Theoretical Hubris and the Willingness To Be Radical: An Open Letter to James J. Gibson |
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Abstract: | J.J. Gibson's direct perception thesis is the cornerstone of ecological psychology. Not to understand this is not to understand ecological psychology. Beginning in the summer of 1968, when I first met Gibson, and after working with him for the next year at Cornell, I underwent a conversion crisis. I came to appreciate his thesis through a few philosophical insights that I here share with the reader through an open letter to Gibson, where I seek to illuminate the reasons for my conversion from being a Miller-Chomsky psycholinguist and a Piaget devotee to a radical Gibsonian. This conversion has influenced my work even until the present. Indeed, I am still working through its implications in all that I attempt. I share this intimate portrait of my relationship to Gibson and his profound ideas in hope that others who have struggled with his thesis might be helped along their way as I was. |
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