The Open Mind: Cold War Politics and the Sciences of Human Nature

by Jamie Nace Cohen-Cole

The Open Mind chronicles the development and promulgation of a scientific vision of the rational, creative, and autonomous self, demonstrating how this self became a defining feature of Cold War culture. Jamie Cohen-Cole illustrates how from 1945 to 1965 policy makers and social critics used the idea of an open-minded human nature to advance centrist politics. They reshaped intellectual culture and instigated nationwide educational reform that promoted more open, and indeed more human, minds. The new field of cognitive science was central to this project, as it used popular support for open-mindedness to overthrow the then-dominant behaviorist view that the mind either could not be studied scientifically or did not exist. Cognitive science also underwrote the political implications of the open mind by treating it as the essential feature of human nature.                While the open mind unified America in the first two decades after World War II, between 1965 and 1975 battles over the open mind fractured American culture as the ties between political centrism and the scientific account of human nature began to unravel. During the late 1960s, feminists and the New Left repurposed Cold War era psychological tools to redefine open-mindedness as a characteristic of left-wing politics. As a result, once-liberal intellectuals became neoconservative, and in the early 1970s, struggles against open-mindedness gave energy and purpose to the right wing.

Genres: Politics, Psychology

408 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Davood Gozli · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the title of the book suggests, the Open Mind demonstrates the evolution and impact of a single concept, open-mindedness, in the post-World War II American intellectual history. Cohen-Cole argues that the notion of an open-minded individual was in fact a solution that simultaneously addressed a set of important academic and cultural questions: 1) how is the American identity differentiated from the identity of a USSR citizen? 2) how will the unity of the American cultural identity be preserved in the face of extreme diversity in specialization, skills, and expertise? 3) how should the education system best be improved to satisfy the need for expertise-development and the development of a cultural identity.

Central values in the movement were largely defined by means of contrast with the Soviet communist culture (and its impact on the formation of its individual citizens). Books such as "the Authoritarian Personality" helped anchor the Soviet culture into certain personality trait, which were essentially linked to rigidity and closed-mindedness. Thus, psychological definitions in such works were heavily shaped by political, pre-scientific biases. Against this background, the leading figures in the movement began to celebrate traits that opposed the so-called authoritarian personality, including flexibility and open-mindedness. These traits were regarded as (at the individual, psychological scale) the foundation of democracy.

Combating the fear of isolation and separation among intellectuals and academic experts, the notion of the open mind was celebrated for its readiness and enthusiasm to engage in conversation and collaboration in experts in other fields. Formative figures, such as James Conant and Gordon Allport, celebrated a kind of academic culture that involved informal conversations across disciplinary boundaries. Intellectual contributions that facilitate conversation within a broad range of interested individuals were also highly celebrated, the prime example being Thomas Kuhn's work in philosophy of science. Similarly, scientists whose work facilitated collaboration and interdisciplinarity were celebrated and supported, the prime example being Jerome Bruner (and other members of the cognitive science movement). Speaking of which, if you are interested in the history of the cognitive sciences, this book is a substantial contribution to that topic, including an entire chapter that is devoted to the story of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard, tracing its background, its formation and evolution through the 60s and 70s.

In short, the book demonstrates how practices, values, and beliefs in academia are intimately linked to what is valued by a culture and its leading intellectuals. It demonstrates how cultural and pre-scientific values can be implemented as rhetorical weapons (e.g., what took place in the critiques of behaviourism) to push certain agendas in an academic context. The concept of "the open mind" easily crossed the boundaries between culture and academia, performing different functions in different contexts. Personalities, arguments, and practices that seemed congruent to it flourished as a result, while incongruent concepts (strict adherence to disciplinary work) suffered. The book is very nicely written. As a student of psychology, this book was an immense joy to read.

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Open-mindedness was a kind of mind characterized by autonomy, creativity, and the use of reason. To the scientific experts, intellectuals, and policy makers who developed and utilized the concept of the open mind, this type of self served simultaneously as model and ideal of the national and intellectual character. They projected upon the open mind their aspirations for the American character and liberal pluralist democracy, for scientific thinking and true intellectual inquiry." (1-2)

"If every American needed to rely on other people and their particular areas of expertise, then would not everyday living need to be conducted on a great deal of trust? In order for society to function well, there had to be some rational basis for that trust. In other words, the kind of society envisioned by the Harvard committee was one in which the ability to judge specialist competence from a nonspecialist perspective was an indispensable skill." (25)

"In fact, interdisciplinarity was not an issue of knowledge of more than one discipline. Instead, as programmatic studies of interdisciplinary by NIMH and the RAND Corporation indicated, what was needed was the ability, cognitive skills, and personality to get along with people of other disciplines. ... That knowledge of mathematics or statistics was taken not as domain knowledge but rather as a communicative or problem-solving skill was highlighted by a warning against team members' having too much disciplinary or content knowledge." (99)

"The Center's [for Cognitive Studies] own members were well aware of the difficulty of knowledge transfer through print. For instance, Leo Postman, an early collaborator of Bruner's, complained to Bruner that after moving from Harvard he was unable to get his own instruments to work because of insufficient local technical support in his new location. In addition, Norman Mackworth was invited to become a member of the Center because his published work on eye cameras was not rich and detailed enough for others at the Center to make use of it without his direct involvement. ... Even the Center's research results were fully available only to insiders. Published work by the Center's scholars often cited internal unpublished studies, research reports written for patrons, the Center's own annual reports, papers given at the Center, mimeographs distributed at the Center, and/or personal communications." (179)

[Jennifer]

riddled with typos, but informative. I know where the new math came from now!