced book about one particular episode in the nexus between ideas, politics, and science. It is an object lesson in how far the history of psychology has moved beyond the disciplinary obsessions and great-figure stories that contained scholarship in the past." Ellen Herman, Jrnl of Interdisciplinary History

This book should be on the shelves of anyone interested in the history of psychology" Isis

"...Pandora has produced a fine case study of the ways in which culture and science are constitutive of each other....Pandora has written a history that should be of interest to specialists as well as to historians of medicine and science." Joel Barslow, American Historical Review

From the Publisher