ABSTRACT
We are very pleased to be given the opportunity to participate in the current volume dedicated to the excellent contributions of Willis “Bill” Overton to our fields of study. In particular, we wish to acknowledge his important contributions through the paradigm of a Relational-Developmental Systems approach to lifespan development. That approach is premised on propositions that avoid mechanistically framed binary oppositions predicated on mechanistic additivity, aiming at an explanation of the whole by taking some of this (e.g., environment) and adding it with some of that (e.g., biology). Overton clearly articulated his relational position in a presentation in 2012 at the meeting of the Jean Piaget Society, arguing that:
the fact that a feature is mental does not imply it is not physical, and vice-versa (from Searle, 1992, p. 15);
the fact that a feature is biological does not suggest it is not cultural, and vice-versa;
the fact that an act is cognitive does not suggest it is not emotional, and vice-versa (Turiel, 2010).
