Re: re Grand Unified Theory

Don Munro (munro@psychology.newcastle.edu.au)
Thu, 27 Oct 1994 12:18:35 +1000

>>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.
DEVI, THE PLAN IS TO BOLT ON ALL THE OTHER BITS TOO, AND TAKE OVER THE
WHOLE ENTERPRISE! MOTIVATION IS ABOUT _EVERYTHING_. DON

>Doesn't anyone else see this as funny, in the context of personal construct
>psychology?
>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?
>
ICH BIN EIN CONSTRUKTIVIST, AUCH! DON AGAIN.
(But we'll have to stop meeting like this).

Don Munro, Ph.D. |Telephone (Office Secretary)

Senior Lecturer and Head of Department |(049) 215935 Home (049) 264607
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"Full optimism is a lack of information. Full pessimism is a lack of
imagination". Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Melbourne, October 1994.
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