The papers in this
collection explore a wide variety of predominantly late 19^th Century
influences on the emerging discipline of psychology. Together they comprise a thoroughly engaging series of snapshots
of an academic discipline in its infancy, drawing upon the influence of
philosophy and science whilst simultaneously defining itself as distinct from
both.

All of the
articles are individually enlightening, and jointly they provide a good
resource for anyone interested in the factors that shaped and continue to shape
modern psychology. The collection does
not, and is not intended to, amount to an exhaustive account of the origins of
psychology; nevertheless it serves as a helpful guide to the ways in which a
range of disciplines served to define the subject.

As might be
expected given both the topic and the fact that the book developed from an
interdisciplinary seminar series (at the York University, Toronto), contributions
cover a diverse range of topics. 
Subjects covered range from the influence and apparent success of
phrenology in the latter half of the 19^th Century, to the question
of the extent to which Charles Babbage was an early cognitive scientist, to the
place and status of the psychological exhibit in the 1893 World’s Columbian
Exposition in Chicago.

One major theme
that runs through a number of the papers concerns the development of psychology
as a professional science, standing in opposition to both religion and
metaphysics, and the extent of the empiricist and verificationist influences
upon it. The tendency to focus upon
empirical evidence and reject any metaphysical underpinnings is seen emerging
in Raymond E. Fancher’s discussion of the development of Francis Galton’s
psychology and methodology in Chapter One, ‘Eugenics and Other Victorian
"Secular Religions"’. Galton
and his contemporaries, including the likes of Herbert Spencer, T. H. Huxley
and John Tyndall, challenged the claims of religion on the grounds of lack of
verifiability, and emphasised the requirement of empirical testability so
familiar today.

The specifically
anti-metaphysical nature of the contemporary approach is more explicitly dealt
with in Andrew S. Winston’s paper focusing on Ernst Mach’s influence on the
subject (Chapter Six, ‘Cause Into Function: Ernst Mach and the Reconstruction
of Explanation in Psychology’). Mach
rejected the metaphysical notion of cause, for broadly Humean reasons,
preferring to replace it with the application of mathematical functions to
psychological methodology. This use of
the concept of function fitted neatly with the emphasis on experimentation,
deriving from Bacon’s work three centuries earlier, in that it allowed for
experimentation to be described in terms of the manipulation of one variable in
order to determine the effects on other dependent variables. Winston argues that Mach’s strongly
positivist philosophy of science was an important influence upon psychology,
notably through the behaviourism of Skinner and Watson.

In her paper,
‘Instincts and Instruments’ (Chapter Eight), Katharine Anderson notes the
integration of the mind into the class of instruments, rendering it amenable to
scientific investigation. This move
allowed the mind to be studied as a causal mechanism, albeit one that was often
seen at that time as a mechanism employed by some other conscious agency.

The consequences
of the viewing psychology as a science can be seen in Chapter Three, ‘Sealing
Off the Discipline: Wilhelm Wundt and the Psychology of Memory’. Here, Kurt Danziger notes that Wundt failed
to demonstrate that psychological experiments concerning memory had any
relevance to everyday life precisely because he maintained a tight boundary
between scientific concepts and discourse and their everyday counterparts. He claims that if psychology was to become
successful, it would require

psychological
categories that presented a Janus face, one turned outward to the ordinary
world of lay psychological problems and concerns, the other turned inward to
the shuttered world of disciplinary investigative practices (p. 60).

In other words,
what psychologists have to maintain, Danziger thinks, is that an empiricist,
investigative, scientific methodology
can actually reveal truths about the mental states of individuals.

It is precisely
this assumption that comes under attack in two later chapters, namely Charles
W. Tolman’s ‘Philosophic Doubts About Psychology as a Natural Science’ (Chapter
Nine), and Thomas Teo’s ‘Karl Marx and Wilhelm Dilthey on the Socio-Historical
Conceptualization of the Mind’ (Chapter Ten).

Tolman raises a
number of concerns about the scientific status and usefulness of modern
psychology arising from the works of the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Georg
Wilhelm Hegel. Kant claims that any
psychology that neglects the place of reasons
and focuses instead upon causal regularities will be inadequate for giving an
account of human behaviour and mentality (a similar claim would be made against
the Machian alternative). Similarly (if
for very different reasons), Hegel claimed that explanations of human actions
are to be found not in causal accounts but "mainly in the reasons embodied
in Objective Spirit, that is, in social institutions" (p. 191).

In his chapter,
Teo offers a sketch of two alternative approaches to the mind, both of which
reject the individualistic conception of the mind found in contemporary
psychology. This standard conception,
traceable back to René Descartes, limits its concerns to the workings of the
individual mind, isolated from its social context. Such a view is reflected in the methodology of using artificial
experimental situations to confirm or disconfirm psychological theories. Against this approach, Teo provides the
beginnings of two related alternatives, based in the writings of Karl Marx and
Wilhelm Dilthey.

Marx, while not
offering a developed psychology, does present an account of humans as
essentially social animals (this falling squarely within the Aristotelian
tradition). Dilthey, while not agreeing
with Marx’s views on society, history or economics, likewise stressed the social
context of the individual mind: "the human being as an object of a sound
analytical science is the individual as part of society" (quoted on p.
205). This view led Dilthey to reject
the inclusion of psychology in the class of natural sciences in favour of its
assimilation into the class of socio-historical studies.

The insistence
that the mind is essentially social challenges current psychological
assumptions, in that it directly attacks the possibility of discovering general
laws that hold over all cases. 
Furthermore, there is little point in attempting to use laboratory-based
experiments if this neglects a fundamental, ineliminable aspect of human
mentality.

While these papers
provide grounds for questioning the underlying assumptions of psychology—something
that every practising psychologist ought to be aware of—they fail to fully
justify Tolman’s attack on contemporary psychology:

What has
scientific psychology got to show for itself? 
The faddish nature of experimental psychology in the 20^th
century is well-known… Is it all pretense and illusion? (p. 191)

One point worth
making here is that, given the emphasis on empiricist science found in a number
of the papers, the Introduction’s emphasis on Kant’s decidedly non-standard
conception of science is rather unhelpful. 
Some introductory account of the standard empiricist picture, coming
from the likes of Bacon and David Hume, would have been far more useful.

There are other
exceptional papers that do not touch upon the issues discussed above. Michael M. Sokal’s discussion of ‘Practical
Phrenology as Psychological Counseling’ (Chapter Two) is thoroughly engaging
and illuminating, as is Marlene Shore’s account of psychology’s place in the
1893 World Exposition (Chapter Four). 
John G. Benjafield’s discussion of psychology’s early interest in
applying scientific experimental methods to subjects’ appreciation of the
‘Golden Section’ in Chapter Five is an excellent illustration of the perceived
scope of early psychology. Christopher
D. Green provides an evaluation of the suggestion that Charles Babbage should
be seen as an early advocate of cognitive science in Chapter Seven, focusing on
Ada Lovelace’s advocacy of Babbage’s work. 
Finally, Fredric Weizmann discusses turn of the century views of the
role of genetic and embryological influences on early development and
psychology in Chapter Eleven.

All of the papers
in this collection merit reading, and cast significant light both on the
development of modern psychology and the philosophical assumptions that underlie
it even today. As I hope the preceding
discussion demonstrates, they can be read either as individually interesting
articles in their own right or together as providing a variety of viewpoints on
the putative scientific status of current psychology.

 

©
2002 Chris Lindsay

 

Chris
Lindsay, Ph.D. teaches philosophy at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.
His research interests include conceptual spatial awareness and agency.

Categories: Philosophical