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My research
1: Retrospect
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RESEARCH 1: RETROSPECT OF MY RESEARCH |
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Sixteen short chapters
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A common denominator of my research
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1/16: The common demominator of my approaches, viewed from a distance, is probably my fancy for piecing together what appears to be entirely disparate at first sight. I wish to find relationships among seemingly independent levels of human experience and behaviour. A desire of trespassing frontiers arose on the fertile ground of my teacher's, Wolfgang Metzger's,(see pic) Gestalt psychology, whose urge to attend comprising wholes, associated with an experimental and analytical mind, doesn't set you at rest.
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First passe-partout: General qualities
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2/16: Using Charles Osgood's (see pic) Semantic Differential rationale, I first focused synaesthesia, i.e., inter-modal connections pervading human perception. Inter-modality goes along with lack of specifity. Hearing colours, seeing music, tasting words and such phenomena are based on what I called general qualities (Allgemeinqualitäten), a "passe-partout", as Heinz Heckhausen occasionally called them. General qualities transmit empirical links among disparate cognitive and affective processes and are needed to arrive at a first theoretical understanding (1964).
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Experience is based on latent abstract relations.
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3/16:On further pondering over general qualities, searching by factor analysis what is behind them, I ended up with three relational components: degree of relatedness (strong to weak), dominance (dominant to sub-dominant). and equilibrium (balanced to imbalanced). A triiplicity of relational facets thus seems to operate on elementary functional levels. Here an abstract phenomenology of experience might merge neuronal processes. It seems to me today that my digging underground relations which I considered "deeper" than units, objetcs etc., anticipated, in principle, some of the spirit of modern connectionism (1970).
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Sound related to meaning
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4/16: Words, the building blocks of language, are signs making sense. They connect lower levels (physical signs) and higher levels of human cognition (meaning). Co-functioning processes are involved, i. e., phonetic-semantic correlations. Contrary to de Saussure's, the Swiss linguist's, famous principle of arbitrariness, the sounds of words, their physical manifestations, tend to reflect, to some extent and more often than rationalists would expect, associated connotations (phonetic symbolism) Wolfgang Köhler's classical matching task (which of the above figures represents MALUMA, which TAKETE?) was a pioneering simple beginning. (1969).
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Open and closed minds revealed by content analysis
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5/16: The fact that man is endowed with the capacity to connect phenomena of seemingly unrelated levels of experience may be viewed as resulting from leaps of evolution. They gave rise to adaptive intelligence, eventually to humankind's advantage over immutable specializations which characterize other primates and lower species. Very often, however, human minds show less than optimal mutability. Moreover, people differ in this regard, some are generally more versatile, flexible and adaptable than others. Such insights might have been one of the reasons why, in 1971, I devised a content analytical procedure (DOTA, Dogmatism Text Analysis) to assess, by objective means, traits and states of open versus closed modes of cognitive functioning.
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Research tool DOTA (Dogmatism Text Analysis)
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6/16: This occurred at a time when an epidemic relapse into immutability - neo-Marxian slogans headlined this turmoil - posed problems to academic teachers who had opted for "open minds" as an educational goal. The DOTA procedure picks from a speaker's or writer's text "A-lexemes" like all, none, always, never, must, cannot, absolutely, and other forms of superlative content that manifest black-white modes of cognition. Moderate and open "B-lexemes" are also recorded like not all, some, sometimes, little, much, can, must not, possibly, in all 650 lexemes are considered. The relative frequencies of A- over B-lexemes is used as a measure indicating degrees of of cognitive "Prägnanz", premature Prägnanz being known as "closed-mindedness" which is generally an escape from unbearable complexity. As expected, Nazi ideology presented itself by an abundance of A-lexemes.
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Victim of my own research: Radical openness
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7/16: Incidentally, having become sensitive to A-B-contrasts in word production, I became victim of my own research. By permanently attending verbal DOTA entries, even at putting my own thoughts to words, I discovered tendencies of rashly accepting as true and rejecting as false what I had not seriously examined. I realized that if my approach to open minds was valid it should work on myself in the first place. Hence I felt obliged to embrace open-mindedness more radically. I started admitting objectives of research that many of my mainstream colleagues would reject as abstruse. I knew that my disregarding the constraints of institutionalized science would probably put me in unwelcome isolation.
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A. L.Chizhevsky�s claim of solar-human connections
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8/16: Soon I found myself looking, with due sense of duty, at unconventional claims of disrespected authors. Is there anything at Alexander Chizhevsky's (see pic) claim that variations of solar activity and dependent geomagnetic oscillations have any impact on human mental life? I there any evidence of his claim that changes of minds among masses of people are triggered by solar magnetism manifesting themselves as upheavals, revolts, civil wars, revolutions, and other forms of "power from below"? (Chizhevsky had been banished by Stalinist "power from above" to some gulag in Ural). I found weaknesses in the Russian's archival procedure. To my surprise, however, my scrutiny of this hypothesis based on own data corroborated the gist of his results. Fortunately, representatives of mainstream science in the West where tolerance is decreed by law could not simply react to this finding by jailing the researcher.
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Human cultural history: Affected by our sun?
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9/16: In 1975, a solar astronomer and expert in the history of solar processes (John Eddy) published an interesting discovery: In historical time, the sun underwent extended periods of missing spots, i.e., periods of anomalous magnetic respite. The logic for my research which ensued was simple: If the sun, during its short 11-year cycles, affected mental processes of the masses, then long-term drastic changes of its activity should give rise to even more marked oscillations of mental life on earth. Bursts of cultural creativity in its broadest sense might be expected in independent societies. I found surpsising evidence supporting this conjecture, The strongest changes in cultural history occurred, as predicted (or post-dicted), during the so-called "Maunder Minimum" around A.D. 1630-1715) when solar activity was essentially switched off. Hans J. Eysenck (see pic), the undaunted "rebel with a cause", took interest in my research. Eysenck even devoted a chapter of his book on creativity to my findings and encouraged me to broaden my investigations.
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If the sun horns in, why not planets? (Gauquelin)
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10/16: Of course, relationships between solar physics and human minds are considerably different from relationships between sound and meaning. They are alike, though, in that ordinary scientists whose work is merely rooted in conventions don't take seriously what tramscends currently accepted frameworks. Whenever reports on anomalies (= currently unexplainable phenomena) obtrude orthodox onlookers they tend to react by more or less forceful rejection. Michel Gauquelin (see pic) is a case in point. He claimed that the birth rates of eminent artists, writers, politicians, scientists etc. are above chance when Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Moon have just risen or have just crossed the mid-heaven. If the sun horns, I thought, why not the planets? So I took this matter up, too, and devoted considerable research to it.
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The organized sceptics� revolt: Mars effect drama
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11/16: Again, Hans Eysenck showed interest here and checked the Gauquelin data, although by mere cursory inspection. He found no fault. I myself went into this stuff independently abiding to my principle of open-mindedness (overcoming my distaste of astrology). Here again I found grains of gold. This was nothing to stay happy for long, because I soon became entangled in the "Mars effect drama", as it was called, which had begun around 1960 and was still on stage by 1985 when I entered the scene. The world’s leading sceptic, Paul Kurtz ( pic), of the Scientific Committeee of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) acted as main opponent and leader of a joint campaign by French, Belgian, Dutch, German, and U.S. "true disbelievers". Readers interested in sociology of science and its psychological underpinnings - interest in planets is dispensable - will find here a plethora of anecdotes, symptoms of generally unknown dynamics at the fringes of ordinary science (see the chronology in my and Ken Irving's "The Tenacious Mars Effect", 1996), condensed on Irving's Website here.
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Effects by morphic resonance? (Sheldrake)
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12/16: Beyond the fringes of ordinary science, provided you tresspass them, you may find unusually fertile oases - or fata morganas. Students of one of my courses drew my attention to Rupert Sheldrake's (see pic) New Science of Life and his "morphic fields". Sheldrake claims that the world is embedded in patterns of information which are effective, in terms of "formative causation, beyond space and time, independently of physical carriers. Inanimate and animate systems of nature are permanently drawing blueprints of form from this mysterious realm of nature that he claimed was existent. What is the evidence? I entered this problem area, I used Japanese Hiragana letters as stimulus material in recognition experiments (subjects were expected to be better at learning foreign letters in genuine as compared to tilted positions). I hoped to get hold of at least some fragments of new facts that might eventually turn out to fill explanatory gaps of my solar and planatory studies. I thought, in view of first positive results of my student's thesis and subsequent additional success, that this thread might turn to account. Five years of intensive research was needed to come to the conclusion that Sheldrake's predictions were wrong. If any grain of gold should be hidden in his theory of morphic fields it must still be discovered. So I quit this field. Sheldrake himself abandoned this experimental route.
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Are our minds connected without senses? (Rhine)
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13/16: Despite my dealing with weird claims of various outsiders I did not dare, for a long time, to investigate extra-sensory perception and other putative phenomena of the so-called paranormal. My prejudice, based on cursory reading, was that paranormal effects, even though probably real (J. B. Rhine's -see pic -pioneering work appeared convincing), are exceptionally tiny and not replicable. When I eventually made a first attempt - again triggered by my students (1996) - I was surprised to find that deviations from chance, due to "psi" - the unexplained variable in this field - were not as small and not as evasive as critics and even experts of parapsychological research were deploring. I think it's because of my haphazardly using a new straightforward method that my results came out as more convincing than what had generally been published (the test invites participants to guess the number on a ball they will draw from an opaque bag on each of a series of trials). After five years of ball-test research - more than 300 student participants were tested - I may conclude that roughly 10 percent of our student population (perhaps of the population at large) is "psychic", i.e., at least sensitive to information which is "received" somehow, apparently without sensory transmission. I also found that such skills are rather stable over weeks, months, or even years, they may oscillate but they rarely vanish. The main goal of my current research is to improve this method and to incite others, disbelievers in the first place, to use it and to get involved. I don’t have reason to doubt that the new method, applied by others, will continue to yield confirming results. Independent replications of psi effects are needed to gain recognition and general interest (and funds) in this disrespected area of research.
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On revealing dogmas in mainstream�s vital matters
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14/16: It might be a bad foible of mine to link seemingly independent pieces of experience, since I even carried such attitude over to create problems within my mainstream business. My concern is factor analysis, the popular method of analysing correlational data sets with exploratory intent, a method that I myself had been using routinely early on. I had become increasingly unhappy with L. L. Thurstone's principle of so-called simple structure and his widely accepted idea that variables are best explained if based on a minimum number of "factors", on only one "factor" if possible. As far as I can see, varieties in nature are nowhere put on single poles, phenomena generally arise from relations of underlying building blocks, from interaction of components and complex combinations. On all levels of inanimate and animate organization wholes emerge from interweaving parts. I could not understand why factor analysts were doggedly attempting to construe a world of utterly independent "dimensions" and associated constructs in splendid isolation.
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�Simple structure� leads us astray
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15/16: With the mathematical help of Uwe Engeland, a postgraduate in physics and expert in principal component analysis, I replaced Thurstone's principle of simple structure by its opposite, the principle of "complex structure". I replaced the widely used Varimax factor rotation which is guided by simple structure with what I call Varimin rotation which is guided by complex structure. Results by Varimin rotation, compared with those of Varimax rotation, turned out to be more abstract, but more meaningful, more versatile, more conclusive, and theoretically useful. Varimin is apt to recover physical parameters from variables whose determinants are predictable while the results of common Varimax rotations lead astray. They are confusing and less stable. As a rule, different authors using common varimax and other simple structure tools report more or less different factors. In almost each of twelve yearly issues of the journal PAID (Personality and Individual Differences) new dimensions of personality are introduced, most of them unrelated to the immense long list of dimensions which have already been assembled. Psychometrics, the main methodological guideline for conceptual efforts in personality research, is currently viewed by potent critics as a field of stagnation. Energetic attempts at getting rid of its unbearable constraints are being made (Paul Kline, Paul Barrett).
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To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.(Lichtenberg (1774)
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Records must be set straight whatever this entails
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16/16: In my view, the main cause of stagnation in psychometrics is Thurstone's fatal error. My current endeavour aims to transmit to hesitant colleagues my ample evidence and to challenge them to test the new paradigm of factorial data analysis so as to make them see for themselves that Thurstone's simple structure concept was actually a will-o'-the-wisp. More pioneers are needed to overcome six decades of doubtful practice. Or else, if the fault is mine, if it is me who has gone astray, then merciful colleagues might bring me down to earth and set the records straight. But they should first try to blow my dandelion seeds so as to make the rounded whole of my empirical results disappear. If they succeed, I might be cured and gain wisdom. That’s science, not only Rolling Stones’ lyric:
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. . . . . . Bring your dandelions to blow away
. . . . . . Dandelion don't tell no lies
. . . . . . Dandelion will make you wise |