KURT LEWIN MEMORIAL AWARD ADDRESS-1963 On the Nature of the Environment.

The article presents the opinion of the author on the nature of the environment on the occasion of Kurt Lewin Memorial Award presentation for the year 1963. One theme was Lewin's vigorous presentation of psychology as a conceptually autonomous science. In his view, psychology is independent of biology, physics, and sociology; its constructs and theories are not reducible to those of any other science. F. Heider has reminded that this was a guiding conviction of Lewin from his earliest days, and that it is expressed in his theory of the life space. Kurt Lewin brought this view to Iowa, and under the impact of his brilliance and enthusiasm all who worked with him there operated within its framework. But his conception of the place of psychology among the sciences did not go unchallenged; in fact, it was an explicit and a lively issue. The philosophy of science had recently come to the University of Iowa directly from Vienna. Under these circumstances, Lewin, who would certainly have chosen to let history settle the argument, had to enter into discussions of what, for him, were the familiar issues of positivism, reductionism, and the unity of science.