ABSTRACT
The concept of structure is one of the most widely used concepts in the modern sciences. We can, for example, speak of the structure of an atomic nucleus or of a continental shelf; of a molecular structure, a mathematical structure, or a cytological structure. Similarly, in psychology we speak of cognitive structures, linguistic structures, personality structures, and social structures. Indeed, many of the most celebrated advances in every field of knowledge have consisted in devising new means for observing, describing, or notating one or another of these various types of structures. In modern psychology the psychoanalysts, the gestalt psychologists, and the genetic epistemologists have been most explicitly concerned with the metatheory of psychological structures. Each of these treatments is however grounded in the data field of some particular branch of psychology and is to that extent of limited generality. Let us therefore begin by exploring a very general definition of the concept of structure — one which expresses that which is common to all these traditional uses of the concept.
