ABSTRACT
The central insight within James J. Gibson’s ecological psychology is the principle of reciprocity. Initially, Gibson was strongly influenced by traditional theories in perception and psychology, but over a 50-year period he came to challenge both mind-matter dualism in his ecological theory and the epistemology of indirect perception in his direct realist philosophy of perception. Perception is of the environment, because the perceiver is within the environment. Much of what Gibson explicitly critiqued as he was developing his views on perception and psychology can be found in the scientific-philosophical tradition articulated during the Scientific Revolution and the rise of modern philosophy. Newtonian science was Platonic in placing true knowledge beyond transitory, unique perceptions in an eternal realm. Commensurate with Newton’s substance ontology, 18th century science contains a very limited conceptualization of change. The ontological and epistemological dualisms of the Scientific Revolution can therefore be traced back to the Parmenidian-Platonic elevation of the eternal one over the temporal many.
