Transactionalism: An Historical and Interpretive Study, was written in 1966 by philosopher Trevor J. Phillips (1927–2016) and first published in December 2013. At the time of its publication, it was the first, most comprehensive account of the origins and evolution of the modern historical, philosophical, psychological, and educational philosophy known as transactionalism.
About the philosophy Transactionalism is about the mutual transactions that make up our human condition. It is about the co-constitutive, reciprocal acts required to satisfy various unavoidable conditions of life. The philosophy of transactionalism appears across a wide range of disciplines from anthropology to zoology. Though "transactionalism" never appears in the works of educational philosopher, pragmatist, and psychologist John Dewey, Phillips documents his conceptualization of "transactions," which stems primarily from his work and collaboration with political philosopher Arthur Bentley in the 1949 book Knowing and the Known. "Dewey and Bentley don’t use or define ‘transactionalism’ explicitly in their work. Dewey was, as is illustrated in my thesis, against the use of such things as -isms."
"Transactionalism" was first used by Norwegian-born social anthropologist Frederick Barth. He never claims to originate the term or concept,Anderson, Robert. 2007. Interview with Fredrik Barth – Oslo, 5 June 2005. AIBR. vol. 2, no. 2 (May–August) p.xii. Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana (AIBR). www.aibr.org Volumen 2, Número 2. Mayo-Agosto 2007. Pp. i-xvi Madrid: Antropólogos Iberoamericanos en Red. . but his definition is useful: "[M]ost of our basic relationships, all of our basic relationships, are social relations that are built around mutual transactions" built upon the "biological constraints of ecology" and understood within a context of economics and politics. Transactionalism is exemplified in Barth's ethnographic observations of the Swat Pathans in Pakistan.
About the publication Published by the founders of a learning ecology steeped in the philosophy of transactionalism and training others in transactional competence, the book Transactionalism: An Historical and Interpretive Study re-presents the 1966 dissertation of educational philosopher Trevor J. Phillips (1927–2016). Using its original title, the entirety of the text is as it originally appeared (with a few minor edits) in 222 pages. Without any pictures or figures, the prose is dense and not an easy read, but its rich explications are valuable in understanding how human beings tend towards complicating our condition through the persistent liability of our dualistic thinking.
After completing his dissertation in 1966, Phillips joined the U.S. professoriate and ended his career as a professor emeritus in educational foundations and inquiry at Bowling Green State University from 1963 to 1996. His dissertation was retrieved by the founders of Influence Ecology and published as a hardbound text in 2013.
Summary of the contents There are five main chapters followed by the author's biography and a bibliography of books and articles referenced in the book.
Chapter I is an introduction to the pragmatic philosophy of transactionalism. Chapter 2 traces its historical roots. Chapter 3 outlines its evolution in contemporary philosophy. Chapter 4 discusses how transactionalism took its forms in contemporary psychology. Finally, Chapter 5 examines its place in the educative process given its formulations in philosophy and psychology before the 1970s. Overall, the book traces the philosophical roots of transactionalism through various well-known figures including Polybius, Galileo, and Newton; it frames an understanding of transactionalism through field theory, Darwinism, theories of inquiry, truth, and symbols, as well as the pragmatism of William James and the sociological theory of George Herbert Mead, to name a few. Phillips demonstrates and justifies the need for transactionalism as an educational philosophy that was initially shaped and charted by John Dewey in collaboration with Arthur F. Bentley.
The following provides a broad sense of each chapter's content.
Chapter I: Introduction The philosophical roots of transactionalism, from Greek historians Polybius and Plato to 7th century polymath and architect of the scientific revolution Galileo, are explicated in this chapter. "The schools of transactional philosophy and psychology represent a relatively new approach to the ancient and perennial problems of perceiving and knowing," writes Phillips in the introduction. He adds that the current thinking at the time of his writing was one that denied the uniqueness and human dignity of all people. Society was facing the strife of resistance to the U.S. civil rights movement and anti-war protests in the late 1960s. The introduction was designed to provide a historical perspective on the philosophical roots of a transactional approach to a complex way of life that demands on-going inquiry and examination to fulfill our basic and complex needs.
Chapter II: Transactionalism Viewed Historically The book Knowing and the Known by philosophers John Dewey and Arthur Bentley (1949) is recognized as a critical source in defining the concept that is the basis of transactionalism.Hammarström, M. (2010, June). On the Concepts of Transaction and Intra-action. In The Third Nordic Pragmatism Conference–Uppsala (pp. 1-2). The term "trans-action" appears repeatedly throughout the text in ways distinct from its uses in economics as a representation of exchange or value in an economy. In this early chapter of his dissertation, which appears in its original form in this historical and interpretive book, educational philosopher Trevor Phillips distinguishes viewing a transaction not as a form of economic exchange but rather as a way to invite human beings to inquiry into situations for which we presume ourselves as divisible separates. If a human is an organism-environment, then she/he is only an aspect of situations known as "borrowing-lending, buying-selling, writing-reading, parent-child, and husband-wife." Borrowing, for example, is an aspect of the borrowing-lending transaction, and cannot, without serious distortion, be regarded as an independent element. That is to say, one cannot “borrow” except with the help of a “loan.” The term is not strictly a modern creation.This chapter explores the historical roots and foundations of the philosophy initially discovered in the writings of the Greek historian Polybius by British historian and philosopher of history Arnold J. Toynbee. Toynbee believed that Polybius's references to "transaction" with regards to the history of the Roman conquest parallel the meaning intended by Dewey and Bentley. Transactionalism is a focus on the "why" and "how" as well as the reasoning for any given action whether it be conquest or merely requesting a loan. Transactions of any kind "ought to concentrate attention less upon the bald narrative of transactions than upon the antecedents, concomitants and consequences of any give action". This chapter outlines a historical lineage of thinkers whose work lays the foundation for transactional thought and competence as a way of living life. The findings of Polybius, and perhaps most importantly Galileo, as well as Aristotle and Isaac Newton, are considered as historical antecedents. More modern contributions are discussed from the contemporary use of the term "transaction" in a non-economic context by physicist J. Clerk Maxwell. Field theory, referencing the work of physicists Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld in The Evolution of Physics, is also discussed as a modern precursor of transactionalism philosophy.
Chapter III: Transactionalism In Contemporary Philosophy From birth to death every human being is a Party, so that neither he nor anything done or suffered can possibly be understood when it is separated from the fact of participation in an extensive body of transactions.Transactionalist philosophy was based on a foundational series of exchanges between John Dewey and Arthur Bentley beginning in 1932. Their exchange resulted in the 1949 book Knowing and the Known. Transactionalists believe that errors in perceiving what is (or is not) real stem from oversimplifications and bifurcations, or from categorizing things or what we know into dualities. Dualisms limit facts to "interaction" or "merely action-and-reaction," which does not encompass the transactional nature of life (not to be confused with an economic understanding of transaction). Transactionalists dismiss as inappropriate any inclination towards bifurcating knowledge leading to a need to discover the words, tenets, errors, and weaknesses in our thinking that may prevent us from any legitimate inquiry into knowing what is a "satisfying" versus "satisfactory" experience or transaction small or large. To meet our basic needs for survival, mankind must constantly inquire into the transactional nature of who we are as an ever-evolving organism in ever-evolving world of experience. To experience is to transact; in point of fact, experience is a transaction of organism-environment....The happenings which affect individuals and the actions they consciously effect in response constitute the domain know[n] as experience.By unpacking inherited meanings and accepted or assumed ways of knowing assigned through words like "fact" and "mind," transactionalists explicate how humans tend to privilege the signification of something over acting and doing something. Our access to understanding reality demands a comprehensive way of knowing and existing. Scholars supporting a transactionalist philosophical approach include William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, naturalist George Ellett Coghill, and sociologist George Herbert Mead.
Dualisms distance us from reality separating object and subject, the known and the knower. In transactionalism, "knowledge is dependent upon the autonomous existence of a knower on the one hand, and something to be known on the other," and any separation of the two leads away from reality. Thus, any inquiry into knowledge starts with the assumption that "man as the knower is a part of the world as it is known." Man as organism in both an external and skin-bounded environment can only exist in this assumed reality as man as organism-environment realizes the need to act together-at-once in her/his ecology. Any inner or outer knowing-ness happens as a result of transaction, of exchange and value that comes from experience.
Author Trevor Phillips also references independent approximations of transactionalism found in the research of atomic physicist Niels Bohr and biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy, which substantiates the rejection of any dualism that segregates behavior and interaction as if they are separates rather than parts of a unified transactional system or whole. The chapter examines the resulting theory of knowledge and subsequent theories of inquiry, truth, and value designed to help mankind more reliably grasp the "knowings" and "existings" of a transactional world of experience.
The chapter closes with 10 tenets of transactional metaphysics including:
Rejecting any notion that there is an independent knower distinct from something to be known. Knowledge must emerge from an actual inquiry into a unified experience of all the known and existing aspects of a transaction. The perception of reality is an "unfractured observation" of a "knowing-known" taken as a unified process. "Human behavior is a trans-dermal affair; intra-dermal and extra-dermal factors are to be viewed as aspects of the total behavioral event." Given our tendency towards duality, "the fragmentation of experience is to be corrected on whatever level it may occur."
Chapter IV: Transactionalism In Contemporary Psychology