A Relational Ontology for Psychology: Life as an Asymmetric Subjet-Object Choosing Relation : Review of A New Logical Foundation for Psychology, J. Mammen, Springer, 2017.

This review of Mammen's new book (2017), provides a brief summary of the first part, stressing the main points of the author's constructive critique of the unfortunate issues psychology inherited from the atomistic mechanism of classical physics. Driving the discussion on the ontological level, Mammen briefly shows how nowadays natural sciences provide the main components psychology needs to overcome the everlasting crisis of psychology since its constitution as a science: discontinuity, contextuality, etc. Making of the relation between subject and object the foundation of any science, Mammen contributes to a new ontology specific to human study with elements of last century mathematics, notably the axiom of choice, bridging the rift between natural and human sciences with a continuum from inert matter to more or less advanced life forms. Mammen's constructive proposal opens the building site of a new foundation for life sciences, avoiding both simplistic mechanism and nihilist post-modernism.