Dewey's 1896 paper, "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," was acclaimed 50 years later as the most important paper published in The Psychological Review in its first half-century of history. Today, Dewey's paper appears to be headed toward oblivion. Considering it worthy of resurrection, we use it as a starting point for tracing out the gradual evolution of Dewey and Bentley's formulation of their transactional viewpoint to its culmination in their book, Knowing and the Known. An exposition of the transactional (...) paradigm is developed via competing, contemporary self-actional and interactional theoretical systems. Then, the space-time postulates of self-actional, interactional, and transactional approaches are spelled out as they enter into philosophical, biological and psychological inquiry. Among prevailing theories, most of which fall into the self-actional/interactional categories, Kantor's interbehavioral viewpoint stands apart from the rest. And while it shares a certain similarity with the transactional approach, the historical record should document it as an independent and parallel development, dating back to Kantor's first publications almost seven decades ago. Furthermore, Kantor's system goes far beyond Dewey and Bentley's "unfractured observation," by providing highly refined analytic procedures in his theoretical constructs. (shrink)

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.