“After this first approximation, the various aspects of the situation undergo a more and more detailed analysis. In contrast to this the second method [for analysis of life space] begins with the life space as a whole and defines its fundamental structure. The procedure in this case is not to add disconnected items but to make the original structure more specific and differentiated. This method therefore proceeds by steps from the more general to the particular and thereby avoids the danger of a "wrong simplification" by abstraction.”

— Kurt Lewin

Source: 1930s, Principles of topological psychology, 1936, p. 4; partly cited in: Chris Argyris (1952) An introduction to field theory and interaction theory.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "After this first approximation, the various aspects of the situation undergo a more and more detailed analysis. In cont…" by Kurt Lewin?

Kurt Lewin48

German-American psychologist 1890–1947

Related quotes

“By this way of Analysis we may proceed from Compounds to Ingredients, and from Motions to the Forces producing them; and in general, from Effects to their Causes, and from particular Causes to more general ones, till the Argument end in the most general. This is the Method of Analysis: and the Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discover'd, and establish'd as Principles, and by them explaining the Phænomena proceeding from them, and proving the Explanations.”

Isaac Newton book Opticks, or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light

Query 31
Opticks (1704)

“The general structural features of the system considered as a network of units of information linked to each other and to documentary items. This may be called structural analysis.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

The Structure of Information Retrieval Systems (1959)

“The social system is, thus, a very complex entity. As an organization of human interests, activities and commitments, it must be viewed as a system and in functional perspective. This is the key to its lines of organization, its modes of differentiation, and its integration. Such a system may be considered as both structure and process, in different aspects and for different scientific purposes. Structurally, we have suggested that there is a double basis for systematizing differentiation and variation : that internal to the primary social system itself and that involved in its relations to its primary environments, as analyzed with reference to the general system of action. Processually, the categories of analysis must follow from and integrate with those of structure. I suggest that, given the central position language as definitive of human society, the more differentiated and specialized symbolic media of interchange constitute the master scheme for the systematic analysis of social system processes.”

Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) American sociologist

Talcott Parsons (1968) "Systems Analysis: Social Systems" in: David L. Sills ed. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. p. 472

“In definitional terms, a process is simply a structured, measured set of activities designed to produce a specific output for a particular customer or market. It implies a strong emphasis on how work is done within an organization, in contrast to a product focus’s emphasis on what. A process is thus a specific ordering of work activities across time and space, with a beginning and an end, and clearly defined inputs and outputs: a structure for action.”

Thomas H. Davenport (1954) American academic

Process Innovation: Reengineering Work through Information Technology, 1993

“Enterprise Engineering is defined as that body of knowledge, principles, and practices having to do with the analysis, design, implementation and operation of an enterprise. In a continually changing and unpredictable competitive environment, the Enterprise Engineer addresses a fundamental question: “how to design and improve all elements associated with the total enterprise through the use of engineering and analysis methods and tools to more effectively achieve its goals and objectives”…”

Donald H. Liles (1947) American engineer

Source: The Enterprise Engineering Discipline (1996), p. 1

“An analysis [of urban space] is possible only if one reduces social action to a language and social relations to systems of communication. The ideological displacement carried out in this perspective consists in passing from one method of mapping traces of social practice through its effects on the organization of space to a principle of organization deduced from the formal expression listed, as if social organization were a code and urban structure a set of myths.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach, 1977, p. 216

“[M]ost of our structures in the past consisted of individual members having relatively small transverse dimensions as compared with their length, and in such members stress analysis is much more simple. …[M]any modern structures consist of frameworks of this type, and frequently the word "structure" refers specifically to assemblies consisting of linear elements.”

Eduardo Torroja (1899–1961) Spanish architect

Philosophy of Structures (1958)

“Either one or the other [ analysis or synthesis ] may be direct or indirect. The direct procedure is when the point of departure is known-direct synthesis in the elements of geometry. By combining at random simple truths with each other, more complicated ones are deduced from them. This is the method of discovery, the special method of inventions, contrary to popular opinion.”

André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836) French physicist and mathematician

André-Marie Ampè, in André-Marie Ampère: Enlightenment and Electrodynamics http://books.google.co.in/books?id=QWZKQWB-sbQC&pg=PA159, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 159

“The evolution of consciousness in its social and ethical aspects consists in the evolution of the ability to make real and vivid the phenomena that are more and more distant in both space and time.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Modern Ethics", pp. 268–269
The Universal Kinship (1906), The Ethical Kinship

“The following work is not a republication of a former treatise by the Author, entitled, "The Mathematical Analysis of Logic." Its earlier portion is indeed devoted to the same object, and it begins by establishing the same system of fundamental laws, but its methods are more general, and its range of applications far wider. It exhibits the results, matured by some years of study and reflection, of a principle of investigation relating to the intellectual operations, the previous exposition of which was written within a few weeks after its idea had been conceived.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

Source: 1850s, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), p. i; Preface, lead paragraph

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Kurt Lewin48

Related quotes

Related topics