Abstract

Kurt Lewin's essay “Gesetz und Experiment in der Psychologie” of 1927, published in this issue of SiC for the first time in English translation, and his “Der Übergang von der aristotelischen zur galileischen Denkweise in Biologie und Psychologie” of 19311 have together contributed most to shape his image as a metatheorist of psychology. A careful examination of what has occasionally been called the “Lewinian tradition,”2 however, reveals that Lewin's metascientific contributions have been much more influential in Europe than in the United States, where he lived and taught as a Jewish refugee from 1934 until his early death on 2 February, 1947.