The Promise of Cognitive Psychology by Richard E. Mayer (review)

250 Books waking life, never both at the same time since they are mutually exclusive. When a change occurs it is sudden as in the analogy of the light switch which has a degree of freedom of movement in going from the 'on' to the 'off position, where the switch position has no effect on the light until at the crucial moment the reversal is complete and total. One of the salient features of this work is its attempt to deal with the complexities of behaviour, created when different levels of physical alterations of state interrelate with functional and cognitive states in which meanings may change for both the subject and the observer, depending upon the organization of different levels at any given moment. The net result, however, isa book so rich in interrelations that it is in danger of becoming unreadable. Reversal theory is a hermeneutic theory and like much which has been written from this point of view, this book is not a 'sparkling read'. There is much to chew over, but the work seems to be attempting two things. On the one hand it attempts a general theory of the subjective experience of behaviour and on the other, it is almost a manual of how to interpret particular pieces of behaviour. It is a useful addition to the small number of systems and cybernetic approaches dealing with psychotherapeutic problems. Perhaps the next step would be a book dealing with case histories of treatments using this approach by Michael Apter's co-worker, Dr. K. C. P. Smith. I would very much welcome this. The Cognitive Paradigm: Cognitive Science, a Newly Explored Approach to the Study of Cognition Applied in an Analysis of Science and Scientific Knowledge. Marc de Mey. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1982.314 pp., illus. Cloth, $43.50. ISBN: 90-277-1382-0. Reviewed by Trevor Pateman* This is the first volume in a series of monographs in sociology of the sciences, although it is neither monographic nor sociological. It is a long, unfocused book in which interesting ideas occasionally relieve a stodgy, textbook exposition. The sense is always clear enough, however. If there is a central idea, it is this: to marry the history, philosophy and sociology of science as studies of expert communities and their achievements, understood centrally in terms of Kuhnian paradigms, with a cognitivist theory of the individual mind as a community of experts, in the Minsky-Papert formulation of that idea (to be found most accessibly in Seymour Papert's Mindstorms, Harvester Press, Brighton, 1980). Mey hopes to reconstruct the possibility and rationality of scientific change as progress, which has been threatened by Kuhnian relativism. He uses a cognitivist-inspired theory of perception, set out at pp. 188-192, which shows the inadequacy of concept-driven versus data-driven controversies in the history and philosophy of science. These controversies fail to recognize that data can be perceived from more and less global perspectives, depending on whether they are approached top-down or bottom-up by the perceiving subject. Scientific discoveries involve integration and reintegration of data within organizations of conceptual knowledge (mental schemata), which have both tops and bottoms. This idea is briefly illustrated by reference to Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood. The idea is worth examining at greater length than Mey gives it. In particular, 1missed any discussion of post-Kuhnian controversies; there is no reference to Larry Laudan's Progress and Its Problems (University of California Press, 1977), for instance. Mey's account of perceptual organization is also his solution to the 'cognitive paradox': "When perceptions depend on anticipations [as cognitivists argue], it is difficult to see what the further point is of perception. Furthermore, it becomes impossible to conceive of the perception of the unexpected. Nothing seems solved by moving massively into the subject all the information that was previously localized in the object" (p. 181). In the theory of perception Mey employs, and more generally in the Minsky-Papert account of the mind, schemata are, as indicated, directly connected to data at both global and specific levels, so that satisfaction of an anticipation at one level does not lead automatically to satisfaction at another...