Millstone Noah
Department of History, Harvard University, Robinson Hall, 35 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Integr Psychol Behav Sci. 2012 Dec;46(4):529-43. doi: 10.1007/s12124-012-9222-y.
This essay is an expanded set of comments on the social psychology papers written for the special issue on History and Social Psychology. It considers what social psychology, and particularly the theory of social representations, might offer historians working on similar problems, and what historical methods might offer social psychology. The social history of thinking has been a major theme in twentieth and twenty-first century historical writing, represented most recently by the genre of 'cultural history'. Cultural history and the theory of social representations have common ancestors in early twentieth-century social science. Nevertheless, the two lines of research have developed in different ways and are better seen as complementary than similar. The theory of social representations usefully foregrounds issues, like social division and change over time, that cultural history relegates to the background. But for historians, the theory of social representations seems oddly fixated on comparing the thought styles associated with positivist science and 'common sense'. Using historical analysis, this essay tries to dissect the core opposition 'science : common sense' and argues for a more flexible approach to comparing modes of thought.
本文是对为《历史与社会心理学》特刊撰写的社会心理学论文的一组扩充评论。它探讨了社会心理学，尤其是社会表征理论，可能为研究类似问题的历史学家提供什么，以及历史方法可能为社会心理学提供什么。思维的社会史一直是二十世纪和二十一世纪历史写作的一个主要主题，最近以“文化史”体裁为代表。文化史和社会表征理论在二十世纪早期的社会科学中有共同的渊源。然而，这两条研究路线以不同的方式发展，与其说它们相似，不如说它们更具互补性。社会表征理论有效地突出了诸如社会分化和随时间变化等问题，而文化史则将这些问题置于背景之中。但对历史学家来说，社会表征理论似乎奇怪地专注于比较与实证主义科学和“常识”相关的思维方式。通过历史分析，本文试图剖析“科学：常识”这一核心对立，并主张采用更灵活的方法来比较思维模式。
