Mullins's borrowing of the Kipling title is compelling not only because it suggests that small group research promised much and failed to deliver but also because it suggests that field theory extended its reach beyond its grasp. In recent years there has been a revival of interest in field theory, though, for better or worse, much of the youthful optimism has faded.
Lewin and the Origins of Field Theory
Lewin's (1935) A Dynamic Theory of Personality called for a shift in psychology from the Aristotelian to the Galilean mode of thought. Epitomized by the now-classic formulation "behavior is a function of personality and environment," or B=f(PE), the new perspective placed social psychology squarely at the intersection of psychology and sociology. It required abandoning the hope that social behavior could be explained by reference to personality variables and seeking explanations in the dynamic relationships among actors and situations. In this book, Lewin defined the building blocks of the field theory that was to come: force (a vector directed at a point of application), valence (the push or pull of the force), and conflict (the opposition of roughly equivalent forces). At this point, he clearly had in mind a metric space of social life, the concepts of vector and direction having limited meaning in topological (or nonmetric) space.
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