In hmolscience, Kurt Lewin (1890-1947), pronounced 'Leveen', was Polish-born German American physical sciences trained psychologist noted for his Field Theory in Social Science, in which, as summarized by Daniel Rigney, he constructed an entire theory of personality out of the language of physics and topology, filled with references to force fields, valences, gradients, among others. [1]
Overview
In 1937, Lewin, in his “Field Theory and Experiment in Social Psychology”, asserted that: [5]
“To explain social behavior it is necessary to represent the structure of the total situation and the distribution of the forces in it.”
In 1956, Judson Herrick ranked Lewin’s Field Theory in the Social Sciences, along with Nicholas Rashevsky’s Mathematical Biology of Social Behavior (1951), as two examples of works pointing the way to quantitative treatment of some factors of social analysis. [4]
In 1977, American political scientist Rudolph Rummel expanded on Lewin's work. [3]
In 2002, American psychologist Meg Bond, in her team consultations, supposedly, applies Lewin’s notion of ‘force field analysis’, in which consultants analyzed the resources or driving forces that the team could draw on in their initial state to reach their vision or final state and the various barriers or restraining forces that could make it difficult. [2]
References
1. (a) Lewin, Kurt. (1948). Field Theory in Social Science: Selected Theoretical Papers. Indiana University, 1967.
(b) Black, Max. (1962). Models and Metaphors. Cornell University Press.
(c) Hall, Calvin S. and Lindzey, Gardner. (1970). Theories of Personality. Wiley.
(d) Rigney, Daniel. (2001). The Metaphorical Society: an Invitation to Social Theory (pg. 50). Rowman & Littlefield.
2. Bond, Meg A. (2007). Workplace Chemistry: Promoting Diversity through Organizational Change (activation energy, pgs. 50, 74, 87; catalyst, pgs. 35, 46, 74; force field analysis, pgs. 127, etc.). UPNE.
3. Rummel, Rudolf J. (1977). Field Theory Evolving (Lewin, 7+ pgs; physics, 13+ pgs) Sage Publications.
4. Herrick, C. Judson. (1956). The Evolution of Human Nature (abs) (pg. 190). University of Texas Press.
5. Lewin, Kurt. (1937). “Field Theory and Experiment in Social Psychology: Concepts and Methods” (abs), American Journal of Sociology, 44(6):868-96.
Further reading
● Lewin, Kurt. (1943). “Defining the ‘Field at a Given Time’” (abs), Psychological Review. 50: 292-310.
External links
● Kurt Lewin – Wikipedia.
