Wundt, early German psychology & psychology as academic discipline Lecture structure What makes a discipline? One account of the emergence of psychology

Wundt, early German psychology & psychology as academic discipline

Lecture structure

What makes a discipline?

One account of the emergence of psychology

Problems with the account

Implications for the present or how could it have been otherwise?

Alan Collins, Lancaster University

And so?

Stories of the past & the identity of the discipline (see O’Donnell on Boring)

What counts as psychology is historically contingent … but does this matter?

Thinking of how psychology might be different


What does it take to be recognised as a separate discipline?Danziger (1990): as a minimum…

object(s) of study

method(s) of study

social organisation: labs, journals, departments, research programmes … students!


‘Origins’ historiesThis one can help us understand:

how and why psychology a separate disciplinehow and why dominated by experiment

And to recognise that it could have been otherwise consciousness as its objectcultural studiespart of physiology or philosophy

Caution: this is not a ‘firsts’ story … and consider: why do we seek ‘origins’?


Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

Personal background

medicine, physiology, philosophy

1862 Contributions towards a theory of sense perception

1873-4 Principles of Physiological Psychology


Wundt’s lab

1879 begins self-funded lab research, Leipzig

1883 Official recognition by university

1892 expanded to 11 rooms and 20+ students


Lab in 1909


Wundt’s interests, ideas & beliefs

• what are the basic elements of consciousness?

• how do they combine, that is, what laws or processes govern their combination?


Psychological elements are not physiological elements e.g. sensation blue

Sensations as elements BUTperceptions as complex combinations ideas as internal complex combinations

Passive combinations … associationActive combination … apperception

… intelligent, directional, cohesive… creative synthesis

Attention is a crucial concept: an act of will… a system of voluntarism Alan Collins, Lancaster University

A Wundtian experiment

What is the apperception span i.e. how many stimulus elements can be held in mind at once?

Present letters or words briefly … see how many can be fixed in consciousness

finds same number of letters or familiar words can be recalledwords treated as wholes


Characteristics of the experiment

Manipulation, artificial conditions, observation and/or measurement

Cooperation: manipulation of conditions, making measurements& another’s consciousness


‘observer’, ‘reactor’ ‘person under experiment’

versus

‘manipulator’, ‘signaller’, ‘reader’

Subject as expert

Difference from natural sciences

… object of investigation participates

A cooperative exercise


… and here they are


Other methods by Wundt

Comparative methods, evolutionary history and developmental methods

Limits of the expt

Völkerpsychologie


Wundt’s Psychology

Objects of study: individual private consciousness, cultural products

Method of study: experiment (Naturwissenschaft), cultural science (Geisteswissenschaft)

Social organisation: within labs students and new labs … 100+ PhDs1881 founded Philosophische Studien journal;


What the lab did for Wundt

Lab made possible replicable experiences

standardised conditions

short report time

external/internal unwanted influences at a minimum

replication … by trial

Small numbers of expert subjects

Individual mind as universal or generalised mind


The importance of precision

Precision is an ideal and an argument

(Benschop and Draaisma, 2000)

Quality of science

Reaction times …. mental chronometry


Mental chronometry

Donders (1865 on)

Condition 1: mild shock to either left or right foot and told which

Condition 2: mild shock to either left or right but NOT told which

Task: move hand on same side that stimulus was administered

Time difference between conditions: 1/15 second … mental processing


Human thought not as instantaneous but as measurable:

“This was the first determination of the duration of a well-defined mental process. It concerned the decision in a choice and an action of the will in response to that decision.” (Donders, 1869)


Precision again

Science: requires and produces precision

Shapin & Schaffer (1985) precision produced through:

material technology

literary technology

social technology


Technologies for precision

1. Material

instrumentation

… source of precision and error

Wundt’s lab and brass instruments


Hipp chronoscope

... like a stopwatch... depended on vibration of a spring

... spring sensitive to disturbance


Calibration... Chronograph

... problem of calibration

?infinite regress


Literary technologyReports: encourage reproduction of particular ways of

conducting experiments

Philosophische Studien 1881 Style: graphs, charts, formulae, numbers

Description and advertising of instrumentation

Rhetoric: words like ‘exact’, ‘reliable’, ‘constant’, ‘uniform’, ‘standardization’ emphasise the theme of precision and portray process as being precise

Texts as model for actions in other labs


Social technologyConstancy in conduct in lab by both experimenter and observer

Being ‘Ready’: poised between attention & relaxation

Environment

Understanding of task

Extensive practice ... observer as an expert ... not person off street

Aim: evenness or constancy in reactions to allow access to ‘generalized mind’… results as representative


Precision & its consequences

Discrepancies between labs

Reveals variation between individuals

… reasons for variation?

Precision … use of aggregate


Why there & then?

Physiologymind C19 from structure to function

from anatomy & dissection to physiology & experiment

Individual private consciousnessmind as separate, specialProtestant ethic of self-examination

German university system… stress on science & knowledge in elite… reconciling knowledge for own sake with producing better

citizens .. new forms of knowledgeAlan Collins, Lancaster University

Wundt & legaciesInstitutional

labs, departments, expt set-up, journals

Training and studentsCattell .. founding member of APA, editor Science, founded Psychological ReviewWitmer … psychological clinic at University of PennsylvaniaKraepelin … schizophreniaTitchener … structuralism at CornellScripture … director at Yale Angell founded Cornell and Stanford labs

But rejection & opposition … within Germany & outside


… andMethod and object

Someone/some things to oppose e.g.

Ebbinghaus…. Expt & higher mental functions … memory

Kulpe … reduce to physiological

Even Watson’s behaviorism … the object of psychology is not consciousness


Some critical remarks on this account

Origin myths

Boring:“I believe that when Wundt’s special theories have utterly perished his fame will still endure because … he established a new point of view and from it surveyed the whole scientific and philosophical domain. In this sense, I am prepared to say that Wundt is the founder, not of experimental psychology alone, but of psychology.” Titchener, 1921 (p.177)

•Alan Collins, Lancaster University

heroes, foundations, separation … simplicity

Emphasis on individual

Tolstoy: any one individual as being swept along … rather than doing the sweeping


The ‘And so?’ question

Earlier points:

the functions or effects of origin histories

the characteristics of Wundt’s science … how same & how different, how legitimised, how expanded .. What are these telling us?

if we had pursued a Wundtian psychology, how might today’s psychology be different?


Documents

Wundt, early German psychology & psychology as academic discipline Lecture structure What makes a discipline? One account of the emergence of psychology