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    Social Factors in the Origins of a New Science: The Case of PsychologyAuthor(s): Joseph Ben-David and Randall CollinsReviewed work(s):Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Aug., 1966), pp. 451-465Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2090769.

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    AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEWAugust 1966 Volume 31, No. 4

    SOCIAL FACTORS IN THE ORIGINS OF A NEW SCIENCE:THE CASE OF PSYCHOLOGY*JOSEPH BEN-DAVID RANDALL COLLINS

    Hebrew University, Jerusalem University of California, BerkeleyThe uninterrupted growth of a scientific field depends upon the existence of a scientificcommunity permanently devoting itself to the field. Therefore a new idea is not sufficient tostart the take-off into sustained growth in a new field; a new role must be created as well.In scientific psychology, this occurred in the late nineteenth century in Germany. UsingGermany as the positive case, and France, Britain and the United States as negative cases,it is shown that the new role resulted from academic career opportunities favoring themobility of practitioners and students of physiology into other fields, and from the relativelylow academic standing of speculative philosophy and its consequent receptivity to personsand ideas which promised to turn the study of the human mind into an experimental science.

    THE PROBLEMTHE growth of scientificdisciplines,asof many otherphenomena,can be repre-sented by an S-shaped curve.' Firstthere is a long period, going back to pre-history, during which there are various upsand downsbut no continuousgrowth; this isfollowed by a spurt of accelerated growth;eventually the development slows down andapproaches a ceiling.2 This typical patternis obtained whether one uses as the index ofgrowth the numbers of publications, dis-coveries, or people doing research in the

    subject; the pattern correspondswell withthe intuitive picture one obtains from thehistories of the differentsciences.The process, as presented in the accountsof scientific development, can be presentedschematically as follows. Ideas beget ideasuntil the time is ripe for a new and coherentsystem of thought and research to arise.Thenceforththe system possessesa life of itsown. It is identifiedas a new field of science,is eventually given a name of its own (suchas chemistry or psychology), and growsrapidly into maturity. This still leaves openthe questionof beginnings.If the whole storyconsisted of ideas begetting ideas, thengrowth would have to start at an exponen-tially acceleratingrate (to a point of satura-tion) right from the first relevant idea. Sincethis does not happen, it has to be assumedeither that only a few ideas are capable ofgenerating new ones-the rest simply beingsterile-or that ideas are not self-generating,and, even if potentially fertile, have to becarriedfromperson to person and implantedin some special way in order to give rise tonew generation.Common sense indicates that both state-

    * This paper is partly based on an M.A. thesisby Randall Collins (University of California atBerkeley, 1965). The authors are indebted to Pro-fessors David Krech and Harold Wilensky for theircomments and suggestions, and to the ComparativeNational Development Project of the Institute ofInternational Studies of the University of Californiaat Berkeley for financial support.1 Derek de Solla Price, Little Science, Big Science,New York: Columbia University Press, 1963, pp. 1-32; Gerald Holton, Scientific Research and Schol-arship: Notes Toward the Design of Proper Scales,Daedalus, 91 (Spring, 1962), pp. 362-99.2Although this may be followed by escalationinto further growth, it is unnecessary for the pur-pose of the present paper to consider this possibility.

    451

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    452 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEWments are true. Not all originalideas are fer-tile, and some potentially fertile ideas arelost or left unused because they are notcommunicatedeffectively. Nevertheless his-tories of science have concentrated on thefirst type of explanation. If an idea has nohistoricalconsequences, he historian of ideaswill take it for granted that something musthave been at fault with the idea. Conversely,when an idea with a seemingly not-so-bril-liant beginning proves capable of furthergrowth, he will assume that it must have hadhidden qualities which ensured its success.Obviously he will find no difficulty after thefact in demonstratingthe correctness of flishunches.In this paper, we shall pursue the othertack. Instead of trying to show what in-herent qualities made one idea fertile andanother infertile, we shall ask how it hap-pened that at a certain point in time thetransmission and diffusion of ideas relatingto a given field became strikingly increasedin effectiveness. Instead of contemplatingthe internal structure of intellectual muta-tions,3 we shall concentrate on the environ-mental mechanisms which determine theselection of mutations. Specifically, we pos-tulate that: (1) the ideas necessary for thecreationof a new disciplineare usually avail-able over a relatively prolonged period oftime and in several places;4 (2) only a fewof these potential beginnings lead to furthergrowth; (3) such growth occurs where andwhen persons become interested in the newidea, not only as intellectual content butalso as a potential means of establishing anew intellectual identity and particularly anew occupational role; and (4) the condi-tions under which such interest arises canbe identified and used as the basis foreventually building a predictive theory.

    THE CASE OF PSYCHOLOGY: THE TAKE-OFFINTO ACCELERATED GROWTH

    The earliest beginnings of psychology

    reach back into prehistory. Explanations ofhuman thought and behavior are inherent inevery language; with the rise of philosophies,more abstract and systematic formulationscame into being. Finally, in the nineteenthcentury, the methods of natural science wereapplied to the subject. Using publicationsin experimental and physiological psychol-ogy as an index of the growth of modernscientific psychology, we find that the ac-celeration started about 1870, and that theperiod of rapid growth was reached about1890. (Table 1)..5The place where accelerated growth be-gan can be ascertained from comparisons ofthe growth in different countries. The pat-tern is similar to that found in other nine-teenth century sciences. The main develop-ment occurs in Germany, to be continued inthe twentieth century in the United States,with a much more modest growth in Britain.For a while France also seems to developstrongly, but production there declines soonafter the initial spurt around the turn of thecentury (Table 2.) Moreover, French de-velopment seems to have been isolated fromthe mainstream; it has been quoted in majortextbooks less than its relative share in pro-duction of publications would indicate.(Table 3).These are the data to be explained. Sincethe conditions under which something newis created are not necessarily the same as theconditions under which the innovation is ef-fectively received somewhere else, we shallconfine ourselves to the explanation of thetake-off, and leave the analysis of the dif-fusion of the new field for another discussion.

    PROCEDUREOriginally the subject matter of psychol-ogv was divided between speculative Dhi-

    This is not to say that such contemplation isnecessarily useless. Its potential utility depends onfinding identifiable characteristics which predictwhat is and what is not a fertile idea.4This accords with the oft-noted phenomenon ofmultiple discoveries in science. Cf. Robert K. Mer-ton, Singletons and Multiples in Scientific Discov-ery: A Chapter in the Sociology of Science, Pro-ceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 105(1961), pp. 471-486.

    5These publications do not represent the totalnumber of reports of experimental and physiologi-cal researches in psychology, but rather review ar-ticles, books, and papers dealing with the theoryand methodology of experimental and physiologicalpsychology. Complete tables of research reports arenot available for this period; however, this particu-lar bibliography may be more useful for our pur-poses than they would have been. It represents aset of self-conscious summaries of scientific workin the field; therefore it indicates the rise of interestin scientific psychology better than would a collec-tion of researches which may not at the time havebeen considered relevant to psychology.

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    ORIGINS OF PSYCHOLOGY 453TABLE 1. NUMBER OF PUBLICATIONS IN EXPERIMENTAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY,

    BY NATIONALITY AND DECADE, 1797-1896Nationality

    Decade German French British American Other Total1797-1806 1 1 21807-1816 2 1 31817-1826 1 3 41827-1836 4 3 2 91837-1846 11 4 2 1 181847-1856 15 2 6 1 .. 241857-1866 16 8 7 3 341867-1876 38 11 15 1 4 691877-1886 57 22 17 9 12 1171887-1896 84 50 13 78 21 246

    Source: J. Mark Baldwin (ed.), Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, New York: Macmillan,1905, vol. III, Part 2, pp. 950-64.losophy and physiology. Towards 1880, spe-cialized psychological publications came toconstitute the bulk of the work in the field,and philosophical psychology was widelydisparaged by the new psychologists. 6The acceleration of production was asso-ciated with a growing consciousness amongthese men of the existence of a distinct fieldof psychology, and of the need for distin-guishing their work from traditional fields.It is usually assumed that the emergenceofa new group devoting itself to a new spe-cialty is an effect of intellectual growth.As knowledge in a field increases, no one isable to master all of it any more, and spe-cialization is the necessary result. We shall

    try to show, however, that the new scien-tific identity may precede and indeed makepossible the growth in scientific production.At least in the rise of the new psychology,social factors played an important role, in-dependently of intellectual content.The first step is to determine the personswho consciously identified themselves aspractitioners of a new science investigatingmental phenomena by means of empiricalmethods such as experimentation, systema-tical observation, and measurement, (irre-spective of whether they called themselvespsychologists or experimental philoso-phers ). Operationally, there are three con-ditions for the existence of such a new sci-entific identity: (1) the person must doempirical work in the subject matter ofpsychology; (2) he must not have some

    6 Richard Miiller-Freienfels, Die Hauptrichtungder gegenwirtigen Psychologie, Leipzig: Quelle &Meyer, 1929, pp. 3-6.

    TABLE 2. ANNUAL AVERAGE NUMBER OF PUBLICATIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY, BY LANGUAGE, 1896-1955English

    Years German Total American British French Other Total1896-1900 764 745 .... ... 709 270 24941901-1905 1119 747 .... ... 660 210 27811906-1910 1508 941 .... ... 478 158 31851911-1915 1356 1090 .... ... 376 160 29821916-1920 386 1639 .... ... 159 191 23951921-1925 1163 1850 .... ... 326 315 36531926-1930 1761 2654 .... .. 428 913 59511931-1935 1362 3371 .... ... 472 975 63761936-1940 1160 .... 3238 328 299 747 63301941-1945 216 .... 3411 296 72 299 44651946-1950 203 .... 4257 346 246 560 56621951-1955 459 .... 5955 557 502 572 8385

    Source: Samuel W. Fernberger, Number of, Psychological Publications in Different Languages,American Journal of Psychology, 30 (1917), 141-50; 39 (1926), 578-80; 49 (1936), 680-84; 59 (1946),284-90; 69 (1956), 304-09.

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    454 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEWTABLE 3. PER CENT DISTRIBUTIONoF REFERENCESIN PSYCHOLOGYTEXTS BY LANGUAGE

    LanguageText Total English German French Other

    Ladd, Elements of Physiological Psychology, 1887. 100.0 (420) 21.1 70.0 7.4 0.5Ladd & Woodworth, 2nd edition, 1911. 100.0 (581) 45.6 47.0 5.2 2.2Woodworth, Experimental Psychology, 1938. 100.0 (1735) 70.9 24.5 3.1 1.5Woodworth & Schlosberg, 2nd edition, 1954. 100.0 (2359) 86.1 10.9 2.5 0.5

    other clearly established scientific identity,such as physiologist; (3) he must be a partof an on-going group of scientific psycholo-gists, rather than an isolated individual.Taking these points in order: (1) Thefirst group to be excluded are speculativephilosopherssuch as Descartes, Locke, Hart-ley, Herbart, and even Lotze as well asvarious socialphilosophers. Howevermuchthey may have theorized about the use ofempirical methods, they are not classifiedas scientific psychologists if they did notactually use such methods. (2) Also ex-cluded are those natural scientists, princi-pally physiologists, whose experiments canbe retrospectively included in psychology,but whose identificationwas clearly with thenatural sciences. Psychiatrists are also ex-cluded: at the time in question, they be-longed to a medical discipline which wasquite independent of philosophy, and thusof psychology. Moreover, their theorieswererather self-consciouslybased on the views ofnineteenth-century medical science.7(3) Finally, we must make an operationaldistinction among three categories of per-sons: forerunners, founders, and followers.The first two are distinguished by whetheror not they had students who became psy-chologists.An exampleof a forerunnerwouldbe the scientific dilettante-such as FrancisGalton. These men did not consider them-selves psychologists, nor were they so identi-fied by their contemporaries.Generally theyremained isolated from any specific disci-pline until historians of the science-whichwas created by other forces-offered them aposthumous home.

    Those who were not themselves the stu-dents of psychologists, but who trained theirown disciplines as psychologists, are thefoundersof the new discipline of psychology.Their disciples are the followers. The lattertwo classes can be considered psychologistsproper. What we have referred to as dis-cipleship -the fact of having studied undera man, or having worked under him as alaboratory assistant-is, we believe, an ade-quate measure of the existence of a consci-ously self-perpetuating identity, a move-ment or discipline. The use of purelyobjective criteria in establishingsuch lines ofdescent has the disadvantage that we maymisjudge the extent of actual influence andidentification,but the overall picture shouldbe accurate.The names to be classifiedare taken fromfive histories of psychology, including oneswritten in each of the countries to be exam-ined.8 For Germanyand the United States,all names between 1800 and 1910 weretaken. Beyond the latter date, the numbersof psychologists in these countries becomeso great that the histories are necessarily se-lective; moveover, scientific psychology waswell into its second and third generations inthese countries by this point. For Britainand France, all names between 1800 and

    7 Gregory Zilboorg, A History of Medical Psy-chology, New York: Norton, 1941, pp. 400, 411-12,434-35, 441. Breuer and Freud were developing apsychological psychiatry at the end of the nine-teenth century, but there was no contact (except ofthe most negative kind) between Freudianism andGerman academic psychology for many decadesthereafter.

    8 Germany: Mifller-Freienfels, op. cit.; France:Fernand-Lucian Mueller, Historie de la Psychologie,Paris: Payot, 1960; Britain: John C. Flugel, AHundred Years of Psychology, 2nd edition, Lon-don: Duckworth, 1951; United States: Edwin G.Boring, A History of Experimental Psychology,2nd ed., New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts,1950; Robert I. Watson, The Great Psychologists,Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1963. Russia has not beentreated in this analysis. The number of its contribu-tions to psychological literature until recent yearshas been very small; its great innovators, Sechenov,Pavlov and Bekhterev, were all physiologists andwould therefore have been excluded from the popu-lation of psychologists. They provide good exam-ples of persons whose work could be integrated intoscientific psychology only because subsequent devel-opments elsewhere created such a discipline.

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    ORIGINS OF PSYCHOLOGY 4551940 were taken, since the numbersof namesinvolved were much smaller than for eitherGermany or the United States. Scientificpsychology became established in Britain orFrance considerablylater than in the othertwo countries.9

    RESULTSFigures 1-4 show the population of sci-entific psychologists for each country in theform of genealogical charts.10A great manynames of physiologists and philosophershadto be excluded from the histories of Germanpsychology, among them many of the mosteminentmen in those fields in the nineteenth

    century. In Germanyourpopulation includes32 names, five of which have no predecessorson the chart (Figure 1). Two names do notappearin the figure. Gustav Fechner has allof the characteristics of an innovator saveone: he gave rise to no personal school offollowers,although, as will be seen, he influ-enced some of the founders. On balance, hewas probably more of a forerunnerthan afounder, as one cannot say that his innova-tion of psychophysics would have been de-velopedinto a discipline of experimentalpsy-chologyif an institutionally-basedmovementhad not been founded subsequently. Karl

    Groos appears rather late to be an indige-nous developer, having habilitated in 1889,nine years afterEbbinghaus,whowas the lastof other self-starters.In any case, he cannotbe considereda founder,as he gave rise to nofollowing. This brings us down to five menwho can be regarded as the foundersof sci-entific psychology in Germany: WilhelmWundt, Franz Brentano, G. E. Muller, CarlStumpf, and Hermann Ebbinghaus.In Britain, the biologists C. Lloyd Morganand GeorgeRomanes were excluded, as wellas the statistician Karl Pearson. FrancisGalton, who instigated psychological testingin Britain but whose scientific interests ex-tended from geographical exploration tochemistry, photography, and statistics, andwho left no school of psychologists to carryon is also omitted. This leaves 9 names inBritish psychology, virtually all of whomgo back to the German innovators, Wundtand Milller (Figure 2). The exceptions areG. H. Thomson who is not shown in thefigure,who took his degreeat Strassburg (aGermanuniversity at the time) in 1906; andW. H. R. Rivers, who studied with EwaldHearing, physiologist closely identified withthe new psychology in Germany. But bythe 1890's, one could hardly study in Ger-many without becoming aware of the newdevelopments, and Rivers cannot be calledan originator of experimental methods inthe field of psychology.In France, the names of numerous psy-chiatrists and some physiologists and biolo-gists were excluded, leaving 10 names (Fig-ure 3). Two men comprisingthe Swiss schoolcan be traced back to Wundt; one-VictorHenri-worked with Mifller, although hehad previously worked with Alfred Binet-

    9 Information about biographies and careers hasbeen drawn from the five histories of psychologycited above (especially Boring) and from: MollieD. Boring and Edwin G. Boring, Masters andPupils among American Psychologists, AmericanJournal of Psychology, 61 (1948) 527-34; CarlMurchison (ed.), A History of Psychology in Auto-biography, Vols. I-IV, Worcester, Massachusetts:Clark University Press, 1930-1952; Carl Murchison(ed.), Psychological Register, Vols. II and III,Worcester, Massachusetts: Clark University Press,1929-1933; Minerva: Jahrbuch der GelehrtenWelt, Leipzig: 1892-. Germany is taken to in-clude Austria and the German-speaking universitiesof Switzerland and Central Europe; France in-cludes French-speaking Switzerland and Belgium.10 Clearly, those charts do not represent the totalpopulation of such psychologists for this period,and men may appear to have no psychological fol-lowers only because they are not listed in the textsfrom which the names are drawn. Nevertheless, wefeel justified in using this form of measurement ofthe rise of a discipline, because the visibility of themen who form such a movement is an importantfactor in its existence.

    Fechner was a retired physicist who devotedmany years to writing pantheistic, anti-materialisticphilosophical works. His writings met with littlesuccess, due to the reaction against Idealism that

    had developed by the mid-nineteenth century. In1850, he took up the physiologist E. H. Weber'sexperiments on touch and muscle sense, in an at-tempt to establish mathematical laws of percep-tion. This research, however, was an integral partof Fechner's pantheistic system; the laws of psycho-physics were intended to give a demonstrable proofto his belief that mind and matter were aspects ofthe same thing, and he went on to propose an ex-planation of the entire physical world as composedof souls related to each other by material bodies.Cf. Robert I. Watson, The Great Psychologists,Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1963, p. 215, and E. G.Boring, Fechner: Inadvertent Founder of Psycho-physics, in E. G. Boring, History, Psychology, andScience: Selected Papers, New York: Wiley, 1963,pp. 126-131.

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    456 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEWThe self-starters appear to be Theodule-Armand Ribot, Henri Beaunis, Pierre Janet.Ribot cannot be considereda major innova-tor, as he made his reputationby publicizingGermanpsychology, and was given the firstchair of Experimental Psychology in Francein 1889 as a result; he remainedby and large1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900

    G.NlartiusA. Iirschmann,FT.lbiins terbervaIsIJLan Ae

    rA * ~~~~~~~Leluzi~ann/ iG~~~~~~~~.t:brrin,-|F.K' .eso w

    / F ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. BI~rhierW*J.Wundt+G .Seumiann~~ ~~ ~~ .J lf~~~~Ii-rth

    \ ,Il~~~~~~~~~~~~.M~arbe.Mayer.Orth0 . Iulpe - .AchA/nA.Messer

    / tZ~~~~~~~~7.ffhlerG.

    fllerl'~A. PilzeckerF.Scuin

    {SitasekC StUmpf i__ V Benuss i---HCCrneliSus

    WT.S ternH.Ebbinohlaus

    A . leinong C.v. EhrenfelsF. Brentano A.118fler

    K. GroosFIGURE 1. FOUNDERS AND FOLLOWERS AMONG GERMAN EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGISTS, BY DECADE OF

    HABILITATION,1850-1909.a speculative philosopher. Beaunis was aphysiologist who set up the first psychologi-cal laboratory in France in the same year;again, it is difficult to assign Beaunis a roleas an independent innovator since a rash oflaboratory-foundingshad already been goingon in Germanyand the United States for adecade. Janet was an M.D. who succeededto Ribot's chair in 1902 at the College deFrance; he was primarily a psychiatrist,however, and maintained a private practicethroughout his career.

    In France, then, there appear to be anumber of figureswithout direct antecedentsamong the German psychologists. Some ofthem were obviously influenced by the Ger-mans, others had ideas of their own. Hadideas been enough, the French school mighthave become an effective rival to the Ger-

    man school. But the French developmentfrom the Germanin that there was no con-tinuity in France. Ribot and Beaunis eachhad but one important follower and Janethad two. This relative lack of descent re-sulted from a lack of interest in creatingnewroles for the new ideas. As will be shownlater, those working in the new field werecontent to remain philosophers, psychia-trists, or broad-gauged scientific intellect-uals, often interested in finding a scientificsolution to some practical problem, like

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    ORIGINS OF PSYCHOLOGY 4571850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900

    (WWund_ - W.G.Srnith J.Drever

    (G.E.til Ier) C.E.Spea rmnK\u Pup) -H. J. Vl~att

    \ -C.Bu~~~~frt.Brown

    W.McDougall7C. S.MyersW.H.R.Rivers

    G.H.ThomsonFIGURE 2. FOUNDERS AND FOLLOWERS AMONG BRITISH EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGISTS, BY DECADE OF HIGH-EST DEGREE, 1850-1909.Binet. They did not attempt, therefore, tocreate a coherent and systematic para-digm, and to transmit it to the nextgeneration2

    Finally, in the United States virtuallyall excluded figures were speculative philos-ophers, among them George T. Ladd andJohn Dewey. Very few American physiolo-gists or other natural scientists appeared inthe histories. The remaining37 figures, pre-sented in Figure 4, were overwhelminglyinfluencedby the German nnovators,partic-ularly Wundt. Only one name lacks an ante-cedant: William James, who began as aphysiologist and set up a small demonstra-tion laboratoryat Harvard in 1875 which helater claimed was the first psychologicallab-oratory in the world. He became Professorof Philosophy at Harvard in 1885, and hadhis title changed to Professorof Psychologyonly in 1889. James is the closest Americacomes to an indigenous developmentin psy-chology, but his work was largely an exposi-

    12 Cf. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scien-tific Revolutions, Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1963, for a discussion of how sciences areable to make cumulative advances because they areintegrated around a particular paradigm or modelof scientific reality, with its implied methodologyand research directions. Of course, it can be arguedthat psychology even today still lacks overwhelm-ing consensus around a central, reality-definingtheory of the sort that Kuhn means by a para-digm, and that the term should be used only insuch fields as physics which do have such a theory.We have used the term here more broadly, to referto the necessity of a new discipline to have at leastminimal consensus on the boundaries of the subjectmatter upon which its practitioners will focus theirattention, and on an acceptable range of researchmethods.1850 1860 1870 1s80 1890 1900

    (W Wund ) T. Flou-.noyE. Clapareda

    P.Janet C.BlondelH. Beaunis A. Binet -1L. Pieron

    (G.E.kifUller) V.H{enriT.Ribot G.Durnas

    A.MichotteFIGuRE 3. FOUNDERS AND FOLLOWERS AMONG FRENCH EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGISTS, BY DECADE OF HIGHEST

    DEGREE, 1850-1909.

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    458 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEW1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900

    f.M. Strattonr.I. Cattell LWitmer. S WoodwortlAhK.W~o1f-B.Tiitc:ene12 IF .Washbui_ p ei?.Ange~ ~ ~ ~~~~~~(01ippl

    (W.Wundt) F.AngellE.W. Scripture-C.E.SeashoreE.A.PaceC.A. Judd\J ..Baldwin

    \ (I.LMUnsterberg .M4.YerkesK.Dunlap

    E.B.Delabarre\.T.CalkinsW.James E.L.Thorndike

    J .R.Angel1 T.jJ B .Watson\H.A.Carr

    .C.Sanford L.M.TerlanJ .JastrowG.T.W. Patrick .H.Goddard\ / Z~~~~WL. Bryan\ / ~~~~~T.L.olton. S .Ral J . eba

    . J. KinnaraanWU.S . Smal I

    (C.Stumpf _MeyerZS.E. Sharp

    FIGURE. FOUNDERSNDFOLLOWERSMONG MERICANXPER1MENTALSYCHOLOGISTS,Y DECADE FHIGH-EST DEGREE, 1850-1909.

    tion of European ideas and discoveries (hehad visited Germany in 1869, while prepar-ing to teach physiology); he himself becameincreasingly interested in philosophy duringthe time that experimental psychology wasdeveloping in America. (All of James' majorphilosophical works date from 1897, whenhis title was changed back to professor ofPhilosophy.) The first generation of experi-mentalists were almost entirely students ofWundt, including G. Stanley Hall, who didnot take his degree with Wundt. Hall in1881 set up the first functioning psychologi-cal laboratoryin the U. S. at Johns Hopkinsafter returningfrom a visit with the Germanpsychologists, and the lines to succeedinggenerations can be clearly traced. Without

    any important contributions from Americanphilosophers or natural scientists, experi-mental psychology suddenly sprang up inthe United States, transplanted from Ger-many.Germany, then, is where the crucial con-ditions for the innovation of scientific psy-chology are to be sought. Ideas which couldhave given rise to a cumulative traditioncould be found outside of Germany. In fact,towards the end of the nineteenth century,France nearly rivalled Germany as a centerfor such ideas. But as shown in Table 2,French production declined rapidly after amomentary peak around 1900, while Ger-man, American, and, to a much lesser ex-tent, British work continued to grow. Fig-

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    ORIGINS OF PSYCHOLOGY 459ures 1-4 indicate that only in Germanyhadthere developed an autonomousnetwork forthe regulartransmissionand receptionof thenew ideas. Subsequently the U. S. and laterBritain linked up with this network, and theU. S. eventually became its center. Franceonly partially linked up with it and it didnot develop a network of its own. In theabsence of such a network, innovations re-mained isolated events; only the existenceof networkscould make them into a cumula-tive process.13We shall not here follow the entire storyof the creation of communicationnetworksand their diffusion from country to country,but shall confine ourselves to the originalestablishment of the German network. Forthis purpose, all the other countries will betreated as negative instances, with Germanyas the sole positive case. The question to beanswered is: Why did an effective networkfor the communication of these new ideasdevelop only in Germany?

    ROLE-HYBRIDIZATIONThe answer is that the conditions for theestablishmentof a new professionalrole vari-ety, committed to the new field, existed onlyin Germany.Ideas which are not cultivatedby people whose regularjobs are to cultivatethem are like souls hovering in a mythologi-cal limbo before entering a body. They canlight upon the dreamsor the imagination ofone person here and another one there, ofsomeone who lives today or of someone elsewho will be born in a thousand years. If,however, ideas become the end-products ofscientific roles, they can be likened to geneswhich are transmitted from generation togeneration through a reliable and naturalprocess; under normal conditions, they willnot only survive but increase.There are several ways in which new sci-entific role varieties arise. The present in-

    stance is a case of role-hybridization:the in-dividual moving from one role to another,such as from one profession or academicfield to another, may be placed at leastmomentarily in a position of role conflict.14This conflict can be resolved by giving upthe attitudes and behaviors appropriate tothe old role and adopting those of the newrole; in this case, identificationwith the oldreference group must be withdrawn. How-ever, the individual may be unwilling to giveup his identification with his old referencegroup, as it may carry higher status (intel-lectual as well as perhaps social) than hisnew group. In this case, he may attempt toresolve the conflict by innovating, i.e. fittingthe methods and techniques of the old roleto the materials of the new one, with the de-liberate purpose of creating a new role.Examples of scientificrolescreatedby thisprocess are psychoanalysis, which was cre-ated by a man who moved from the presti-gious profession of scientific research to therelatively lower-status occupation of Ger-man medical practice; Freud attempted tomaintain his status by trying to raise medi-cal practice into a formof scientificresearch,and as a result createdpsychoanalysis. Sim-ilarly, Pasteur gave rise to bacteriology bymaintaininghis theoreticalperspectivesafter

    13 A further indication of the weakness of theFrench system is the relatively greater mortality ofFrench psychological journals. Between 1850 and1950, 70 per cent of the psychological journals be-gun in France had ceased, as compared to 50 percent for the United States, 51 per cent for Ger-many (before 1934, excluding the many stoppagesduring the Nazi era), and 21 per cent for Britain.Cf. Robert S. Daniel and Chauncey M. Louttit,Professional Problems in Psychology, New York:Prentice-Hall, 1953, pp. 25, 358-74.

    14 Joseph Ben-David, Roles and Innovations inMedicine, American Journal of Sociology, 65(1960), pp. 557-68. John T. Gullahorn and JeanneE. Gullahorn, Role Conflict and its Resolution,Sociological Quarterly, 4 (1963), pp. 32-48, havedistinguished between two kinds of role conflict:status-produced role conflict, in which the occu-pant of a single status position is subjected to con-flicting expectations by the different persons withwhom he deals, and contingent role conflict, inwhich the conflicts arise from the simultaneous oc-cupancy of two statuses. Most of the discussions inthe literature have dealt with the first variety, e.g.Robert K. Merton, The Role-Set: Problems inSociological Theory, British Journal of Sociology,8 (1957), pp. 106-120; and Neal Gross, Ward S.Mason, and Alexander W. MacEachern, Explora-tions in Role Analysis, New York: Wiley & Sons,1958. We are distinguishing a third kind of roleconflict, resulting from mobility rather than fromthe static situations indicated above. See Peter M.Blau, Social Mobility and Interpersonal Relations,American Sociological Review, 21 (1956), pp. 290-95. For a discussion of why scientists would tend toidentify with a traditional discipline rather thanwith an emerging specialty of lower prestige, seeWarren 0. Hagstrom, The Scientific Community,New York: Basic Books, 1965, pp. 53, 209.

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    460 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEWmoving into research on wine fermentation,and elaborated his discovery into a newspecialty.Mobility of scholars from one field to an-other will occur when the chances of success(i.e., getting recognition, gaining a full chairat a relatively early age, making an out-standing contribution) in one discipline arepoor, often as a result of overcrowding n afield in which the number of positions isstable. In such cases, many scholars will belikely to move into any related fields inwhich the conditions of competition are bet-ter. In some cases, this will mean that theymove into a field with a standing relativelylower than their original field.15This createsthe conditions for role conflict. Of course,not everyone placed in such a position willchoose to or be able to innovate a new role,nor is it possible to predict exactly whichindividuals will do so. It is possible, how-ever, to say that the chancesof such a majorinnovation occurring in a discipline intowhich there is mobility from a higher-statusdiscipline are considerably greater than in adiscipline into which there is no such mobil-ity, or which stands higherin status than thediscipline from which mobility takes place.For example, if physiology has higher stand-ing in an academic system than philosophy,but competitive conditions are better in thelatter than in the former, one might expecta role-hybridization in which physiologicalmethods will be applied to the material ofphilosophy (at their most adjacent point,psychology) in order to differentiatethe in-novator from the more traditional practi-tioners of the less respected discipline. Thiswould not be expected if philosophy's statuswere equal or higher, or if the competitiveconditions in philosophy were equal or worsethan those in physiology.Moreover, since a major academic inno-vation has a chance of success only if it can

    attract a sizable following, it is usually notenough (except perhaps in cases of strikingutility, such as bacteriology), that an indi-vidual innovator be placed in a situation ofrole conflict. The conditions have to be gen-eral so as to ensure a widespreadresponse tothe innovation. The motivation of the manwho merely joins such a movement is quitesimilar to that of the man who begins it-moving into a discipline of lower standingthan his old one, he is likely to welcome theopportunity to raise his status throughadopting the innovation. Even more impor-tantly, the existence of such relationshipsbe-tween disciplines may have a vicarious ef-fect upon individuals within the system whodo not personally move from the high-statusdiscipline to the low-status discipline. Forexample, the younger men in the low-statusfield may attempt to upgradethemselves byborrowingthe methods of a high-status field.The simplest way to upgrade themselveswould be to move to the other field, but theyare restrainedfrom doing this by the differ-ences in competitive conditions. If they donot make the innovation themselves, theymay be very receptive to an innovation by amigratingscientist. Even young scholars whohave not yet chosen a field, knowing the rel-ative prestige and conditions of competitionin the several fields, will be attracted to thenew hybridizedrole.It is important to distinguish role-hybrid-ization from what might be termed idea-hybridization, the combination of ideastaken from different fields into a new intel-lectual synthesis. The latter does not at-tempt to bring about a new academic or pro-fessional role, nor does it generally give riseto a coherent and sustained movement witha permanenttradition.Antecedents of modern psychology as farback as Descartes had discussed psychologi-cal functioning in a physiological perspec-tive, but without giving rise to any move-ment to extend these ideas as other scienceswere doing with their respective materials.Similar connections were made by the Brit-ish associationists, from John Locke andDavid Hartley up to AlexanderBain, JamesWard, and James Sully at the end of the19th century,but without giving any indica-tion that a continuous scientific tradition

    15 For the scholar or scientist, this is not simply amatter of social status or prestige, but rather of theeffectiveness or ability of the field to make progressas judged by its own intellectual standards. Cf.Hagstrom, op. cit., pp. 9-104, for a theoretical ex-position of science as a form of social organizationin which competition for recognition by the col-league group is a prime mechanism of control; seealso pp. 208-220 for a general discussion of discipli-nary differentiation.

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    ORIGINS OF PSYCHOLOGY 461would ever result from these theories. InGermany, Herbart and Lotze certainly fallinto this category, along with Fechner, whointroducedexperimentalmethods into philo-sophical psychology in the 1850's with hispsychophysics, but who did not therebycreate any movement to reform the role ofthe psychologist-philosopher.Galton in Eng-land, and in France, such men as Ribot,Beaunis, and Binet must be consideredmoreidea-hybrids than role-hybrids ; ratherthan creating a new role, they merely addedanother facet to the established role of themulti-purpose intellectual such as had ex-isted in these countriessince the seventeenthcentury. Finally, William James in theUnited States would fall into the categoryof an idea-hybrid, particularly since hefinally decided on the traditional role ofphilosopherrather than the new role of sci-entific psychologist.

    THE POSITIVE CASEIn the German universities of the 19thcentury, physiology was a highly productive,expanding science. One of its greatest peri-

    ods of productivity took place between 1850and 1870, when most of the chairs of physi-ology were first split off from anatomy. Fif-teen chairs were created between 1850 and1864. After that date, the field rapidlyreached a limit of approximately one chair

    per university in a system comprising19 uni-versities before 1870 and 20 after 1870.16Table 4 shows that physiology, with approx-imately half as many chairs as philosophy,added only two full chairs from 1873-1910,whereasphilosophy, already the largest fieldin the universities, added eight. The numberof Extraordinary Professors and Privatdo-zents in physiology grew much more rapidlyduring this period than in philosophy. Butthese were poorly paid and largely honorificpositions; their number indicates somethingof the competitive pressures in these fieldsfor the truly desirablepositions, the full pro-fessorships. Advancement was particularlydifficult in physiology, since most of its fullchairs, having been created at about thesame time, were filled with men of aboutthe same age who held them for decades.'7Table 5 showsthat in the 1850's, the chancesof becoming a full professor were better forthose habilitating in the medical sciencesthan in the philosophical disciplines. In thenext decade, however, the situation was re-versed and the relative competitive situationwithin the medical sciences steadily wors-

    16Awraham Zloczower, Career Opportunities andthe Growth of Scientific Discovery in NineteenthCentury Germany with Special Reference to Physi-ology, unpublished M.A. thesis, Department of So-ciology, Hebrew University, 1960.17 Ibid.

    TABLE . NUMBEROFACADEMICOSITIONSN PHILOSOPHYNDPHYSIOLOGYN THEGERMANUNIVERSITYYSTEM,1864-1938Field andAcademic Position 1864 1873 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1931 1938

    PhilosophyOrdinary Professor 36 40 43 44 42 48 56 56 36Extraordinary Professor 21 16 12 14 14 23 30 51 34Dozents 23 21 18 19 25 43 45 32 21Total 81 79 75 81 85 117 140 163 117PhysiologyOrdinaryProfessor 15 19 20 20 20 21 24 27 21Extraordinary Professor 3 3 4 66 9 12 15 24 18Dozents 9 1 2 7 20 27 22 23 15Total 27 23 27 33 49 61 66 80 67

    Note: In the German university system, the rank of Ordinary Professor is equivalent to Full Profes-sor and Extraordinary Professor to Associate Professor. Dozents are private lecturers.Source: Christian von Ferber, Die Entwicklung des Lehrkorpers der deutschen Universitaten indHochschulen, 1864-1954, vol. III in Helmut Plessner (ed.), Untersuchungen zur Lage der deutschenHochschullehrer, Gottingen: Van den Hoeck, 1953-56, pp. 204, 207.

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    462 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEWTABLE 5. HIGHEST RANK REACHED BY SCHOLARS IN THE GERMAN UNIVERSITY SYSTEM WHO

    HABILITATED IN THE MEDICAL FACULTY AND PHILOSOPHICAL FACULTY(NATURAL SCIENCES EXCLUDED), 1850-1909

    RankExtra- Per centOrdinary ordinary Privat- remainingYear and Faculty Professors Professors dozents Total dozents

    1850-59Medicine 57 19 15 91 16. 5Philosophy 53 13 15 83 18.11860-69Medicine 72 44 37 153 24.2Philosophy 68 24 22 114 19.31870-79Medicine 94 74 53 221 24.0Philosophy 138 24 26 188 13.81880-89Medicine 89 59 64 212 30.2Philosophy 118 25 36 179 20.11890-99Medicine 131 57 138 326 42.3Philosophy 162 33 66 261 25.31900-09Medicine 184 48 249 481 51.8Philosophy 142 25 75 242 31.0Source: von Ferber, op. cit., p. 81.

    ened through the rest of the century. Clearly,from about 1860 on, philosophy offeredmuch more favorable competitive conditionsthan did physiology. The first condition forthe occurrence of role-hybridization wasthus present.The second condition was providedby thetrend of the prestige conflict that raged be-tween philosophy and the natural sciencesthroughout the nineteenth century in Ger-many. Before 1830, the great systems ofIdealism claimed for philosophy the positionof a super-science,deriving by speculation allthat might be painstakingly discovered byempirical methods. But these pretensionswere shattered by the rapidly expandingnatural sciences, led first by the chemists,then by the physiologists. Paulsen notes thecontempt in which speculative philosophycame to be held after the rise of the sciencesin the 1830's, a contempt which was reced-ing only at the end of the century.18 Her-mann von Helmholtz, the physicist andphysiologist, was the leading propagandistfor the scientific attack on philosophicalspeculation; in his student days in 1845 in

    Berlin, he banded together with a group ofyoung scientists (including Emil Du Bois-Reymond, Ernst Brucke, and Carl Ludwig),who swore to uphold the principle: Noother forces than commonphysical chemicalones are active in the organism. 19 By the1860's, the scientists werenear to extinguish-ing the academic reputation of philosophyand its super-science pretensions.20Wundt began his career as a physiologistin 1857, at the height of the competition forthe new chairs being created in physiology.He remained a Dozent for 17 years, how-ever, and after being passed over for thechair of physiology at Heidelberg in 1871,made the transition to philosophy.21 Thistransition was made in 1874 with the chairat the University of Zurich,which served assomething of a waiting-room or appoint-ments to one of the great universitiesin Ger-many proper.On the strength of his Physio-logical Psychology in that year, he won afirst-class chair of philosophy at Leipzig in1875.Before Wundt began to take philosophv

    18 Friedrich Paulsen, The German Universitiesand University Study, New York: Longmans Green,1906.

    19Edwin G. Boring, op. cit., p. 708.20 G. Stanley Hall, Founders of Modern Psychol-ogy, New York: Appleton, 1912, p. 138.21 Edwin G. Boring, op. cit., p. 319.

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    ORIGINS OF PSYCHOLOGY 463as a secondreferencegroup,he was doing thesame kind of things that Helmholtz, Hering,Frans Donders, and many other physiolo-gists were doing-experimenting on thefunctions of the sense-organsand the nerv-ous system, and occasionally pointing outthat their work made speculative philosophya superfluousanachronism.Wundt had oncebeen an assistant to Helmholtz, the leaderof the anti-philosophicalmovement; Wundt'smove into philosophy must have been anacute identity crisis for him, which could beresolved only by innovating a new philo-sophical method.22Using Fechner's empiricalmethods of studying perception, Wundt pro-posed to build metaphysics on a solid basis,thus making philosophy a science.23To pre-serve his scientific status, he was forced notonly to carry out a revolution in philosophyby replacing logical speculationwith empiri-cal research,but also to widely advertise thefact that he was in a different kind of enter-prise than the traditionalphilosophers.Brentano, Stumpf, MUller, and Ebbing-haus were all philosophers who became in-terested in using empirical methods in theirfield. Apparently, they were aware of theonslaught physiology was making into theterritory of philosophy; rather than acceptits deterioratingposition, they in effect wentover to the enemy. It is known that Stumpfmet Fechner and E. H. Weber in his days asa Dozent; 24 Muller also correspondedwithFechner; 25 and Ebbinhaus apparently de-cided to re-enter the academic world afteraccidentally encountering a copy of Fech-ner's Elements.26 Brentano, although hemakes reference to Helmholtz, Fechner, andWundt in his first major work, Psychologyfrom an Empirical Standpoint (1874), wasconsiderably less influenced by them thanwere the others. He also remained the leastexperimental of this group of founders.Wundt is undoubtedly the central figure.Hehad the largest following and he articulatedthe ideology of the philosophical revolu-

    tion most clearly. The others, originallyphilosophers, put the position less stronglyand had smaller personal followings. Yetthey were role-hybrids to some extent, asclearly appears when one compares themwith Fechner. The latter had the decisiveidea, but was content to write about it andsubmit it to what Derek de Solla Price callsthe general archives of science. The phi-losophers,however, influenced by the exam-ple of Wundt, used it for the creation of anew role variety.THE NEGATIVE CASES

    In France, there was no innovation of us-ing experimental methods in philosophy.There was heavy competition in the Frenchacademicsystem for positions in all the nat-ural sciences; the physiologists were fairlyhard-pressed, having fewer than one chairper university even at the turn of the cen-tury (Table 6). The number of availableTABLE 6. NUMBER OF ACADEMIC POSITIONS IN PHI-

    LOSOPHY AND PHYSIOLOGY IN THE FRENCHUNIVERSITY SYSTEM, 1892-1923

    Philosophy Physiology NumberFull Full of Uni-Year chairs Total chairs Total versities a1892 17 27 10 17 151900 20 28 12 20 151910 22 30 14 27 151923 22 * 17 * 16

    a Includes College de France.* Figures on positions below the level of full pro-fessor are not available for 1923.Source: Minerva, Jahrbuch der Gelehrten Welt,2 (1892), 10 (1900), 20 (1910), 27 (1923).

    positions in philosophy was a little better.However, the relative situation was nothinglike in Germany,where physiology had beenfilling up for several decades, whereas inFrance it was still expanding into all of theuniversities for the first time.Besides, in France a central intellectualelite existed whose status was dependent ona diffuseevaluation of excellencerather thanon regularuniversity appointmentsand spe-cialized attainment.27The lines of demarca-

    22 Helmholtz may well have seen it as a kind oftreason; there are reports that it was Helmholtz'santagonism to his former assistant that blocked theappointment of the latter to Berlin in 1894. Cf.Ibid., p. 389.

    23 Hall, op. cit., pp. 323-326.24 Edwin G. Boring, op. cit., p. 363.25Ibid., p. 374.261bid., p. 387.27 Joseph Ben-David and Awraham Zloczower,Universities and Academic Systems in Modern So-

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    464 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEWtion between disciplineswere too amorphousto mean anything for a man like Binet, whocould afford to dabble in law, entomology,psychiatry, experimental psychology, andeducational testing. He could expect thatsome kind of facilities would be created forhis patricular needs, and that his achieve-ments would be recognizedwithout the needfor justifying them in the terms of a specificacademic discipline.Existing positions allowed a broad rangeof possible activities for their holders; Lu-cien Levy-Bruhl, the anthropologist, for ex-ample, held a chair of philosophy; EmileDurkheim, the sociologist, held a chair ofeducation, and the few chairs of experimen-tal psychology were likely to be turned overto menwho wereprimarilypsychiatrists suchas PierreJanet or CharlesBlondel. The Col-lege de France, the most prestigious institu-tion in France, rewarded unique individualaccomplishments,but did not provide muchopportunity for those following an estab-lished career,nor did it allow the training ofdisciples, since its positions were for re-search rather than teaching. Ribot, by pros-elytizing Germanpsychology, could have anew chair in Experimental Psychology es-tablished for himself at the College deFrance, but this personal recognition prob-ably preventedhim fromdevelopinga schoolof followers. The purely individual basis ofrecognition is indicated by the fact thatHenri Pieron could have a new chair createdfor himself at the College de France (in thePhysiology of Sensation) because the Pro-fessor of Archeologydied without a suitablyeminent successor.28Unlike in the Germansystem, disciplineswere not differentiated sharply enough tocreate serious role conflicts among men withideas. The elite compriseda single referencegroup of relatively non-specializedintellect-uals and philosophers n the old eighteenthcentury tradition, and prestige adhered tothe individual, not to the discipline. TheFrench system, in short, was suited to pick-ing up intellectual innovations by specificindividuals,but was not at all suited for giv-

    ing rise to movements attempting to createa new discipline.The same conditions which prevented thedevelopment of a referencegroup conflict inFrance existed to an even greater extent inBritain.The relativenumberof chairs inphilosophy and physiology was similar tothat in France (Table 7). Both were aboutTABLE 7. NUMBER OF ACADEMICPOSITIONSIN PHI-

    LOSOPHYAND PHYSIOLOGY N THE BRITISHUNIVERSITY SYSTEM, 1892-1923

    Philosophy Physiology NumberFull Full of Uni-Year chairs Total chairs Total versities1892 13 15 9 20 101900 16 20 12 21 111910 19 38 14 29 161923 22 * 16 * 16

    * Figures on positions below the level of full pro-fessor are not available for 1923.Source: Minerva, Jahrbuch der Gelehrten Welt,2 (1892), 10 (1900), 20 (1910), 27 (1923).

    one per university,with chairs in philosophyin a slight lead over those in physiology, butwith the latter expanding. The necessity ofgaining an academic position was even lessimportantthan in France.In the latter coun-try, one eventually had to obtain some kindof official position. In England, even thiswas unnecessary.Before 1832, there were only two univer-sities in all England and four in Scotland,and they werelittle morethan an upper-classintellectual backwater. Four provincial uni-versities were founded throughout the re-mainder of the century and another halfdozen in the first decade of the twentiethcentury. Under the threat of being leftbehind by these technologically-minded,lower-class universities, Oxford and Cam-bridge began to take in the new sciences,andin the process, to recover intellectual as wellas merely social pre-eminence.9This process was still going on in the latenineteenth century; both philosophy andphysiology were still centered to a consider-able extent outside of the British universi-ties.30 From the point of view of the physi-cieties, European Journal of Sociology, 3 (1962),pp. 45-85.

    28 Henri Pieron, Autobiography, in Carl Mur-chison (ed.), A History of Psychology in Autobi-ography, vol. IV, Worcester, Mass.: Clark Uni-versity Press, 1952.29 Walter H. B. Armytage, Civic Universities,London: Ernest Benn, 1955, pp. 178, 206.30 Both Herbert Spencer and J. S. Mill, for ex-

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    ORIGINS OF PSYCHOLOGY 465ologist fighting for entranceinto the conserv-ative strongholds, the academic philosophytaught there must have seemed a somewhatoutdated and unduly privileged field. Butthe mobility factor was missing; it was stillpossible to attain the highest prestige in phi-losophy or in physiology outside of the uni-versities. This non-university tradition pro-vided a safety-valve which let off the pres-sure which might have led to the innovationof a new psychology.In the United States as well, an in-digenous innovation of experimental psy-chology failed to appear; however, a largeand successful movement of followersof theGerman psychology did spring up in the1880's, a full decade or two before suchmovements (on a smaller scale) appearedinFrance and Britain. Before this period, therehad been a very large number of small col-leges in the country.3'In these colleges, psy-chology was a branch of philosophy of theeighteenth-century Scottish variety, withheavily religiousovertones. It was taught bythe college presidents, 90 per cent of whomwere clergymen.32Philosophy occupied thesame dominant position as in Germany inthe early part of the century, but in otherrespects the colleges resembled the philo-sophical faculties (the lower, undergradu-ate section) of the Germanuniversities be-fore von Humboldt's reforms in 1810.Learningwas by rote, salaries were low, andthere were no facilities for research. Teach-ing positions were merely sinecures for un-successful clergymen.33Under these condi-tions, there could be no movements toinnovate new disciplines: therewere no posi-

    tions worth competing for, the institutionswere too small for specialization, and re-search was not a function of the academiccommunity at all. A vigorous movement inexperimental psychology, clearly derivativeof the German movements, grew up onlyafter the foundings of the first graduateschools beginning in 1876.SUMMARY

    The innovation of experimental psychol-ogy was brought about by the mechanismof role-hybridization. Excluding the inde-pendently originated practical traditions inBritain and Francewhich only later becameattached to the movement in experimentalpsychology, this innovation took place onlyin Germany. Three factors were required:(a) an academic rather than an amateurrole for both philosophersand physiologists;(b) a better competitive situation in philos-ophy than in physiology encouraging themobility of men and methods into philoso-phy; (c) an academic standing of philoso-phy below that of physiology, requiringthephysiologist to maintain his scientific stand-ing by applying his empiricalmethods to thematerials of philosophy.Germany had all three factors. Francehad a measure of the first. All the personsinvolved eventually acquired full-time sci-entific appointments, but their careers hadoften started outside the academic frame-work, and their official positions were littlestandardized. The second factor was presentto an insignificantdegree,and the latter notat all, as prestige was attached to the indi-vidual and the formal honors he receivedrather than to the discipline. Britain wassimilar to France concerning the last twofactors and the first was present to an evenmore limited exent than in France, since theamateurpattern still prevailedwidely amongphilosophers and physiologists. The UnitedStates before 1880 lacked even the rudi-ments of an academic system in which thesefactors could operate.

    This explains why the take-off occurredin Germany.The reasonFrancenever linkedup with the mainstream of the developmentwhile the United States, and eventually Bri-tain, did, remains to be investigated.

    ample, held no academic positions. Physiologicalresearch was largely carried on by medical prac-titioners in the independent hospitals. Cf. AbrahamFlexner,MedicalEducation:A Comparative tudy,New York: Macmillan, 1925.31 There were 182 colleges in 1861, averaging sixfaculty members each. Cf. Richard Hofstadter andWolfgangMetzger,The Developmentof AcademicFreedom n The UnitedStates, New York: Colum-bia University Press, 1955, pp. 211, 233.32 That is, the faculty psychology of Thomas

    Reid, Dugald Stewart and Thomas Brown; for therole of the president, see Hofstadter and Metzger,op. cit., p. 297.33 Bernard Berelson,GraduateEducationin theUnited States, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960, p.14.