Aaro Toomela - The Psychology of Scientific Inquiry

In the twenty-first century, we live under the conditions of exponential increase of information that at times breaks loose from the knowledge it is supposed to represent. This is the case of information noise too much information that obscures the basic message that is needed for our understanding of the World. Psychology today is filled with information noiseempirical studies are published in ever-increasing quantity with rare efforts to systematically analyze what the value of these messagesother than the fact that they are published in peer-reviewed journalsactually is. Science is in danger when fetishism of the administrative evaluation systems of scientists work steps in.

This book by Aaro Toomela is a powerful counter-voice to the prevailing ethos of empiricism for its own sake. It is a systematic analysis of the ways in which psychologists thinkorshould think if they want to advance their science to that of productive Wissenschaft . His coverage of the issues is typically Estoniandeep in ideas, serious in their implications, and silently humorous in their presentation. Estonia is a small country between Europe and the Orient, where people are serious about many aspects of livingincluding that of how classical music can be appreciated in its new forms yet fiercely independent new nation state.

Aaro Toomelas work in psychology belongs in kind to these basic inventions that Estonia has contributed to the World. He is a unique scholarcombining in his background the education and practice of a medical doctor with that of a cultural psychologist. Currentlyas a professor of both neuropsychology and cultural psychology in Tallinn Universitya combination of topics within one Lehrstuhl that is unique in the World. He is among the top three persons in the World who is an expert in the work of Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Luria. Much of the theoretical advancement he presents in this book is based on this expertise that dates back to last century.

There is much to learn from the Continental European perspectives in psychology of the 1920s and early 1930s, and Toomelas work is a good example of how history of psychology can illuminate the future of the discipline. History is not a cabinet of curiosities for old ideas, but rather a reservoir of unfinished and unduly abandoned perspectives many of which can lead us further in our search for theoretical innovations in the twenty-first century. Many of the forgotten names of the European psychology before 1879when Wilhelm Wundts establishment of the first laboratory of psychology has been made to mark the birth of psychology as scienceare worth careful re-examination. Psychology is the science of the extraordinary ways in which we live our ordinary lives and is better not dragged over to a laboratory for investigations. Psychologists such as William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Bunin, Henry James, Rabindranath Tagore, Pablo Neruda, and many others have made that point clearyet mostly in the domain of applied psychology appreciating the world literature rather than in research psychology. Yet the latter could benefit from it in very realistic ways (Brinkmann, 2009). Psychological issues are oneand complexwithin laboratory walls and beyond them.

Toomela understands the basic human value of doing psychology with deep devotion to our basic understanding. He is relentless in pointing out the superficial moments in psychologists ways of working. He is known for his intelligently argumentative style that has already been contributing to the present series of SpringerBriefs (Toomela, 2017, 2018), aside from in the analysis of psychologys methodological crisis (Toomela & Valsiner, 2010). That psychology in the last century has moved in a direction of fragmentation of ideas and mechanistic application of methods is a point Toomela never tires of emphasizing. At times, helike most of usgets frustrated as the possible ways of overcoming the crisis are ignored by the readers.

Advocating against the fragmentation of the discipline, Toomela argues that there are specific epistemological and ontological assumptions that good science should satisfy. Psychology would be still on its way to becoming such an integrative scienceToomela calls this stage metaparadigmatic science. His aim is to set the epistemological foundations for a metaparadigmatic psychology. According to him, this advance will be possible insofar as the discipline overcomes the narrow understanding of causality that pervades it. Contemporary psychology would reduce cause to efficient cause, leaving important parts of the psychological object/subject