In search of an organizing principle for the behavioral science literature

Knowledge about man, the philosophical concern of the "anthropological sciences" in the early 19th century, has now become a unifying concept for the scientific study of human behavior. The literature of the behavioral sciences and of the field of mental health, however, remains to be unified. The worldwide system of bibliographic organization, conceptually rooted in the late 19th century, needs to be supplemented by a bibliographic superstructure that can show the progress of the behavioral sciences. The paper proposes an orbital rather than a classified system as a bibliographic organizing principle, suited to the "anthropotropic" orientation of the behavioral science literature.