The ecological approach to psychology has been a main antecedent of embodied and situated approaches to cognition. The concept of affordances in particular has gained currency throughout psychological science. Yet, contemporary ecological psychology has seemed inaccessible to outsiders and protective of its legacy. Indeed, some prominent ecological psychologists have presented their approach as a “package deal”—a principled and unified perspective on perception and action. Looking at the history of the field, however, we argue that ecological psychology has developed in rich and pluriform ways. Aiming to open the field to critical engagement and productive exchange, we identify three major strands of thought within ecological psychology, each of which emerged in the 20 years after Gibson’s death: physical, biological, and social ecological psychology. Each of these strands develop ecological ideas in quite different directions, making different use of some of its central concepts, adopting different explanatory principles, and embodying different philosophical worldviews. Proponents of the ecological approach have been arguing for pluralism within cognitive science to make room for ecological psychology. Given the diversity of the strands, we extend this plea to within ecological psychology itself; the field is better off aiming for a productive pluralism in which the different strands are in dialogue with each other.
Ecological psychology has a relatively long history in the Netherlands, starting in the early 1980s. Heft wrote some pivotal papers in the 1980s and 1990s (Heft, 1988(Heft, , 1989(Heft, , 1993), yet it took some years before Heft's work rose to prominence in the Dutch ecological community. In this chapter, we will sketch in broad strokes the history of ecological psychology in our country. How did the Gibsonian approach take root in the Netherlands? When did Dutch ecologically inclined authors find inspiration in Heft's work? After this historical background, we will discuss some of Heft's ideas in more detail and consider the impact they had on the ecological movement in the Netherlands. The ecological movement in the NetherlandsJames Gibson saw himself as an "American thinker" (Reed, 1988, p. 205), but he was clearly also following and inspired by developments in European psychology. He
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