Wundt contested: The first crisis declaration in psychology
Published in: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2011.11.002
When reflecting on the history and the present situation of their field, psychologists have often seen their... more
When reflecting on the history and the present situation of their field, psychologists have often seen their discipline as being in a critical state. The first author to warn of a crisis was, in 1897, the now scarcely known philosopher Rudolf Willy. He saw a crisis in psychology resulting, firstly, from a profuse branching out of psychology. Adopting a radical empiriocriticist point of view, he, secondly, made the metaphysical stance of scholars like Wilhelm Wundt responsible for the crisis. Meanwhile, the priest Constantin Gutberlet responded to the claim of crisis arguing, on the contrary, that the crisis resulted from research that was empirical only.
Throughout the discipline psychologists felt troubled by a widespread sense of fragmentation in the field. I will argue that this is due to psychology’s early social success and popularization in modern society. Moreover the paper shows that the first declaration of crisis emerged at a time when a discussion of fundamentals was already underway between Wundt and the empiriocriticist Richard Avenarius. The present historical research reveals the depth of the confrontation between Wundt and Willy, entailing a clash of two worldviews that embrace psychological, epistemological, and political aspects
The Effects of Atomistic Ontology on the History of Psychology
This article articulates the presuppositions that psychology inherited from logical positivism, and how those... more This article articulates the presuppositions that psychology inherited from logical positivism, and how those presuppositions effected the interpretation of data and research procedures. Despite the efforts of Wundt, his most well known disciples, Titchener and Külpe, embraced an atomistic view of experience which was at least partly responsible for many of their failures. When the behaviorists rejected the introspectionism of Titchener and Külpe, they kept their atomism, using the reflex as the fundamental psychological unit, rather than the sense datum. When cognitive psychology embraced functionalism, it made the most radical break from atomism in psychology's history, which is reason for optimism. However, there are still certain presuppositions which make cognitive psychology vulnerable to some of the weaknesses of atomism, and research in a variety of areas is starting to uncover them.