Tateo, L., Marsico, G., (2023). New Perspectives in Ecosystemic Psychology: the Developmental Mereotopology. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), Farewell to Variables, p. 183-200, InfoAge Publishing.

In this chapter we develop a dialogue between cultural psychology, developmental mereotopology and semiotics. Social sciences are still considering human beings as detached from their ecosystem, opposing individual and environment, biology and culture. Psychic life is neither the outcome of a genetic program nor the mere inner representation of the social world. Several attempts to build ecological psychology have not fully overcome the issue of environment as independent variable. Through the concept of developmental system, the chapter finally defines psychology as the study of ecosystems: the unique local configurations of humans and non-humans: the local cultural solution to general existential problems. Knowledge is a deep existential problem for human beings. The ultimate meaning of knowledge is the awareness of life’s finitude and the knowledge of those uncanny boundaries before and after life. At the same time, the sense of finitude provokes a quest for understanding our place within the cosmos (Bateson & Bateson, 1979). The original sin is not knowledge, other living beings can be acknowledged to be able to produce and transmit knowledge, it is rather self-awareness. A part of the humankind has developed a solution to this question that places the human in control and a step up the rest of living beings. Another part of the humankind has chosen to place itself within the other beings at the same level.