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A history of psychology in autobiography volume III.E. W. Scripture.

A history of psychology in autobiography volume III.: E. W. Scripture. In my psychological life I have undergone four stages of mental development. In the enthusiasm of my college days I bought a big book by Descartes. "I think, therefore I am," wrote Descartes when he started to solve the problem of the universe. He ended by placing the soul in the pineal gland because the soul is indivisible and this gland is the only single organ in the brain--psychological nonsense located in an anatomical mistake. This type of thought went out of physics with the thud of the cannon balls at the base of the Tower of Pisa. Little ivory balls dropping on an ebony board in the Leipzig laboratory knocked it out of me, and I came to regard non-experimental psychology as talk-talk-talk and nothing but talk. The second stage was a Fechner-Wundt phase. Modern psychology began with the attempt of Herbart to introduce mathematical methods. It was advanced by the introduction of experimental methods by Weber. Both methods were combined by Fechner to produce laws. Wundt collected the various currents into a systematic science. Under the influence of Freud I passed into a third stage in which consciousness was treated as a quite subordinate element of mind. The mind itself became the Great Unknown and the object of psychology was the investigation of this Unknown by experiment and measurement. The Great Unknown included both the consciousness of the old psychology and the Unconscious of Freud. The general attitude was that expressed in Freud's Das Ich und das Es. The fourth stage began with a shock. Everything that I had ever believed in was swept away as soon as I managed to get some understanding of relativity. Where were the Kantagories of space and time on which I had based all my work? What of matter and mind, causality and identity, and all the rest? Gone with the indivisible atoms and the wave theory of light into the limbo of outworn delusions. The physicists of the world have reacted to this shock by revising their notions entirely; it is evident that psychologists must do likewise. I am now trying to revise my psychological and phonetic notions to accord with the new mode of thought. I take a kind of malicious pleasure in thinking that my fellow psychologists must undergo a like shock and struggle. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A history of psychology in autobiography volume III.E. W. Scripture.

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Publisher
Clark University Press
Copyright
Copyright © 1936 American Psychological Association
Pages
231 –261
DOI
10.1037/11247-010
Publisher site
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Abstract

In my psychological life I have undergone four stages of mental development. In the enthusiasm of my college days I bought a big book by Descartes. "I think, therefore I am," wrote Descartes when he started to solve the problem of the universe. He ended by placing the soul in the pineal gland because the soul is indivisible and this gland is the only single organ in the brain--psychological nonsense located in an anatomical mistake. This type of thought went out of physics with the thud of the cannon balls at the base of the Tower of Pisa. Little ivory balls dropping on an ebony board in the Leipzig laboratory knocked it out of me, and I came to regard non-experimental psychology as talk-talk-talk and nothing but talk. The second stage was a Fechner-Wundt phase. Modern psychology began with the attempt of Herbart to introduce mathematical methods. It was advanced by the introduction of experimental methods by Weber. Both methods were combined by Fechner to produce laws. Wundt collected the various currents into a systematic science. Under the influence of Freud I passed into a third stage in which consciousness was treated as a quite subordinate element of mind. The mind itself became the Great Unknown and the object of psychology was the investigation of this Unknown by experiment and measurement. The Great Unknown included both the consciousness of the old psychology and the Unconscious of Freud. The general attitude was that expressed in Freud's Das Ich und das Es. The fourth stage began with a shock. Everything that I had ever believed in was swept away as soon as I managed to get some understanding of relativity. Where were the Kantagories of space and time on which I had based all my work? What of matter and mind, causality and identity, and all the rest? Gone with the indivisible atoms and the wave theory of light into the limbo of outworn delusions. The physicists of the world have reacted to this shock by revising their notions entirely; it is evident that psychologists must do likewise. I am now trying to revise my psychological and phonetic notions to accord with the new mode of thought. I take a kind of malicious pleasure in thinking that my fellow psychologists must undergo a like shock and struggle. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Published: Dec 11, 2006

Keywords: Edward Wheeler Scripture; autobiography; psychology; history

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