Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (2021) 55:728–734

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-021-09638-4

REGULAR ARTICLE

Vygotsky and Psychology as Normative Science

Luciano Mecacci1 

Accepted: 7 August 2021 / Published online: 17 August 2021

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
2021

Abstract
The political and revolutionary character of Vygotsky’s theory consists not only in
the project of a psychology based on the principles of Marxism, but in the idea of
the primary role of practice as the source of the development of theoretical research
itself. In the Vygotskyan analysis of the differences between normal and pathologi-
cal in psychological processes, the normative character of psychology emerges,
imposing patterns of behavior and personality beyond the specific social and cul-
tural contexts in which they were developed. After the turning point of the mono-
graph by Van der Veer and Valsiner (Understanding Vygotsky: A quest for synthesis,
Blackwell, 1991), and the new knowledge derived from the publication of the Note-
books, edited by Zavershneva and Van der Veer (Vygotsky’s notebook: A selection,
Springer Nature, Berlin, 2018), recent historical studies on Vygotsky’s work show
that, faithful to this perspective, the Russian psychologist investigated the dialectical
relationship between theory and practice particularly in the areas of pedology and
defectology where the risk of a normativity, imposed from above and mediated by
psychology, was very high.

Keywords  Vygotsky · Normal · Pathological · Normative · Marxism · Defectology

Introduction

In a notepad from the first half of 1930, Vygotsky sketched a brief outline of a book
he planned to write. The title was to be Zoon politikon (Political animal) (Zaversh-
neva & Van der Veer, 2018, p. 75), a direct reference to the Aristotelian definition
of man (Aristotle, 1916). As is well known, ‘political’ has a more specific mean-
ing than ‘social’ (although it is often said that ‘man is a social animal’, also refer-
ring to Aristotle’s definition). In animals, patterns of social behavior are genetically
fixed and species-specific, while in the human species it takes on forms that vary in

* Luciano Mecacci
mecaccil@gmail.com
1
Florence, Italy

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
 Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (2021) 55:728–734 729

relation to historical and cultural factors. Therefore, Vygotsky speaks of a ‘dynamic’

of human behavior that depends on the system of moral, social and juridical rules:
an overall historical-cultural network within which the individual grows and acts. In
this sense, which refers to the etymology of ‘political’ (from the Greek polis), the
human being is a political animal. The historical-social dimension is not generic or
abstract. It does not concern only differences on a large historical scale (for exam-
ple, the primitive vs. civilized human being; Vygotsky & Luriya, 1930) or differ-
ences between populations at a given historical moment, such as the Uzbek popu-
lation compared to the Russian population at the beginning of the 1930s (Luriya,
1974), but it mainly concerns differences within a certain population determined
by concrete social factors (typical is the set of research coordinated by Luriya on
the cognitive processes of rural, urban and homeless children; Luriya, 1930). In his
important article on the ‘socialist transformation of man’, Vygotsky asserted that
personality formation depends primarily “on the development of technology, the
degree of development of the production forces and on the structure of that social
group to which the individual belongs” (1930; Engl. transl., p. 176). As a result of
the adoption of a Marxist perspective, society was not considered by Vygotsky as
a fixed entity, immutable in time, but as a dynamic system that evolves according
to changes in the power relations between classes. In the era of capitalism, “under
relentless pressure, forces are evolving and preconditions are being created for its
destruction and replacement with a new order, which is based on the absence of
man’s exploitation of man” (1930; Engl. transl., p. 179). Although this statement,
in its general lines, may have had a utopian streak (McQueen, 2010), Vygotsky
assigned psychology a concrete role in the construction of a new society and a
‘new man’. In fact, a genuine Marxist perspective necessarily implied that scientific
research was inextricably linked to the transformation of the reality under investiga-
tion: theory and praxis are inseparable. The moment of implementation and practi-
cal verification of theory has a primary role (it is ‘the main driving force’) for the
development of theory itself, precisely in critical moments such as those in which
psychology found itself in the mid 1920s:
‘Let say right away that the main driving force of the crisis in its final phase is
the development of applied psychology as a whole. The attitude of academic psy-
chology toward applied psychology has up until not remained somewhat disdain-
ful as if it had to do with a semi-exact science. Not everything is well in this area
of psychology, there is no doubt about that, but nevertheless there can be no doubt
for an observer who takes a bird-eye’s view, i.e., the methodologist, that the lead-
ing role in the development of our science belongs to applied psychology. It repre-
sents everything of psychology which is progressive, sound, which contains a germ
of the future. It provides the best methodological works. It is only by studying this
area that one can come to an understanding of the meaning of what is going on and
the possibility of a genuine psychology. The center has shifted in the history of sci-
ence: what was at the periphery became the center of the circle. One can say about
applied psychology what can be said about philosophy which was rejected by empir-
ical psychology: ‘the stone which the builders rejected is become the head stone
of the corner’ […] The first [aspect to be considered] is practice. Here psychology
was first (through industrial psychology, psychiatry, child psychology, and criminal

13
23456789)

Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.

 730 Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (2021) 55:728–734

psychology) confronted with a highly developed—industrial, educational, political,

or military—practice. This confrontation compels psychology to reform its princi-
ples so that they may withstand the highest test of practice. It forces us to accom-
modate and introduce into our science the supply of practical psychological experi-
ences and skills which has been gathered over thousands of years; for the church,
the military, politics, and industry, insofar as they have consciously regulated and
organised the mind, base themselves on an experience which is enormous, although
not well ordered from the scientific viewpoint (every psychologist experienced the
reforming influence of applied science). For the development of psychology, applied
psychology plays the same role as medicine did for anatomy and physiology and
technique for the physical sciences. The importance of the new practical psychol-
ogy for the whole science cannot be exaggerated. The psychologist might dedicate
a hymn to it. A psychology which is called upon to confirm the truth of its thinking
in practice, which attempts not so much to explain the mind but to understand and
master it, gives the practical disciplines a fundamentally different place in the whole
structure of the science than the former psychology did. There practice was the col-
ony of theory, dependent in all its aspects on the metropolis. Theory was in no way
dependent on practice. Practice was the conclusion, the application, an excursion
beyond the boundaries of science, an operation which lay outside science and came
after science, which began after the scientific operation was considered completed.
Success or failure had practically no effect on the fate of the theory. Now the situa-
tion is the opposite. Practice pervades the deepest foundations of the scientific oper-
ation and reforms it from beginning to end. Practice sets the tasks and serves as the
supreme judge of theory, as its truth criterion. It dictates how to construct the con-
cepts and how to formulate the laws’ (Vygotsky, 1927; Engl. transl., pp. 305–306)
(see also Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1991, pp. 149–151).
We think that the idea of the primacy of practice in the theoretical development
of psychology is Vygotsky’s most general and important legacy. No other psycholo-
gist of his era so clearly stated that practice is the moment of verification of a psy-
chological theory. Of course, almost all other leaders of the psychological schools of
the early twentieth century asserted that psychology is not only scientific research,
but also practical application of its results. For example, it is well known that Freud
explicitly defined psychoanalysis as ‘a procedure for the investigation of mental pro-
cesses’ and on the same time ‘a method (based upon that investigation) for the treat-
ment of neurotic disorders’ (Freud, 1923; Engl. transl., p. 235), and similar defini-
tions of the theory–practice relationship can be found in Stern, Watson or Piaget,
just to mention psychologists well known to Vygotsky.
In these cases, however, the theory appears as a monolithic system that can
undoubtedly be modified depending on the results of experimental research, applied
research in the sphere of school and work, or therapeutic practice, but essentially the
conceptual architecture of the theory remains intact. In the Vygotskian perspective,
however, the premise is the need to continually revise theory in light of practice. In
this sense, the Vygotskian conception of psychology is revolutionary. In essence,
the word ‘revolution’ is central to the Vygotskian lexicon to express the non-linear
idea of both the history of the human species and the ontogenetic development of an
individual. In a significant, but often-quoted passage in a past misleading English

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
 Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (2021) 55:728–734 731

translation (mind instead of consciousness to translate soznanie), Vygotsky stated:

‘Child psychology wants to know nothing about the critical, spasmodic, and revolu-
tionary changes with which the history of child development is replete and which are
found so often in the history of cultural development. To the naive consciousness,
revolution and evolution seem incompatible. For the naive, historical development
continues only as long as it proceeds along a straight line. Where a turn, a break of
the historical tissue, a jump occurs, the naive consciousness sees only catastrophe, a
failure, a break. For the naive, history stops at this point for the whole period until it
again enters on a direct and smooth road. Scientific consciousness, on the other band,
considers revolution and evolution as two mutually connected and closely interrelated
forms of development. Scientific consciousness considers the leap itself that is made
in the development of the child during such changes as a certain point in the entire
line of development as a whole’ (Vygotsky, 1931; Engl. transl., p. 99).
To be a Marxist, it is not enough to quote Marx; to be a revolutionary, it is not
enough to propagandise the idea of revolution: it is necessary to act in practice, to
modify the social reality and consequently the psychological life of people according
to a model of development that is not fixed, but dynamic and flexible in relation to
the new historical, social and economic conditions. As is well known, this not only
progressive, but authentically revolutionary connotation of Vygotsky’s thought (and in
general of cultural-historical theory) was grasped, starting from the end of the 1960s,
by various psychological schools, particularly European ones, linked to left-wing
political movements. We can recall, in particular, in France the work of Lucian Sève
(1969), editor of the French edition of various works of Vygotsky; in Germany the
group directed by Klaus Holzkamp (1972), with its proposal of a ’critical psychology’
(in which Marxism and cultural-historical theory converged), and in Italy a large num-
ber of psychologists, some linked to the Italian Communist Party, active in the promo-
tion of relevant psychosocial law reforms. As for the Italian context, it should also be
remembered that some important members of the Red Brigades (the terrorist group,
especially known for the 1978 murder of Aldo Moro, president of the Democrazia
Cristiana party) during their detention in prison studied Vygotsky in depth and wrote
articles and books on the revolutionary force of his thought (Mecacci, 2015). More-
over in the United States, a clear revolutionary reading of Vygotsky was offered by
Fred Newman and Lois Holzman (1993), within a project of ’critical psychology’ in
which also converged the theoretical and social debates raised by movements such as
feminism, neo-Marxism and post-modernism. Finally, for the critical psychology trend
Vygotsky is a key theoretical reference (Elhammoumi, 2015).
In a perspective that affirms the theory–practice circularity, it is to be expected
that some theoretical principles, if not the whole theoretical system, will change
according to the confrontation with practice (‘This confrontation compels psychol-
ogy to reform its principles so that they may withstand the highest test of practice’,
as quoted above). This statement has a particular heuristic significance when Vygot-
sky discusses the difference between normal and pathological. A child’s behavior or
personality, Vygotsky noted, is considered abnormal or pathological according to
the differences found with respect to the behavior and personality of a normal child.
The determination of deficit is made by subtraction. A blind child is a sighted child
minus vision; a deaf child is a hearing child minus hearing: ‘Defectology is now

13
23456789)

Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.

 732 Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (2021) 55:728–734

contending for a fundamental thesis, the defense of which is its sole justification for
existence as a science. The thesis holds that a child whose development is impeded
by a defect is not simply a child less developed than his peers but is a child who has
developed differently. If we subtract visual perception and all that relates to it from
our psychology, the result of this subtraction will not be the psychology of a blind
child. In the same way, the deaf child is not a normal child minus his hearing and
speech’ (Vygotsky, 1929; Engl. transl., p. 30).
In the ’purely arithmetical conception of a handicapped condition’, two comple-
mentary concepts of ’normal’ are implicit. On the one hand, ’normal’ refers to the
concept of ’norm’ in the statistical sense and on the other hand to the concept of
’rule’: ’normal’ behavior is that which is most frequent in a given historical-social
context, and at the same time that behavior becomes the norm to be followed. To
give a paradoxical example, close to the area of research-application of Vygotsky
himself, in the field of psychology and education of blind-deaf children, one can
ask what were the ’abnormal’ behaviors and personalities in a community like the
famous Zagorsk boarding school, where all the children had the same condition of
disability (blind-deaf). The characterization of abnormality would have arisen from
comparison with children outside that community, but not within it.
The contemporary movement known as inclusive education supports, often with
a direct reference to the Vygotskian perspective, the urgent need to overcome the
’negative approach’ (resulting from the comparison of the disabled child with the
normal child) and to propose a ’positive approach’, based on the enhancement of
the resources of the disabled child:: ‘On the one hand, the defect means a minus, a
limitation, a weakness, a delay in development; on the other, it stimulates a height-
ened, intensified advancement, precisely because it creates difficulties. The position
of modern defectology is the following: Any defect creates stimuli for compensatory
process. Therefore, defectologists cannot limit their dynamic study of a handicapped
child to determining the degree and severity of the deficiency. Without fail, they must
take into account the compensatory processes in a child’s development and behavior,
which substitute for, supersede, and overarch the defect. Just as the patient-and not the
disease-is important for modem medicine, so the child burdened with the defect—not
the defect in and of itself—becomes the focus of concern for defectology’ (Vygotsky,
1929; Engl. transl., p. 32; see also Kozulin & Gindis, 2007; Smagorinsky, 2012; Vik,
2018). Moreover the ‘normal’ may be generally considered, more or less explicitly,
the behavior or personality of white people compared with people of color, and the
racial consequences of this comparison are evident when the ‘zone of proximal devel-
opment’ is investigated (Leonardo & Manning, 2017). The relevance of the concept
of the norm was particularly evident in the area of pedology, as recent publications
on Vygotsky’s contribution and reasons for the banning of pedology in 1936 show
(Vygotsky, 2018, 2019, 2020; see also Caroli & Mecacci, 2020).
The second concept of ’normal’ refers to the normative function that the description
of what is normal assumes for an individual. We are not referring to what is discussed
in ’normative psychology’ concerning the system of normative propositions that reg-
ulates the behavior of an individual (a normative proposition ‘says something about
what is required, allowed, or forbidden among human activities’, ‘normative psychol-
ogy is the psychology of oughts’, Kelly & Davis, 2018, pp. 57, 58; see also Bicchieri,

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
 Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (2021) 55:728–734 733

2006, 2016). What we mean can be clarified with Vygotsky’s critique of Piaget’s the-
ory of child psychic development: ‘The laws that Piaget established, and the facts that
he found, are of limited rather than universal significance. They are actually hinc et
nunc ‒ here and now ‒ in a given, specific social environment. He describes not the
development of the thinking of the child in general, but only the development of the
thinking of the children that he studied. The laws that he discovered are not the eternal
laws of nature, but historical and social laws’ (1934; Engl. transl., p. 90).
If the laws of development established by psychological research are considered
as universal and not as dependent on the particular historical and social context, this
means that the operation carried out by psychologists is to extrapolate their results to
other historical and social contexts. This extrapolation has social and political conse-
quences because those pseudo-universal laws take on a normative character: in this
sense psychology becomes a normative science. The problem does not lie in the appli-
cation, good or bad, of psychological research to the psychological problems of an
individual or social groups, believing that at the outset the theory and empirical results
are neutral with respect to the type of practical application. One may wonder, limit-
ing ourselves to two historical examples, whether Freud’s theory of infantile sexual
development or Piaget’s theory of cognitive development reflected a broader concep-
tion of the human mind whose roots lay in early twentieth-century European society
and culture. Under the guise of scientific knowledge, these psychological theories indi-
cated not only what was normal, but what had to be normal for a child or adult not to
be considered abnormal. In our opinion, Vygotsky’s most important general lesson is
represented by the unveiling of the intrinsic normative dimension of psychology. This
legacy is highly relevant today in an era in which, just to take up the historical example
above, the taboo of sexual normality has fallen and the concept of inclusion has been
adopted for individuals once considered cognitively and culturally disadvantaged.
Being aware of the normative nature of psychology should drive psychologists to
greater social and political responsibility in the conduct of their professional practice.

Funding  The author did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work.

Declarations 
Conflicts of Interest  The author has no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

References
Aristotle, B. (1916). Politics. Clarendon Press.
Bicchieri, C. (2006). The grammar of society: The nature and dynamics of social norms. Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
Bicchieri, C. (2016). Norms in the wild: How to diagnose, measure, and change social norms. Cambridge
University Press.
Caroli, D., & Mecacci, L. (2020). The forbidden science: The dismantling of pedology and the listing of
the works of pedologists in the Soviet Union in 1936–1938. European Yearbook of the History of
Psychology, 6, 11–61.

13
23456789)

Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.

 734 Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (2021) 55:728–734

Elhammoumi, M. (2015). Marxist psychology and dialectical method. In I. Parker (Ed.), Handbook of
critical psychology (pp. 271–279). Routledge.
Freud, S. (1923). Psycho-analysis. In: The standard edition of the complete psychological works (pp. 235–
254). The Hogart Press.
Holzkamp, K. (1972). Kritische Psychologie. Fischer.
Kelly, D., & Davis, T. (2018). Social norms and human normative psychology. Social Philosophy & Policy,
35, 54–76.
Kozulin, A., & Gindis, B. (2007). Sociocultural theory and education of children with special needs: From
defectology to remedial pedagogy. In H. Daniels, M. Cole, & J. V. Wertsch (Eds.), The Cambridge
companion to Vygotsky (pp. 332–362). Cambridge University Press.
Leonardo, Z. & Manning, L. (2017). White historical activity theory: Toward a critical understanding of
white zones of proximal development. Race Ethnicity and Education, 20, 15–29.
Luriya, A. R., Ed. (1930). Rech i intellekt derevenskogo, gorodskogo i besprizornogo rebionka (Speech and
intellect in rural, urban, and homeless child). Gosizdat RSFSR.
Luriya, A. R. (1974), Ob istoricheskom razvitii poznavatelnikh processov: Experimentalno-psikhologich-
eskoye issledovanie. Nauka (Engl. transl., Cognitive development: Its cultural and social foundations.
Hemisphere, 1976).
McQueen, K. (2010). Chasing Vygotsky’s dogs: Retrieving Lev Vygotsky’s philosophy for a worker’s para-
dise. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 29, 53–66.
Mecacci, L. (2015). Vygotsky’s reception in the West: The Italian case between Marxism and communism.
History of the Human Sciences, 28, 173–184.
Newman, F., & Holzman, L. (1993). Lev Vygotsky. Routledge.
Sève, L. (1969). Marxisme et théorie de la personnalité. Éditions sociales (Engl. transl., Man in Marxist
theory and the psychology of personality. Harvester Press, 1978).
Smagorinsky, P. (2012). “Every individual has his own insanity”: Applying Vygotsky’s work on defectology
to the question of mental health as an issue of inclusion. Language, Culture and Social Interaction, 1,
67–77.
Van der Veer, R., & Valsiner, J. (1991). Understanding Vygotsky: A quest for synthesis. Blackwell.
Vik, S. (2018). Defectology and inclusion. Problemy Wczesnej Edukacij/Issues in Early Education, 3(42),
94–102.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1927). Istoricheskii smysl’ psikhologicheskogo krizisa. In Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1. Ped-
agogika, 1982, pp. 291–436 (Engl. transl., The historical meaning of the crisis in psychology. In The
collected works, vol. 3. Plenum Press, 1987, pp. 233–343).
Vygotsky, L. S. (1929). Osnovnye problemy sovremennoy defektologii. In Trydy 2-go MGU (pp. 6–33).
MGU (Engl. transl., Fundamental problems of defectology. In The collected works, vol. 2. Plenum
Press, 1993, pp. 29–51).
Vygotsky, L.S., & Luriya, A.R. (1930). Etudy po istorii povedeniya (obeziana, primitiv, rebionok) (Engl.
transl., Studies on the history of behavior: Ape, primitive, and the child). Routledge, 1993.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1930). Socialisticheskaya peredelka cheloveka. VARNITSO, 3, 36–44 (Engl. transl., The
socialist alteration of man. In R. van der Veer & J. Valsiner, Eds., The Vygotsky reader. Blackwell,
1994, pp. 175–184).
Vygotsky, L. S. (1931). Istoriya razvitiya vysshikh psikhicheskikh funktcii. In Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 3.
Pedagogika, 1983, pp. 5–328 (Engl. transl., The history of the development of higher mental functions.
In The collected works, vol. 4. Plenum Press, 1997, pp. 233–343).
Vygotsky, L. S. (1934). Mishlenie i rech: Psikhologicheskye issledovaniya. Gos. Sotsekgiz (Engl. transl.,
Thinking and speech. In The collected works, vol. 1. Plenum Press, 1997, pp. 37–285).
Vygotsky [Vygotskij], L.S. (2018). La science du development de l’enfant: Textes pédologiques, eds. I. Leo-
poldoff Martin & B. Schneuwly. Peter Lang.
Vygotsky, L.S. (2020). Pedology of the schoolchild, ed. R. van der Veer. Information Age Publishing.
Vygotsky, L. S. (2019). Pedological works. In D. Kellogg & N. Veresov (Eds.), Foundations of pedology.
Springer.
Zavershneva, E., & Van der Veer, R. (2018). Vygotsky’s notebook: A selection. Springer.

Publisher’s Note  Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Terms and Conditions
Springer Nature journal content, brought to you courtesy of Springer Nature Customer Service Center
GmbH (“Springer Nature”).
Springer Nature supports a reasonable amount of sharing of research papers by authors, subscribers
and authorised users (“Users”), for small-scale personal, non-commercial use provided that all
copyright, trade and service marks and other proprietary notices are maintained. By accessing,
sharing, receiving or otherwise using the Springer Nature journal content you agree to these terms of
use (“Terms”). For these purposes, Springer Nature considers academic use (by researchers and
students) to be non-commercial.
These Terms are supplementary and will apply in addition to any applicable website terms and
conditions, a relevant site licence or a personal subscription. These Terms will prevail over any
conflict or ambiguity with regards to the relevant terms, a site licence or a personal subscription (to
the extent of the conflict or ambiguity only). For Creative Commons-licensed articles, the terms of
the Creative Commons license used will apply.
We collect and use personal data to provide access to the Springer Nature journal content. We may
also use these personal data internally within ResearchGate and Springer Nature and as agreed share
it, in an anonymised way, for purposes of tracking, analysis and reporting. We will not otherwise
disclose your personal data outside the ResearchGate or the Springer Nature group of companies
unless we have your permission as detailed in the Privacy Policy.
While Users may use the Springer Nature journal content for small scale, personal non-commercial
use, it is important to note that Users may not:

1. use such content for the purpose of providing other users with access on a regular or large scale
basis or as a means to circumvent access control;
2. use such content where to do so would be considered a criminal or statutory offence in any
jurisdiction, or gives rise to civil liability, or is otherwise unlawful;
3. falsely or misleadingly imply or suggest endorsement, approval , sponsorship, or association
unless explicitly agreed to by Springer Nature in writing;
4. use bots or other automated methods to access the content or redirect messages
5. override any security feature or exclusionary protocol; or
6. share the content in order to create substitute for Springer Nature products or services or a
systematic database of Springer Nature journal content.
In line with the restriction against commercial use, Springer Nature does not permit the creation of a
product or service that creates revenue, royalties, rent or income from our content or its inclusion as
part of a paid for service or for other commercial gain. Springer Nature journal content cannot be
used for inter-library loans and librarians may not upload Springer Nature journal content on a large
scale into their, or any other, institutional repository.
These terms of use are reviewed regularly and may be amended at any time. Springer Nature is not
obligated to publish any information or content on this website and may remove it or features or
functionality at our sole discretion, at any time with or without notice. Springer Nature may revoke
this licence to you at any time and remove access to any copies of the Springer Nature journal content
which have been saved.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, Springer Nature makes no warranties, representations or
guarantees to Users, either express or implied with respect to the Springer nature journal content and
all parties disclaim and waive any implied warranties or warranties imposed by law, including
merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose.
Please note that these rights do not automatically extend to content, data or other material published
by Springer Nature that may be licensed from third parties.
If you would like to use or distribute our Springer Nature journal content to a wider audience or on a
regular basis or in any other manner not expressly permitted by these Terms, please contact Springer
Nature at

onlineservice@springernature.com