The Psychological Record. 1975. 25. 583-589.

COMMENTS AND QUERIES:

HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY: WHAT SCIENTIFIC BENEFITS?
A brief article in this journal proposed that the history of science
might be regarded as a scientific method, since scientific work centers in
the behavior of individuals. In an attempt to confirm or disconfirm the
thesis as it applies to psychology, consideration is given to (a) the
circumstances affecting the theories and practices of psychologists, (b)
the influence of metaphysical dualism upon the misconstruction of the
nature of organisms and their behavior, and (c) some outstanding traits of
successful science.
Exactly 15 years ago there appeared in this journal an extremely
brief article (Kantor, 1960) on the theme that the history of science
may well be regarded as a method of science. The writer supported
his thesis by exhibiting the fallacy indulged in by eminent physicists
that they studied" creations of mind," instead of things and events
they confronted. Conspicuous in their thinking was the ignorance of
the evolution of psychology. They did not know that the history of
psychology made plain the sociopolitical source and origin of the myth
of mind, as well as the need for scientific psychology to liquidate the
myth.
Today it appears appropriate to enlarge upon the theme proposed
in the above-mentioned article. Critical observation of the de-
velopment of the sciences provides a number of important lessons
useful for the advancement of science and the improvement of
scientific workers. This is as true of psychology as of other sciences.
In fact, since psychology is concerned with the behavior of scientists,
psychological history is capable of illuminating other scientific
disciplines as well. 1

Caveat Lector. It is understood, of course, that by the history of

psychology we refer exclusively to the authentic records of in-
teractions of organisms with their surrounding objects and con-
ditions. What ordinarily goes by the name "history of psychology"
is the indiscriminate collection of traditional beliefs about psychic
processes beyond the boundaries of scientific investigation. It is only
authentic psychological history that can promote scientific interests.
There is no intellectual profit to be gained from pondering upon the
putative gulf that separates the career of the unified and intuitive soul
of Leibniz, Locke, Kant, or Reid versus the atomic sensations and
associations of Berkeley, Hume, the Mills, or Wundt.
From the study of evolution of naturalistic psychology is gleaned
significant understanding concerning the behavior of human
organisms whether categorized as psychologists or other types of
scientists.
Furthermore, from the knowledge of the growth of psychology
one can derive an ability to analyze the influences of social
institutions upon scientific workers.
1This in no sense implies that psychology is somehow basic to the other sciences as implied
by Stevens (1936).
584 COMMENTS AND QUERIES

Finally, since events and the study of them are all interrelated,
much is learned from the history of psychology about the nature of
science and of its various unit disciplines, as well as the particulars
of psychological development.

I. BEHAVIOR OF HUMAN ORGANISMS AS SCIENTISTS

Scientists as Persons in Human Milieux

The history of psychology, as the histories of every science,
emphasizes as its major task the study by particular persons of things
and events that interest them either as private or public enterprises.
Above all, the entire behavior of scientific persons consists of
naturalistic activities, whether or not they yield to the temptation of
verbalizing about transcendentals along with their interactions with
things and events.
Because psychological workers are members of specific
communities, they are perforce subject to and guided by local and
general group influences that give shape and direction to their
investigative behavior. Examples are so multifarious as to permit
mentioning only a few. In the first place, scientists of every type of
specialization where transcendental institutions prevail cannot
escape extra spatial ways of thinking, and in consequence indulge in
dualistic interpretations of their findings.
Such general influences may be called religious. Other more
localized institutional influences no less sinister may be categorized
as economic, social, political, profeSSional, and so on. Because it is
unprofitable and even detrimental not to move with the mainstream, it
is wise to be a member of in-groups and be accepted and rewarded by
them. Then there is the magnet of success with its revenue of honors
and appreciation by the intellectual establishment. Again, it might be
the subtle influences of family status and ideals, or the multiple
complex variables of national prosperity, war or peace, and so on. To
such influences must be added the power of every variety of social
custom and professional style. In the psychological domain the styles
are exemplified by the succession of dominating interests, the
metaphysical, the antiphilosophic trend, the philosophical revival,
learnology, the eras of physiological interpretation, the statistical
movement, the computerological age, and of course the age of
professional and community services.

Hazards of Scientific Activity

One of the most valuable lessons to be learned from a critical
study of the history of psychology is the constant necessity of
scientists to restrain the tendency to intermix presuppositions with
the observational descriptions of events. The best illustration of this
is the overt or covert intrusion of traditional psychophysical duality
in scientific thinking. How greatly this dualism pervades science is
indicated by the reference of an eminent biologist to "the old but ever
fresh body-mind question [Simpson, 1975]."
 COMMENTS AND QUERIES 585

The physical-mental dichotomy clearly represents a basic

cultural influence. The history of psychology also brings to light many
specialized traditions that affect basic assumptions. In addition,
there are numerous localized traditions that pertain to investigative
procedures. Two examples are experimentation and quantification:
Experimentation. It is axiomatic that experimentation is the
acme of observation when possible or applicable. What the history of
psychology teaches about this subject is as interesting as it is
important. For one thing one learns that it is unwise to insist upon
experimentation, even when it is not arbitrary manipulation, to the
neglect of field observation.
The histories of all sciences provoke the pertinent question: Are
not the goals of science to ascertain the structure and function of
things and events substantially compromised by the necessities of
laboratory manipulation?
Butan even more pertinent problem arises here. The history of
psychology reveals a trend toward placing a greater value upon
doctrines than upon the results of observation. The evidence offered
by the history of psychology is the support lent to the mentalistic
fallacies of Fechner, Wundt, and a large succession of followers that
one can experiment upon transcendent nonentities such as
"sensations" and "mental images." Does not experimentation a
outrance imply an intimate association of psychological events with
the occultism of historical theology and spiritistic philosophy? A
pertinent query here is: Why have so many erstwhile pulpit aspirants
become experimental psychologists? 2
Quantification. Similar considerations arise from the ex-
amination of mathematical developments in psychology. Obviously,
no quantification is possible of nonexistent psychical entities.
Accordingly, as in the development of experimentation there is no
correlation between hypotheses and actual data. What the history of
psychology shows is that quantification concerns always and
everywhere the records of the behavior of subjects and stimulus
objects. In other words, despite the conventional view that
measurement is the attachment of numbers to objects or events
according to rule (Campbell, 1920), actually quantization always
involves numerous operations with things and events. Types and
styles of numerals imply the identifications of things, the creation of
scales and many other interactions with objects under specified
auspices and conditions.
Can anyone doubt the claims of the history of psychology to be a
valuable aid in the development of the science itself? When the history
of psychology is pursued as the origin and development of a discipline,
much can be learned about the results of observing things and events
along with established presuppositions which condition the processes
which support the conclusions or become blocks in the way of proper
descriptions and interpretations.
2 In the USA the first systetnatic textbooks on experimental psychology were published by
men of the cloth or clergymen manques.
586 COMMENTS AND QUERIES

History pursued with these guidelines may start with a primary

interest in one type of event but sooner or later is brought into contact
with other types. Actually, the most damaging attitudes toward the
history of physics are owing to the serious misinterpretations of the
nature of psychological events. Gradually, of course, each science
misled the others in reciprocal local situations. The fable that the
sciences are concerned with "matter" (physics, chemistry), "life"
(biology), and "mind" (psychology) admirably illustrates the
situation.

II. HOW METAPHYSICAL DUALISM MISCONSTRUED

THE NATURE OF MAN AND HIS BEHAVIOR
Section I suggested how a critical reading of the history of
psychology could lay bare the metamorphosis of things and events into
the mental and the material. The result for the sciences was of course
disastrous, with the baleful effects operating today as in the entire
intellectual history of Western thinking.
In the present section it is proposed that a critical reading of the
records of psychology could be most revealing in pointing out how
metaphysical dualism served to misconstrue human nature and the
interaction of persons with things and events located in their
circumam biance.
Just as the naturalistic metaphysics of the Greeks became
transmogrified into spiritistic verbalism, so the human organism
became dichotomized into a soul and a body. The former, as is
commonly known, became successively transformed into mind,
consciousness, and finally mental states and functions resident in a
part of the body, especially the brain.
What the history of psychology makes clear is how all the
traditional mysteries and puzzles of psychic privacy, subjectivity,
mental powers, and misinterpretations of behavior might all have
been averted by cleaving to the plain observations that all powerful
and competent actions are definitely the cumulative developments of
interactions of biologically integrated individuals with the things,
persons, and events constituting their environments. Instead, the
history of psychology retails the misadventures of the "mind" or
"brain" in spontaneous performances without much regard to the
things surrounding them. In fact, those things are presumed to be
created by the soul, mind, or brain. The great misinterpretations of
psychology are well represented by the hoax of innateness, as in
treatments of intelligence, and transmigration of souls as in the
prevailing doctrine of mental inheritance in genetic succession.

III. SCIENCE IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF

PSYCHOLOGICAL HISTORY
Because psychology is the science of interactions of organisms
with stimulus objects and functions, it may well be expected to provide
relevant perspectives for the nature and processes of science as one
of the most useful and rational fields of human evolution.
 COMMENTS AND QUERIES 587

Science as Orientational Evolution

Like all complex enterprises, the sciences also must be
considered as evolved processes of human adaptation to the
surrounding plenum. The history of psychology suggests that
scientific work is a development of the orientation behavior which is
characteristic of all complex organisms. The differences between the
numerous successive stages of orientation may be summarized as
cumulative expertness and the development of analytic and predic-
tive competence to adapt to various interactional fields. These
interactional fields may be gravitational, electromagnetic, bio-
adaptational, or psychological. The expanding capacities are based
upon successive interactions with the various fields.

Construction and Events

Probably one of the most valuable lessons that the history of
psychology teaches about science is the essential respect that must be
accorded the difference between constructions and the events
concerning which hypotheses, inferences, and laws are structured. It
is inescapable that at bottom all scientific work and products hark
back to the interactions of individuals with objects, including
themselves, other individuals, and the products of such interactions.
The biochemistry of metabolism, for example, goes back by several
stages to the elementary processes of ingestion and digestion of
materials that became the habitual food objects of persons and
groups.
To keep alert to the relations of constructions and events in
science is to be prepared for judicious consideration of a number of
problems essential for a proper attitude toward science and scientific
work. The following paragraphs direct attention toward a few critical
problems.

Fields Versus Innate Properties

From the psychological standpoint scientific work consists of the
interbehavior of observers or investigators with the interbehavior of
events with other Jevents on the basis of former or current specific
conditions. In the simplest event situations the current conditions
might be pressure, temperature, and the proximity of other objects or
events. In more complex situations the acutest conditions may be
greatly complicated. The various situations constitute event fields so
that scientific work comprises a minimum of two related fields.
In consequence the basic scientific construct is the field unit
rather than inherent properties localized in either of the factors in
interaction. His the lack of field construction ideas that ha.s been a
stumbling block in the way of scientific progress throughout the
development of science.
Now it is implied in the field construction that the structures and
functions of objects are only relatively more prominent and more
potent in field integrations. Especially in the field of psychology the
notions of independent and dependent factors are simply heritages of
588 COMMENTS AND QUERIES

the old metaphysical cause. Actually, the so-called dependent and

independent factors are interdependent. All differentiations and
emphases of dependence and independence are only partial con-
structions of workers and should not be confused with any sort of de-
pendence or independence in the events that are studied.

Coordination Among Scientific Disciplines

Science seen in psychological perspective discovers no
hierarchical order in the various sciences. It has been a long-time
tradition that physics is more basic than any other science and that the
other sciences all depend upon physics for their criteria and validity.
An interesting variety of the fallacy that physics is basic to the other
sciences we designate as Gloria in Excelsis Physica. Such a laudatory
estimation of physics was exhibited by Professor H. A. Rowland in an
address to the first general open meeting in 1900 of the American
Physical Society:
We meet here in the interest of a science above all sciences which
deals with the foundation of the Universe ... with the constitution of matter
from which everything in the Universe is made and with the ether of space
by which alone the various portions of matter forming the Universe affect
each other ....

We form a small and unique body of men, a new variety of the human
race as one of our greatest scientists calls it, whose views of what
constitutes the greatest achievement in life are very different from those
around us. In this respect we form an aristocracy, not of wealth, not of
pedigree, but of intellect and of ideals [Rowland, 1900].

Despite the difficulties and uncertainties engendered more

recently in the department of physics, the tradition of the lofty
eminence of the discipline still prevails. But what critical ob-
servation makes clear is that the multiplicity of things and events in
the biological, anthropological, and psychological domains is ignored
and unaccounted for.
At this point it may be mentioned that the entire development of
relativity, quantum mechanics, and the vast reaches of electronic
theory and technology were unknown and unsuspected in the day when
physicists thought tha t only the location of the final decimal point was
needed to round out the omniscient science of physics. It is surely a
unique kind of myopia to exalt one type of data and to discount the value
and importance of the efforts of workers to understand the many other
coordinate types of events in the great stream of existence.
Freedom from metaphysical misconceptions permits the con-
templation of the vast events in the biological domain as well as all
the complex interactions of organisms as they discriminate, hope,
create, judge, reason, and perform the intricate behavior which is
required by the evolution of organisms and their complex world.
Moreover, the realization that all sciences are coordinate
a ttacks upon important problems frees one from the need to resort to
any form of metaphysical abstraction such as "matter" in physics,
 COMMENTS AND QUERIES 589

"vitalism" in biology, or the "psychic" and "consciousness" in

psychology.

Autonomy of the Sciences

One of the most acute consequences sustained from the ancient
metaphysical dichotomy of the world was the long-lasting prejudice
against the so-called nonexact sciences. The prevailing institution of
spirit lent credence to the dogma that psychology concerned itself
with entities not localizable in space and time. However, as the
history of psychology clearly shows, to impute such subject matter to
psychology and to ascribe a career of transcendental preoccupations
to psychology is based upon nothing more than fallacious phi-
losophies. Such a rendering of psychology does no justice to the ac-
tual evolution of psychology.
As institutions devoted to the observation and investigation of
events, every scientific discipline is autonomous and sovereign in its
own domain. No scientific discipline is reducible to any other. There
is a stable and valid criterion for every discipline in the existence of
specifically different event fields.
OBSERVER
REFERENCES
CAMPBELL, N. R. 1920. Physics, the Elements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
KANTOR, J. R. 1960. History of science as scientific method. The Psychological Record, 10,
187 -189.
ROWLAND, H. A.1900. The highest aim of the physicist. Bulletin of the American Physical
Society, 1, 4..5. In D. M. Livingston, 1973. The Master of Light, A Biography of
Albert A. Michelson. New York: Scribners.
SIMPSON, G. G. 1975. Review of Studies in the Psychology of Biology. Science, 188, 838.
STEVENS, S. S. 1936. Psychology: The propaedeutic science. Philosophy of Science, 3, 90-
103.