Psychology History entry

226 CHAPTER 7 medium—things in which formerly we Thus, Nietzsche advised people to use their may have found our humanity. I doubt will to power to combine their Dionysian and that such a pain makes us “better,” but I Apollonian tendencies in their own unique way. know that it makes us more profound. This artistic creation is the only meaningful basis (Kaufmann, 1982, pp. 680–681) of morality. Beyond this concept, Nietzsche gave no general formula for living. Through The notion of supermen was Nietzsche’s an- Zarathustra, Nietzsche (1883–1885/1969) re- swer to the human moral and philosophical di- sponded to those looking to him for a philosophy lemma. The meaning and morality of one’s life of life: “‘This … is … my way: where is yours?’ come from within oneself. Healthy, strong indivi- Thus I answered those who asked me ‘the way.’ duals seek self-expansion by experimenting, by liv- For the way—does not exist!” (p. 213). And earlier ing dangerously. Life consists of an almost infinite through Zarathustra, Nietzsche said, “One repays a number of possibilities, and the healthy person (the teacher badly if one remains only a pupil” (p. 103). superman) explores as many of them as possible. For Nietzsche then, it was important for each Religions or philosophies that teach pity, humility, individual to find the meaning in his or her own life submissiveness, self-contempt, self-restraint, guilt, and then to live in accordance with that meaning. or a sense of community are simply incorrect. On Very much in accordance with what was later the other hand, Nietzsche very much admired the called existentialism, Nietzsche said, “If you have ancient Cynics (see Chapter 3) and referred to them your why? for life, then you can get along with often in his works. What he especially appreciated almost any how?” (1889/1998b, p. 6). about Cynicism was its criticism of conventional morality (Pröbsting-Niehues, 1996, p. 359). For Misunderstanding of Nietzsche’s Super- Nietzsche, the good life is ever-changing, challeng- men. Throughout history, scientific and philo- ing, devoid of regret, intense, creative, and risky. It sophical works have often been distorted in order is self-overcoming. Acting in accordance with the will to support political ideologies. Nietzsche’s philoso- to power means living a life of becoming more than phy is an example. His philosophy was embraced by you were, a life of continual self-renewal. Science, the German National Socialists (the Nazis), who philosophy, and especially religion can only stifle claimed that the German people were the super- the good life—the life of the superman. Any view- men to whom Nietzsche referred. For the Nazis, point that promotes herd conformity as opposed to supermen meant “superior men,” and the Germans individuality should be actively avoided. Nietzsche were, they believed, superior. Nothing could have believed that repressive civilization is the primary been more alien to Nietzsche than the thought of cause of humans’ mental anguish, a belief later national or racial superiority. Nietzsche dissolved shared by Freud. his close relationship with the famous German The meaning of life, then, is found within the composer Richard Wagner partly because Wagner individual, and the daring, the supermen, will find it held strong nationalistic and anti-Semitic views there: “Only dare to believe in yourselves—in your- (Blackburn, 1994, p. 262). Each individual, accord- selves and in your entrails! He who does not believe ing to Nietzsche, has the potential to be a super- in himself always lies” (Nietzsche, 1883–1885/1969, man. What differentiates the superman from the p. 146). To be a superman, one must necessarily be nonsuperman is passion, courage, and insight— intensely individualistic; and yet, all supermen have nothing else. As examples of supermen, Nietzsche in common the same philosophy of life: “Iam offered the historical Jesus, Goethe (from whom Zarathustra the godless: Where shall I find my equal? Nietzsche borrowed the term superman), All those who give themselves their own will and Dostoevsky, and himself. Freud agreed that renounce all submission, they are my equals” Nietzsche should be on the list of supermen: (Nietzsche, 1883–1885/1969, p. 191). “[Freud] said of Nietzsche that he had a more pen-

ROM ANTICISM A ND EXISTENTIALISM 227 etrating knowledge of himself than any other man For both men, Hegelian philosophy was a favorite who ever lived or was ever likely to live. From the target, and both men preached reliance on direct, first explorer of the unconscious this is a handsome personal experience. The major difference between compliment” (Jones, 1955, p. 344). the two was that Kierkegaard accepted the exis- Again, both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche be- tence of God, whereas for Nietzsche God did not lieved that irrational instincts strongly influence hu- exist. Both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche alienated al- man behavior. But whereas Schopenhauer believed most everyone, especially the establishment. For that such instincts should be repressed, Nietzsche example, almost no one bought Kierkegaard’s thought that they should be largely expressed. In books when they were published. Three years after this regard, Freud was influenced most by the publication of his Philosophical Fragments Schopenhauer, whereas one of Freud’s early fol- (1844/1985), it had sold 229 copies from a printing lowers, Alfred Adler, was influenced more by of 525 (Hong and Hong, 1985, p. xix). Now Nietzsche. Not only did Adler stress the gaining Fragments is highly regarded and considered one of of power in order to overcome feelings of inferior- Kierkegaard’s finest, most influential works. ity, he also shared Nietzsche’s belief that weak in- The romantic and early existential philosophers dividuals often gain power over others by eliciting had much in common. Indeed, Nietzsche is as often their pity or by hurting them with their described as a romantic as he is an existentialist. suffering. Freud also recognized this phenomenon The themes running through both philosophies in his concept of “secondary gains” from neuroses. are an emphasis on human emotions; the impor- Freud’s colleague Carl Jung was also influenced by tance of subjective experience; a deep respect for Nietzsche. In Jung’s famous distinction between in- individuality; a belief in free will; and a distrust of troversion and extroversion, the introvert was the grandiose theories of human nature created by viewed as dominated by the Apollonian tendency the rationalists, empiricists and sensationalists, and and the extrovert by the Dionysian tendency natural scientists. The latter theories, they believed, (Golomb, 1989, p. 35). minimized the importance of the individual at- tempting to make sense out of his or her life and freely acting upon his or her interpretations of life’s meaning. KIERK EGAARD AND Today romanticism and existentialism have NIE TZSCH E combined to form the third-force movement in psychology, exemplified by the theories of Nietzsche was apparently unaware of Kierkegaard’s Rogers, Maslow, May, and Kelly, which we will work, yet he developed ideas that were in many explore in Chapter 18. Also, many of the concerns ways similar to Kierkegaard’s. Like Kierkegaard, of the romantic and existential philosophers are Nietzsche rejected what was conventionally ac- echoed in postmodernism, which will be discussed cepted, such as the organized church and science. in Chapter 21. SUMMARY The accomplishments of individuals such as other forms of traditional authority. There was Hobbes, Bacon, Descartes, and Newton ushered widespread optimism that the principles governing into Western philosophy a period called the the universe could be discovered and applied to the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was character- betterment of humankind. Under the umbrella of ized by skepticism toward religious dogma and the Enlightenment, the philosophies of empiricism,

228 CHAPTER 7 sensationalism, and rationalism pictured humans as ble. The only way to minimize human suffering is complex machines, products of experience, or to deny or minimize one’s needs. Needs can be highly rational beings operating in accordance sublimated into such pursuits as music, art, and po- with lofty, abstract principles. In the opinion of etry. Also, the rational mind can repress undesirable some, all these philosophies left something impor- thoughts and hold them in the unconscious mind. tant out of their analyses—the irrational aspect of For Schopenhauer, the rational mind could and humans. Those philosophers stressing the impor- should inhibit the powerful needs related to biolog- tance of human irrationality were called romantics. ical survival. Schopenhauer’s philosophy had a con- In general, the romantics emphasized inner, per- siderable influence on Freud’s psychoanalytic sonal experience and distrusted both science and theory. the philosophers who pictured humans as products Another reaction against Enlightenment phi- of experience, as machines, or as totally rational losophy was existentialism. The existentialist beings. stressed meaning in life, freedom of choice, subjec- Rousseau is usually considered the father of tive experience, personal responsibility, and the modern romanticism. He believed that humans uniqueness of the individual. Kierkegaard is gener- are born free and good but are soon contaminated ally considered the first modern existential philoso- by society. As a guide for living and for believing, pher. He believed that rationalistic philosophy, sci- the natural impulses of the “heart” could be trusted. ence, and the organized church discouraged people Rousseau believed that humans have both an indi- from having a deep, personal relationship with vidual will and a general will and that for govern- God. Logic and facts have nothing to do with ment to work, people must deny their individual such a relationship, which must be based on faith will. Education should take into consideration a alone. By one’s accepting God on faith, God be- child’s natural curiosity rather than attempting to comes a living, emotional reality in one’s subjective mold a child as if he or she were a lump of clay experience. For Kierkegaard, the only truth is sub- or a blank tablet. Goethe, a scientist, poet, and phi- jective truth—that is, truth that exists as a personal losopher, viewed life as consisting of choices be- belief. Furthermore, accepting the reality of God tween conflicting forces (such as good and evil, reveals a number of logical paradoxes that cannot love and hate). He believed that the best life is be resolved logically. The existence of God cannot one lived with passion and that results in self- and need not be proved by rational argument; it can expansion. He also believed that the physical only be taken on faith. One should become emo- sciences, although effective in providing useful in- tionally involved with God and read his word (the formation about the physical world, are of limited Bible) as one would read a love letter. value when it comes to understanding people. Nietzsche agreed with Schopenhauer that many Following Kant, Schopenhauer distinguished human desires are irrational but disagreed with him between the noumenal world (things in themselves) that they should be repressed or sublimated. For and the phenomenal world (consciousness). What Nietzsche, the basic human motive is the will to Kant called the noumenal world, Schopenhauer power, which is satisfied when a person acts as he called the universal will. When manifested in an or she feels. Acting on irrational instincts causes a individual human, the universal will becomes the person to have new experiences and thus to develop will to survive, which is the most powerful mo- greater potential as a person. According to Nietzsche, tive for human behavior. Life, according to science, religion, rationalism, and empiricism stifle Schopenhauer, consists of an unending cycle of irrationality and thereby inhibit human develop- needs and need satisfaction. Because intelligent or- ment. Nietzsche believed that rational philosophy ganisms are most aware of their needs, they suffer and science had emphasized the Apollonian, or ratio- more than unintelligent organisms do. Satisfying nal, aspect of human nature at the expense of the our needs simply postpones death, which is inevita- Dionysian aspect. He believed that giving reasonable

ROM ANTICISM A ND EXISTENTIALISM 229 expression to both aspects of human nature is best. Opinions are tentative beliefs that are modified in He also believed that science and philosophy had light of new information. Convictions are beliefs made it impossible for people to accept religious su- thought to reflect some absolute truth and are immu- perstition as a guide for living. As a substitution, table and dangerous. Nietzsche referred to humans Nietzsche proposed individually determined values who have the courage to live in accordance with and beliefs. The only source of information for their own values, thus rising above conventional mo- what is good or bad, desirable or undesirable, is the rality, as supermen (higher men). Supermen experi- individual. According to Nietzsche, there are no uni- ment with life and are constantly in the process of versal truths, only individual perspectives. There is becoming something other than what they were. considerable similarity between Nietzsche’s perspec- The influence of romanticism and existential- tivism and contemporary postmodernism. Nietzsche ism in modern psychology is seen in psychoanalysis, distinguished between opinions and convictions. humanistic psychology, and postmodernism. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 12. What did Kierkegaard mean by his statement 1. What was romanticism a reaction against? “Truth is subjectivity”? Discuss the major features of the romantic movement. 13. Describe the type of relationship Kierkegaard believed individuals should have with God. 2. What assumptions did Rousseau make about human nature? What did he mean by his 14. Describe what Kierkegaard referred to as the statement “Man is born free yet we see him three stages toward full personal freedom. everywhere in chains”? 15. What were the important aspects of Freudian 3. What did Rousseau and Hobbes have in psychoanalysis anticipated by Nietzsche? common? In what ways did they disagree? 16. Discuss the importance of innate Dionysian and 4. Discuss Rousseau’s distinction between the Apollonian tendencies for Nietzsche’s individual will and the general will. psychology. 5. Summarize Rousseau’s views on education. 17. Discuss Nietzsche’s views on personal freedom. 6. How did Goethe view life? What was his at- 18. What, according to Nietzsche, were the im- titude toward science? What were his contri- plications of the death of God (and his “sha- butions to psychology? dows”) for human existence? 7. For Schopenhauer, what is the primary motive 19. Discuss Nietzsche’s perspectivism in relation to for human behavior? Discuss the implications Enlightenment philosophy. of this motive for human existence. 20. Discuss Nietzsche’s distinction between opi- 8. Why is Schopenhauer’s philosophy generally nions and convictions. Which did he believe referred to as pessimistic? had a negative influence on human history? 9. What did Schopenhauer suggest we could do 21. According to Nietzsche, what are supermen? to minimize the influence of the powerful, ir- Give an example of how Nietzsche’s concep- rational forces within us? tion of supermen has been misunderstood. 10. What is existentialism? How does existentialism 22. Of what, according to Nietzsche, would a rich, differ from romanticism? meaningful life consist? 11. What type of religion did Kierkegaard oppose? 23. What did the philosophies of romanticism and Which type did he promote? existentialism have in common?

230 CHAPTER 7 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Gardiner, P. (2002). Kierkegaard: A very short introduction. Books/Penguin Press. (Original work published New York: Oxford University Press. 1883–1885) Golomb, J. (1989). Nietzsche’s enticing psychology of power. Rousseau, J. J. (1947). The social contract. (C. Frankel, Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press. Trans.). New York: Macmillan. (Original work Hayman, R. (1999). Nietzsche. New York: Routledge. published 1762) Janaway, C. (2002). Schopenhauer: A very short introduction. Rousseau, J. J. (1974). Emile. (B. Foxley, Trans.). New York: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1762) London: Dent. Kaufmann, W. (Ed. and Trans.). (1982). The portable Tanner, M. (2000). Nietzsche: A very short introduction. Nietzsche. New York: Viking Books/Penguin Press. New York: Oxford University Press. Magee, B. (1997). The philosophy of Schopanhauer (rev. Watkin, J. (1997). Kierkegaard. New York: Geoffrey ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Chapman. Nietzsche, F. (1969). Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Wokler, R. (1995). Rousseau. New York: Oxford (R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). New York: Viking University Press. GLOSSARY Aesthetic stage According to Kierkegaard, the first General will According to Rousseau, the innate ten- stage in the growth toward full personal freedom. At this dency to live harmoniously with one’s fellow humans. stage, the person delights in many experiences but does Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749–1832) Believed not exercise his or her freedom. that life is characterized by choices between opposing forces Apollonian aspect of human nature According to and that much about humans is forever beyond scientific Nietzsche, that part of us that seeks order, tranquillity, understanding. and predictability. Kierkegaard, Søren (1813–1855) Believed that reli- Convictions According to Nietzsche, beliefs that are gion had become too rational and mechanical. He be- thought to correspond to some absolute truth and, as lieved that a relationship with God should be an in- such, are immutable and dangerous. (See also Opinions.) tensely personal and a highly emotional experience, like Dionysian aspect of human nature According to a love affair. Taking the existence of God on faith makes Nietzsche, that part of us that seeks chaos, adventure, and God a living truth for a person; thus Kierkegaard con- passionate experiences. tended that truth is subjectivity. Enlightenment A period during which Western phi- Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (1844–1900) Claimed losophy embraced the belief that unbiased reason or the that humans could no longer rely on religious supersti- objective methods of science could reveal the principles tion or metaphysical speculation as guides for living; in- governing the universe. Once discovered, these princi- stead, they must determine life’s meaning for themselves. ples could be used for the betterment of humankind. By exercising their will to power, people can continue to grow and overcome conventional morality. The term Ethical stage According to Kierkegaard, the second superman described those who experimented with life and stage in the growth toward full personal freedom. At this feelings and engaged in continuous self-overcoming. stage, the person makes ethical decisions but uses prin- ciples developed by others as a guide in making them. Noble savage Rousseau’s term for a human not con- taminated by society. Such a person, he believed, would Existentialism The philosophy that examines the live in accordance with his or her true feelings, would meaning in life and stresses the freedom that humans not be selfish, and would live harmoniously with other have to choose their own destiny. Like romanticism, humans. existentialism stresses subjective experience and the uniqueness of each individual.

ROM ANTICISM A ND EXISTENTIALISM 231 Opinions According to Nietzsche, beliefs that are ten- Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860) Believed that the tative and modifiable in light of new information and, will to survive is the most powerful human motive. Life therefore, reasonable. (See also Convictions.) is characterized by a cycle of needs and need satisfaction, Perspectivism Nietzsche’s contention that there are no and need satisfaction simply postpones death. The most universal truths, only individual perspectives. people can do is to minimize the irrational forces oper- ating within them by sublimating or repressing those Religious stage According to Kierkegaard, the third forces. stage in the growth toward full personal freedom. At this stage, the person recognizes his or her freedom and Supermen The name Nietzsche gave to those indivi- chooses to enter into a personal relationship with God. duals who have the courage to rise above conventional morality and herd conformity and to follow their own Romanticism The philosophy that stresses the inclinations instead. The German word Übermensch can uniqueness of each person and that values irrationality be translated as “overman,”“higherman,” or much more than rationality. According to the romantic, “superman.” people can and should trust their own natural impulses as guides for living. Will to power According to Nietzsche, the basic human need to become stronger, more complete, Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–1778) Considered the father of modern romanticism, Rousseau believed that more superior. While satisfying the will to power, a human nature is basically good and that the best society is person continually becomes something other than he one in which people subjugate their individual will to or she was. the general will. The best education occurs when edu- Will to survive According to Schopenhauer, the cation is individualized and when a student’s natural powerful need to perpetuate one’s life by satisfying one’s abilities and curiosity are recognized. biological needs.

8 ✵ Early Developments in Physiology and the Rise of Experimental Psychology cientific achievements of the 17th and 18th centuries allowed ancient philo- S sophical questions to be examined in new, more precise ways. Much had been learned about the physical world, and it was now time to direct scientific method toward the study of the mechanisms by which we come to know the physical world. Basically, the question was, By what mechanisms do empirical events come to be represented in consciousness? Everything from sense percep- tion to motor reactions was studied intensely, and this study eventually gave birth to experimental psychology. If we are interested in discovering the origins of psychology, we need to go back to the early Greeks. If, however, we are interested in the origins of experimental psychology, we must look to early devel- opments in physiology, anatomy, neurology, and even astronomy. INDI VIDU AL DIFFER ENCES It was astronomers who first realized that the type of knowledge human physiol- ogy provided might be useful to all sciences. In 1795, astronomer Nevil Maskelyne and his assistant David Kinnebrook were setting ships’ clocks accord- ing to when a particular star crossed a hairline in a telescope. Maskelyne noticed that Kinnebrook’s observations were about a half-second slower than his. Kinnebrook was warned of his “error” and attempted to correct it. Instead, however, the discrepancy between his observations and Maskelyne’s increased to 232

EARLY DEVEL OPMENTS IN PHYSIOLOGY A ND THE RISE OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 233 8/10ths of a second, and Kinnebrook was relieved be avoided by simply concentrating on primary of his duty. Twenty years later, the incident came qualities—that is, concentrating on events for to the attention of the German astronomer which there was a match between their physical Friedrich Bessel (1784–1846), who speculated that qualities and the sensations that they create. It was the error had not been due to incompetence but to becoming increasingly clear, however, that the mis- individual differences among observers. Bessel set out match between physical events and the perceptions to compare his observations with those of his col- of those events was widespread. Newton leagues and indeed found systematic differences (1704/1952) had observed that the experience of among them. This was the first reaction-time white light is really a composite of all colors of study, and it was used to correct differences among the spectrum, although the individual colors them- observers. This was done by calculating personal selves are not perceived. In 1760 Van equations. For example, if 8/10ths of a second Musschenbroek discovered that if complementary was added to Kinnebrook’s reaction time, his ob- colors such as yellow and blue are presented in servations could be equated with Maskelyne’s. proper proportions on a rapidly rotating disc, an Bessel found systematic differences among indivi- observer sees neither yellow nor blue but gray. It duals and a way to compensate for those differ- was evident that often there was not a point- ences, but his findings did not have much impact to-point correspondence between physical reality on the early development of experimental psychol- and the psychological experience of that reality. ogy. As we will see, the early experimental psy- Because the most likely source of the discrepancy chologists were interested in learning what was was the responding organism, the physical scientists true about human consciousness in general; there- had reason to be interested in the new science of fore, individual differences found among experi- physiology, which studied the biological processes mental subjects were generally attributed to sloppy by which humans interact with the physical world. methodology. Later in psychology’s history (after Physiologists studied the nature of nerves, neural Darwin), the study of individual differences was to conduction, reflexive behavior, sensory perception, be of supreme importance. brain functioning, and, eventually, the systematic Bessel did show, however, that the observer relationship between sensory stimulation and sensa- influenced observations. Because all of science was tion. It was the work of physiologists that provided based on observation, it was now necessary to learn the link between mental philosophy and the science more about the processes that converted physical of psychology. stimulation into conscious experience. Besides showing the influence of the observer on observations, the personal equation was impor- tant because the quantitative assessment that it al- lowed began to cast doubt on the claims of Kant DISCREPANCY BETWE EN and others that psychology could not be a science OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE because mathematics could not be applied to psy- chological phenomena. In general, however, it was RE ALITY noting the discrepancy between physical and psy- chological (subjective) reality that made anatomy, Of course, the demonstration of any discrepancy physiology, and, eventually, psychology important between a physical event and a person’s perception aspects of science. In a sense, the physical sciences of that event was of great concern to the natural made scientific psychology inevitable: scientists, who viewed their jobs as accurately de- scribing and explaining the physical world. The Once the physical sciences were started problem created by Galileo’s and Locke’s distinc- and well under way, it was inevitable that tion between primary and secondary qualities could scientific psychology should arise. The

234 CHAPTER 8 older sciences themselves made it neces- sary. Investigators were repeatedly having their attention drawn to the observing or- ganism and to the necessity of taking its reactions into consideration in order to make their own accounts exact and com- plete. (Heidbreder, 1933, p. 74) 2005691450 We will see in this chapter that the question concerning how the makeup of humans influences what humans observe was addressed mainly by phy- Congress, siologists. Later, this concern was incorporated into of the new science of psychology. Thus, to a large Library extent, both the content of what was to become the psychology and the methodologies used to explore of that content were furnished by physiology. Courtesy We turn next to a summary of the major ob- servations made by physiologists that eventually Charles Bell gave birth to the new science of psychology. movement. Bell’s finding was significant because it demonstrated that specific mental functions are me- diated by different anatomical structures. That is, BELL – MAGENDIE LAW separate nerves control sensory mechanisms and re- sponses. Bell himself speculated that there was a Until the 19th century, two views prevailed about much more detailed relationship between sensory what nerves contained and how they functioned. nerves and sensation, but Johannes Müller actually One was Descartes’s view that a nerve consisted supported Bell’s speculations with experimental ev- of fibers that connected sense receptors to the brain. idence. Müller’s extension of Bell’s findings is re- These fibers were housed in hollow tubes that viewed shortly. transmitted the “animal spirits” from the brain to That there are sensory and motor nerves is an the muscles. The second was Hartley’s view that ancient idea going back as far as Eristratus of nerves were the means by which “vibrations” Alexandria (ca. 300 B.C.) and Galen in the second were conducted from the sense receptors to the century A.D. In fact, both Descartes and Hartley brain and from the brain to the muscles. In 1811 speculated about the possibility. It was Bell, how- the great British physiologist Charles Bell (1774– ever, who substantiated the idea with clear-cut, 1842) printed and distributed to his friends 100 experimental evidence. As mentioned, Bell circu- copies of a pamphlet that was to radically change lated his findings only among his friends. This can the view of neural transmission. His pamphlet sum- explain why the prominent French physiologist marized his research on the anatomical and func- François Magendie (1783–1855) could publish tional discreteness of sensory and motor nerves. results similar to Bell’s 11 years later without being Operating on rabbits, Bell demonstrated that sen- aware of Bell’s findings. A heated debate arose sory nerves enter the posterior (dorsal) roots of the among Bell’s and Magendie’s followers about the spinal cord and the motor nerves emerge from the priority of the discovery of the distinction be- anterior (ventral) roots. Bell’s discovery separated tween sensory and motor nerves. History has set- nerve physiology into the study of sensory and mo- tled the issue by referring to the discovery as tor functions—that is, into a study of sensation and the Bell–Magendie law. (For the details on the

EARLY DEVEL OPMENTS IN PHYSIOLOGY A ND THE RISE OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 235 five senses was served by a separate type of sensory nerve. Johannes Müller Born on July 14 in Koblenz, Germany, the great physiologist Johannes Müller (1801–1858) ex- Medicine panded the Bell–Magendie law by devising the of doctrine of specific nerve energies. After re- Library ceiving his doctorate from the University of Bonn in 1822, Müller remained there as professor until National 1833, when he accepted the newly created chair the of physiology at the University of Berlin. The cre- of ation of this chair at Berlin marked the acceptance Courtesy of physiology as a science (R. I. Watson, 1978). Following Bell’s suggestion, Müller demonstrated François Magendie that there are five types of sensory nerves, each containing a characteristic energy, and that when they are stimulated, a characteristic sensation results. Bell-versus-Magendie controversy, see Cranefield, In other words, each nerve responds in its own 1974.) characteristic way no matter how it is stimulated. For After Bell and Magendie, it was no longer pos- example, stimulating the eye with light waves, elec- sible to think of nerves as general conveyers of vi- tricity, pressure, or by a blow to the head will all brations or spirits. Now a “law of forward direc- cause visual sensations. Emil Du Bois-Reymond, tion” governed the nervous system. Sensory one of Müller’s students, went so far as to say that nerves carried impulses forward from the sense re- if we could cut and cross the visual and auditory ceptors to the brain, and motor nerves carried im- nerves, we would hear with our eyes and see with pulses forward from the brain to the muscles and our ears (Boring, 1950, p. 93). glands. The Bell–Magendie law demonstrated sep- Müller’s detailed experimental research put to arate sensory and motor tracts in the spinal cord and final rest the old emanation theory of perception, suggested separate sensory and motor regions in the according to which tiny copies of physical objects brain. went through the sensory receptors, along the nerves, and to the brain, causing an image of the DOCTRINE OF SPECIFIC object. According to this old view, any sensory nerve could convey any sensory information to the NERVE ENERGIES brain. As we have just seen, the Bell–Magendie law indi- Adequate Stimulation. Although Müller cated that nerves were neither hollow tubes trans- claimed that various nerves contain their own specific mitting animal spirits to and from the brain nor energy, he did not think that all the sense organs are general structures performing both sensory and mo- equally sensitive to the same type of stimulation. tor functions. Bell and Magendie had verified two Rather, each of the five types of sense organs is maxi- different types of nerves with two different func- mally sensitive to a certain type of stimulation. tions. As mentioned, Bell had also suggested that Müller called this “specific irritability,” and it was there are different types of sensory nerves. In fact, later referred to as adequate stimulation. The eye Bell suggested, but did not prove, that each of the is most easily stimulated by light waves, the ear by

236 CHAPTER 8 impulses. It follows that our knowledge of the physical world must be limited to the types of sense receptors we possess. An ardent Kantian, Müller believed that he had found the physiological equivalent of Kant’s cate- gories of thought. According to Kant, sensory in- formation is transformed by the innate categories of thought before it is experienced consciously. For Müller, the nervous system is the intermediary be- tween physical objects and consciousness. Kant’s nativism stressed mental categories, whereas Müller’s stressed physiological mechanisms. In both cases, sensory information is modified, and Bettmann/CORBIS therefore what we experience consciously is differ- ent from what is physically present. For Müller, © however, sensations did not exhaust mental life. In his famous Handbuch der Physiologie der Menschen Johannes Müller (Handbook of Human Physiology, 1833–1840), in a section titled “Of the Mind,” he postulated a mind capable of attending to some sensations to sound waves, the skin by pressure, and so on. The eye the exclusion of others. Thus, even in his otherwise can be stimulated by pressure, but pressure is a less mechanistic system, Müller found room for an ac- adequate stimulus for vision than is a light wave. As tive mind, again exposing his allegiance to Kant. we experience the environment, this differential sen- Müller was one of the greatest experimental sitivity of the various senses provides an array of sen- physiologists of his time. His Handbuch summarized sations. In this way, a “picture” of the physical envi- what was known about human physiology at the ronment is formed, but the nature of the picture—for time. Müller also established the world’s first example, how articulated it is—depends on the sen- Institute for Experimental Physiology at the sory systems that humans possess. University of Berlin. In addition, Müller anticipated For Müller, then, the correspondence between what would become the close relationship between our sensations and objects in the physical world is physiology and psychology. He said, “Nobody can determined by our senses and their specific irritabil- be a psychologist, unless he first becomes a physiol- ity. Müller agonized over the question of whether ogist” (Fitzek, 1997, p. 46). the characteristics of the nerve itself or the place in Most of those destined to become the most the brain where the nerve terminates accounts for prominent physiologists of the 19th century studied specificity. He concluded that the nerve was re- with Müller, including Helmholtz, to whom we sponsible, but subsequent research proved that brain turn next. location is the determinant. We Are Conscious of Sensations, Not of Physical Reality. The most significant implica- HERMANN VON HELMHOLTZ tion of Müller’s doctrine for psychology was that the nature of the central nervous system, not the Many consider Hermann von Helmholtz (1821– nature of the physical stimulus, determines our sen- 1894) to be the greatest scientist of the 19th century. sations. According to Müller, we are aware not of As we will see, he made significant contributions in objects in the physical world but of various sensory physics, physiology, and psychology. Helmholtz,

EARLY DEVEL OPMENTS IN PHYSIOLOGY A ND THE RISE OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 237 born on August 31 in Potsdam, Germany, was a frail No other forces than the common child and a mediocre student who was especially physical-chemical ones are active within poor at foreign languages and poetry. Helmholtz’s the organism. In those cases which cannot apparent mediocrity as a student, however, seemed at the time be explained by these forces to reflect the inadequacy of his teachers because he one has either to find the specific way or spent his spare time reading scientific books and form of their action by means of the working out the geometrical principles that de- physical mathematical method, or to as- scribed the various configurations of his play blocks. sume new forces equal in dignity to the His father was a teacher who did not have enough physical-chemical forces inherent in mat- money to pay for the scientific training that his son ter, reducible to the force of attraction and desired. Fortunately, the government had a program repulsion. (Bernfeld, 1949, p. 171) under which talented students could go to medical school free if they agreed to serve for eight years as In addition to Helmholtz, others who signed army surgeons following graduation. Helmholtz the oath were Du Bois-Reymond (who became a took advantage of this program and enrolled in the professor of physiology at the University of Berlin Berlin Royal Friedrich-Wilhelm Institute for when Müller died), Karl Ludwig (who became a Medicine and Surgery when he was 17 years old. professor of physiology at the University of While in his second year of medical school, he began Leipzig, where he influenced a young Ivan his studies with Johannes Müller. Pavlov), and Ernst Brücke (who became a professor of physiology at the University of Vienna, where he taught and befriended Sigmund Freud). What this Helmholtz’s Stand against Vitalism group accepted when they rejected vitalism were Although Helmholtz accepted many of Müller’s the beliefs that living organisms, including humans, conclusions, the two men still had basic disagree- were complex machines (mechanism) and that ments, one of them over Müller’s belief in vitalism. these machines consist of nothing but material sub- In biology and physiology, the vitalism–materialism stances (materialism). The mechanistic-materialistic problem was much like the mind-body problem in philosophy embraced by these individuals pro- philosophy and psychology. The vitalists main- foundly influenced physiology, medicine, and tained that life could not be explained by the inter- psychology. actions of physical and chemical processes alone. For the vitalists, life was more than a physical pro- Principle of Conservation of Energy cess and could not be reduced to such a process. Furthermore, because it was not physical, the Helmholtz obtained his medical degree at the age “life force” was forever beyond the scope of scien- of 21 and was inducted into the army. While in the tific analysis. Müller was a vitalist. Conversely, the army, he was able to build a small laboratory and to materialists saw nothing mysterious about life and continue his early research, which concerned met- assumed that it could be explained in terms of phys- abolic processes in the frog. Helmholtz demon- ical and chemical processes. Therefore, there was strated that food and oxygen consumption were able no reason to exclude the study of life or of anything to account for the total energy that an organism else from the realm of science. Helmholtz sided expended. He was thus able to apply the already with the materialists, who believed that the same popular principle of conservation of energy to laws apply to living and nonliving things, as well living organisms. According to this principle, which as to mental and nonmental events. So strongly previously had been applied to physical phenom- did Helmholtz and several of his fellow students ena, energy is never created or lost in a system believe in materialism that they signed the follow- but is only transformed from one form to another. ing oath (some say in their own blood): When applied to living organisms, the principle was

238 CHAPTER 8 entire body was instantaneous. Those believing in animal spirits, a vital force, or in a nonmaterial mind or soul believed that measuring the speed of nerve conduction was impossible. Helmholtz, however, excluded nothing from the realm of science, not even the rate of nerve Akron conduction. To measure the rate of nerve conduc- of tion, Helmholtz isolated the nerve fiber leading to a University frog’s leg muscle. He then stimulated the nerve fi- ber at various distances from the muscle and noted Archives–The how long it took the muscle to respond. He found that the muscular response followed more quickly © Psychology when the motor nerve was stimulated closer to the muscle than when it was stimulated farther away from the muscle. By subtracting one reaction time from the other, he concluded that the nerve im- Hermann von Helmholtz pulse travels at a rate of about 90 feet per second (27.4 meters per second). Helmholtz then turned to clearly in accordance with the materialist philoso- humans, asking his subjects to respond by pushing a phy because it brought physics, chemistry, and button when they felt their leg being stimulated. physiology closer together. In 1847 Helmholtz He found that reaction time was slower when the published a paper titled “The Conservation of toe was stimulated than when the thigh was stimu- Force,” and it was so influential that he was released lated; he concluded, again by subtraction, that the from the remainder of his tour of duty in the army. rate of nerve conduction in humans was between In 1848 Helmholtz was appointed lecturer of 165 and 330 feet per second (50.3–100.6 meters per anatomy at the Academy of Arts in Berlin. The second). This aspect of Helmholtz’s research was following year, he was appointed professor of phys- significant because it showed that nerve impulses iology at Königsberg, where Kant had spent his are indeed measurable—and, in fact, they are fairly entire academic life. It was at Königsberg that slow. This was taken as further evidence that Helmholtz conducted his now famous research on physical-chemical processes are involved in our in- the speed of nerve conduction. teractions with the environment instead of some mysterious process that was immune to scientific Rate of Nerve Conduction scrutiny. Helmholtz disagreed with Müller not only over the Although the measure of reaction time was ex- issue of vitalism but also over the supposed speed of tremely useful to Helmholtz in measuring the speed nerve conduction. Müller had maintained that of nerve conduction, he found that it varied con- nerve conduction was almost instantaneous, making siderably among subjects and even for the same it too fast to measure. His view reflected the an- subject at different times. He concluded that reac- cient belief, still very popular during Müller’s time, tion time was too unreliable to be used as a valid that there was a vital, nonmaterial agent that measure and abandoned it. Support for his doubts moved instantaneously and determined the behav- came years later when more precise measurements ior of living organisms. Many earlier philosophers indicated that the nerve conduction speeds he had had believed that the mind or the soul controlled reported were too slow. But this does not detract bodily actions and that, because the mind and soul from the importance of Helmholtz’s pioneering were inspired by God, their effect throughout the research.

EARLY DEVEL OPMENTS IN PHYSIOLOGY A ND THE RISE OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 239 Theory of Perception One by one, Helmholtz took the supposed in- nate categories of thought Kant had proposed and Although he believed that the physiological appa- showed how they were derived from experience. ratus of the body provides the mechanisms for sen- Concerning the axioms of geometry, which Kant sation, Helmholtz thought that the past experience had assumed were innate, Helmholtz said that if our of the observer is what converts a sensation into a world were arranged differently, our experience perception. Sensations, then, are the raw elements would be different, and therefore, our axioms of conscious experience, and perceptions are sensa- would be different. tions after they are given meaning by one’s past Helmholtz and Kant agreed, however, on one experiences. In explaining the transformation of important point: The perceiver transforms what the sensations into perceptions, Helmholtz relied senses provide. For Kant this transformation was heavily on the notion of unconscious inference. accomplished when sensory information was struc- According to Helmholtz, to label a visual experi- tured by the innate faculties of the mind. For ence a “chair” involves applying a great deal of Helmholtz the transformation occurred when sen- previous experience, as does looking at railroad sory information was embellished by an individual’s tracks converging in the distance and insisting that past experience. Kant’s account of perception was they are parallel. Similarly, we see moving pictures therefore nativistic and Helmholtz’s was empiricis- as moving because of our prior experience with tic. With his notion of unconscious inference, events that create a series of images across the retina. Helmholtz came very close to what would later And we learn from experience that perceived dis- be considered part of psychology. That is, for un- tance is inversely related to the size of the retinal conscious inference to convert a sensation into a image. Helmholtz decided that the perception of perception, memories of previous learning experi- depth arises because the retinal image an object ences must interact with current sensations. causes is slightly different on the two retinas. Although the processes of learning and memory Previous experience with such retinal disparity were later to become vital to psychology, causes the unconscious inference of depth. Helmholtz never considered himself a psychologist. Helmholtz was very reluctant to use the term un- He believed that psychology was too closely allied conscious inference because it suggested the type of with metaphysics, and he wanted nothing to do mysterious process that would violate his oath, but with metaphysics. he could not find a better term. Helmholtz supported his empirical theory of perception with the observation that individuals Theory of Color Vision who are blind at birth and then acquire sight need to learn to perceive, even though all the sensations Helmholtz performed his work on vision between furnished by the visual apparatus are available. His 1853 and 1868 at the Universities of Königsberg, classic experiments with lenses that distorted vision Bonn, and Heidelberg, and he published his results provided further evidence. Helmholtz had subjects in the three-volume Handbook of Physiological Optics wear lenses that displaced the visual field several (1856–1866). Many years before Helmholtz’s birth, inches to the right or left. At first, the subjects Thomas Young (1773–1829) had proposed a the- would make mistakes in reaching for objects; but ory of color vision very similar to Helmholtz’s, but after several minutes perceptual adaptation occurred, Young’s theory had not been widely accepted. and even while wearing the glasses, the subjects Helmholtz changed Young’s theory slightly and could again interact accurately with the environ- buttressed it with experimental evidence. The the- ment. When the glasses were removed, the subjects ory we present here has come to be called the again made mistakes for a short time but soon Young–Helmholtz theory of color vision recovered. (also called the trichromatic theory).

240 CHAPTER 8 In 1672 Newton had shown that if white sun- ent. For example, presenting a red and a green light light was passed through a prism, it emerged as a simultaneously would produce the subjective color band of colored lights with red on one end of the experience of yellow. Also, the same color experi- band, then orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and, ence could be caused by several different patterns of finally, violet. The prism separated the various wa- the three receptor systems firing. In this way, velengths that together were experienced as white. Helmholtz explained why many physical wave- Early speculation was that a different wavelength lengths give rise to the same color experience. corresponded to each color and that different color The Young–Helmholtz theory of color vision experiences resulted from experiencing different was extremely helpful in explaining many forms of wavelengths. However, Newton himself saw diffi- color blindness. For example, if a person lacks one culties with this explanation. When he mixed vari- or more of the receptor systems corresponding to ous wavelengths, it became clear to him that the the primary colors, he or she will not be able to property of color was not in the wavelengths them- experience certain colors subjectively, even though selves but in the observer. For example, white is the physical world has not changed. The senses experienced either if all wavelengths of the spec- therefore actualize elements of the physical world trum are present or if wavelengths corresponding that otherwise exist only as potential experiences. to the colors red and blue-green are combined. Helmholtz was continually amazed at the way Similarly, a person cannot distinguish the sensation physiological mechanisms distort the information a of orange caused by the single wavelength corre- person receives from the physical world, but he was sponding to orange from the sensation of orange even more amazed at the mismatch between physi- caused by mixing red and yellow. The question cal events and psychological sensations (such as the was how to account for the lack of correspondence experience of color). Helmholtz expressed his feel- between the physical stimuli present and the sensa- ings as follows: tions they cause. The inaccuracies and imperfections of the Helmholtz’s answer was to expand Müller’s eye as an optical instrument, and the defi- doctrine of specific nerve energies by postulating ciencies of the image on the retina, now three different types of color receptors on the ret- appear insignificant in comparison with the ina. That is, instead of saying that color vision had incongruities we have met with in the field one specific nerve energy associated with it, as of sensation. One might almost believe Müller had thought, Helmholtz claimed it involved that Nature had here contradicted herself three separate receptors, each with its own specific on purpose in order to destroy any dream energy. It was already known that various combi- of a preexisting harmony between the nations of three colors—red, green, and blue-violet, outer and the inner world. (Kahl, 1971, the additive primary colors—could produce all p. 192) other colors. Helmholtz speculated that there are three types of color receptors corresponding to the three primary colors. If a red light is shown, the Theory of Auditory Perception so-called red receptors are stimulated, and one has the sensation of red; if a green light is shown, the For audition, as he had done for color vision, green receptors are stimulated, and one has the ex- Helmholtz further refined Müller’s doctrine of spe- perience of green; and so on. If all these primaries cific nerve energies. He found that the ear is not a are shown at once, one experiences white. If the single sense receptor but a highly complex system of color shown is not a primary color, it would stim- many receptors. Whereas the visual system consists ulate various combinations of the three receptors, of three types of nerve fibers, each with its own resulting in a subjective color experience corre- specific nerve energy, the auditory system contains sponding to the combination of wavelengths pres- thousands of types of nerve fibers, each with its

EARLY DEVEL OPMENTS IN PHYSIOLOGY A ND THE RISE OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 241 own specific nerve energy. Helmholtz found that incomplete and perhaps distorted information furn- when the main membrane of the inner ear, the ished by the senses (Turner, 1977). basilar membrane, was removed and uncoiled, it was shaped much like a harp. Assuming that this Helmholtz’s Contributions membrane is to hearing what the retina is to seeing, Helmholtz speculated that the different fibers along Although Helmholtz did postulate an active mind, the basilar membrane are sensitive to differences in he accepted the empirical explanation of the origins the frequency of sound waves. The short fibers re- of the contents of that mind. In his explanations of spond to the higher frequencies, the longer fibers to sensation (the mental event that results from sensory the lower frequencies. A wave of a certain fre- stimulation) and perception (sensation plus uncon- quency causes the appropriate fiber of the basilar scious inference), Helmholtz was emphatically em- membrane to vibrate, thus causing the sensation pirical. In studying physiological and psychological of sound corresponding to that frequency. This phenomena, he was unequivocally scientific. He process was called sympathetic vibration, and it showed that nerve transmission is not instantaneous, can be demonstrated by stimulating a tuning fork as had previously been believed, but that it is rather of a certain frequency and noting that the string on slow and reflects the operation of physical processes. a piano corresponding to that frequency also begins More than anyone before him, Helmholtz showed to vibrate. Helmholtz assumed that a similar process with experimental rigor the mechanisms by which occurs in the middle ear and that, through various we do commerce with the physical world—mechan- combinations of fiber stimulation, one could ex- isms that could be explained in terms of objective, plain the wide variety of auditory experiences we physical laws. Although he found that the match be- have. This theory is referred to as the resonance tween what is physically present and what is experi- place theory of auditory perception. Variations enced psychologically is not very good, he could ex- of Helmholtz’s place theory persist today. plain the discrepancy in terms of the properties of the receptor systems and the unconscious inferences of the observer. No mystical, unscientific forces were Theory of Signs involved. Helmholtz’s work brought physics, chem- Although Helmholtz was an empiricist in his expla- istry, physiology, and psychology closer together. In nations of sensation and perception, he did reflect so doing, it paved the way for the emergence of ex- the German Zeitgeist by postulating an active mind. perimental psychology, which was in many ways an According to Helmholtz, the mind’s task was to inevitable step after Helmholtz’s work. (For an ex- create a reasonably accurate conception of reality cellent discussion of Helmholtz’s contributions to from the various “signs” that it receives from the modern science and of the cultural climate in which body’s sensory systems. Helmholtz assumed that a they were made, see Cahan, 1994.) dynamic relationship exists among volition, sensa- Helmholtz realized a lifelong ambition when tion, and reflection as the mind attempts to create a he was appointed professor of physics at the functional view of external reality. Helmholtz’s University of Berlin in 1871. In 1882 the German view of the mind differed from that of Kant because emperor granted him noble status, and thereafter his Kant believed that the mental categories of thought name was Hermann von Helmholtz. In 1893 automatically present a conception of reality. Helmholtz came to the United States to see the Helmholtz’s view of the mind also differed from Chicago World’s Fair and to visit with William that of most of the British empiricists and French James. On his way back to Germany, he fell aboard sensationalists because they saw the mind as largely ship and suffered cuts and bruises but was appar- passive. For Helmholtz the mind’s job was to con- ently not badly injured. Following the accident, struct a workable conception of reality given the however, he complained of a general lack of

242 CHAPTER 8 energy. The next year he suffered a cerebral hem- Space Perception orrhage and died on September 8, 1894. On the matter of space perception, we have seen that Helmholtz believed that it slowly develops from experience as physiological and psychological events are correlated. Hering, however, believed EWALD HERING that, when stimulated, each point on the retina au- tomatically provides three types of information In Helmholtz’s time, there was intense controversy about the stimulus: height, left-right position, and over whether perceptual phenomena were learned depth. Following Kant, Hering believed that space or innate. Helmholtz, with his notion of unconscious perception exists a priori. For Kant space perception inference, sided with those who said perceptions was an innate category of the mind; for Hering it were learned. Ewald Hering (1834–1918) sided was an innate characteristic of the eye. with the nativists. After receiving his medical degree from the University of Leipzig, Hering stayed there Theory of Color Vision for several years before accepting a post as lecturer at the Vienna Military Medical Academy, where he After working on the problem of space perception worked with Josef Breuer (1842–1925), who was for about 10 years, Hering turned to color vision. later to be instrumental in the founding of psycho- Hering observed a number of phenomena that he analysis (see Chapter 16). Working together, Hering believed either were incompatible with the and Breuer showed that respiration was, in part, Young–Helmholtz theory or could not be ex- caused by receptors in the lungs—a finding called plained by it. He noted that certain pairs of colors, the Hering–Breuer reflex. In 1870 Hering was called when mixed together, give the sensation of gray. to the University of Prague, were he succeeded the This was true for red and green, blue and yellow, great physiologist Jan E. Purkinje (1787–1869). Like and black and white. He also observed that a person Goethe, to whom Purkinje dedicated one of his who stares at red and then looks away experiences a major works, Purkinje was a phenomenologist. He green afterimage; similarly, blue gives a yellow af- believed that the phenomena of the mind, arrived at terimage. Hering also noted that individuals who by careful introspective analysis, should be what phy- have difficulty distinguishing red from green could siologists attempt to explain. According to Purkinje, still see yellow; also, it is typical for a color-blind the physiologist is obliged to explain not only “nor- person to lose the sensation of both red and green, mal” sensations and perceptions but “abnormal” not just one or the other. All these observations at ones as well, such as illusions and afterimages. least posed problems for the Young–Helmholtz Among the many phenomena that Purkinje ob- theory, if they did not contradict it. served was that the relative vividness of colors is dif- To account for these phenomena, Hering the- ferent in faint light than it is in bright light. More orized that there are three types of receptors on the specifically, as twilight approaches, hues that corre- retina but that each could respond in two ways. spond to short wavelengths such as violet and blue One type of receptor responds to red-green, one appear brighter than hues corresponding to longer type to yellow-blue, and one type to black-white. wavelengths such as yellow and red. This change in Red, yellow, and white cause a “tearing down,” or relative vividness, as a function of luminance level, is a catabolic process, in their respective receptors. known as the Purkinje shift. Hering also was a phe- Green, blue, and black cause a “building up,” or nomenologist, and his theory of color vision, which an anabolic process, in their respective receptors. If will be considered shortly, was based to a large extent both colors to which a receptor is sensitive are ex- on the phenomenon of negative afterimages. perienced simultaneously, the catabolic and ana-

EARLY DEVEL OPMENTS IN PHYSIOLOGY A ND THE RISE OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 243 of by because she was a woman. She was, however, given division 1898 an honorary degree by Vassar in 1887. When the a © social climate became less discriminating against Company, Series, Portrait women, she was granted her doctorate from Johns Hopkins in 1926, 44 years after she had completed Publishing her graduate work (she was nearly 80 years old at the time). Court Philosophical In 1882 Vassar married Fabian Franklin, a Open from mathematics professor at Johns Hopkins. During of Company, Company. her husband’s sabbatical leave in Germany, Christine Ladd-Franklin was able to pursue an permission Publishing interest in psychology she had developed earlier by Publishing Court (she had published a paper on vision in 1887). Reprinted Carcus Open Although, at the time, women were generally ex- cluded from German universities, she managed to be accepted for a year (1891–1892) in Georg E. Ewald Hering Müller’s laboratory at Göttingen, where Hering’s theory of color vision was supported. After her bolic processes are canceled out, and the sensation year under Müller’s influence, she studied with of gray results. If one color to which a receptor is Helmholtz at the University of Berlin, where she sensitive is experienced, its corresponding process is learned about his trichromatic theory of color depleted, leaving only its opposite to produce an vision. afterimage. Finally, Hering’s theory explained why Before leaving Europe, Ladd-Franklin was individuals who cannot respond to red or green can ready to announce her own theory of color vision, still see yellow and why the inability to see red is which she believed improved upon those of usually accompanied by an inability to see green. Helmholtz and Hering. She presented her theory For nearly 50 years, lively debate ensued be- at the International Congress of Experimental tween those accepting the Young–Helmholtz the- Psychology in London in 1892. Upon returning ory and those accepting Hering’s; the matter is still to the United States, Ladd-Franklin lectured on far from settled. The current view is that the logic and psychology at Johns Hopkins until she Young–Helmholtz theory is correct in that there and her husband moved to New York, where she are retinal cells sensitive to red, green, and blue lectured and promoted her theory of color vision at but that there are neural processes beyond the retina Columbia University from 1910 until her death in that are more in accordance with Hering’s proposed 1930. metabolic processes. Ladd-Franklin’s theory of color vision was based on evolutionary theory. She noted that some animals are color blind and assumed that ach- romatic vision appeared first in evolution and color CHRISTINE LADD-FRANK LIN vision came later. She assumed further that the hu- man eye carries vestiges of its earlier evolutionary Born on December 1, Christine Ladd (1847–1930) development. She observed that the most highly graduated from the then new Vassar College in evolved part of the eye is the fovea, where, at least 1869. She pursued her interest in mathematics at in daylight, visual acuity and color sensitivity are the also new Johns Hopkins University and, al- greatest. Moving from the fovea to the periphery though she completed all the requirements for of the retina, acuity is reduced and the ability to a doctorate in 1882, the degree was not granted distinguish colors is lost. However, in the periphery

244 CHAPTER 8 believe, however, that her analysis of color vision still has validity (see, for example, Hurvich, 1971). For interesting biographical sketches of Ladd- Franklin, see Furumoto (1992) and Scarborough Akron of and Furumoto (1987). University Archives–The EARLY RESEARCH ON BRAIN FU NCTIO NIN G Psychology Toward the end of the 18th century, it was widely © believed that a person’s character could be deter- mined by analyzing his or her facial features, body Christine Ladd-Franklin structure, and habitual patterns of posture and movement. Such an analysis was called physiog- of the retina, night vision and movement percep- nomy (Jahnke, 1997, p. 30). One version of phys- tion are better than in the fovea. Ladd-Franklin iognomy that became extremely popular was assumed that peripheral vision (provided by the phrenology. rods of the retina) was more primitive than foveal vision (provided by the cones of the retina) because night vision and movement detection are crucial for Phrenology survival. But if color vision evolved later than ach- Not long after Reid and others (see Chapter 6) had romatic vision, was it not possible that color vision listed what they thought were the faculties of the itself evolved in progressive stages? mind, others were to revise faculty psychology sub- After carefully studying the established color stantially. One was Franz Joseph Gall (1758– zones on the retina and the facts of color blindness, 1828). Gall accepted the widely held belief that Ladd-Franklin concluded that color vision evolved faculties of the mind acted on and transformed sen- in three stages. Achromatic vision came first, then sory information, but he made three additional blue-yellow sensitivity, and finally red-green sensi- claims that changed the history of faculty tivity. The assumption that the last to evolve would psychology: be the most fragile explains the prevalence of red- green color blindness. Blue-yellow color blindness ■ The mental faculties do not exist to the same is less frequent because it evolved earlier and is less extent in all humans. likely to be defective. Achromatic vision is the old- ■ The faculties are housed in specific areas of the est and therefore the most difficult to disrupt. brain. Ladd-Franklin, of course, was aware of ■ If a faculty is well developed, a person would Helmholtz’s and Hering’s theories, and, although have a bump or protrusion on the corre- she preferred Hering’s theory, her theory was not sponding part of the skull. Similarly, if a faculty offered in opposition to either. Rather, she at- is underdeveloped, a hollow or depression tempted to explain in evolutionary terms the ori- would be on the corresponding part of the gins of the anatomy of the eye and its visual skull. abilities. After initial popularity, Ladd-Franklin’s theory Thus, Gall believed that the magnitude of one’s fell into neglect, perhaps because she did not have faculties could be determined by examining the adequate research facilities available to her. Some bumps and depressions on one’s skull. Such an anal-

EARLY DEVEL OPMENTS IN PHYSIOLOGY A ND THE RISE OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 245 Although Gall is usually reviewed negatively in the history of psychology, he made several positive contributions to the study of brain functioning. For example, he studied the brains of several animal species, including humans, and was the first to sug- Medicine gest a relationship between cortical development and mental functioning. He found that larger, of better-developed cortices were associated with Library more intelligent behavior. In addition, he was the National first to distinguish the functions of gray matter and white matter in the brain. These discoveries alone the qualify Gall for recognition in the history of psy- of Courtesy chology, but there is more. As the 19th century began, the idea that different cortical regions are associated with different functions was becoming Franz Joseph Gall popular. This, in large part, was due to Gall: “In the minds of most historians, Gall, more than any other scientist, put the concept of cortical localiza- ysis was called phrenology. Gall’s idea was not tion into play” (Finger, 1994, p. 32). necessarily a bad one. In fact, Gall was among the first to attempt to relate certain personality traits and The Popularity of Phrenology. The term phre- overt behavior patterns to specific brain functions. nology was actually coined by Thomas Foster in The problem was the type of evidence he accepted 1815 (Bakan, 1966). Gall rejected the term (he pre- to demonstrate this relationship. He would observe ferred physiognomy), but it was accepted and made that someone had a pronounced personality charac- popular by his student and colleague Johann teristic and a well-developed brain structure and Kaspar Spurzheim (1776–1832). The dissemina- then attribute one to the other. After observing tion of phrenology into English-speaking countries such a relationship in one individual, he would was facilitated by Spurzheim’s The Physiognomical generalize it to all individuals. In their research on System of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim (1815) and by the mental faculties, some of Gall’s followers ex- the translation of Gall’s On the Functions of the ceeded even his shoddiness: Brain and Each of Its Parts: With Observations on the If Gall was cavalier in his interpretations of Possibility of Determining the Instincts, Propensities, and evidence, he attracted some followers who Talents, or the Moral and Intellectual Dispositions of raised that tendency to an art form. When Men and Animals, by the Configuration of the Brain a cast of Napoleon’s right skull predicted and Head (1835). qualities markedly at variance with the Phrenology became enormously popular and emperor’s known personality, one phre- was embraced by some of the leading intellectuals nologist replied that his dominant side had in Europe (such as Bain and Comte). One reason been the left—a cast of which was conve- for the popularity of phrenology was Gall’s consid- niently missing. When Descartes’s skull erable reputation. Another was that phrenology was examined and found deficient in the provided hope for an objective, materialistic analysis regions for reason and reflection, phrenol- of the mind: “The central theme that runs through ogists retorted that the philosopher’s ra- all of the phrenological writings is that man himself tionality had always been overrated. could be studied scientifically, and in particular that (Fancher, 1990, p. 79) the phenomena of mind could be studied

246 CHAPTER 8 objectively and explained in terms of natural hero’s welcome. He lectured at some of the na- causes” (Bakan, 1966, p. 208). tion’s leading universities, such as Harvard and Phrenology was also popular because, unlike Yale, and his appreciative audiences included phy- mental philosophy, it appeared to offer practical in- sicians, ministers, public educators, college profes- formation. For these reasons phrenology was also sors, and asylum superintendents. O’Donnell (1985) embraced enthusiastically in the United States. For points out that these and other individuals were example, the Central Phrenological Society was looking to phrenology for the type of information founded in Philadelphia in 1822 by Charles that some would later seek in the school of behav- Caldwell (1772–1853). In 1824 Caldwell published iorism (see Chapter 12): Elements of Phrenology, the first American textbook With or without bumps, phrenology’s on phrenology. In 1827 a second edition of theory of human nature and personality Elements was published. Because of the popularity recommended itself to emerging profes- of phrenology, when Spurzheim arrived in the sional groups searching for “positive United States on August 4, 1832, he was given a Affective Faculties Intellectual Faculties Propensities Sentiments Perceptive Refective ? Desire to live 10 Cautiousness 22 Individuality 34 Comparison • Alimentiveness 11 Approbativeness 23 Confguration 35 Causality 1 Destructiveness 12 Self-Esteem 24 Size 2 Amativeness 13 Benevolence 25 Weight and resistance 3 Philoprogenitiveness 14 Reverence 26 Coloring 4 Adhesiveness 15 Firmness 27 Locality 5 Inhabitiveness 16 Conscientiousness 28 Order 6 Combativeness 17 Hope 29 Calculation 7 Secretiveness 18 Marvelousness 30 Eventuality 8 Acquisitiveness 19 Ideality 31 Time 9 Constructiveness 20 Mirthfulness 32 Tune 21 Imitation 33 Language F I G U R E 8.1 The phrenology chart suggested by Spurzheim (1834) showing the “powers and organs of the mind.’’

EARLY DEVEL OPMENTS IN PHYSIOLOGY A ND THE RISE OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 247 knowledge.”… [They] found in phre- uated the educational claims of the phrenologists nology an etiological explanation of aber- and found them to be false (see Chapter 11), the rant human behavior; a predictive belief that educational experiences can be arranged technology for assessing character, tem- to strengthen specific mental faculties persists to the perament, and intellect; and a biological present. For example, Frances Rauscher, Gordon blueprint for social reform. The social en- Shaw, Linda Levine, and Katherine Ky (see gineers of the twentieth century, together Martin, 1994) found that studying or listening to with their patrons and subscribers, would music for as little as 10 minutes a day significantly demand no less of modern experimental increased spatial reasoning skills in children. The behaviorism. When the new psychology explanation was that the improvement occurs be- [behaviorism] arrived on the American cause musical experience and spatial reasoning in- stage an eager audience anticipated the role volve similar cortical activity and, therefore, train- it was to play. Gall, Spurzheim … and ing in one (music) facilitates the other (spatial their followers had already written the reasoning). script. (p. 78) For reasons that we review next, the specific claims of the phrenologists were found to be incor- Spurzheim died shortly after he came to the rect, but phrenology did influence subsequent psy- United States, and on the day of his funeral chology in a number of important ways: It argued (November 17, 1832), the Boston Phrenological effectively that the mind and brain are closely re- Society was formed. Such societies soon sprang up lated; it stimulated intense research on the localiza- all over the nation (Bakan, 1966), and numerous tion of brain functions; and it showed the impor- journals devoted to phrenology emerged in tance of furnishing practical information. Europe and the United States. One, Phrenological Journal, started publishing in 1837 and continued until 1911. Pierre Flourens A number of “phrenology charts” began to ap- By the turn of the 19th century, it was generally pear after the publication of Gall’s and Spurzheim’s conceded that the brain is the organ of the mind. books. Proposed numbers of faculties ranged from Under the influence of Gall and the other phrenol- 27 (suggested by Gall) to as many as 43 suggested by ogists, the brain-mind relationship was articulated later phrenologists. Figure 8.1 shows the chart into a number of faculties housed in specific Spurzheim proposed. Formal Discipline. Phrenology also became highly influential in the realm of education. Several phrenologists made the additional claim that the faculties become stronger with practice, just as muscles do. This belief influenced a num- Medicine ber of educators to take a “mental muscle” ap- of proach to education. For them education meant Library strengthening mental faculties by practicing the traits associated with them. One could improve National one’s reasoning ability, for example, by studying the mathematics. The belief that educational experi- of ences could be arranged so that they strengthen Courtesy certain faculties was called formal discipline. Although Edward L. Thorndike systematically eval- Pierre Flourens

248 CHAPTER 8 locations in the brain. Thus, the phrenologists gave birth to the concern of localization of functions in the brain. Although popular among scientists, in- cluding neurophysiologists, phrenology was far from universally accepted. A number of prominent physicians questioned the claims of the phrenolo- gists. It was not enough, however, to claim that the phrenologists were wrong in their assumptions; the claim had to be substantiated scientifically. This was the goal of Pierre Flourens (1794–1867), who Medicine used the method of extirpation, or ablation, in brain of research. This method involves destroying part of Library the brain and then noting the behavioral conse- quences of the loss. As did Gall, Flourens assumed National that the brains of lower animals were similar in the of many ways to human brains, so he used organisms such as dogs and pigeons as his research subjects. He Courtesy found that removal of the cerebellum disturbed an organism’s coordination and equilibrium, that abla- Paul Broca tion of the cerebrum resulted in passivity, and that destruction of the semicircular canals resulted in loss Broca’s famous observation was in itself very of balance. simple. There had in 1831 been admitted at When he examined the entire brain, Flourens the Bicêtre, an insane hospital near Paris, a concluded that there is some localization, but that man whose sole defect seemed to be that he contrary to what the phrenologists believed, the could not talk. He communicated intelli- cortical hemispheres do not have localized func- gently by signs and was otherwise mentally tions. Instead, they function as a unit. Seeking fur- normal. He remained at the Bicêtre for ther evidence of the brain’s interrelatedness, thirty years with this defect and on April 12, Flourens observed that animals sometimes regained 1861, was put under the care of Broca, the functions that they had lost following ablation. surgeon, because of a gangrenous infection. Thus, at least one part of the brain had the capacity Broca for five days subjected him to a careful to take over the function of another part. Flourens’s examination, in which he satisfied himself fame as a scientist, and his conclusion that the cor- that the musculature of the larynx and tex functioned as a unit, effectively silenced the articulatory organs was not hindered in phrenologists within the scientific community. normal movements, that there was no other Subsequent research, however, would show that paralysis that could interfere with speech, they had been silenced too quickly. and that the man was intelligent enough to speak. On April 17 the patient— fortunately, it must have seemed, for science—died; and within a day Broca had Paul Broca performed an autopsy, discovering a lesion Paul Broca (1824–1880), using the clinical in the third frontal convolution of the left method, cast doubt on Flourens’s conclusion that cerebral hemisphere, and had presented the the cortex acted as a whole. Boring (1950) de- brain in alcohol to the Société scribed Broca’s observation: d’Anthropologie. (p. 71)

EARLY DEVEL OPMENTS IN PHYSIOLOGY A ND THE RISE OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 249 Broca was not the first to suggest that clinical women, in eminent men than in men of observations be made and then to use autopsy ex- mediocre talent, in superior races than in aminations to locate a brain area responsible for a inferior races… . Other things equal, there disorder. For example, the French scientist Jean- is a remarkable relationship between the Baptiste Bouillaud (1796–1881) had done so as development of intelligence and the vol- early as 1825. Using the clinical method on a large ume of the brain. (Gould, 1981, p. 83) number of cases, Bouillaud reached essentially the same conclusion concerning the localization of a Broca was aware of several facts that contra- speech area on the cortex that Broca was to reach dicted his theory: There existed an abundance of later using the same technique. Why, then, do we large-brained criminals, highly intelligent women, credit Broca with providing the first credible evi- and small-brained people of eminence; and Asians, dence for cortical localization and not Bouillaud? It despite their smaller average brain size, were gener- is primarily because Bouillaud had been closely as- ally more intelligent than ethnic groups with larger sociated with phrenology and, by the time that brains. In spite of these contradictions, and in the Broca made his observations, “The scientific com- absence of reliable, supportive evidence, Broca con- munity [was] overly cautious about anything or tinued to believe in the relationship between brain anyone associated in any way with Gall or phrenol- size and intelligence until his death. Then it was ogy” (Finger, 1994, p. 37). In any case, subsequent discovered that his brain weighed 1,424 grams: “A research confirmed Broca’s observation that a bit above average to be sure, but nothing to crow portion of the left cortical hemisphere is implicated about” (Gould, 1981, p. 92). in speech articulation or production, and this area Broca and other craniometricians were not has been named Broca’s area. In 1874, just over purposefully deceitful. As so often happens, how- a decade after Broca’s discovery, the German ever, they found what they were looking for: neurologist Carl Wernicke (1848–1905) discov- The leaders of craniometry were not con- ered a cortical area, near Broca’s area, responsible scious political ideologues. They regarded for speech comprehension. This area on the left themselves as servants of their numbers, temporal lobe of the cortex has been named apostles of objectivity. And they confirmed Wernicke’s area. all the common prejudices of comfortable Broca’s localizing of a function on the cortex white males—that blacks, women, and supported the phrenologists and damaged poor people occupy their subordinate roles Flourens’s contention that the cortex acted as a by the harsh dictates of nature. (Gould, unit. Unfortunately for the phrenologists, however, 1981, p. 74) Broca did not find the speech area to be where the So what is the relationship between brain size phrenologists had said it would be. and intelligence? Dealy (2001) first reviews the con- Other aspects of Broca’s work were less im- temporary research on the topic and then con- pressive. Reflecting the Zeitgeist, he engaged in cludes, “There is a modest association between craniometry (the measurement of the skull and its brain size and … intelligence. People with bigger characteristics) in order to determine the relation- brains tend to have higher mental test scores. We ship between brain size and intelligence. He began do not know yet why this association occurs” his research with a strong conviction that there was (p. 45). Thus, it appears that Broca and other cra- such a relationship, and (not surprisingly, because of niometricians were not totally wrong and that his conviction) he found evidence for it. In 1861 Gould’s criticism of them was too harsh. Broca summarized his findings: However, their claims far exceeded their evidence. In general, the brain is larger in mature As we will see in Chapter 10, the tendency to “sci- adults than in the elderly, in men than in entifically” confirm personal beliefs concerning

250 CHAPTER 8 intelligence continued even when measures of in- a matter of the sensory nerve stimulated. It looked telligence became more sophisticated. very much as if the brain is a complex switchboard where sensory information is projected and where it in turn stimulates appropriate motor responses. Gustav Fritsch, Eduard Hitzig, and The localization studies seemed to favor the empirical-materialistic view rather than the ration- David Ferrier alist view. Electrically stimulating the exposed cortex of a dog, The brain research that was stimulated in an Gustav Fritsch (1838–1927) and Eduard Hitzig effort to evaluate the claims of the phrenologists (1838–1907) made two important discoveries. made it clear that physical stimulation gives rise to First, the cortex is not insensitive, as had been pre- various types of subjective experiences and that they viously assumed. Second, they found that when a are directly related to brain activity. The next step certain area of the cortex is stimulated, muscular in psychology’s development toward becoming an movements are elicited from the opposite side of experimental science was to examine scientifically the body. Stimulating different points in this motor how sensory stimulation is systematically related to area of the brain stimulated movements from differ- conscious experience. ent parts of the body. Thus, another function was localized on the cortex. David Ferrier (1843– 1928) refined the cortical research performed by THE RISE OF EXPERIMENTAL Fritsch and Hitzig. Using monkeys as subjects and finer electrical stimulation, he was able to produce a PSYCHOLOGY more articulated map of the motor cortex. He was able to elicit behaviors “as intricate as the twitch of The very important difference between what is an eyelid, the flick of an ear, and the movement of physically present and what is experienced psycho- one digit” (Finger, 1994, p. 40). Ferrier then logically had been recognized and agonized over for mapped cortical regions corresponding to the cuta- centuries. This was the distinction that had caused neous senses, audition, olfaction, and, eventually, Galileo to conclude that a science of psychology vision. He summarized his findings in The was impossible and Hume to conclude that we Functions of the Brain (1876) which had a substantial could know nothing about the physical world impact on the scientific community: “One out- with certainty. Kant amplified this distinction come was that it opened the ‘modern’ era of neu- when he claimed that the mind embellished sensory rosurgery. Neurosurgeons now turned to ‘func- experience, and Helmholtz reached the same con- tional maps’ of the brain for guidance” (Finger, clusion with his concept of unconscious inference. 1994, p. 41). With advances in science, much had been The evidence seemed clear; there is a great deal learned about the physical world—that is, about of localization of function on the cortex, just as the physical stimulation. Also, as we have seen, much phrenologists had maintained. These findings, how- had been learned about the sense receptors, which ever, did not support traditional phrenology. convert physical stimulation into nerve impulses, Seldom was a function (faculty) found where the and about the brain structures where those impulses phrenologists had said it was. Furthermore, the terminate. There was never much doubt about the phrenologists had spoken of faculties such as vital- existence of consciousness; the problem was in de- ity, firmness, love, and kindness, but the researchers termining what we were conscious of and what instead found sensory and motor areas. These find- caused that consciousness. By now it was widely ings extended the Bell–Magendie law to the brain. believed that conscious sensations were triggered That is, the sensation experienced seemed to be by brain processes, which themselves were initiated more a matter of the cortical area stimulated than by sense reception. But the question remained:

EARLY DEVEL OPMENTS IN PHYSIOLOGY A ND THE RISE OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 251 How are the two domains (mental sensations and example, what is ordinarily called the sense of touch the sensory processes) related? includes the senses of pressure, temperature, and Without measurement, science is impossible. pain. Weber also provided convincing evidence Therefore, it was assumed that a science of psychol- that there is a muscle sense. It was in regard to ogy was impossible unless consciousness could be the muscle sense that Weber performed his work measured as objectively as the physical world. on just noticeable differences, which we consider Furthermore, once measured, mental events would shortly. have to be shown to vary in some systematic way with physical events. Ernst Heinrich Weber and Weber’s Work on Touch. For the sensation of Gustav Theodor Fechner were the first to measure touch, Weber attempted to determine the least spa- how sensations vary systematically as a function of tial separation at which two points of touch on the physical stimulation. body could be discriminated. Using a compasslike device consisting of two points, he simultaneously applied two points of pressure to a subject’s skin. Ernst Heinrich Weber The smallest distance between the two points at Ernst Heinrich Weber (1795–1878), a contem- which the subject reported sensing two points in- porary of Johannes Müller, was born on June 24 in stead of one was called the two-point threshold. Wittenberg and was the son of a theology professor. In his famous book One Touch: Anatomical and He was the third of 13 children. Weber obtained Physiological Notes (1834), Weber provided charts his doctorate from the University of Leipzig in of the entire body with regard to the two-point 1815 and taught there until his retirement in threshold. He found the smallest two-point thresh- 1871. Weber was a physiologist who was interested old on the tongue (about 1 millimeter) and the in the senses of touch and kinesthesis (muscle largest in the middle of the back (about 60 milli- sense). Most of the research on sense perception be- meters). He assumed that the differences in thresh- fore Weber had been confined to vision and audi- olds at different places on the body resulted from tion. Weber’s research consisted largely in exploring the anatomical arrangement of the sense receptors new fields, most notably skin and muscle sensations. for touch—the more receptors, the finer the Weber was among the first to demonstrate that the discrimination. sense of touch is not one but several senses. For Weber’s Work on Kinesthesis. Within the his- tory of psychology, Weber’s research on the muscle sense, or kinesthesis, is even more important than his research on touch. It was while investigating kinesthesis that Weber ran his important weight- discrimination experiments. In general, he sought to determine the smallest difference between two Akron weights that could be discriminated. To do this, he of had his subjects lift one weight (the standard), University which remained the same during a series of com- parisons, and then lift other weights. The subject Archives–The was to report whether the varying weights were heavier, lighter, or the same as the standard weight. Psychology He found that when the variable weights were only slightly different from the standard, they were judged to be the same as the standard. Through a Ernst Heinrich Weber series of such comparisons, Weber was able to

252 CHAPTER 8 determine the just noticeable difference (jnd) that there is a constant fraction corresponding to between the standard and the variable weight. It is jnds for each sense modality. important to note that, although Weber did not The finding that jnds corresponded to a con- label them as such, jnds were psychological experiences stant fraction of a standard stimulus was later called (sensations) that may or may not occur depending Weber’s law, and it can be considered the first on the relationships between standard and variable quantitative law in psychology’s history. This was weights. the first statement of a systematic relationship between Weber ran the basic weight-discrimination ex- physical stimulation and a psychological experience. But periment under two conditions. In one condition, because Weber was a physiologist, psychology was the weights were placed on the subject’s hands not his primary concern. It was Fechner who real- while the hands were resting on a table. In this ized the implications of Weber’s work for psychol- condition, the subject’s judgments were made pri- ogy and who saw in it the possible resolution of the marily on the basis of tactile sensations. In the sec- mind-body problem. ond condition, the subject lifted the hands with the weights on them. In this condition, the subject’s Gustav Theodor Fechner judgments were made on the basis of both tactile and kinesthetic sensations. It was found that subjects Born on April 19, Gustav Theodor Fechner could detect much smaller weight differences when (1801–1887) was a brilliant, complex, and unusual they lifted the weights than they could when the individual. Fechner’s father had succeeded his weights were simply placed on their hands. Weber grandfather as village pastor. After his father died, thought that it was the involvement of kinesthesis Fechner, his brother, and his mother spent the next in the lifted-weight condition that provided the nine years with Fechner’s uncle, who was also a greater sensitivity to weight differences. pastor. At the age of 16, Fechner began his studies in medicine at the University of Leipzig (where Judgments Are Relative, Not Absolute. During Weber was studying) and obtained his medical de- his research on kinesthesis, Weber made the star- gree in 1822 at the age of 21. Upon receiving his tling observation that the jnd is a constant fraction medical degree, Fechner’s interest shifted from bio- of the standard weight. For lifted weights, that frac- logical science to physics and mathematics. At this tion is 1/40; for nonlifted weights, it is 1/30. Using time, he made a meager living by translating into lifted weights as an example, if the standard weight is 40 grams, the variable weight would have to be 41 grams to be judged heavier or 39 grams to be judged lighter than the standard. If the standard weight is 160 grams, the variable weight would have to be 164 grams or 156 grams to be judged heavier or lighter, respectively, than the standard. Weber then aligned himself with the large number Akron of of scientists and philosophers who found that there was not a simple one-to-one correspondence University between what is present physically and what is ex- perienced psychologically. Weber observed that Archives–The discrimination does not depend on the absolute dif- ference between two weights but on the relative difference between the two, or the ratio of one to Psychology the other. Weber extended his research to other sense modalities and found evidence that suggested Gustav Theodor Fechner

EARLY DEVEL OPMENTS IN PHYSIOLOGY A ND THE RISE OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 253 German certain French handbooks of physics and Fechner the mystic. For a young scientist to express chemistry, by tutoring, and by lecturing occasion- so many viewpoints, especially because so many of ally. Fechner was interested in the properties of them were incompatible with science, would have electric currents and in 1831 published a significant been professional suicide. So, Fechner invented a article on the topic, which established his reputation person to speak for his other half, and thus was as a physicist. In 1834, when he was 33 years old, born “Dr. Mises.” The pseudonym Dr. Mises first Fechner was appointed professor of physics at appeared while Fechner was still a medical student. Leipzig. Soon his interests began to turn to the pro- Under this pseudonym, Fechner wrote Proof That blems of sensation, and by 1840 he had published the Moon Is Made of Iodine (1821), a satire on the articles on color vision and afterimages. medical profession’s tendency to view iodine as a In about 1840, Fechner had a “nervous break- panacea. In 1825 Dr. Mises published The down,” resigned his position at Leipzig, and became Comparative Anatomy of Angels, in which it is rea- a recluse. Aside from the philosophical conflicts soned, tongue firmly in cheek, that angels cannot Fechner experienced (we discuss those conflicts have legs. Marshall (1969) summarizes the next), he had been almost blinded, presumably while argument: looking at the sun through colored glasses while per- Centipedes have God-knows-how-many forming his research on afterimages. At this time, legs; butterflies and beetles have six, Fechner entered a state of depression that was to mammals only four; birds, who of all last several years and that resulted in his interests turn- earthly creatures rise closest to the angels, ing from physics to philosophy. The shift was in em- have just two. With each developmental phasis only, however, because throughout his adult step another pair of legs is lost, and “Since life he was uncomfortable with materialism, which the final observable category of creatures he called the “nightview”; it contrasted with the possesses only two legs, it is impossible that “dayview,” which emphasized mind, spirit, and con- angels should have any at all.” (p. 51) sciousness. He accepted Spinoza’s double-aspect view of mind and matter and therefore believed Dr. Mises also argued that because the sphere is that consciousness is as prevalent in the universe as the most perfect shape and angels are perfect, angels is matter. Because he believed that consciousness must be spherical; but planets are also spherical, so cannot be separated from physical things, his position angels must be planets. represents panpsychism; that is, all things that are There followed The Little Book of Life After physical are also conscious. It was Fechner’s interest Death (1836), Nanna, or Concerning the Mental Life in the mind-body relationship that led to the devel- of Plants (1848), and Zend-Avesta, or Concerning opment of psychophysics, which we will consider Matters of Heaven and the Hereafter (1851). In all, shortly. Dr. Mises was heard from 14 times from 1821 to In his lifetime, Fechner wrote 183 articles and 1879. Fechner always used Dr. Mises to express the 81 books and edited many others (Bringmann, dayview, the view that the universe is alive and Bringmann, and Balance, 1992). He died in his conscious. Always behind Fechner’s satire or humor sleep on November 18, 1887, at the age of 86, a was the message that the dayview must be taken few days after suffering a stroke. He was eulogized seriously. Marshall (1969) makes this point con- by his friend and colleague Wilhelm Wundt. cerning Zend-Avesta: The Adventures of Dr. Mises. Although Indeed, in Zoroastrian dogma, Zend-Avesta Fechner was an outstanding scientist, there was a meant the “living word,” and Fechner was side of him that science could not satisfy. In addi- to intend that his own Zend-Avesta should tion to Fechner the materialistic scientist, there was be the word which would reveal all nature Fechner the satirist, philosopher, and spiritualist and to be alive. In this work Fechner argues

254 CHAPTER 8 that the earth is ensouled, just as the hu- seen in the last book he wrote as Dr. Mises, The man being is; but the earth possesses a Dayview as Compared to the Nightview (1879). spirituality which surpasses that of her creatures. (p. 54) Psychophysics. From Fechner’s philosophical interest in the relationship between the mind and In fact, it was in Zend-Avesta that Fechner first the body sprang his interest in psychophysics. He described what would later become psychophysics: wanted desperately to solve the mind-body prob- [Fechner] laid down the general outlines lem in a way that would satisfy the materialistic of his program [psychophysics] in Zend- scientists of his day. Fechner’s mystical philosophy Avesta, the book about heaven and the taught him that the physical and mental were sim- future life. Imagine sending a graduate ply two aspects of the same fundamental reality. student of psychology nowadays to the Thus, as we have seen, he accepted the double as- Divinity School for a course in immortality pectism that Spinoza had postulated. But to say that as preparation for advanced experimental there is a demonstrable relationship between the work in psychophysics! How narrow we mind and the body is one thing; proving it is an- have become! (Boring, 1963, p. 128) other matter. According to Fechner, the solution to the problem occurred to him the morning of In The Little Book of Life After Death (Fechner, October 22, 1850, as he was lying in bed (Adler, 1836/1992), written to console a friend who had 1996, p. 6). His insight was that a systematic rela- just lost a loved one, Dr. Mises described human ex- tionship between bodily and mental experience istence as occurring in three stages. The first stage is could be demonstrated if a person were asked to spent alone in continuous sleep in the darkness of the report changes in sensations as a physical stimulus mother’s womb. The second stage, after birth, is was systematically varied. Fechner speculated that spent alternating between sleeping and waking and for mental sensations to change arithmetically, the in the company of other people. During this second physical stimulus would have to change geometri- stage, people often have glimpses into the third stage. cally. In testing these ideas, Fechner created the area These glimpses include moments of intense faith or of psychology that he called psychophysics. of intuitions that cannot be explained by one’s life As was mentioned, Fechner’s insight concern- experiences. Dr. Mises tells us that we enter the third ing the relationship between stimuli and sensations stage by dying: “The passing from the first to the was first reported in Zend-Avesta (1851). Fechner second stage is called birth; the transition from the spent the next few years experimentally verifying second to the third is called death” (Fechner, his insight and published two short papers on psy- 1836/1992, p. 7). Just as unborn children cannot chophysics in 1858 and 1859. Then in 1860 he foresee their forthcoming experiences in stage two, published his famous Elements of Psychophysics,a people cannot foresee their forthcoming experiences book that went a long way in launching psychology in stage three. In the third stage, one’s soul merges as an experimental science. with other souls and becomes part of the “Supreme As the name suggests, psychophysics is the Spirit.” It is only during this stage that the ultimate study of the relationship between physical and psy- nature of reality can be discerned. chological events. Fechner’s first step in studying Whether as Dr. Mises or not, Fechner was al- this relationship was to state mathematically what ways interested in spiritual phenomena. He was also Weber had found and to label the expression interested in parapsychology and even attended sev- Weber’s law: eral séances in which he experienced the anomalous DR movements of a bed, a table, and even himself. His R =k, belief and involvement in parapsychology is clearly where

EARLY DEVEL OPMENTS IN PHYSIOLOGY A ND THE RISE OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 255 R = Reiz (the German word for “stimulus”). In constitute only a means for arousing within Weber’s research, this was the standard us a sum of psychic values. In this respect stimulus. they take the place of stimuli. A dollar has, in this connection, much less value to a DR = The minimum change in R that could be detected; that is, the minimum change in rich man than to a poor man. It can make a physical stimulation necessary to cause a beggar happy for a whole day, but it is not person to experience a jnd. even noticed when added to the fortune of a millionaire. (1860/1966, p. 197) k = A constant. As we have seen, Weber found this constant to be 1/40 of R for lifted weights. The Jnd as the Unit of Sensation. Fechner as- sumed that as the magnitude of a stimulus increased from zero, a point would be reached where the stimulus could be consciously detected. The lowest Weber’s law concerns the amount that a physical intensity at which a stimulus can be detected is stimulus must change before it results in the aware- called the absolute threshold. That is, the abso- ness of a difference or in a change of sensation (S). lute threshold is the intensity of a stimulus at or Through a series of mathematical calculations, above which a sensation results and below which Fechner arrived at his famous formula, which he no detectable sensation occurs. According to believed showed the relationship between the men- Fechner, intensity levels below the absolute thresh- tal and the physical (the mind and the body): old do cause reactions, but those reactions are un- conscious. In that it allowed for these negative S= k log R sensations, Fechner’s position was very much like those of Leibniz (petites perceptions) and This formula mathematically states Fechner’s Herbart (threshold of consciousness). For all three, earlier insight. That is, for sensations to rise arith- the effects of stimulation cumulated and, at some metically (the left side of the equation), the magni- point (the absolute threshold), was capable of caus- tude of the physical stimulus must rise geometrically ing a conscious sensation. (the right side of the equation). This means that as a Fechner’s analysis of sensation started with the stimulus gets larger, the magnitude of the change absolute threshold, but because that threshold pro- must become greater and greater if the change is to vided only one measure, it was of limited useful- be detected. For example, if the stimulus (R)is40 ness. What Fechner needed was a continuous scale grams, a difference of only 1 gram can be detected; that showed how sensations above the absolute whereas if the stimulus is 200 grams, it takes a dif- threshold varied as a function of level of stimula- ference of 5 grams to cause a jnd. In everyday tion. This was provided by the differential terms, this means that sensations are always relative threshold, which is defined by how much a stim- to the level of background stimulation. If a room is ulus magnitude needs to be increased or decreased dark, for example, turning on a dim light will be before a person can detect a difference. It was in immediately noticed, as would a whisper in a quiet regard to the differential threshold that Fechner room. If a room is fully lighted, however, the addi- found that stimulus intensities must change geo- tion of a dim light would go unnoticed, as would a metrically in order for sensation to change arith- whisper in a noisy room. However, Fechner did metically. Given a geometric increase in the inten- not believe his formula applied only to the evalua- sity of a stimulus, Fechner assumed that sensations tion of simple stimuli. He believed it applied to the increased in equal increments (jnds). With this as- more complex realm of human values as well: sumption it was possible, using Fechner’s equation, Our physical possessions … have no value to deduce how many jnds above absolute threshold or meaning for us as inert material, but a particular sensation was at any given level of

256 CHAPTER 8 stimulus intensity. In other words, Fechner’s law control over the variable stimulus and is in- assumed that sensations increased in equal units structed to adjust its magnitude so that the (jnds) as the stimulus intensity increased geometri- stimulus appears equal to the standard stimulus. cally beyond the absolute threshold. After the adjustment, the average difference With his equation, Fechner believed that he between the variable stimulus and the standard had found the bridge between the physical and stimulus is measured. the psychical that he sought—a bridge that was sci- These methods were another of Fechner’s leg- entifically respectable. Subsequent research demon- acies to psychology, and they are still widely used strated that the predictions generated by Fechner’s today. equation were accurate primarily for the middle ranges of sensory intensities. Predictions were found Fechner’s Contributions. In addition to creat- to be less accurate for extremely high or low levels ing psychophysics, Fechner also created the field of physical intensity. of experimental esthetics. Between 1865 and 1876, Fechner wrote several articles attempting to Psychophysical Methods. After establishing that quantify reactions to works of art. For example, in mental and physical events varied systematically, an effort to discover the variables that made some and thus showing that a science of the mind is in- works of art more pleasing than others, Fechner deed possible (contrary to the beliefs of such indi- analyzed 20,000 paintings from 22 museums viduals as Galileo, Comte, and Kant), Fechner em- (Fechner, 1871). After publishing his major work ployed several methods to further explore the on esthetics (1876), Fechner spent the remainder mind-body relationship: of his professional life responding to criticisms of ■ The method of limits (also called the method psychophysics. For an interesting discussion of of just noticeable differences): With this Fechner’s experimental esthetics and its relationship method, one stimulus is varied and is compared to his philosophical beliefs, see Arnheim, 1985. to a standard. To begin with, the variable Fechner did not solve the mind-body problem; stimulus can be equal to the standard and then it is still alive and well in modern psychology. Like varied, or it can be much stronger or weaker Weber, however, he did show that it was possible than the standard. The goal here is to deter- to measure mental events and relate them to physi- mine the range of stimuli that the subject cal ones. A number of historians have suggested that considers to be equal to the standard. the beginning of experimental psychology be marked by the 1860 publication of Fechner’s ■ The method of constant stimuli (also called Elements. Although a case can be made for marking the method of right and wrong cases): Here, the beginning of experimental psychology with the pairs of stimuli are presented to the subject. publication of that book, most agree that another One member of the pair is the standard and important step had to be taken before psychology remains the same, and the other varies in could emerge as a full-fledged science: Psychology magnitude from one presentation to another. needed to be founded as a separate discipline. As we The subject reports whether the variable stim- will see in Chapter 9, it was Wilhelm Wundt who ulus appears greater than, less than, or equal to took that step. the standard. ■ The method of adjustment (also called the method of average error): Here, the subject has

EARLY DEVEL OPMENTS IN PHYSIOLOGY A ND THE RISE OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 257 SUMMARY The discovery of individual differences among as- inference, Helmholtz offered an empirical explana- tronomers in the recording of astronomical events tion of perception instead of the nativistic explana- demonstrated the need, even within the physical tion, which Kant and others had offered. And he sciences, for understanding how the physical world extended the doctrine of specific nerve energies to was sensed and mentally represented. An intense color vision by saying that specific receptors on the investigation of the human sensory apparatus and retina corresponded to each of the three additive nervous system followed. Bell and Magendie dis- primary colors: red, green, and blue-violet. If one covered that some nerves are specialized to carry of the three receptors is missing or inoperative, the sensory information to the brain, whereas others person would be blind to the color to which the are specialized to carry sensory information from receptor is sensitive. For Helmholtz all experiences the brain to the muscles of the body. This distinc- of color could be explained as the stimulation of tion between sensory and motor nerves is called the one or a pattern of the three types of color recep- Bell–Magendie law. Müller found that each sensory tors. Because Young had earlier proposed a similar nerve was specialized to produce a certain type of theory of color vision, the theory became known as energy, which in turn produced a certain type of the Young–Helmholtz (or trichromatic) theory of sensation. For example, no matter how the optic color vision. nerve is stimulated, it will produce the sensation Helmholtz also explained auditory perception of light. The same is true for all other sensory by applying the doctrine of specific nerve energies. nerves of the body. Müller’s finding is called the He believed that tiny fibers on the basilar mem- doctrine of specific nerve energies. brane each respond to a different frequency and Helmholtz is a monumental figure in the his- that our auditory perception results from the com- tory of science. He opposed the belief in vitalism bination of the various fibers that are being stimu- that his teacher Müller and others held. The vital- lated at any given time. This is called the resonance ists maintained that life could not be reduced to place theory of auditory perception. Helmholtz’s physical processes and therefore could not be inves- work clearly indicated that there is a difference tigated scientifically. For Helmholtz nothing was between what is present physically and what is ex- beyond scientific investigation. He showed that perienced psychologically. The reason for this dif- the amount of energy an organism expended was ference is that the sensory equipment of the body is directly proportional to the amount of food and not capable of responding to everything that is oxygen it consumed, thereby showing that the physically present. Although Helmholtz found sub- principle of conservation of energy applied to living stantial mismatches between what is present physi- organisms as well as to physical systems. Ignoring cally and what is experienced psychologically, he the contention that nerve impulses are too fast to did postulate an active mind that takes whatever be measured, he measured their speed and found sensory information is available and creates the them to be remarkably slow. best possible interpretation of external reality. Helmholtz differentiated between sensations Helmholtz’s work moved physiology closer to psy- and perceptions, the former being the raw images chology and thus paved the way for experimental provided by the sense receptors and the latter re- psychology. flecting the meaning that past experiences give to In his explanation of perceptual phenomena, those raw sensations. Through the process of un- Helmholtz sided with the empiricists, but Hering conscious inference, the wealth of prior experience sided with the nativists. In his explanation of color we have had with objects and events is brought to vision, Hering postulated red-green, yellow-blue, bear on current sensations, converting them and black-white receptors on the retina that could into perceptions. With his notion of unconscious either be torn down (causing the color experiences

258 CHAPTER 8 of red, yellow, and white, respectively), or built up sensation it caused. He determined the two-point (causing the experiences of green, blue, and black, threshold for various parts of the body by observing respectively). Hering’s theory could explain a num- the smallest distance between two points of stimu- ber of color experiences that Helmholtz’s theory lation that would be reported as two points. could not. Ladd-Franklin proposed a theory of Working with weights, Weber determined how color vision based on evolutionary principles. much heavier or lighter than a standard a weight Gall and Spurzheim expanded faculty psychol- must be before it was reported as being lighter or ogy into phrenology, according to which individuals heavier than the standard. This sensation of differ- differ in the extent to which they possess various fac- ence was called a just noticeable difference (jnd). ulties. The faculties are housed in specific areas of the Weber found that for lifted weights, if a weight was brain, and an evaluation of a person’s faculties could 1/40 lighter than the standard, the subject would be made by examining the bumps and depressions of report that it was lighter; if it was 1/40 heavier than his or her skull. Phrenology became very popular the standard, it would be reported as heavier. A because it seemed to provide an objective method difference in weight of less than 1/40 of the stan- of studying the mind and because it seemed to pro- dard went undetected. For weights not lifted but vide practical information. Many phrenologists be- simply placed in a subject’s hand, the jnd was lieved that various faculties could be strengthened by 1/30 of the standard weight. Weber’s work pro- practicing the activities associated with them. This vided the first statement of a systematic relationship belief resulted in the formal discipline, or the “mental between physical and mental events. muscle” approach to education. Flourens experi- Fechner expanded Weber’s work by showing mentally tested many of the conclusions the phrenol- that jnds are related to stimulation in a geometric ogists had reached concerning the localization of way. That is, as the magnitude of the standard stim- brain function, and although he found some evi- ulus increases, so did the amounts that needed to be dence for localization of function in the lower parts added to or subtracted from a comparison stimulus of the brain, he concluded that the cortex itself acts as before those differences could be noticed. In his a whole. Because of Flourens’s prestige as a scientist, work on psychophysics, Fechner used three meth- the claims of the phrenologists concerning cortical ods: the method of limits, by which one stimulus is localization were seriously questioned within the held constant and another varied in order to deter- scientific community. Using the clinical method, mine which values of the variable stimulus are per- however, Broca did find evidence for an area of the ceived as the same as the standard; the method of cortex responsible for the ability to articulate speech. constant stimuli, by which pairs of stimuli are pre- Later, Wernicke discovered a cortical area responsi- sented and the subject reports which stimulus ap- ble for speech comprehension. Furthermore, Fritsch pears to be greater than, less than, or equal to the and Hitzig found a motor area on the cortex, and standard stimulus; and the method of adjustment, Ferrier further articulated the motor cortex and by which the subject adjusts the magnitude of one then mapped cortical areas associated with the cuta- stimulus until it appears to be the same as the stan- neous senses, audition, olfaction, and vision. Thus, dard stimulus. In addition to psychophysics, there did seem to be localization of function on the Fechner also created the field of experimental es- cortex, but the functions were not the same as those thetics. Now that it had been demonstrated that the phrenologists had proposed, nor were they in the mental events could be studied experimentally, locations the phrenologists had suggested. the ground was laid for the founding of psychology Weber was the first to attempt to quantify the as an experimental science. relationship between a physical stimulus and the

EARLY DEVEL OPMENTS IN PHYSIOLOGY A ND THE RISE OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 259 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. What significance did the observation that as- 15. Discuss the basic tenets of phrenology. Also tronomers differ in their reaction times have for discuss the reasons for phrenology’s popularity the history of psychology? and its influence on psychology. 2. What is the Bell–Magendie law? What was the 16. Describe Flourens’s approach to brain research. significance of this law in the history of Did his conclusions support or refute phrenol- psychology? ogy? Explain. 3. Summarize Müller’s doctrine of specific nerve 17. Describe Broca’s approach to brain research. energies. What conclusions did he reach concerning the 4. Define vitalism. Was Müller a vitalist? Was functioning of the brain? Concerning Helmholtz? intelligence? 5. How did Helmholtz apply the principle of 18. Describe the functions associated with Broca’s conservation of energy to living organisms? and Wernicke’s cortical areas. 6. Describe the procedure Helmholtz used to 19. What approach to brain research did Fritsch, measure the rate of nerve conduction. Hitzig, and Ferrier take? Did their results sup- port Gall or Flourens? Explain. 7. How did Helmholtz explain perception? Include in your answer a discussion of uncon- 20. What significance did Weber’s work have for scious inference. the development of experimental psychology? In your answer, describe Weber’s research 8. Summarize the Young–Helmholtz theory of techniques and his findings. color vision. 21. Why did Fechner feel it necessary to invent 9. Summarize the resonance place theory of au- Dr. Mises? ditory perception. 22. What was Fechner’s proposed solution to the 10. Discuss the importance of Helmholtz’s work mind-body problem? What evidence did he for the development of psychology as a offer in support of his solution? science. 23. What did Fechner mean by a negative 11. Explain in what way Helmholtz was a sensation? rationalist. 24. Distinguish between the absolute threshold and 12. How did Hering explain space perception? the differential threshold. 13. Summarize Hering’s theory of color vision. 25. Summarize Fechner’s psychophysical methods. 14. Discuss the theory of color vision proposed by 26. What were Fechner’s contributions to the de- Ladd-Franklin. velopment of psychology as a science? SU GGE STIONS FOR FURTHER READING Adler, H. E. (1966). Gustav Theodor Fechner: A Adler, H. E. (2000). Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von German Gelehrter. In G. A. Kimble, C. A. Boneau, Helmholtz: Physicist as psychologist. In G. A. & M. Wertheimer (Eds.), Portraits of pioneers in psy- Kimble & M. Wertheimer (Eds.) Portraits of pioneers chology (Vol. 2, pp. 1–13). Washington, DC: in psychology (Vol. 4, pp. 15–31). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. American Psychological Association.

260 CHAPTER 8 Bakan, D. (1966). The influence of phrenology on Fechner, G. (1992). The little book of life after death. American psychology. Journal of the History of the Journal of Pastoral Counseling: An Annual, 27, 7–31. Behavioral Sciences 2, 200–220. (Original work published 1836) Cahan, D. (Ed.). (1994). Hermann von Helmholtz and the Marshall, M. E. (1969). Gustav Fechner, Dr. Mises, and foundation of nineteenth-century science. Berkeley: the comparative anatomy of angels. Journal of the University of California Press. History of the Behavioral Sciences,5, 39–58. Cahan, D. (Ed.). (1995). Hermann von Helmholtz: Science Turner, R. S. (1977). Hermann von Helmholtz and the and culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. empiricist vision. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 13, 48–58. GLOSSARY Absolute threshold The smallest amount of stimula- also mapped cortical areas corresponding to the cutane- tion that can be detected by an organism. ous senses, audition, olfaction, and vision. Adequate stimulation Stimulation to which a sense Flourens, Pierre (1794–1867) Concluded that the modality is maximally sensitive. cortical region of the brain acts as a whole and is not Bell, Charles (1774–1842) Discovered, in modern divided into a number of faculties, as the phrenologists times, the distinction between sensory and motor nerves. had maintained. Bell–Magendie law There are two types of nerves: Formal discipline The belief that the faculties of the sensory nerves carrying impulses from the sense receptors mind can be strengthened by practicing the functions to the brain and motor nerves carrying impulses from the associated with them. Thus, one supposedly can become brain to the muscles and glands of the body. better at reasoning by studying mathematics or logic. Broca, Paul (1824–1880) Found evidence that part of Fritsch, Gustav (1838–1927) Along with Hitzig, dis- the left frontal lobe of the cortex is specialized for speech covered motor areas on the cortex by directly stimulating production or articulation. the exposed cortex of a dog. Broca’s area The speech area on the left frontal lobe Gall, Franz Joseph (1758–1828) Believed that the side of the cortex (the inferior frontal gyrus). strengths of mental faculties varied from person to person Clinical method The technique that Broca used. It and that they could be determined by examining the involves first determining a behavior disorder in a bumps and depressions on a person’s skull. Such an ex- living patient and then, after the patient had died, amination came to be called phrenology. (See also locating the part of the brain responsible for the be- Phrenology.) havior disorder. Helmholtz, Hermann von (1821–1894) A monu- Differential threshold The amount that stimulation mental figure in the history of science who did pioneer needs to change before a difference in that stimulation work in the areas of nerve conduction, sensation, per- can be detected. ception, color vision, and audition. Doctrine of specific nerve energies Each sensory Hering, Ewald (1834–1918) Offered a nativistic ex- nerve, no matter how it is stimulated, releases an energy planation of space perception and a theory of color vision specific to that nerve. based on the existence of three color receptors, each Fechner, Gustav Theodor (1801–1887) Expanded capable of a catabolic process and an anabolic process. Weber’s law by showing that, for just noticeable differ- Hering’s theory of color vision could explain a number ences to vary arithmetically, the magnitude of a stimulus of color experiences that Helmholtz’s theory could not. must vary geometrically. Hitzig, Eduard (1838–1907) Along with Fritsch, dis- Ferrier, David (1843–1928) Created a more detailed covered motor areas on the cortex by directly stimulating map of the motor cortex than Fritsch and Hitzig had. He the exposed cortex of a dog.

EARLY DEVEL OPMENTS IN PHYSIOLOGY A ND THE RISE OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 261 Just noticeable difference (jnd) The sensation that Principle of conservation of energy The energy results if a change in stimulus intensity exceeds the dif- within a system is constant; therefore, it cannot be added to ferential threshold. (See also Differential threshold.) or subtracted from but only transformed from one form to Kinesthesis The sensations caused by muscular activity. another. Ladd-Franklin, Christine (1847–1930) Proposed a Psychophysics The systematic study of the relationship theory of color vision based on evolutionary principles. between physical and psychological events. Magendie, François (1783–1855) Discovered, in Reaction time The period of time between presenta- modern times, the distinction between sensory and mo- tion of and response to a stimulus. tor nerves. Resonance place theory of auditory perception The Method of adjustment An observer adjusts a variable tiny fibers on the basilar membrane of the inner ear are stimulus until it appears to be equal to a standard stimulus. stimulated by different frequencies of sound. The shorter the Method of constant stimuli A stimulus is presented at fiber, the higher the frequency to which it responds. different intensities along with a standard stimulus, and Sensation The rudimentary mental experience caused the observer reports if it appears to be greater than, less when sense receptors are stimulated by an environmental than, or equal to the standard. stimulus. Method of limits A stimulus is presented at varying Spurzheim, Johann Kaspar (1776–1832) A student intensities along with a standard (constant) stimulus to and colleague of Gall, who did much to expand and determine the range of intensities judged to be the same promote phrenology. as the standard. Two-point threshold The smallest distance between Müller, Johannes (1801–1858) Expanded the Bell– two points of stimulation at which the two points are Magendie law by demonstrating that each sense receptor, experienced as two points rather than one. when stimulated, releases an energy specific to that par- ticular receptor. This finding is called the doctrine of Unconscious inference According to Helmholtz, the specific nerve energies. process by which the remnants of past experience are added to sensations, thereby converting them into Negative sensations According to Fechner, sensations perceptions. that occur below the absolute threshold and are therefore below the level of awareness. Weber, Ernst Heinrich (1795–1878) Using the two- Panpsychism The belief that everything in the uni- point threshold and the just noticeable difference, was verse experiences consciousness. the first to demonstrate systematic relationships between stimulation and sensation. Perception According to Helmholtz, the mental ex- perience arising when sensations are embellished by the Weber’s law Just noticeable differences correspond to a recollection of past experiences. constant proportion of a standard stimulus. Personal equations Mathematical formulae used to Wernicke, Carl (1848–1905) Discovered an area on correct for differences in reaction time among observers. the left temporal lobe of the cortex associated with speech comprehension. Phrenology The examination of the bumps and de- pressions on the skull in order to determine the strengths Wernicke’s area The area on the left temporal lobe of and weaknesses of various mental faculties. the cortex associated with speech comprehension. Physiognomy The attempt to determine a person’s Young–Helmholtz theory of color vision Separate character by analyzing his or her facial features, bodily receptor systems on the retina are responsive to each of structure, and habitual patterns of posture and the three primary colors: red, green, and blue-violet. movement. Also called the trichromatic theory.

9 ✵ Voluntarism, Structuralism, and Other Early Approaches to Psychology e saw in the last chapter that Helmholtz, Weber, and Fechner were pio- W neers in experimental psychology. It was Wilhelm Wundt, however, who took the diverse achievements of these and other individuals and synthe- sized them into a unified program of research that was organized around certain beliefs, procedures, and methods. As early as 1862, Wundt performed an experi- ment that led him to believe that a full-fledged discipline of experimental psy- chology was possible. Using the apparatus shown in Figure 9.1, Wundt showed that it took about 1/10 of a second to shift one’s attention from the sound of the bell to the position of the pendulum or vice versa. Wundt believed that, with his “thought meter,” he had demonstrated that humans could attend to only one thought at a time and that it takes about 1/10 of a second to shift from one thought to another. From this early experiment, Wundt concluded not only that experimental psychology was feasible but also that such a psychology must stress selective at- tention, or volition: Wundt suddenly realized that he was measuring the speed of a central mental process, that for the first time, he thought, a self-conscious ex- perimental psychology was taking place. The time it takes to switch at- tention voluntarily from one stimulus to another had been measured—it varied around a tenth of a second. 262

VOLU NTARISM, STRUC TU RALISM , A ND O TH ER EARLY APPROA CHES TO PSYCHOLOGY 263 then on, a prominent theme in Wundtian psychology was the distinction between voluntary and involuntary actions. (Blumenthal, 1980, pp. 121–122) In the introduction to his book Contributions to the Theory of Sense Perception (1862a), Wundt enun- ciated the need for a new field of experimental psychology that would uncover the facts of human consciousness. In his epoch-making book Principles of Physiological Psychology (1874/1904), Wundt clearly stated that his goal was to create such a field. It should be noted that in Wundt’s time the term physiological meant more or less the same as experi- mental. Thus, reading “physiological psychology” in the title of Wundt’s book as “experimental psychol- ogy” is more accurate than viewing it as emphasiz- ing a search for the biological correlates of thought and behavior, as is the case with much physiological psychology today. Wundt reached his goal by 1890, and psychol- F I G U R E 9.1 ogy’s first school had been formed. A school can Wundt’s “thought meter.” The clock was arranged so be defined as a group of individuals who share that the pendulum (B) swung along a calibrated scale (M). common assumptions, work on common problems, The apparatus was arranged so that a bell (g) was struck and use common methods. This definition of school by the metal pole(s) at the extremes of the pendulum’s swing (d, b), Wundt discovered that if he looked at the is very similar to Kuhn’s definition of paradigm.In scale as the bell sounded, it was never in position d or b both a school of thought and a paradigm, indivi- but some distance away from either. Thus, determining duals work to explore the problems articulated by a the exact position of the pendulum as the bell sounded particular viewpoint. That is, they engage in what was impossible. Readings were always about 1/10 of a second off. Wundt concluded that one could either at- Kuhn (1996) called normal science. tend to the position of the pendulum or to the bell, but By 1890 students the world over were traveling not both at the same time. to Leipzig to be trained in experimental psychology SOURCE: Wundt (1862b, p. 264). at Wundt’s laboratory. There now appeared to be little doubt that a productive discipline of scientific At this moment, the unfolding of psychology was possible. A staggering amount of Wundt’s theoretical system began. For it research poured out of Wundt’s laboratory, and was not the simple fact of the measured speed of selective attention that impressed laboratories similar to his were being established him as much as it was the demonstration of throughout the world, including in the United a central voluntary control process. From States.

264 CHAPTER 9 VOLUNTARISM to psychology was voluntarism because of its em- phasis on will, choice, and purpose. Wundt’s stated goal was to understand conscious- Voluntarism, then, was psychology’s first ness, and his pursuit of this goal was very much school—not structuralism, as is often claimed. within the German rationalistic tradition: Structuralism is the name of a rival school started by Edward Titchener, one of Wundt’s students Wundt said that Herbart was second only (discussed later). As we will see, the schools of vol- to Kant in terms of the debt owed for the untarism and structuralism had very little in development of his own thoughts.… But common. beyond Herbart and Kant, there looms the influence of Leibniz, in whose shadow Wundt clearly felt himself to be working from the beginning.… Numerous … re- WILHELM MAXIMILIAN ferences to Leibniz at key points in Wundt’s more theoretical works make it WUNDT clear that he felt a special affinity with this philosopher. (Danziger, 1980a, pp. 75–76) Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (1832–1920) was born at Neckarau, a suburb of the important com- Wundt opposed materialism, about which he mercial center of Mannheim, on August 16 of the said, “Materialistic psychology … is contradicted same year that Goethe died. When he was 4 years by … the fact of consciousness itself, which cannot old, he and his family moved to the small town of possibly be derived from any physical qualities of Heidelsheim. He was the fourth, and last, child of a material molecules or atoms” (1912/1973, p. 155). Lutheran minister. His father’s side of the family He also opposed the empiricism of the British and included historians, theologians, economists, and French philosophers, in which a person is viewed as two presidents of the University of Heidelberg. the passive recipient of sensations that are then pas- On his mother’s side were physicians, scientists, sively “organized” by the laws of association. and government officials. Despite the intellectually Lacking in empiricism, according to Wundt, were stimulating atmosphere in which Wundt grew up central volitional processes that act on the elements (or perhaps because of it), he remained a shy, re- of thought giving them forms, qualities, or values served person who was fearful of new situations. not found in either external stimulation or the ele- Wundt’s only sibling to survive infancy was a mental events themselves. brother, eight years his elder, who went away to Wundt’s goal was not only to understand con- school. Wundt’s only friend his own age was a sciousness as it is experienced but also to understand mentally retarded boy who could barely speak. the mental laws that govern the dynamics of con- When Wundt was about eight years old, his educa- sciousness. Of utmost importance to Wundt was tion was turned over to a young vicar who worked the concept of will as it was reflected in attention in his father’s church. The vicar was Wundt’s closest and volition. Wundt said that will was the central friend until Wundt entered high school. Wundt’s concept in terms of which all of the major problems first year in high school was a disaster: he made no in psychology must be understood (Danziger, friends, daydreamed incessantly, was physically 1980b, p. 108). Wundt believed that humans can punished by his teachers, and finally failed. At decide what is attended to and thus what is per- this time, one of his teachers suggested that a rea- ceived clearly. Furthermore, he believed that sonable aspiration for Wundt would be a career in much behavior and selective attention are under- the postal service (Diamond, 1980, pp. 12–13). The taken for a purpose; that is, such activities are moti- following year, he started high school over, this vated. The name that Wundt gave to his approach time in the city of Heidelberg, where his brother

VOLU NTARISM, STRUC TU RALISM , A ND O TH ER EARLY APPROA CHES TO PSYCHOLOGY 265 could be used. Both of these concerns were clearly present in Lectures, the first part of which included a history of psychology, a review of research on sensa- Akron tion and perception, and research related to the per- of sonal equation. The second part of Lectures included University discussions of aesthetic and religious feelings, moral judgments, the development of societies, compara- Archives–The tive religion, language, and the will. In fact, most of the topics that later appeared in Völkerpsychologie Psychology (1900–1920), the monumental 10-volume work that Wundt worked on for the last 20 years of his © life, first appeared in Lectures in 1863. Wundt re- mained a teacher at Heidelberg until 1874, when Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt he accepted a professorship in inductive philosophy at the University of Zürich in Switzerland. The fol- and a cousin were students. Although he was not an lowing year he was offered an appointment to teach outstanding student, he did much better there. scientific philosophy at the University of Leipzig. After graduation from high school, Wundt en- Wundt accepted the appointment and remained at rolled in the premedical program at the University of Leipzig for 45 years. Tübingen. He stayed for a year and then transferred Wundt wanted to teach experimental psychol- to the University of Heidelberg, where he became ogy at Leipzig in 1875, but the university could not one of the top medical students in his class, graduated provide space for his equipment; he ended up summa cum laude, and placed first in the state medi- teaching courses in anthropology, logic, and lan- cal board examination. After receiving his medical guage instead. He obtained the space he needed degree in 1855 at the age of 23, he went to Berlin the following year and began teaching experimental and studied with Johannes Müller, who so influ- psychology. By 1879 his laboratory was in full pro- enced Wundt that he decided to pursue a career in duction, and he was supervising the research of sev- experimental physiology instead of medicine. After a eral students. The year 1879 is usually given as the year of working and studying at Müller’s institute, date of the founding of the first laboratory dedi- Wundt returned to the University of Heidelberg, cated exclusively to psychological research. Wundt where he became Helmholtz’s laboratory assistant. called his laboratory the Institute for Experimental While he was working for Helmholtz, Wundt Psychology. At first, the university administration gave his first course in psychology as a natural science was not supportive of Wundt’s institute, and it and wrote his first book, Contributions to the Theory of was not listed in the university catalog until 1883. Sense Perception (1862a). In this book, Wundt formed The institute became extremely popular, however, the plan for psychology that he was to follow for the and Wundt’s lecture classes became the most pop- rest of his life. The following year, he published ular at the university, sometimes exceeding 250 stu- Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology (1863), dents (Bringmann, Bringmann, and Ungerer, 1980, which clearly indicated the dual interests in psychol- p. 147). In 1881, Wundt began the journal ogy that Wundt entertained throughout his career. Philosophical Studies, the first journal devoted to ex- Wundt believed that experimental psychology perimental psychology. He wanted to call his jour- could be used in an effort to understand immediate nal Psychological Studies, but a journal with that title consciousness (discussed later) but that it was useless already existed, and it dealt with spiritualism and in attempting to understand the higher mental pro- parapsychological phenomena. Several years later, cesses and their products. For the study of the latter, Wundt did change the name of his journal to the only naturalistic observation or historical analysis more appropriate Psychological Studies.

266 CHAPTER 9 In response to the increasing popularity of ematical science but not an experimental one. Wundt’s institute, it was physically enlarged several Wundt believed strongly that psychology had, in times. In 1882 he moved from his small one-room fact, become an experimental science. As we have laboratory to one with nine rooms, and in 1897 he seen, however, in his comprehensive view of psy- was given an entire building, which he helped de- chology, experimentation played only a limited sign. By this time Wundt dominated experimental role. He believed that experimentation could be psychology, something he continued to do for used to study the basic processes of the mind but three decades. During his years at Leipzig, Wundt could not be used to study the higher mental pro- supervised 186 doctoral dissertations (70 in philoso- cesses. For the latter, only various forms of naturalistic phy and 116 in psychology). His psychology stu- observation could be used. We will see how Wundt dents became pioneers of experimental psychology proposed to study the higher mental thought pro- throughout the world; we will encounter several of cesses when we discuss his Völkerpsychologie. Still, them. the role of experimental psychology was vital to Wundt was one of the most productive indivi- Wundt. Learning about the simpler conscious pro- duals in the history of psychology. Boring (1950) cesses may shed some light on those that are more estimated that from 1853 to 1920, Wundt wrote a complex: “Let us remember the rule, valid for psy- total of 53,735 pages: chology as well as for any other science, that we can- not understand the complex phenomena, before we If there are 24,836 days in sixty-eight have become familiar with the simple ones which years, then Wundt wrote or revised at the presuppose the former” (Wundt, 1912/1973, average rate of 2.2 pages a day from 1853 p. 151). To summarize, according to Wundt, psy- to 1920, which comes to about one word chology’s goal was to understand both simple and every two minutes, day and night, for the complex conscious phenomena. For the former, ex- entire sixty-eight years. (p. 345)Obviously, perimentation could be used; for the latter, it could Wundt’s primary interest was his work: not. He never was much excited about anything other than his work. Even his wife and family receive no more than one Mediate and Immediate Experience. Wundt paragraph in his entire autobiography. His believed that all sciences are based on experience dedication went so far that he analyzed his and that scientific psychology is no exception. But psychological experiences when he was the type of experience psychology would use would very seriously ill and near death; at one be different. Whereas other sciences were based on point in his life he was rather intrigued mediate experience, psychology was to be based with the idea of experiencing the process on immediate experience. The data the physi- of dying. (Wertheimer, 1987, p. 62) cist uses, for example, are provided by various mea- suring devices such as spectrometers (to measure Appropriately, the last thing Wundt worked on wavelengths of light) or sound spectrographs (to was his autobiography, which he finished a few measure the frequencies and intensities of sound days before he died at the age of 88. waves). The physicist records the data these de- vices provide and then uses the data to analyze the characteristics of the physical world. Thus the Psychology’s Goals experience of the natural scientist is mediated by Wundt disagreed with individuals like Galileo, recording devices and is not direct. For Wundt Comte, and Kant who claimed that psychology the subject matter of psychology was to be human could never be a science; and he disagreed with consciousness as it occurred. Wundt was not inter- Herbart, who said that psychology could be a math- ested in the nature of the physical world but wanted

VOLU NTARISM, STRUC TU RALISM , A ND O TH ER EARLY APPROA CHES TO PSYCHOLOGY 267 to understand the psychological processes by which 180 studies performed in Wundt’s laboratory be- we experience the physical world. tween 1883 and 1903 and found that all but four Once the mental elements were isolated, the used experimental introspection, and Wundt him- laws governing their combination into more com- self criticized two of the four studies that did not. plex experiences could be determined. Thus, Wundt, then, used introspection more or less as the Wundt set two major goals for his experimental physiologists (such as Helmholtz) and the psycho- psychology: (1) to discover the basic elements of physicists had used it—that is, as a technique to thought, and (2) to discover the laws by which determine whether a person is experiencing a spe- mental elements combine into more complex men- cific sensation or not. In fact, Wundt replicated tal experiences. much of the work on audition and vision that the physiologists had done and much of the work on Wundt’s Use of Introspection absolute and differential thresholds that the psycho- physicists had done. To study the basic mental processes involved in In the restrictive way that Wundt used it, in- immediate experience, Wundt used a variety of trospection could be used to study immediate ex- methods, including introspection. Wundt’s use perience, but under no circumstances could it be of introspection bore little resemblance, however, used to study the higher mental processes. to how the technique was used by St. Augustine to explore the mind to find the essence of God or by Descartes to find certain truth. Wundt’s use of Elements of Thought introspection was also different from how the em- According to Wundt, there are two basic types of piricists and sensationalists used it to study ideas mental experience: sensations and feelings. A sen- and association. Wundt distinguished between pure sation occurs whenever a sense organ is stimulated introspection, the relatively unstructured self- and the resulting impulse reaches the brain. observation used by earlier philosophers, and exper- Sensations can be described in terms of modality (vi- imental introspection, which he believed to be scien- sual, auditory, taste, and so on) and intensity (such as tifically respectable: how loud an auditory stimulus is). Within a modal- Experimental introspection made use of ity, a sensation can be further analyzed to determine laboratory instruments to vary the condi- its qualities. For example, a visual sensation can be tions and hence make the results of internal described in terms of hue (color) and saturation perception more precise, as in the psy- (“richness” of color). An auditory sensation can be chophysical experiments initiated by described in terms of pitch and timbre (“fullness” of Fechner or in the sense-perception ex- tone). A taste sensation can be described in terms of periments of Helmholtz. In most instances its degree of saltiness, sourness, bitterness, or saying “yes” or “no” to an event was all sweetness. that was needed, without any description All sensations are accompanied by feelings. of inner events. Sometimes the subject Wundt reached this conclusion while listening to responded by pressing a telegraph key. The the beat of a metronome and noting that some rates ideal was to make introspection, in the of beating were more pleasant than others. From his form of internal perception, as precise as own introspections, he formulated his tridimen- external perception. (Hilgard, 1987, p. 44) sional theory of feeling, according to which any feelings can be described in terms of the de- Wundt had little patience with colleagues who gree to which they possess three attributes: used introspection in the more philosophical and pleasantness-unpleasantness, excitement-calm, and less objective way. Danziger (1980c) examined strain-relaxation.

268 CHAPTER 9 Perception, Apperception, and There are no psychological qualities in Creative Synthesis physics. For example, there is no red, or green, or blue in that world. Redness, Often a discussion of Wundt’s system stops with his greeness, and blueness are phenomena concern with mental elements and his use of intro- that are created by the cortex of the spection as the means of isolating them. Such a dis- experiencing individual. A musical qual- cussion omits some of Wundt’s most important ity, the flavor of the wine, or the famil- ideas. Indeed, sensations and feelings are the ele- iarity of a face is a rapid creative synthesis ments of consciousness, but in everyday life they that cannot, in principle, be explained as a are rarely, if ever, experienced in isolation. Most mere sum of elemental physical features. often, many elements are experienced simulta- (p. 45) neously, and then perception occurs. According to Wundt, perception is a passive process governed So, contrary to the popular view that Wundt by the physical stimulation present, the anatomical busied himself searching for the cognitive and emo- makeup of the individual, and the individual’s past tional elements of a static mind, he viewed the experiences. These three influences interact and de- mind as active, creative, dynamic, and volitional. termine an individual’s perceptual field at any given In fact, he believed that the apperceptive process time. The part of the perceptual field the individual was vital for normal mental functioning, and he attends to is apperceived (Wundt borrowed the term speculated that schizophrenia could be the result apperception from Herbart). Attention and appercep- of a breakdown of the attentional processes. If a tion go hand in hand; what is attended to is apper- person lost the ability to apperceive, his or her ceived. Unlike perception, which is passive and thoughts would be disorganized and would appear automatic, apperception is active and voluntary. In meaningless, as in the case of schizophrenia. The other words, apperception is under the individual’s theory that schizophrenia could be understood as control. It was primarily because Wundt believed so a breakdown of the attentional processes was ex- strongly that individuals could direct their attention panded by Wundt’s student and friend Emil by exercising their will that he referred to his ap- Kraepelin (1856–1926). According to Kraepelin, a proach to psychology as voluntarism. Wundt even defect in the “central control process” can result in criticized John Stuart Mill’s concept of “mental reduced ability to pay attention, an erratic ability to chemistry,” according to which two or more ideas pay attention, or in extremes in focusing one’s at- could synthesize and give rise to an idea unlike any tention—any one of which would result in severe of those it comprises. Wundt rejected this process mental illness. because it is passive, just as the blending of chemical As we have seen, Wundt was interested in sen- elements is passive. For Wundt the vital difference sations; and in explaining how sensations combined between his position and that of the empiricists was into perceptions, he remained close to traditional his emphasis on the active role of attention. When associationism. With apperception, however, he elements are attended to, they can be arranged and emphasized attention, thinking, and creative syn- rearranged according to the individual’s will, and thesis. All these processes are much more closely thus arrangements never actually experienced before aligned with the rationalist tradition than with the can result. Wundt called this phenomenon creative empiricist tradition. synthesis and thought that it was involved in all acts of apperception. It was, according to Wundt, the Mental Chronometry phenomenon of creative synthesis that made psy- chology a discipline that was qualitatively different In his book Principles of Physiological Psychology from the physical sciences. Blumenthal (1998) sum- (1874/1904), Wundt expressed his belief that re- marizes Wundt’s position as follows: action time could supplement introspection as a

VOLU NTARISM, STRUC TU RALISM , A ND O TH ER EARLY APPROA CHES TO PSYCHOLOGY 269 Stimuli: AB C D E ; Medicine Response: c of The time it took to perform the mental act of Library discrimination was determined by subtracting simple National reaction time from the reaction time that involved discrimination. Donders then made the situation the of more complicated by presenting several different Courtesy stimuli and instructing his subjects to respond to each of them differently. This experimental arrange- ment can be diagrammed as follows: Franciscus Cornelius Donders technique for studying the elemental contents and Stimuli: ABC D E activities of the mind. We saw in Chapter 8 that Friedrich Bessel performed the first reaction-time ;;; ; ; experiment to collect data that could be used to correct for individual differences in reaction times Response: aBc d e among those observing and reporting astronomi- cal events. Helmholtz used reaction time to de- Donders called reactions under these circum- termine the rate of nerve conduction but then stances choice reaction time, and the time required abandoned it because he found it to be an unre- to make a choice was determined by subtracting liable measure. both simple and discrimination reaction times from choice reaction time. Franciscus Cornelius Donders. About 15 years after Helmholtz gave up the technique, Franciscus Wundt’s Use of Donders’s Methods. Wundt Cornelius Donders (1818–1889), a famous enthusiastically seized upon Donders’s methods, be- Dutch physiologist, began an ingenious series of lieving that they could provide a mental chronom- experiments involving reaction time. First, etry, or an accurate cataloging of the time it took to Donders measured simple reaction time by noting perform various mental acts. Almost 20% of the early how long it took a subject to respond to a prede- work done in Wundt’s laboratory involved repeating termined stimulus (such as a light) with a predeter- or expanding on Donders’s research on reaction mined response (such as pressing a button). Next, time. Wundt believed strongly that such research Donders reasoned that by making the situation provided another way (along with experimental in- more complicated, he could measure the time re- trospection) of doing what so many had thought to quired to perform various mental acts. be impossible—experimentally investigating the In one experiment, for example, Donders pre- mind. According to Danziger (1980b), the sented several different stimuli to his subjects but reaction-time studies conducted during the early instructed them to respond to only one, which he years of Wundt’s laboratory constitute the first exam- designated ahead of time. This required the subjects ple of a research program explicitly concerned with to discriminate among the stimuli before respond- psychological issues. ing. The arrangement can be diagrammed as Wundt repeated and expanded many of follows: Donders’s experiments and was originally optimistic

270 CHAPTER 9 about being able to measure precisely the time re- goals, according to Wundt, because the ac- quired to perform various mental operations. tions, or physical forces, for a given psy- However, he eventually abandoned his reaction- chological event may take an infinite variety time studies. One reason was that he, like of physical forms. In one notable example, Helmholtz, found that reaction times varied too he argued that human language cannot be much from study to study, from subject to subject, described adequately in terms of its physical and often for the same subject at different times. shape or of the segmentation of utterances, Reaction time also varied with the sense modality but rather must be described as well in terms stimulated, the intensity of the stimulus, the num- of the rules and intentions underlying ber of items to be discriminated and the degree of speech. For the ways of expressing a thought difference among them, how much practice a sub- in language are infinitely variable. ject received, and several other variables. The situa- (Blumenthal, 1975, p. 1083) tion was much too complicated to obtain measur- able psychological “constants.” Another factor that makes the prediction of After Wundt rejected them, Donders’s meth- psychological events impossible is what Wundt ods were subsequently ignored. However, when called the principle of the heterogony of ends. cognitive psychology was resurrected in the 1960s, According to this principle, a goal-directed activity Donders’s reaction-time procedures were rediscov- seldom attains its goal and nothing else. Something ered and found to be effective in studying cognitive unexpected almost always happens that, in turn, processes (Boynton and Smith, 2006). changes one’s entire motivational pattern: An action arising from a given motive produces not only the ends latent in the Psychological Versus Physical motive, but also other, not directly pur- Causation posed, influences. When these latter enter Wundt believed that psychological and physical into consciousness and stir up feelings and causality were “polar opposites” because physical impulses, they themselves become new events could be predicted on the basis of antecedent motives, which either make the original conditions and psychological events could not. It is act of volition more complicated, or they the will that makes psychological causation qualita- change it or substitute some other act for tively different from physical causation. We have it. (Wundt, 1912/1973, pp. 168–169) already seen that Wundt believed humans can will- Wundt also employed the principle of con- fully arrange the elements of thought into any trasts to explain the complexity of psychological number of configurations (creative synthesis). experience. He maintained that opposite experi- Wundt also believed that because intentions are ences intensify one another. For example, after eat- willfully created, they cannot be predicted or un- ing something sour, something sweet tastes even derstood in terms of physical causation: sweeter, and after a painful experience, pleasure is [Wundt argued that the] physical sciences more pleasurable (Blumenthal, 1980). The related would … describe the act of greeting a principle, the principle toward the develop- friend, eating an apple, or writing a poem in ment of opposites, states that after a prolonged terms of the laws of mechanics or in terms of experience of one type, there is an increased ten- physiology. And no matter how fine- dency to seek the opposite type of experience. This grained and complicated we make such latter principle not only applies to the life of an descriptions, they are not useful as descrip- individual but also to human history in general tions of psychological events. Those events (Blumenthal, 1980). For example, a prolonged pe- need be described in terms of intentions and riod during which rationalism is emphasized (for

VOLU NTARISM, STRUC TU RALISM , A ND O TH ER EARLY APPROA CHES TO PSYCHOLOGY 271 example, the Enlightenment) would tend to be fol- religion, social customs, myths, history, language, lowed by a period during which the human emo- morals, art, and the law. Wundt studied these topics tions would be emphasized, such as in romanticism. for the last 20 years of his life, with his research cul- minating in his 10-volume Völkerpsychologie Volitional Acts Are Creative but Not (“group” or “cultural” psychology). In this work, Free. Wundt was a determinist. That is, he did Wundt emphasized the study of language, and his not believe in free will. Behind all volitional acts long-overlooked conclusions have a strikingly mod- were mental laws that acted on the contents of ern ring to them. consciousness. These laws were unconscious, com- According to Wundt, verbal communication plex, and not knowable through either introspec- begins with a general impression, or unified tion or other forms of experimentation; but laws idea, that one wishes to convey. The speaker ap- they were, and their products were lawful. perceives this general impression and then chooses According to Wundt, the laws of mental activity words and sentences to express it. The linguistic can be deduced only after the fact, and in that sense structures and words the speaker chooses for ex- the psychologist studying them is like a historian: pressing the general impression may or may not do so accurately; and upon hearing his or her Future resultants can never be determined own words, the speaker may say, No, that’s not in advance; but … on the other hand it is what I had in mind, and make another attempt at possible, starting with the given resultants, expression. Once the speaker has chosen sentences to achieve, under favourable conditions, an appropriate for expressing the general idea, the next exact deduction into the components. The step is that the listener must apperceive the speaker’s psychologist, like the psychological histo- words. That is, the listener must understand the rian, is a prophet with his eyes turned to- general impression the speaker is attempting to con- wards the past. He ought not only to be vey. If this occurs, the listener can replicate the able to tell what has happened, but also speaker’s general impression by using any number what necessarily must have happened, ac- of different words or sentence structures. Verbal cording to the position of events. (Wundt, communication, then, is a three-stage process. 1912/1973, p. 167) 1. The speaker must apperceive his or her own The historical approach must be used to inves- general impression. tigate the higher mental processes, and it is that 2. The speaker chooses words and sentence approach that Wundt used in his Völkerpsychologie, structures to express the general impression. to which we turn next. 3. The listener, after hearing the words and sen- tences, must apperceive the speaker’s general impression. VÖLKERPSYC HOLOGIE As evidence for this process, Wundt points out that we often retain the meaning of a person’s words Although Wundt went to great lengths to found ex- long after we have forgotten the specific words the perimental psychology as a separate branch of science person used to convey that meaning. and spent years performing and analyzing experi- ments, he believed, as we have seen, that the higher mental processes, which are reflected in human cul- The Historical Misunderstanding of ture, could be studied only through historical analysis Wundt and naturalistic observation. According to Wundt, the nature of the higher mental processes could be Bringmann and Tweney (1980) observe, “Our mod- deduced from the study of such cultural products as ern conceptions of psychology—its problems, its

272 CHAPTER 9 methods, its relation to other sciences, and its limits— Wundt’s true psychology is in the process of being all derive in large part from [Wundt’s] inquiries” rediscovered, and one reason for this may be psy- (p. 5). And yet Blumenthal (1975) comments, “To chology’s return to an interest in cognition. put it simply, the few current Wundt-scholars (and Strange as it may seem, Wundt may be some do exist) are in fair agreement that Wundt as more easily understood today than he portrayed today in many texts and courses is largely could have been just a few years ago. This fictional and often bears little resemblance to the ac- is because of the current milieu of modern tual historical figure” (p. 1081). Blumenthal (1979) cognitive psychology and of the recent speculates that, to a large extent, Wundt’s early use research on human information processing. of the word element was responsible for his being mis- (Blumenthal, 1975, p. 1087) interpreted by so many: Today I cannot help but wonder whether Wundt had any notion of what might happen the day he chose the word EDWARD BRADFOR D “Elemente” as part of a chapter title. Later generations seized upon the word with TITCHENER such passion that they were eventually led to transform Wundt into something nearly Born on January 11 in Chichester, England, opposite to the original. (p. 549) Edward Bradford Titchener (1867–1927) at- tended Malvern College, a prestigious secondary Earlier in this chapter, we discussed a major school. He then went to Oxford from 1885 to source of the distortion of Wundt’s ideas: 1890, where his academic record was outstanding. Wundt’s psychology reflected the rationalist tradi- While at Oxford, he developed an interest in ex- tion, and U.S. psychology embraced the perimental psychology and translated the third edi- empiricistic-positivistic tradition. The distortion of tion of Wundt’s Principles of Physiological Psychology Wundt’s ideas started early: “For all the American into English. Following graduation from Oxford, students who went abroad to attend Wundt’s lec- Titchener went to Leipzig and studied for two years tures, very little of Wundt’s psychological system with Wundt. survived the return passage” (Blumenthal, 1980, p. During his first year at Leipzig, Titchener 130). Edward Titchener (whom we consider next) struck up a friendship with Frank Angell, a fellow was an Englishman who came to the United States student who was to play an important role in bring- and came to be viewed as the U.S. representative of ing Titchener to the United States. After complet- Wundtian ideas. That was a mistake: ing his studies with Wundt, Angell went to Cornell While the stimulus of some of Wundt’s University in Ithaca, New York, to establish a psy- ideas is detectable in Titchener’s psychol- chological laboratory. After only one year, how- ogy, an enormous cultural and intellectual ever, Angell decided to accept a position at gulf separated the general approach of Stanford University. When Titchener earned his these two psychologists.… It seems that doctorate in 1892, he was offered the job as [Titchener] genuinely could not think in Angell’s replacement. Titchener was also offered a terms of categories that differed funda- job at Oxford, but there he would have no labora- mentally from the English positivist tradi- tory facilities. In 1892 he accepted the offer from tion. (Danziger, 1980a, pp. 84–85) Cornell and soon developed the largest doctoral program in psychology in the United States. By misrepresenting Wundt, psychology has When Titchener arrived at Cornell, he was 25 years overlooked a rich source of ideas. Fortunately, old, and he remained there for the rest of his life.

VOLU NTARISM, STRUC TU RALISM , A ND O TH ER EARLY APPROA CHES TO PSYCHOLOGY 273 of developments in abnormal, clinical, develop- mental, animal-comparative, social psychology, and psychological testing, and he even supported investigations in these areas. In spite of their useful- ness, however, he believed that they did not repre- sent pure, experimental psychology—psychology as he defined it. Anecdotes about Titchener’s authoritarian style abound. It is said that he refused a dinner invitation from Cornell’s president because the president had Akron not called in person to invite him. When the presi- of dent protested that he did not have time to make University such personal calls, Titchener said that he at least could have sent his coachman with the invitation. Archives–The The coachman came, and Titchener went to dinner (Hilgard, 1987, p. 76). Needless to say, Titchener’s students were in awe of him. Hilgard (1987) de- © Psychology scribes a lasting experience that Edwin Boring, then a graduate student at Cornell, had with Titchener: Once Boring was invited to dinner at Edward Bradford Titchener Titchener’s to celebrate Titchener’s birth- day. After dinner the cigars were passed and Boring could not refuse under the However, Titchener remained a loyal British sub- circumstances, though he had never ject and never became a U.S. citizen. smoked a cigar. The consequence was that Titchener ruled his domain with an iron fist. he had to excuse himself presently because He determined what the research projects would of his nausea and go outside to throw up. be and which students would work on them. For Still, the honor of having been invited him, psychology was experimental psychology (as once was so great that every year thereafter he defined it); and everything that preceded his Titchener’s birthday would be celebrated version of psychology was not psychology at all: by dinner at the Boring home, followed by “To Titchener, the American psychologies prior the smoking of a cigar, with the inevitable to the 1880s—and much since then—were little consequence. (p. 106) more than watered-down Cartesianisms, codified phrenologies, or worst of all, thinly disguised the- Although Titchener was domineering concern- ology” (Evans, 1984, p. 18). When the school of ing psychology, it would be a mistake to conclude behaviorism was introduced by John B. Watson in that he was narrow-minded. He was an accom- the early 1900s (see Chapter 12), Titchener (1914) plished musician and provided instruction in music claimed that it was a technology of behavior but at Cornell until a music department was established. not part of psychology. Titchener was also opposed He conducted a small orchestra in his home on to seeking psychological information for its applied Sunday nights, and students with musical ability value; science seeks pure knowledge, and psychol- were encouraged to participate. Casual, nonpsycho- ogy (his psychology) was a science: “Science deals, logical conversation followed the concerts. He was a not with values, but with facts. There is no good or dedicated and knowledgeable collector of ancient bad, sick or well, useful or useless, in science” coins, and his home was described as a “veritable (Titchener, 1915, p. 1). Titchener was well aware museum.” In addition, he was well versed in several

274 CHAPTER 9 languages. In his autobiography, Boring (1961) pro- Titchener’s Paradoxical Relationship vided a sample of Titchener the generalist: with Female Psychologists He always seemed to me the nearest ap- proach to genius of anyone with whom I Although the APA had admitted women as mem- have been closely associated.… He was bers almost from its inception, when Titchener cre- competent with languages, and could ad ated the Experimentalists, women were excluded. lib in Latin when the occasion required it. The ban on women lasted from the organization’s If you had mushrooms, he would tell you inception until its reorganization two years after at once how they should be cooked. If you Titchener’s death, in 1929. Although membership were buying oak for a new floor, he would included many of the most illustrious psychologists at once come forward with all the advan- in the United States, few criticized the ban and tages of ash. If you were engaged to be several supported it. married, he would have his certain and Of the female psychologists excluded from insistent advice about the most unexpected Titchener’s organization, Christine Ladd-Franklin aspects of your problems, and if you were (see Chapter 8) was the most outraged. In an ex- honeymooning, he would write to remind change of letters with Titchener, she expressed ex- you, as he did me, on what day you ought treme indignation with his “old-fashioned” policy. to be back at work. (pp. 22–23) To Titchener’s claim that he believed women might be offended by the excessive cigar smoke at Incidentally, Boring (1886–1968) dedicated his the meetings, she replied, “Have your smokers sep- classic History of Experimental Psychology (1950) to arated if you like (tho I for one always smoke when Titchener. This book did much to perpetuate the I am in fashionable society), but a scientific meeting myth that Wundt’s and Titchener’s versions of psy- (however personal) is a public affair, and it is not chology were similar. open to you to leave out a class of fellow workers Titchener was a charter member of the without extreme discourtesy” (Scarborough and American Psychological Association (APA) but Furumoto, 1987, p. 125). Ladd-Franklin’s com- never attended a meeting, even when the national ments did not cause Titchener to change his exclu- meeting was held in Ithaca. Instead, in 1904 sionary policy. he founded his own organization, the However, Titchener’s first doctoral candidate Experimentalists, and until his death in 1927, he was Margaret Floy Washburn who, in June 1894, ran it according to his own ideas of what psychol- became the first woman ever to receive a doctorate ogy should be. Membership was by Titchener’s in- in psychology. Titchener was so impressed by vitation only. Titchener apparently felt the need to Washburn’s dissertation, which explored the influ- create an organization separate from the APA for ence of visual imagery on judgments of tactile dis- two reasons. First, he was upset because the APA tance and direction, that he took the unusual step of failed to expel one of its members whom he be- submitting it to Wundt for publication in his jour- lieved to be guilty of plagiarism. Second, and prob- nal Philosophical Studies. Washburn went on to make ably most important, he believed that the APA was significant contributions to comparative psychology too friendly toward a variety of applied topics and (see Chapter 11) and to be elected president of the therefore was drifting away from pure experimental APA in 1921. psychology. (For a description of the goals and Other women to whom Titchener taught his characteristics of Titchener’s Experimentalists, see version of experimental psychology included Furumoto, 1988; for a discussion of how the Celestia Susannah Parrish (1855–1918). In 1893 Experimentalists were reorganized following Titchener, then a newly appointed professor at Titchener’s death, see Goodwin, 2005.) Cornell, accepted Parrish as a summer school stu-

VOLU NTARISM, STRUC TU RALISM , A ND O TH ER EARLY APPROA CHES TO PSYCHOLOGY 275 dent. During that summer, Parrish persuaded Titchener set as goals for psychology the determi- Titchener to furnish her with a tailor-made corre- nation of the what, how, and why of mental life. spondence course that she could take while teaching The what was to be learned through careful intro- at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (R-MWC) spection. The goal here was a cataloging of the the following fall. Parrish, who took additional sum- basic mental elements that account for all conscious mer school classes from Titchener in 1894 and 1895, experience. The how was to be an answer to the went on to establish the first psychology laboratory in question of how the elements combine, and the the southern United States at R-MWC in why was to involve a search for the neurological Lynchburg, Virginia, and to chair the Department correlates of mental events. of Psychology and Pedagogy at the State Normal Unlike Wundt, who sought to explain con- School in Georgia, which later became part of the scious experience in terms of unobservable cogni- University of Georgia (Rowe and Murray, 1979). tive processes, Titchener sought only to describe Including Washburn and Parrish, half of mental experience. Titchener, accepting the posi- Titchener’s first 12 doctorates were awarded to tivism of Ernst Mach, believed that speculation women, and of the 56 doctoral students he directed concerning unobservable events has no place in sci- between 1894 and 1927, 19 were women. ence. It is interesting to note that Titchener took Titchener took women into his graduate program the same position toward the use of theory as B. F. at a time when universities such as Harvard and Skinner (see Chapter 13) was to take many years Columbia would not. “More women completed later. For both, theorizing meant entering the their PhD degrees with him than with any other world of metaphysical speculation; and for both, male psychologist of his generation.… Titchener science meant carefully describing what could be also favored hiring women for academic positions observed. However, whereas Skinner focused on when they were the best candidates for a job. In observable behavior, Titchener focused on observ- one case he did so, even over the objection of the able (via introspection) conscious events. It was the dean” (Evans, 1991, p. 90). structure of the mind that Titchener wanted to de- So what was Titchener’s attitude toward female scribe, and thus he named his version of psychology psychologists? It has been suggested that during structuralism (Titchener, 1898, 1899). Titchener’s tenure, Cornell had unusually liberal What Titchener sought was a type of periodic and advanced ideas about women to which table for mental elements, like that which chemists Titchener was obliged to conform. However, given had developed for the physical elements. Once the what we know about his domineering personality, basic elements were isolated, the laws governing it is difficult to imagine him conforming to any- their combination into more complex experiences thing he was not sympathetic toward. could be determined. Finally, the neurophysiologi- As long as Titchener was healthy, structuralism cal events correlated with mental phenomena could flourished; but when he died on August 3, 1927, of be determined. In 1899 Titchener defined the goal a brain tumor at the age of 60, structuralism essen- of structuralism as describing the is of mental life; he tially died with him. The reasons or the demise of was willing to leave the is for for others to ponder. structuralism will be discussed later. Titchener’s Use of Introspection Psychology’s Goals Titchener’s use of introspection was more compli- Titchener agreed with Wundt that psychology cated than Wundt’s. Typically, Wundt’s subjects should study immediate experience—that is, con- would simply report whether an experience was trig- sciousness. He defined consciousness as the sum total gered by an external object or event. Titchener’s sub- of mental experience at any given moment and jects, however, had to search for the elemental in- mind as the accumulated experiences of a lifetime. gredients of their experiences. Their job was to