Theology and Science within a Lakatosian Program

The writings of Ian Barbour and Arthur Peacocke can be construed as initial contributions to a Lakatosian research program on the relation between theology and science, the core theory of which is the thesis that theology belongs at the top of a nonreducible hierarchy of sciences. The positive heuristic of this program involves showing that theology and the sciences have enough in common epistemologically to be so related and arguing for nonreducibility. The author in this essay "rationally reconstructs" some of her philosophical work as a contribution to these tasks.     

The Fractal Self and the Organization of Nature: The Daoist Sage and Chaos Theory

The interconnections between self and surroundings in Daoist thought have been explored in the past in a variety of contexts. This paper, however, explores the Daoist version of the relational self from the general perspective of chaos theory and, more specifically, examines the role of the self in creating emergent form and dynamism in nature and society. The fractal self and world merge through the disciplined effort of the sage until the effort becomes effortless. Both self and world are transformed and become one through the emergent moment. This moment represents a new opportunity for subsequent patterns, or attractors, to emerge. We suggest that the self folds itself into the world, creating and being created by a new attractor, or pattern, in the organization of nature, which we argue is Dao . Our current investigation addresses the following aspects of chaos theory and its relation to Daoism: (1) the Daoist notion of wuwei as perfect congruence; (2) yin and yang at the edge of chaos; (3) the emergent nature of the myriad things; and (4) a Daoist warning against fractal disconnections in the world. Finally, we conclude that the self has the potential to become the world. To approach this amplified condition, the self must dedicate itself to and risk open engagement with events across the complexity of nature. Through openly engaging the world, the self is transformed, leaving the world forever changed.     

Perspective role-taking in young children

Children between the ages of 4 and 7 years were asked to select a photograph depicting the visual perspective of a puppet which was placed at various locations around a dollhouse in a modified version of Piaget and Inhelder's three-mountain task. A shielded condition was used for half of the children. Three types of errors were examined in relation to the shield condition, age, and type of vantage point (views from the corners and from the sides). Shielding of the stimulus array reduced egocentric errors among 4-year-olds, producing a pattern of responses more typical of that observed among older children. Increasing specificity in perspective role-taking with age was indicated by changes in error patterns. Finally, the task was more difficult on trials with corner views, particularly when the child's own view included some of the cues present in the puppet's perspective.     

Facilitative effects of forgetting from short-term memory on growth of long-term memory in retardates

Competing explanations of the beneficial effect of spacing in retardate discrimination learning were tested. Three-trial multidimensional (“junk”) problems were presented concurrently to educable retardates with MAs over 8 years. The spacing interval spearating Trials 1 and 2 was filled with either zero, four, or eight interpolations, the interpolations being either trials on similar junk problems or repetitions of a single, well-learned dot-pattern discrimination. The principal findings were that: (1) while short-term retention of junk problems (as measured by Trial 2 performance) suffered greater interference from similar junk interpolations than from dot-pattern interpolations, long-term learning (as measured by a delayed Trial 3) was superior following the highly interfering junk problems; and (2) spacing facilitated learning only following highly interfering interpolations. These results are inconsistent with consolidation and rehearsal theories but support the prediction of the Sperber. Greenfield, and House (Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1973, 99) spacing model that forgetting from short-term memory facilitates retardate learning.     

Structural consequences of individual position in nondyadic social networks

The pattern of dyadic relationships among members of a population has often been used to obtain important information on the way that social structure can further or constrain social action. More recently, it has been proposed that nondyadic relationships can play a similar role. In this paper, a formalism is proposed that allows the dyadic structure and the nondyadic structure to be considered simultaneously. If this formalism is applied to the study of the structure arising from attendance at significant social events, it becomes possible to identify potential loci for social action. Still further, it is shown that information on individuals' structural perspectives with respect to such potential loci can be translated into conclusions about the individuals' positions in the dyadic structure. Such considerations can be used to evaluate the relative potential of these loci for social action.     

Characteristics of social cognition in children with different symptom patterns

Clinically referred 6- to 12-year-old children as having Internalizing or Externalizing symptoms patterns on the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist were compared on two social perspective taking tasks and three measures of personality. On the Chandler Social Perspective Taking Task and an interview assessing the conceptual understanding of friendship devised by Selman, social cognitive immaturity was more likely to be associated with Externalizing rather than Internalizing symptomatology, especially in boys. Both Internalizers and Externalizers maintained an expected developmental course on these measures, however, when compared to normative data. Greater maturity in the understanding of friendship was found among children who had higher self-esteem and a more internal locus of control and who used more adaptive coping strategies in stressful situations. Methodological issues in studies of psychopathology and social cognition are discussed along with the usefulness of assessing social cognitive maturity in clinical practice.     

Perceiving subjective contours during early childhood

The perception of subjective contours in visual displays that characteristically produce them among adults was studied for children between 3 and 6 years. Evidence for visually creating subjective contours was derived in two ways: (a) by means of direct perception, and (b) by means of recognition of the typically completed shape from among members of a matching series. With both procedures, there were significant age-related contours. A majority of 3-year-olds showed at least one instance of figural completion based on direct perception, and their average recognition performance was 60%. By 5 years, all children provided a clear indication that they had completed at least one figure by means of subjective contours, and their recognition accuracy was 100%. The overall findings provide age-related information that must be accounted for by theories of perceptual development; in particular, those dealing with pictorial perception.     

A research note on occupational changes for Louisiana urban females, 1960–1970

Occupational distributions for sex and race comparisons for areas of Louisiana are examined through an index of dissimilarity, D, a measure of the percentage of workers who must change occupational categories for the two compared percentage occupational distributions to be the same. In 1960 the more urban the area, the lower the index; indices are higher for blacks for male-female comparisons and higher for females than for males in cross-race comparisons. These patterns hold for 1970, but D decreased for all comparisons, indicating a trend toward similarity in compared occupational distributions, but the ultimate limit is unknown.     

The Ringelmann effect: Studies of group size and group performance

Ringelmann's classic finding—that the addition of co-workers in a rope-pulling task leads to a linear decrement in the individual group member's average performance—was reexamined experimentally. Study I attempted to replicate the effect, using groups of subjects ranging in size from 1 to 6. Performance dropped significantly as group size was increased from one individual to two or to three, but the addition of a fourth, fifth, or sixth member produced insignificant additional decrements; thus, the effect was not linear but curvilinear. Study II was designed to examine possible sources of performance loss, separating the factors of “coordination” and “motivation” loss (Steiner, 1972). The possibility of intermember incoordination was eliminated, while motivation loss remained free to vary: Each experimental subject pulled alone, and in “groups” where he believed there were from one to five other members. Once again, individual performance declined significantly with the addition of the first and second perceived co-worker, but then leveled off for perceived group sizes three to six. Some implications are discussed.     

Prenominal adjective order and visual discrimination in children

Preschool and third-grade children heard prenominal adjective phrases describing an object. Each phrase contained an article, two adjectives and a head noun. The phrases were constructed with either normal or inverted adjective order. Either after a one second delay or immediately following phrase presentation, Subjects were shown pictures of two objects. One of the objects (target) depicted the object described in the noun phrase. The other object differed from the target along the dimensions of color, size, or both color and size. The Subject's task was to select the target object. It was predicted that adjective order would influence perceptual strategies used by the Subjects in the visual discrimination task. Analysis of response time scores showed that adjective order interacted with the relevant discriminative stimuli in the discrimination task. These results were interpreted as support for hypotheses that suggest that linguistic organization can constrain conceptual processing involving nonlinguistic information. The effects of the delay condition provided additional evidence for these hypotheses plus support for an arousal hypothesis.