History of Psychology 2008

Lecture 1

Professor Cupchik

Office: S634

Email: cupchik@utsc.utoronto.ca

Office hours: Wed 1-2; Thurs 12-1

Course website:

www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~cupchik

TA: Michelle Hilscher

Office: S142

Email: hilscher@utsc.utoronto.ca

Office hours: Thurs 10-12

Textbook:

Benjafield’s History of Psychology

From Pascal’s Pensées (18th century)…

“Man is only a reed, the feeblest reed in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the entire universe to arm itself in order to annihilate him: a vapor, a drop of water, suffices to kill him. But were the universe to crush him, man would yet be more noble than that which slays him, because he knows that he dies, and the advantage that the universe has over him; of this the universe knows nothing.”

“When I consider the brief span of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and behind it, the small space that I fill, or even see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces which I know not and which know not me, I am afraid, and wonder to see myself here rather than there; for there is no reason why I should be here rather than there, now rather than then…”

These quotes can be related to the existential psychology concept of “thrownness” according to which we are thrown into a particular life at a particular time in history.

Why do we study the history of psychology?

1. Know what has been done to avoid repetition and take advantage of research possibilities that have lain dormant. Avoid “jumping on the bandwagon.”

2. Knowledge of roots may help to chart future course.

3. Understand the evolution of ideas and methods.

4. It is felt by humanist educators that therehas been a lack of communication of cultural values and of the historical background necessary for critical judgments in important areas of contemporary life.

Relevant & insightful quotations from scholars:

Cicero: “Those who know only their generation are destined to remain children forever.”

Croce (1921): “Every true history is contemporary history.”

Wheeler (1936): “Scientific theory has had a strikingly cyclic history. At 1250, 1650 and 1820 and now at 1935 it is organismic (holistic) in intent. Between these peaks, the thought pattern swerved to an opposite extreme, that of mechanism (atomism) whose peaks fall at about 1400, 1775 and 1860.”

The cycles are getting shorter: (organismic in 1940 and atomistic between 1950-1960).

E.G. Boring (1959): “Each individual effort is an eddy in the total stream of science and we shall become much wiser, get much nearer the truth, if we remember to look at the stream as a whole and notice the eddies only as they contribute to the sweep of the main current.”

“One finds that he needs to know about the past, not in order to predict the future, but in order to understand the present.”

R.I. Watson (1960): “Each generation rewrites history in terms of its own values.”

“…in the past writing of our history, material either ignored as irrelevant or simply not known at that time can now be utilized.”

“To neglect history does not mean to escape its influence.”

Gordon Allport (1960): He contrasts the Lockean and Leibnizian

approaches to science.

1. Lockean approach typical of American and British psychology.- Pragmatic emphasis on mind as tabula rasa- Analytical microscopic approach- Stimulus-response and animal psychology- Functional relations between independent and dependent

variables.

2. Leibnizian: an holistic Continental and German perspective.- Mind has a potentially active core of its own

Personalistic (great scholar) versus Naturalistic (environmental &historical explanation).

Julian Jaynes (1970):

1. To discover the historical structure under the logical surface of science.

2. To understand the present.

3. To be relevant to real questions.

4. To liberate ourselves from the persuasions of fashion.

5. To comprehend psychology as a whole.

Robinson: “History is not simply a subject to be learned. It is a method by which we can attempt to know ourselves and the world.”

Henle: “History gives us the distance necessary for problem solving.”

Krantz:

- History gives us freedom from the unverbalized.

- History can serve the same function for the scientist as psychotherapy for the therapist in becoming aware of one’s own biases, attitudes and assumptions. This makes it easier to partial out the effects of one’s own background/socio-cultural context.

- By clarifying the effects of the Zeitgeist (dominant intellectual spirit of an age) we are less subject to the blind effects of external cultural factors.

Also: “An historical perspective reveals problems in their ontogenesis, in the back and forth of interrogation, and in the fire of controversy. Thereby they become clearer and more transparent.”

Rollo May (1958):

What is the reason for resistance in America to the study of history of psychology?

In America we have just begun to emerge from an a-historical period – 1920-1960 ca. Because eminent experimentalists have expressed a strong distaste for “hashing over old theories.”

1. Assumption that all major discoveries have been made and we need only fill in the details.

2. Feeling that the study of history is associated with philosophy and metaphysics.

We now stress method and the objective exploration of a phenomenon: isolating factors and observing them from our detached base. But is it not essential to examine our assumptions?

3. Tendency to stress technique and impatience with searches for the foundations of techniques. Methodolatry – the unreflective and uncritical worship of method.

4. We have a frontier history – optimistic, altruistic, applied and less theoretical. Genius in behavioristic, clinical and applied areas.

5. Larger problem than people of the 19th and 20th century faced because of industrialism.Compartmentalization: separate or isolated aspects of life (e.g., home and work).

Relates to problem of repression within the individual to maintain compartmentalization, surrender self-awareness as a protectionagainst reality and then suffer neurotic consequences.

6. Our goal should be to gain perspective, to see the whole, thus freeing ourselves from the restrictions of roles and perceive ourselves in the context of becoming.

Danziger (1990s): “Methodology is not ontologically neutral.”

Cassirer: Problem of “autonomous sciences”

-Each science develops its own direction – no unifying principle, particularly in relation to man.

-The facts of science are isolated.

-Modern theory of man lost its intellectual centre – anarchy of thought.

What is science?

Three basic domains:

1. Phenomena – events that recur in the world are noticed and require explanation or understanding.

Explanation – explain an event as an instance of a more general law (nomothetic approach).

Plane of observation…

Understanding – Verstehen – understand the overall structure of an event in its uniqueness (ideographic approach – individual cases).

Lived world…

2. Theory – ordered set of cause and effect statements that link concepts. Can never be proven true but only disproved.

3. Method – technique for examining phenomena.

Induction – start with individual facts and then arrive at general statements. Based on observation and “acts of noticing”.

Deduction – start with general statements and arrive at particular conclusions or hypotheses.

Two kinds of data:

1. Quantitative – based on measurement and operational definition (define something by how we measure it)

2. Qualitative – interpret the content or structure in verbal discourse (oral or written)

What is progress?

The collection of facts in the inductive approach… facts in the world, facts in the lab.

Integrative theories and paradigms in the deductive approach.

Contrasting views of science: Popper vs. Kuhn

Sir Karl Popper

Sir Karl Popper was a member of the Vienna Circle in the earlier part of the 20th century.

For Sir Karl, science should be interpreted logically and not psychologically.

Science was “subjectless” – in other words, independent of the psychological dispositions of scientists or particular social contexts.

The validity of a proposition is not sociologically determined.

“The logic of science does not rest on taste.”Does a theory explain what we can observe accurately and reliably? Scientific explanation has a logical character.

According to his “falsification hypothesis” (Is the claim stated in such a way as to inform us of the procedures that would unequivocally establish the claim as false if it is, indeed, false?)

The concept of “procedures” means the logical, syntactical procedures implied in stating the claim and in tying it to the observational domain to which it refers.

The goal of a scientific theory is to explain what we observe with accuracy and reliability. It must be testable.

The theory will help us know more about the world and predict how it will behave.

Thomas Kuhn

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)

Paradigm Normal Science Anomaly Revolution

Paradigm: A universally recognizable scientific achievement that, for a time, provides model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners. It is more global than a theory and includes: laws, theories, application and instrumentation.

During different periods of science, certain perspectives held sway over the thinking of researchers. A particular work may “define the legitimate problems and methods of a research field for succeeding generations of practitioners.”

For example: Aristotle’s Physica, Newton’s Principles and Opticks, Franklin’s Electricity, Lavoiseur’s Chemistry, and Lyells’ Geology.

1. Their intellectual achievement was sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity.

2. Their achievements were sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve.

The commitment is therefore “conceptual, theoretical, instrumental and methodological.”

A paradigm is “the source of the methods, problem-field and standards of solution accepted by any mature scientific community at any given time permitting selection, evaluation, and criticism.”

Normal science: Working within and in the light of the paradigm, making it more and more explicit and precise, actualizing its initial promise by extending the knowledge of those facts that the paradigm displays as particularly revealing, by increasing the extent of the match between those facts and the paradigm’s predictions, and by further articulation of the paradigm itself. This leads to research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements as revealed in text books, articles, and so forth.

Anomaly: In the course of such articulation, however, “anomalies” arise which, after repeated efforts to resolve them have failed, gives birth to the kind of situation in which a scientific revolution can take place.

Revolution: Scientific revolutions are “non-cumulative developmental episodes in which an older paradigm is replaced in whole or part by a new one.” This is a new coherent and unified viewpoint, a disciplinary Zeitgeist. It is a radical change in theory that comes from different assumptions and an alternate viewpoint.

There is a social process underlying this development which reflects the interaction of competing research groups and communities.

Innovative scholars generally come from the periphery of scholarly communities because their ideas threaten accepted assumptions and theories (e.g., Einstein).

Problem: How do people who hold to different paradigms communicate?

Kuhn differs from the positivist Vienna Circle who separate “fact” (observation or operation) from “interpretation” thus preserving the “objectivity” of science.

Kuhn emphasizes the dependence on what counts as a “fact,” “problem,” or “solution to a problem” on presuppositions – in other words, on a sociological aspect.

One thing extra…

Professor Cupchik provided three examples of changes in paradigm over history. They are:

Geocentric to heliocentric (Revolution 1)Darwinian (Revolution 2)Freudian (Revolution 3)