W H R Rivers (1864-1922): the founder of research in cross-cultural perception.

This paper presents a brief review of Rivers's contribution to psychology, especially to his cross-cultural studies of the basic perceptual processes of vision, and examines the lasting influence of his findings. It reports briefly on the scientific milieu in which Rivers carried out his work and traces the growth of his interest in the psychology of perception from the early days of his medical work to his appointment as a foundation lecturer of two English universities, London and Cambridge. It is argued that Rivers's contribution has been undervalued by psychologists.     

A personal encounter with psychology (1937-2002)

An undergraduate assistantship with Abraham Maslow, research with Solomon Asch, and an indirect exposure to Ernest Nagel's philosophy of science encouraged Howard H. Kendler to become involved with methodological issues in psychology. Graduate training with Kenneth Spence led to an active research career that was initially immersed in the latent learning controversy and later, with the collaboration of his wife Tracy Kendler, in the extension of the Hull-Spence model of cognitive development. Methodological concerns from a variety of sources encouraged Kendler to express his ideas on the methodology and history of psychology as well as its role in ethical and social policy issues. A productive symbiotic relationship is created from the interaction of democracy, natural-science psychology, and moral pluralism.     

The historical context of G. Stanley Hall's Adolescence (1904)

G. Stanley Hall's magnum opus, Adolescence, published in 1904 in two hefty volumes I herein submit to historical analysis. I am concerned with how it did "fit" into the notions and practices of the larger culture as well as into the discourses of science and of child nurture of that time. There is plenty of evidence of Hall's ethnic, racial, and gender attitudes as expressed in the book being typical of the white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant middle class stratum to which he belonged. His discussions of the extant discourses of science and of child nurture show a man quite conversant with these discourses, and not merely in American and British, but also in French and German publications as well. Probably any book, idea, or historical circumstance or phenomenon is chiefly a historical artifact, and we should not bend it much to "prove" that it is in any important sense a part of a different age. It is one thing to say that a certain idea has a contemporary resonance; to claim there is a straight line from it to today is problematic and meaningless.     

Stability of the F2-(Al-Pd-Mn) phase

The stability of the F2-(Al-Pd-Mn) phase has been studied by in-situ neutron diffraction on a single quasicrystal with composition Al_69.8Pd_21.4Mn_8.8. We find that the F2 phase is not stable and corresponds to a transient state in the process of the transformation of the icosahedral phase to the F2_M phase. The icosahedral-to-F2_Mphase transition occurs at around 715^oC. In the F2 phase a large amount of diffuse scattering is located close to the icosahedral Bragg reflection in place of the S ₁ superstructure reflections characteristic of the F2_m phase.