The above maxim is often attributed to psychologist Kurt Lewin. Shortly
after his death in 1947, the psychological historian E. C. Tolman wrote of
Lewin: “Freud the clinician and Lewin the experimentalist – these are the two
men whose names will stand out before all others in the history of our psychological
era” (Marrow, 1969). Although Freud has become a household
name, Lewin’s ideas and work are mostly unknown to the general public.
Among psychologists, however, Kurt Lewin is well known as one of the
founders of modern experimental social psychology and recognized for his
early contributions in applying psychological science to real human society.
His interest in the social uses of psychological research is evident not
only from his work on “group dynamics”—a term he coined, involving, for
example, research on leadership, communication, and group performance—
but also from the applied research institutes he established, such as the
Committee on Community Interrelations (McCain, 2015). Indeed, for
Lewin, research served a double purpose: “to seek deeper explanations of
why people behave the way they do and to discover how they may learn to
behave better” (Marrow, 1969, p. xi; Italics added). Science was, in other
words, a way to discover general laws of human functioning as well as a way
to solve practical problems, a combination Lewin labeled “action research.”
To achieve this goal, Lewin proposed, there is nothing as practical as a good
theory—a maxim Lewin himself attributed to “a business man” he once met
(Lewin, 1943).