Contemporary mainstream psychology has moved toward methodological specificity bounded by instrumental experimentalism. However, this institutional reduction of sanctioned methods has not been fully embraced by all social scientists, nor even by all experimental psychologists. The social sciences are rife with examples of practicing empirical scientists disaffected with the reductionism and atomism of traditional experimentalism.

The empirical theory and practice of four of these disaffected social scientists--Lev Vygotsky, James Baldwin, James Gibson, and Kurt Lewin--is explored in...