Hugo Munsterberg, founder of psychotechnics, as the precursor of L.S.Vygotsky in the methodology of psychological research

The author analyzes the dialogue-in-absence between Munsterberg and Vygotsky about the problems of methodology of psychological research. The core issue deals with the formation of practical psychology in accordance with academic psychology. The author considers the methodological potential of psy-chotechnics which allows the reform of psychotechnics and which might become the driving force of crisis in psychology. Munsterberg and Vygotsky were first to identify the technical level of science, apart from the theoretical and the empirical. The technical level of science is a specific form of transforming the mental reality, the meaning, value and ideal centre of which being the practical psychological knowledge. Psychotechnics, according to Vygotsky, is philosophy of practice, and as such, it does not contemplate practice from the outside; it stays within practice and looks through it upon the world it discloses. The author also notes that the scientific school of psychotechnics created in the 20—30s in Russia is not studied thoroughly enough, and this stage of development of science is important as the shift from classical to postclassical science.

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