Assumptions, Methods, and Research Problems of the Holistic, Developmental, Systems-Oriented Perspective

Abstract

Beginning with the basic assumption of perspectivism that is grounded in the philosophical position of interpretationism or constructivism (Lavine, 1950 a,b) and Pepper’s (1942) notion that understanding the world is based on a metaphoric description of world hypotheses and root metaphors, we shall, in keeping with the theme of this volume, attempt to look inward so-to-speak and uncover the basic assumptions of our holistic, developmental, systems-oriented perspective that shapes the nature of the research problems and methods we use in analyzing environment-behavior relationships. We shall attempt to characterize the main assumptions and illustrate how they mold methodology and the formulation of research problems.