Classics in the History of Psychology
An internet resource developed by
Christopher D. Green
ISSN 1492-3173
(Return to Classics index)
John Dewey (1884)
First published in Andover Review, 2, 278-289.
Posted December 2001
Bacon's dictum
regarding the proneness of the mind, in explanation, towards unity and
simplicity, at no matter what sacrifice
of material, has found no more
striking exemplification than that offered in the fortunes of psychology. The least
developed of the sciences, for a hundred years it has borne in its
presentations the air of the one most completely finished. The infinite detail
and complexity of the simplest psychical life, its interweavings
with the physical organism, with the life of others in the social organism,-- created
no special difficulty; and in a book like James Mill's Analysis we find
every mental phenomenon not only explained, but explained by reference to one
principle. That rich and colored experience, never
the same in two nations, in two individuals, in two moments of the same life,--
whose thoughts, desires, fears, and hopes have furnished the material for the ever-developing
literature of the ages, for a Homer and a Chaucer, a Sophocles and a
Shakespeare, for the unwritten tragedies and comedies of daily life,-- was neatly
and carefully dissected, its parts labeled and stowed
away in their proper pigeon-holes, the inventory taken, and the whole stamped
with the stamp of un fait accompli.
Schematism was supreme, and the air of
finality was over all.
We know better now.
We know that that life of man whose unfolding furnishes psychology its material
is the most difficult and complicated subject which
man can investigate. We have some consciousness of its ramifications and of its
connections. We see that man is somewhat more than a neatly dovetailed
psychical machine who may be taken as an isolated individual, laid on the
dissecting table of analysis and duly anatomized. We know that his life is
bound up with the life of society, of the nation in the ethos and nomos; we
know that he is closely connected with all the past by the lines of education,
tradition, and heredity; we know that man is indeed the microcosm who has
gathered into himself the riches of the world, both of space and of time, the
world physical and the world psychical. We know also of the complexities of the
individual life. We know that our mental life is not a syllogistic sorites, but
an enthymeme most of whose members are suppressed; that large tracts never come
into consciousness; that those which do get into consciousness, are vague and
transitory, with a meaning hard to catch and read; are infinitely complex,
involving traces of the entire life history of the individual, or are
vicarious, having significance only in that for which they stand; that
psychical life is a continuance, having no breaks into "distinct ideas which
are separate existences"; that analysis is but a process of abstraction,
leaving us with a parcel of parts from which the "geistige Band" is
absent; that our distinctions, however necessary, are unreal and largely
arbitrary; that mind is no compartment box nor bureau of departmental powers;
in short, that we know almost nothing about the actual activities and processes
of the soul. We know that the old psychology gave descriptions of that which has
for the most part no existence, and which at the best
it but described and did not explain.
I do not say this to
depreciate the work of the earlier psychologists. There is no need to cast
stones at those who, having a work to do, did that
work well and departed. With Sir William Hamilton and J. Stuart Mill the school
passed away. It is true that many psychologists still use their language and
follow their respective fashions. Their influence, no doubt, is yet everywhere
felt. But changed conditions are upon us, and thought, no more than revolution,
goes backward. Psychology can live no better in the past than physiology or
physics; but there is no more need for us to revile Hume and Reid for not
giving birth to a full and complete science, than there is for complaining that
The work of the
earlier psychologists bore a definite and necessary relation both to the
scientific conditions and the times in which it was done. If they had
recognized the complexity of the subject and attempted to deal with it, the science
would never have been begun. The very condition of its existence was the
neglect of the largest part of the material, the seizing of a few schematic
ideas and principles, and their use for universal explanation. Very mechanical
and very abstract to us, no doubt, seems their division of the mind into
faculties, the classification of mental phenomena into the regular, graded,
clear-cut series of sensation, image, concept, etc.; but let one take a look
into the actual processes of his own mind, the actual course of the mental life
there revealed, and he will realize how utterly impossible were the description,
much more the explanation, of what goes on there, unless the larger part of it
were utterly neglected, and a few broad schematic rubrics seized by which to
reduce this swimming chaos to some semblance of order.
Again, the history
of all science demonstrates that much of its progress consists in bringing to
light problems. Lack of consciousness of problems, even more than lack of ability
to solve them, is the characteristic of the non-scientific mind. Problems
cannot be solved till they are seen and stated, and the work of the earlier
psychologists consisted largely in this sort of work. Further, they were filled
with the Zeitgeist of their age, the age of the eighteenth century and the
Aufklärung, which found nothing
difficult, which hated mystery and complexity, which believed with all its heart
in principles, the simpler and more abstract the better, and which had the
passion of completion. By this spirit, the psychologists as well as the other
thinkers of the day were mastered, and under its influence they thought and
wrote.
Thus their work was
conditioned by the nature of science itself, and by the age in which they
lived. This work they did, and left to us a heritage of problems, of terminology,
and of principles which we are to solve, reject, or employ as best we may. And
the best we can do is to thank them, and then go about our own work; the
worst is to make them the dividing lines of schools, or settle in hostile camps
according to their banners. We are not called upon to defend them, for
their work is in the past; we are not called upon to attack them, for our work
is in the future.
It will be of more
use briefly to notice some of the movements and tendencies which have brought
about the change of attitude, and created what may be called the "New
Psychology."
Not the slightest of
these movements has been, of course, the reaction of the present century, from
the abstract, if clear, principles of the eighteenth, towards concrete detail,
even though it be confused. The general failure of the
eighteenth century in all but destructive accomplishment forced the recognition
of the fact that the universe is not so simple and easy a matter to deal with,
after all; that there are many things in earth, to say nothing of heaven, which
were not dreamed of in the philosophy of clearness and abstraction, whether
that philosophy had been applied along the lines of the state, society,
religion, or science. The world was sated with system and longed for fact. The
age became realistic. That the movement has been accompanied with at least
temporary loss in many directions, with the perishing of ideals, forgetfulness
of higher purpose, decay of enthusiasm, absorption in the petty, a hard
contentedness in the present, or a cynical pessimism as to both present and future,
there can be no doubt. But neither may it be doubted that the movement was a
necessity to bring the Antæaus of humanity back to
the mother soil of experience, whence it derives its strength and very life,
and to prevent it from losing itself in a substanceless
vapor where its ideals and purposes become as thin
and watery as the clouds towards which it aspires.
Out of this movement
and as one of its best aspects came that organized, systematic, tireless study
into the secrets of nature, which, counting nothing common or unclean, thought
no drudgery beneath it, or rather thought nothing drudgery,-- that movement
which with its results had been the great revelation given to the nineteenth
century to make. In this movement psychology took its place, and in the growth
of physiology which accompanied it I find the first if not the greatest
occasion of the development of the New Psychology.
It is a matter in
every one's knowledge that, with the increase of knowledge regarding the
structure and functions of the nervous system, there has arisen
a department of science known as physiological psychology, which has already
thrown great light upon psychical matters. But unless I entirely misapprehend
the popular opinion regarding the matter, there is very great confusion and
error in this opinion, regarding the relations of this science to psychology. This
opinion, if I rightly gather it, is, that physiological psychology is a science
which does, or at least claims to, explain all psychical life by reference to
the nature of the nervous system. To illustrate: very many professed popularizers of the results of scientific inquiry, as well
as laymen, seem to think that the entire psychology of vision is explained when
we have a complete knowledge of the anatomy of the retina, of its nervous connection
with the brain, and of the centre in the latter which serves for visual
functions; or that we know all about memory if we can discover that certain
brain cells store up nervous impressions, and certain fibres serve to connect
these cells,-- the latter producing the association of ideas, while the former
occasion their reproduction. In short, the commonest view of physiological psychology
seems to be that it is a science which shows that some or all of the events of our mental life are physically
conditioned upon certain nerve-structures, and thereby explains these
events. Nothing could be further from the truth. So far as I know, all the
leading investigators clearly realize that explanations of psychical events, in
order to explain, must
themselves be psychical and not physiological. However important such knowledge
as that of which we have just been speaking may be for physiology, it has of
itself no value for psychology. It tells simply what and how physiological
elements serve as a basis for psychical acts; what the latter are, or how they are to be explained, it
tells us not at all. Physiology can no more, of itself, give us the what, why, and
how of psychical life, than the physical geography of a country can enable us
to construct or explain the history of the nation that has dwelt within that
country. However important, however indispensable the land with all its qualities
is as a basis for that history, that history itself can be ascertained and
explained only through historical records and historic conditions. And so
psychical events can be observed only through psychical means, and interpreted
and explained by psychical conditions and facts.
What can be meant,
then, by saying that the rise of this physiological psychology has produced a
revolution in psychology? This: that it has given a new instrument, introduced
a new method,-- that of experiment, which has supplemented
and corrected the old method of introspection. Psychical facts still remain
psychical, and are to be explained through psychical conditions; but our means
of ascertaining what these facts are and how they are conditioned have been
indefinitely widened. Two of the chief elements of the method of experiment are
variation of conditions at the will and under the control of the experimenter, and
the use of quantitative measurement. Neither of these elements can be applied
through any introspective process. Both may be through physiological
psychology. This starts from the well-grounded facts that the psychical events known
as sensations arise through bodily stimuli, and that the psychical events known
as volitions result in bodily movements; and it finds in these facts the
possibility of the application of the method of experimentation. The bodily stimuli
and movements may be directly controlled and measured, and thereby, indirectly,
the psychical states which they excite or express.
There is no need at
this day to dwell upon the advantages derived in any science from the
application of experiment. We know well that it aids observation by
indefinitely increasing the power of analysis and by permitting exact measurement,
and that it equally aids explanation by enabling us so to vary the constituent
elements of the case investigated as to select the indispensable. Nor is there
need to call attention to the especial importance of experiment in a science
where introspection is the only direct means of observation. We are sufficiently
aware of the defects of introspection. We know that it is limited, defective,
and often illusory as a means of observation, and can in no way directly
explain. To explain is to mediate; to connect the given fact with an unseen
principle; to refer the phenomenon to an antecedent condition,--
while introspection can deal only with the immediate present, with the given
now. This is not the place to detail the specific results accomplished through this
application of experiment to the psychological sphere; but two illustrations
may perhaps be permitted: one from the realm of sensation, showing how it has
enabled us to analyze states of consciousness which were otherwise indecomposable;
and the other from that of perception, showing how it has revealed processes
which could be reached through no introspective method.
It is now well known
that no sensation as it exists in consciousness is simple or ultimate. Every
color sensation, for example, is made up by at least three fundamental sensory quales, probably those of red, green, and
violet; while there is every reason to suppose that each of these qualities, far
from being simple, is compounded of an indefinite number of homogeneous units. Thus
the simplest musical sensation has also been experimentally proved to be in
reality not simple, but doubly compound. First, there is the number of qualitatively
like units constituting it which occasion the pitch of the note, according to
the relations of time in which they stand to each other; and second, there is
the relation which one order of these units bears to other secondary orders,
which gives rise to the peculiar timbre or tone-color of the sound;
while in a succession of notes these relations are still further complicated by
those which produce melody and harmony. And all this complexity occurs, be it
remembered, in a state of consciousness which, to introspection, is homogeneous
and ultimate. In these respects physiology has been to psychology what the
microscope is to biology, or analysis to chemistry. But the experimental method
has done more than reveal hidden parts, or analyze into simpler elements. It
has aided explanation, as well as observation, by showing the processes which
condition a psychical event. This is nowhere better illustrated than in visual
perception. It is already almost a commonplace of knowledge that, for example,
the most complex landscape which we can have before our eyes, is,
psychologically speaking, not a simple ultimate fact, nor an impression stamped
upon us from without, but is built up from color and muscular sensations, with,
perhaps, unlocalized feelings of extension, by means
of the psychical laws of interest, attention, and interpretation. It is, in
short, a complex judgment involving within itself emotional, volitional, and intellectual
elements. The knowledge of the nature of these elements, and of the laws which govern
their combination into the complex visual scene, we owe to physiological
psychology, through the new means of research with which it has endowed us. The
importance of such a discovery can hardly be overestimated. In fact, this doctrine
that our perceptions are not immediate facts, but are mediated psychical processes,
has been called by Helmholtz the most important
psychological result yet reached.
But besides the debt
we owe Physiology for the method of experiment, is that which is due her for an
indirect means of investigation which she has put within our hands; and it is this
aspect of the case which has led, probably, to such misconceptions of the
relations of the two sciences as exist. For while no direct conclusions
regarding the nature of mental activities or their causes can be drawn from the
character of nervous structure or function, it is possible to reason indirectly
from one to the other, to draw analogies and seek confirmation. That is to say,
if a certain nervous arrangement can be made out to exist, there is always a
strong presumption that there is a psychical process corresponding to it; or if
the connection between two physiological nerve processes can be shown to be of
a certain nature, one may surmise that the relation between corresponding
psychical activities is somewhat analogous. In this way, by purely physiological
discoveries, the mind may be led to suspect the existence of some mental
activity hitherto overlooked, and attention directed to its workings, or light
may be thrown on points hitherto obscure. Thus it was, no doubt, the physiological
discovery of the time occupied in transmission of a nervous impulse that led
the German psychologists to their epoch-making investigations regarding the
time occupied in various mental activities; thus, too, the present psychological
theories regarding the relation of the intellectual and volitional tracts of
minds were undoubtedly suggested and largely developed in analogy with Bell's
discovery of the distinct nature of the sensory and motor nerves. Again, the present
theory that memory is not a chamber hall for storing up ideas and their traces
or relies, but is lines of activity along which the mind habitually works, was
certainly suggested from the growing physiological belief that the brain cells
which form the physical basis of memory do not in any way store up past
impressions or their traces, but have, by these impressions, their structure so
modified as to give rise to a certain functional mode of activity. Thus many
important generalizations might be mentioned which were suggested and developed
in analogy with
physiological discoveries.
The influence of
biological science in general upon psychology has been very great. Every
important development in science contributes to the popular consciousness, and
indeed to philosophy, some new conception which serves for a time as a most
valuable category of classification and explanation. To biology is due the
conception of organism. Traces of the notion are found long before the great
rise of biological science, and, in particular, Kant has given a complete and
careful exposition of it; but the great rôle which the
"organic" conception has played of late is doubtless due in largest
measure to the growth of biology. In psychology this conception has led to the
recognition of mental life as an organic unitary process developing according
to the laws of all life, and not a theatre for the exhibition of independent autonomous
faculties, or a rendezvous in which isolated, atomic sensations and ideas
may gather, hold external converse, and then forever part. Along with this
recognition of the solidarity of mental life has come that of the relation in which
it stands to other lives organized in society. The idea of environment is a
necessity to the idea of organism, and with the conception of environment comes the impossibility of considering psychical life as an
individual, isolated thing developing in a vacuum.
This idea of the
organic relation of the individual to that organized social life into which he
is born, from which he draws his mental and spiritual sustenance, and in which he
must perform his proper function or become a mental and moral wreck, forms the
transition to the other great influence which I find to have been at work in
developing the New Psychology. I refer to the growth of those vast and as yet
undefined topics of inquiry which may be vaguely designated as the social and
historical sciences,-- the sciences of the origin and development of the
various spheres of man's activity. With the development of these sciences has
come the general feeling that the scope of psychology has been cabined and
cramped till it has lost all real vitality, and there is now the recognition of
the fact that all these sciences possess their psychological sides, present
psychological material, and demand treatment and explanation at the hands of
psychology. Thus the material for the latter, as well as its scope,
have been indefinitely extended. Take the matter of language. What a
wealth of material and of problems it offers. How did it originate; was it
contemporaneous with that of thought, or did it succeed it; how have they acted
and reacted upon each other; what psychological laws have been at the basis of
the development and differentiation of languages, of the development of their
structure and syntax, of the meaning of words, of all the rhetorical devices of
language. Any one at all acquainted with modern discussions of language will
recognize at a glance that the psychological presentation and discussion of
such problems is almost enough of itself to revolutionize the old method of
treating psychology. In the languages themselves, moreover, we have a mine of
resources, which, as a record of the development of intelligence, can be
compared only to the importance of the paleontological
record to the student of animal and vegetable life.
But this is only one
aspect, and not comparatively a large one, of the whole field. Folk-lore and
primitive culture, ethnology and anthropology, all render their contributions
of matter, and press upon us the necessity of explanation. The origin and
development of myth, with all which it includes, the relation to the
nationality, to language, to ethical ideas, to social customs, to government
and the state, is itself a psychological field wider than any known to the
previous century. Closely connected with this is the growth of ethical ideas,
their relations to the consciousness and activities of the nation in which they
originate, to practical morality, and to art. Thus I could go through the
various spheres of human activity, and point out how thoroughly they are permeated
with psychological questions and material. But it suffices to say that history in its broadest
aspect is itself a psychological problem, offering the richest resources of matter.
Closely connected
with this, and also influential in the development of the New Psychology, is
that movement which may be described as the commonest thoughts of everyday life
in all its forms, whether normal or abnormal. The cradle and the asylum are
becoming the laboratory of the psychologist of the latter half of the
nineteenth century. The study of children's minds, the discovery of their
actual thoughts and feelings from babyhood up, the order and nature of the
development of their mental life and the laws governing it, promises to be a
mine of greatest value. When it was recognized that insanities are neither
supernatural interruptions nor utterly inexplicable "visitations," it
gradually became evident that they were but exaggerations of certain of the
normal workings of the mind, or lack of proper harmony and co-ordination among
these workings; and thus another department of inquiries, of psychical experiments
performed by nature, was opened to us, which has already yielded valuable
results. Even the prison and the penitentiary have made their contributions.
If there be any need
of generalizing the foregoing, we may say that the development of the New
Psychology has been due to the growth, on the one hand, of the science of physiology,
giving us the method of experiment, and, on the other, of the sciences of
humanity in general, giving us the method of objective observation, both of
which indefinitely supplement and correct the old method of subjective introspection.
So
much for the occasioning causes and method of the New Psychology. Are its results asked for? It will be gathered,
from what has already been said, that its results cannot be put down in black
and white like those of a mathematical theory. It is a movement, no system. But
as a movement it has certain general features.
The chief
characteristic distinguishing it from the old psychology is undoubtedly the
rejection of a formal logic as its model and test. The old psychologists almost
without exception held to a nominalistic logic. This
of itself were a matter of no great importance, were it not for the inevitable tendency
and attempt to make living concrete facts of experience square with the supposed
norms of an abstract, lifeless thought, and to interpret them in accordance
with its formal conceptions. This tendency has nowhere been stronger than in
those who proclaimed that "experience" was the sole source of all
knowledge. They emasculated experience till their logical conceptions could
deal with it; they sheared it down till it would fit their logical boxes; they pruned
it till it presented a trimmed tameness which would shock none of their laws;
they preyed upon its vitality till it would go into the coffin of their
abstractions. And neither so-called "school" was free from this
tendency. The two legacies of fundamental principles which Hume left, were: that every distinct idea is a separate
existence, and that every idea must be definitely determined in quantity and quality.
By the first he destroyed all relation but accident; by the second he denied
all universality. But these principles are framed after purely logical models;
they are rather the abstract logical principles of difference and identity, of
A is A and A is not B, put in the guise of a
psychological expression. And the logic of concrete experience, of growth and development,
repudiates such abstractions. The logic of life transcends the logic of nominalistic thought. The reaction against Hume fell back
on certain ultimate, indecomposable, necessary first truths immediately known
through some mysterious simple faculty of the mind. Here again the logical
model manifests itself. Such intuitions are not psychological; they are
conceptions bodily imported from the logical sphere. Their origin, tests, and
character are all logical. But the New Psychology would not have necessary
truths about principles; it would have the touch of reality in the life of the soul.
It rejects the formalistic intuitionalism for one which has been well termed
dynamic. It believes that truth, that reality, not necessary beliefs about reality,
is given in the living experience of the soul's development.
Experience is
realistic, not abstract. Psychical life is the fullest, deepest, and richest
manifestation of this experience. The New Psychology is content to get its
logic from this experience, and not do violence to the sanctity and integrity
of the latter by forcing it to conform to certain preconceived abstract ideas.
It wants the logic of fact, of process, of life. It has within its departments
of knowledge no psycho-statics, for it can nowhere
find spiritual life at rest. For this reason, it abandons all legal fiction of logical and mathematical analogies and rules; and
is willing to throw itself upon experience, believing that the mother which has
borne it will not betray it. But it makes no attempts to dictate to this
experience, and tell it what it must be in order to square with a
scholastic logic. Thus the New Psychology bears the realistic stamp of contact
with life.
From this general
characteristic result most of its features. It has already been noticed that it
insists upon the unity and solidarity of psychical life against abstract theories
which would break it up into atomic elements or independent powers. It lays
large stress upon the will; not as an abstract power of unmotivated choice, nor
as an executive power to obey the behests of the understanding, the legislative
branch of the psychical government, but as a living bond connecting and
conditioning all mental activity. It emphasizes the teleological
element, not in any mechanical or
external sense, but regarding life as an organism in which immanent ideas or
purposes are realizing themselves through the development of experience. Thus
modern psychology is intensely ethical in its tendencies. As it refuses to hypostatize
abstractions into self-subsistent individuals, and as it insists upon the
automatic spontaneous elements in man's life, it is making possible for the
first time an adequate psychology of man's religious nature and experience. As
it goes into the depths of man's nature it finds, as stone of its foundation,
blood of its life, the
instinctive tendencies of devotion, sacrifice, faith, and idealism which are
the eternal substructure of all the struggles of the nations upon the altar stairs
which slope up to God. It finds no insuperable problems in the relations of
faith and reason, for it can discover in its investigations no reason which is not based upon faith, and no
faith which is not rational in its origin and tendency. But to attempt to give
any detailed account of these features of the New Psychology would be to go
over much of the recent discussions of ethics
and theology. We can conclude only by saying that, following the logic
of life, it attempts to comprehend life.