Preface to Thorndike
pp. 147-161
in: Robert W. Rieber, Jeffrey Wollock (eds), The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky, Berlin, Springer, 1997Abstract
The general revolution in the views and fundamental opinions about the essence, subject, and methods of psychological science, which now in Russia has taken especially acute and vivid forms, cannot pass by, of course, without leaving a trace in the whole field of applied psychology and pedagogical psychology in particular. When a radical breaking from old concepts and ideas, a fundamental reform of ideas and methods, takes place in the realm of theoretical knowledge, then the same painful and fruitful processes of destruction and reconstruction of the whole scientific system are also inevitable in the applied disciplines which form offshoots of the general trunk. They may lag behind but cannot escape such a reform.