>>A few days ago, one colleague wrote:
>>> I'm an independent researcher in the psychological disciplines.
>>> My main research interest is a Grand Unified Theory of psychology;
>>> fitting the vast number of known psychological facts into the
>>> structure of a single conceptual network, rather than the dozens of
>>> independent theories presently needed to explain them all.
>>
>>Then another replied:
>>> I am also working on developing such a theory dealing with personality
>>> issues rather than all of psychology.
>>
>>Tonight, a third wrote:
>>> Further to the above, I have similar aims, mainly in relation to motivation
>>> theroy, but personality would be seen as on the fringe of that anyway.
>>
>>I can't resist!
>>What we _really_ need is a Grand Unified Theory of r(G)s.
>>
>>Devi Jankowicz
and says:
>Reply from No. 3 above: I'll start working on it straight away if you tell
>me what an r(G) is!
>
>Don Munro, P.
Okay Don, et al. colleagues!
A r(G), pronounced "little are-Gee", was, if I remember the symbols
correctly, the "fractional anticipatory goal response" of the last serious
behaviourist GUT: the Hull-Spence model.
You see, I thought the correspondence quoted above was intended as a joke
and I simply wanted to add to it. Crikey! The correspondence started with
the intent of developing a Grand Universal Theory; the next item said, in
effect, well, no, not really a Grand Universal Theory, just a Grandish
Bitty Theory dealing with personality; and your own said well, no, lets
have a Grand Theoriette of motivation with Personality Bits bolted on
instead.
Doesn't anyone else see this as funny, in the context of personal construct
psychology?
I was offering the smallest thing I could think of (the speeding up which
Clark Hull posited should occur when a rat is nearly at the end of its
maze) in attempt to reduce the previous 3 mailings ad absurdium.
Very well, jokes are never funny when they need to be explained. Sorry! But
doesn't anyone else see the multiple absurdities involved when Kellians-
constructivists, dammit! start replicating the fragmentalist-universalist
debates of the 50s and 60s in a search for the "one positivist truth" when
we have a perfectly serviceable general (not Grand!) theory- George
Kelly's- on which to hang our elaborations, amplifications, and indeed
revisions?
The "pcp" in the address of this mailbase does stand for "Personal
Construct Psychology", doesn't it?
Devi Jankowicz