ABSTRACT
James J. Gibson left a legacy of research and theory that challenges researchers to study perception as an activity driven, dynamic interaction between individuals and their meaning laden environments. This legacy guides the field of ecological psychology, and mandates the rejection of many reductionistic elements of traditional "perceptual" research. Ecological psychologists struggle to devise experiments that do justice to the antireductionist nature of their beliefs, and it is likely that the future of research in ecological psychology will involve a rediscovering its theoretical legacy. Ecological psychology's most direct intellectual predecessor was New Realism, from which it inherited much of its antireductionist attitude. The future of ecological psychology will either be grim or glorious depending on its ability to reconcile its antireductionist attitude with its empirical obligations. For an ecological psychologist, answering these challenges requires determining what types of mathematical relations "out there" distinguish between situations in which different outcomes are possible.
