1. The establishment of the academic discipline of Psychology
In 1879 Wilhelm Wundt, at the University of Leipzig, was given some space to conduct
psychological experiments. This event is significant not because Wundt at Leipzig won
out over others at other universities. Nor was it significant because that year Wundt
somehow decided it might be nice to have a psychology laboratory and asked, and was
given one. Psychology did not become an academic (autonomous) discipline “out of the
blue”; Wundt did not just one day invent psychology’s concepts or formulate
psychological problems; rather, he borrowed these from already existing disciplines like
philosophy and physiology.
Similarly, the activities that become known as the methods of psychological research
were hardly Wundt’s invention. Rather, Wundt adapted existing methods/practices to a
different conceptual context. That is, Wundt and others who became “psychologists”
borrowed existing concepts, problems, and methods from elsewhere and adapted these to
suit their new “psychological” goals.
Wundt gave shape to his new program of psychological research by borrowing from two
explicit investigative practices and one implicit practice.
1. He based himself, as a physiologist, on a specific form of experimental practice
that only recently (one generation earlier) had been formulated in physiology.
This provided him with certain material techniques of experimentation and,
importantly, a certain way of asking psychological questions.
2. He then proposed to apply these material techniques to a different “object” than
experimental physiologists had done who had applied these techniques to organs
and organ systems. The object to which Wundt addressed these techniques was
the “inner world” of “individual, private, consciousness”. From where did Wundt
get this “object” of psychology? For we should remember that after all, not long
after Wundt constituted inner experience as the object of psychological
investigation, psychologists quickly rejected this as the proper object of
psychological investigation. In any case, Wundt along with his selection of this
“object” (of “inner experience”) also imported the formulation of a method that
was historical (philosophically) tied to this object, namely introspection, although
he carefully reformulated introspection to suit his view of the object (inner
experience) and to meet the demands of the material techniques of
experimentation as well as the kinds of questions he asked of the object which he
borrowed from physiology.
3. Introspection and experimentation usually receive all the attention by those who
write of the history of the founding of psychology as an autonomous discipline.
But there was also a third element that profoundly affected the founding of the
new discipline, namely the “social organization of psychological
experimentation”. In fact it is this social organization of experimentation that
provides the most convincing grounds on which to credit Wundt with having
founded psychology. That is, Wundt’s laboratory was where “scientific
(physiological = experimental) psychology” was first practiced as an organized
and self-conscious activity by a community of investigators. This community in
turn spawned other communities at other universities. That is, the founding of
psychology as a distinct academic discipline of psychological inquiry was
identified with a research community (i.e., a social organization). Wundt did this
by adopting the prevailing university link between teaching and research that only
recently originated in Germany. That is, Wundt’s laboratory was a place where
students pursued experimental research. This resulted in a particular pattern of
psychological experimentation which quickly became “traditional” in the
discipline and in some way remains so to the present.
1. Introspection
Contra contemporary psychology, introspection was a major topic of discussion at the
time of the founding of psychology and for several decades after that, well into the
20th c. Yet, contra the claims of the later behaviorists (circa 1915) who maintained
that introspection was the hallowed method of pre-scientific psychology,
introspection was at the time of Wundt a relatively recent invention. [The behaviorists
were eager to distance themselves from Wundt’s “introspection method” in order that
they might count Wundt as a full-fledge member their behaviorist vision of the
“science” of psychology.]
It is generally acknowledged (see C. Taylor) that introspection finds it roots in the
protestant theology of the Reformation which encouraged the careful selfexamination of one’s conscience (which partially took the place of the Roman
Catholic confessional). Yet the use of the word ‘introspection’ as a systematic and
ethically neutral practice of self-observation does not appear in English until the
second half the 19th c.
Of course, philosophy had long appealed to self-awareness (just as they appealed to
the observation of others, their actions, beliefs, feelings and motives). But
philosophers never thought of this self-awareness as a method or methodology
(theory of methods), and self-awareness not considered a method in philosophy any
more than observation of the world was deemed to be method. That is, we must
distinguish between our everyday commonsense “experience” (of either or both the
outer world or the inner world) and the systematic arrangement for the
methodological production of certain kinds of experiences that we might call an effort
at a scientific method. In the latter sense there certainly was no introspection before
the 19th c., that is, before Fechner, Weber, and Wundt.
We recall that John Locke had distinguished between two sources of knowledge:
sensation and reflection. Sensation gave us knowledge of the external world whereas
reflection gave us knowledge of the inner world (of our own minds). Thus we get a
philosophy of nature (external world) and a philosophy of mind (inner world). Yet
Locke and the empiricist tradition more generally did not distinguish between the
awareness of the mind (mental states) and the deliberate observation of mind (mental
states).
It was the continental tradition, specifically Immanuel Kant, which in trying to
overcome the conflict between the rationalist and empiricist traditions, distinguished
between awareness and deliberate observation of mental states. Thus, while Kant
accepted Locke’s distinction between inner sense and outer sense, he raised the
crucial question which Locke did not do, namely “can the experience of inner sense
(inner world) be a basis for a “mental science” just like the experience of outer sense
was the basis for physical science?” Kant answered “no”! The reason Kant gave is
that science always involves the systematic ordering of sensory information in terms
of a synthesis expressed in mathematical terms. But the information provided by
inner sense was resistant to mathematization (or measurement) and hence there could
be no science of the inner sense; that is, there not be a science of psychology. Thus,
while Kant acknowledged that Locke was correct in that there was an empirical basis
for psychology (inner sense), this was insufficient to establish it as a “science”. [One
can readily appreciate that Kant’s standard of science was far “higher” than the
empiricist standard – it is one reason why even today many natural scientists do not
consider psychology to be a science – perhaps because it is not possible to
mathematize (measure) psychological (inner sense) phenomena.]
In addition to making a fundamental distinction between “science” and psychology,
Kant made an even more important distinction (which was to be the fate of
psychology in the 19th c.) namely between the very different domains of psychology
and philosophy. The empiricists in the Lockean tradition of the “philosophy of mind”
did not make this distinction between psychology and philosophy – which meant of
course that psychology lacked any special domain of study (it had no objects or
methods that could distinguish it from philosophy – think of Locke, Berkeley, and
Hume). The empiricists were primarily concerned to provide an empirical theory of
knowledge and in doing so they formulated a theory of mental functioning (a
“psychological” theory) but they saw this effort not as “psychology” but a properly
belonging to philosophy.
This point is important (even and perhaps especially so today). The empiricists did
not distinguish between the following two questions: “how mental contents were
caused by the natural (inner or outer) world?” (which was the empiricist focus) and
“in what sense mental contents could be said to constitute knowledge?” As long as
these two questions were not distinguished psychology (presumably answering the
first question) and philosophy (presumable answering the second question) were
indissolubly fused. Hence it follows that the empiricists were simply not concerned to
formulate a special method for psychology, and could merely appeal to everyday
commonsense awareness of experience.
However, Kant did make the distinction between mental as it is present to experience
(the “how” of mental content) and the principles in terms of which that mental life
was organized (the “what” of mental content). That is, Kant held that the inner world
was part of the empirical world just like our perceptions of the outer world, but that
the empirical world (both inner and outer) points beyond itself to the empirical to the
transcendental ego as the source of the categories of understanding that characterize
human experience in general.
To give an example of what difference this distinction between the two questions
makes consider that there is a huge difference between examining the factors
involved in particular spatial perceptions (presumably the “how” or the psychological
question) and examining the implications of the fact that our perceptions are always
characterized by spatiality (the “what” philosophical question). In any case, in
making the distinction between these two kinds of questions (which the empiricist
philosophers collapsed), Kant (the rationalist) separated philosophy from psychology
and thereby raised the question of “psychology as a non-philosophical but empirical
discipline”. Such a discipline would be empirical (based on the evidence of inner
sense in the same way that the natural sciences based themselves on the evidence of
outer sense). But being empirical was not sufficient to be a science (e.g. Botany was
empirical in it formulated a system of classification based on the different features
that characterized plants, but it was not a science since it was unable to demonstrate
why a plant took on the features it does rather than say take on other features). In
contrast Newtonian science (Physics) was able to demonstrate mathematically why a
system of moving physical bodies, like the planets, maintained, given certain
assumptions, the particular arrangement of its parts.
It is interesting then that Kant provided us with a clear cut distinction between
psychology and philosophy but he also had a strong view of what constituted a
science and, importantly, that psychology could not meet those standards in principle.
At best psychology would be a kind of “natural history of mind”, a catalogue or
classification of empirical mental contents lacking both the fundamental importance
of philosophy and the rational (mathematical) consistency of science.
We might just examine this change from Locke’s empiricism to Kant’s critical
realism/idealism (philosophy) more closely because the change involved a set of
interconnected distinctions that profoundly affected the sphere of intellectual work.
Kant’s writings were “critical” precisely in that he raised the standards of and the
interest in the organization of intellectual work. Of course, Kant as a follower of the
Enlightenment’s “new science” was interested in the acquisition of knowledge but he
also recognized that there are different kinds of knowledge based on different kinds of
scientific practices. It became accepted that intellectual work was divided into
different disciplines (fields) each of which was constituted by a trio of independent
factors:
(1) a certain object of investigation,
(2) certain questions/problems that were characteristic of the field and asked of the
object, and
(3) a specific methodology (method) whereby these questions/problems are answered.
Although the conception of the object of investigation limits the problems that can be
formulated with respect to the object and suggests certain methods appropriate in
order to answer the problems posed with respect to the object, the adoption of these
methods will continually re-create the object presupposed and constrain the questions
that can be legitimately posed with respect to the object. Thus, the advance of
introspection from the everyday commonsense awareness to the use of a selfconscious method of investigation (as Wundt formulated it) would not have been
possible without having first established that inner experience (object) was as
legitimate a part of experience as was outer experience, and of course, in turn, the
development of the systematic practice of introspection served to confirm just such an
inner world of experience.
Be careful here. It is often simply asserted that psychology as an academic discipline
owes it existence to Descartes’ rationalist distinction between the “extended” and
mechanical world of matter and the totally different (non-extended) world of mind.
This is partially correct for this was also the starting point of Locke’s empiricist
philosophy (the inner, individual mind). However for both Descartes and Locke (and
here the rationalist and the empiricist both come under Kant’s critique), the mind
remained a potential object of technical scrutiny. Both empiricism and rationalism
made distinctions and divisions in our experience of life but these were but a first
step. To talk about inner experience (just as outer experience) makes it a potential
object of specialized study but it required a lot more (further development) to make
inner experience an “object” of systematic scientific study.
This development involved the growth of the sciences in the 18th c. As knowledge of
the natural world accumulated it gradually became more differentiated and more selfconscious (e.g., the movement from anatomy to physiology). The question of the
relationship between science (or natural philosophy) and the more traditional
concerns of philosophy came under scrutiny particularly in Germany where science
was likely to occupy members of the university philosophy departments (after all
Kant taught the natural sciences). The result was a sharpened focus on the
methodological requirement of the various sciences (witness Kant’s effort, in his
“First Critique” to “ground” Newton’s physics). Kant was clearly concerned with the
role of the philosopher in a situation that was rapidly being changed by the prestige of
the newly emerging sciences (natural knowledge). What Kant did so brilliantly was to
give philosophy the major role in adjudicating divergent kinds of knowledge as a
result of the newly emerging sciences. Consequently, philosophy over the course of
the 19th c. assigned intellectual limits to the new empirical fields of study based on
methodological criteria. In turn, the newly emerging sciences were eager to justify
themselves as “sciences” before this court of appeal.
Hence, in 19th c. German universities the question of psychology as a field of study
became a question of its methodology. Three issues dominated this debate:
1. introspection
2. mathematization
3. experimentation
The first two found their source in Kant and, especially the second, in Friedrich
Herbart who was Kant’s successor at Konigsberg and who tried to demonstrate (in
what was a monumental exercise) that the mathematization of psychology was
possible and this remained an important influence until the end of the 19th c.
Experimentation was to be supplied by physiology.
Introspection remained a contentious issue. For Kant description of inner experience
like that of outer experience was limited to the phenomenal world of appearances (the
only world we can possibly know) and hence introspection was also limited to the
phenomenal self (as I appear to myself). The true basis of mental life, the true subject
of pure apperception (transcendental ego – noumenal self) cannot be grasped in
experience (either inner or outer) but remains a presupposition of all inquiry.
Hegel confirmed this low evaluation of individual self-observation. Since Spirit was
for Hegel the all-embracing objective category embodied in (historical) social and
cultural manifestations, as abstractions of philosophical reflection (speculation), the
role of observing the inner mind had little role to play.
In general the 19th c. was split into two camps with regard to introspection depending
on which aspect of Kant’ ambiguous legacy it chose to emphasize. There were those
like Hegel and Kant himself (“critical realists” or “idealists”) who devalued the
evidence of inner experience (that is, the knowledge claims derived from inner
experience), while there were others who sought to develop a new empirical
discipline on the basis of evidence from inner experience (e.g., Fries, Beneke, and
Fortlage, none of whom received much recognition in Germany however). The
critical factor that distinguished these two camps was the degree of individualism
that characterized each camp. Those in the British empiricist tradition grounded
philosophical speculation in the experience of individual minds, those in the German
idealist tradition grounded philosophical speculation on supra-individual principles.
[In a historically strange twist, it is interesting to note that in France the positivism of
August Comte also distrusted introspection and affirms supra-individual principles of
what Comte called “order”/nature. This point is important for it shows that Comte’s
positivism was not the positivism of British empiricism as propounded, for example,
by in J. S. Mill. The 19th c. is marked by different “positivisms”.] The German
idealist tradition rejected introspection as unreliable and superficial, whereas the
empiricist tradition held that introspection was the necessary basis of
philosophy/psychology – remember the latter did not really distinguish psychology
from philosophy. Thus, where individualism (the self-conscious individual) held
sway it became the center piece of around which the world was arranged and
introspection was held in high regard as a method or else, in contrast, where the order
of the world (Spirit) held precedence over the individual as in idealism (and notably
Comte’s positivism) introspection was regarded with suspicion and condescension.
[A note here is in order. For it would seem from the preceding paragraph that the
British empiricist tradition are more inclined to emphasize the importance of
“inner experience” whereas I suggested in class that the empiricist tradition’s
conception of “consciousness” (and this was also true for the rationalist influence
of Descartes) was very thin indeed. That is, inner experience was either a purely
logical starting point as in Descartes (where the “I think” is not a substantial
“self” or habitus) or else the focal role of experience was divided between
“subjective”, secondary properties, which were deemed to be epiphenomenal and
“objective”, primary properties, which were deemed to be real (e.g., Locke’s
“scientific materialism”). Whether in empiricism, the Scottish School of
philosophy, or early American psychology introspection was deemed important
and stands in stark contrast to the later rise of behaviorism on American
psychology which also signaled a break with Anglo-Saxon mental philosophy.
Strangely enough there was more “consciousness” in idealism (from Kant’s
critical realism/idealism to Hegel’s Spirit) than there was in Anglo-Saxon
“mental philosophy” and this because the latter were constrained in their
effort to accommodate mind to their over-riding adherence to scientific
materialism (which Kant tried to limit and Hegel absorbed in his idealism).
We might also note that August Comte’s French positivism was really an effort to
eliminate the Anglo-Saxon empiricist’s primary/secondary properties distinction
altogether (and with it the distinction between inner and outer experience). Comte
held to a kind of naïve realism (the world is as it appears), precluding any
philosophical metaphysics, in favor a “realism” of a direct access to the world as
given in experience.]
We might also note that since the order of the world (nature) always included the
social order as an important even all-important component, conceptions of
introspection were not unconnected to political considerations. During the 19th c. a
positive attitude towards introspection tended to accompany a philosophy of liberal
individualism while negative attitude towards introspection (inner experience/sense)
were likely to be found among those who stressed the priority of collective interests
(today, “communitarians”) and social cultural institutions (i.e., idealists and, strangely
enough, positivists of Comte’s ilk).
Even an apparently private technique such as introspection turns out to be a form of
social action and this on two levels. (1) On the immediate technical level
introspection is a social performance insofar as its use as a methodology requires the
employment of language for categorizing experience (experience must be articulated
to be experience of something). I will say more about that below. (2) Introspection as
an avowed method of inquiry leading to true knowledge is always a collective project
of putting individual cognitive interests/goals to work in a shared social context. This,
it is not introspection as an idiosyncratic habit of mind (awareness or reflection) that
is of interest, but introspection as a methodological social project that was at stake in
Wundt’s use of it to establish the discipline of psychology. As such introspection
derives its meaning historically – and this is so even when introspection is used
casually – it is always a means of practice in a shared social context. Thus, it is the
social-historical context that endows introspection with the significance it has and
also determines its actual forms in practice.
As we have seen the emergence of the notion of introspection as a method was
intimately linked to the emergence of psychology as a separate discipline of study
with it own subject matter (object – inner experience). The belief in this object, the
private world of inner experience, was a precondition for any meaningful discussion
of introspection as a method. In turn the actual practice of this method validated the
belief that the object, inner private experience, was the object of psychology. Thus
method and object mutually or reciprocally confirmed each other. Later, different
opinions/evaluations about the object led to different evaluations about the method
(for example, when the object became ‘behavior” instead of inner experience, the
method also changed from introspection to observation/perception). Hence, there
could be differences of opinion not only whether introspection was valuable but about
what one was actually doing in practice when one used introspection. Thus,
introspection took on different meanings depending on how the object (private inner
experience) was seen as fitting into the scheme of things. Obviously, the latter (the
scheme of things ‘psychological”) also depended on general and social interests (e.g.,
Wundt believed the social interest was one of understanding the adult human mind he was very “conservative” - whereas the behaviorists, later in the context of
American progressivism and pragmatism, believed that behavior was more important
than mind and so investigated behavior in animals, infant, pathological, etc.).
2. Experimental physiology
Discussions of experimentation in psychology have suffered from a misplaced
abstractness, meaning that we often talk about the experimental method as though
there were only one such method, and worse, the experimental method was often
identified with the scientific method. This kind of abstraction can only be defended if
one is ignorant of the history of psychology/science which provides evidence for
several different kinds of experimentation. Moreover, these different kinds of
experimentation have very different historical roots. Therefore any inquiry into the
origins of psychological experimentation must be concerned with the specific
historical forms of experimentation that played a role in the establishment of the new
science of psychology.
There is no doubt that the physics of sound and optics (see e.g., Helmholtz) affected
the early practices of the psychological laboratory – but the systematic and
programmatic aspects of psychological experimentation derived not from physics but
from physiology (hence, Wundt called the new discipline “physiological psychology”
which was a synonym for “experimental psychology”). Yet the experimental method
in physiology had only just been established in Germany. The older generation of
physiologists such as Johannes Muller (d. 1858) did not regard physiology as
essentially experimental, although they did occasionally conduct experiments. It was
Du Bois-Reymond, Ludwig, and Helmholtz, Muller’s students who preceded Wundt
by one generation, who transformed physiology into an experimental discipline.
Wundt hoped that he might similarly transform psychology into an experimental
science.
While Wundt was inspired by his immediate predecessors, they in turn were inspired
by the French investigators earlier in the 19th c., most notably Francois Magendie
(1783-1855). It is here in post-Napoleonic France that experimental physiology
became an experimental science par excellence. Experimentation came to define
scientific physiology but this was made possible because of some more fundamental
changes in the conception of physiology and its objects of investigation.
Traditionally physiology was not a separate discipline but merely a junior add-on to
anatomy. Medicine had chairs in anatomy and physiology but the latter was clearly
junior. [One should note that there is a parallel between the anatomy and physiology
and philosophy and psychology. The junior partner became of age when it defined its
subject matter in terms of experimentation.] Associated with this arrangement was a
certain view of the subject matter of physiology. In anatomy, function was
subordinate to structure. One began by examination (observation) of a particular
organ and then one looked for what the organ does or how it functions. The body was
conceived as a static hierarchy of organs each with its own characteristic function.
Thus, the question of physiological function could arise only after the structures to
which the functions belonged had been established anatomically. The object of
investigation was the visible anatomical organ and the preferred method was
dissection.
But this situation changes with the development that was as much a change in the
object of investigation as it was a change in method (see above). Functions were no
longer deemed to be properties of anatomically visible organs but rather they were
abstract objects that might involve several organs as well as all sorts of invisible
processes. Thus, it was no longer the structure of a specific organ that was at issue but
the role (or “function” – what it “did”) of the organ (e.g., no longer merely the organ
of the stomach as an observable structure but the function of the stomach in
nutrition). Structures were now subordinate to functions and functions involved
the interplay of several or many organs and organ systems. This dominance of the
functional perspective (over the structural one) changed the method of investigation
from one of observation (of anatomical organs) to one of experimental intervention –
investigating living systems (organ systems) and their effects. The systematic use of
experimentation ensured the dominance of the functional perspective – and the only
questions asked were questions about functions. Thus, experimentation meant that
questions were asked in terms of the contribution of various factors to particular
functional effects. Again, the choice of one’s primary method implied a certain
conception of the object of investigation.
For the emerging science of physiology, experimentation provide a “disciplinary
identity” (Helmholtz’ achievement) that was needed if it was to separate itself
institutionally from anatomy in order to establish itself as an independent discipline
which did not happen until well into the second half of the 19th c.
The functional dominance over structural thinking in physiology was also to deeply
affect psychology. Already in the 18th c. there was a reaction against the absolute
separation of voluntary mental and involuntary physical causes of action and in the
19th c. there were a number of medical investigators (e.g., Whytt, Unzer, Prochaska
and Haller) who formulated “animal motion” in strictly functional terms. The
antecedents of (voluntary or involuntary) action of living beings were now defined in
terms of their effects rather than in terms of their status as mental or physical causes
(which were unknown as yet). This resulted in the modern conception of
“stimulation” (which was to be important for psychology for most of the 20th c. as
referring to all those factors which together had an effect). But note that this concept
of stimulation also legitimized the treatment of psychological topics in a
physiological context [contemporary psychology in all areas of research still follows
this functionalist perspective of adjudicating the effect (dependent variable) in terms
of stimulation (independent variable)].
In the long run there were two channels through which experimental physiology
influenced the investigative practices of the newly founded psychology. (1) Sensory
physiology (see Chs. 3, 4) became the topic of psychology’s first decades, and (2)
Reflex movement which deeply influenced behaviorism and derived from Russian
physiology notably Pavlov (see Ch. 10). When the new program of experimental
physiology was extended to sensory functions, there were immediate psychological
implications. In these physiological experiments variations in sensory effects were
investigated as a function of variations in conditions of stimulation. But in terms of
the prevailing metaphysics, these sensory effects (at least in humans) were
categorized as belonging to the private world of individual experience that was the
subject matter of the philosophy of mind, or the “object” of the new psychology.
Thus, experimental physiology gained theoretical significance far beyond that
envisioned by its originators. It wasn’t just the senses that were being experimentally
investigated or the brain (of which little was as yet understood); rather, it was the
“mind” itself.
[The classical example of this was of course Fechner’s appropriation of Weber’s
experiments in sensory physiology with the purpose of providing empirical
evidence for Fechner’s metaphysical intuitions about the soul (see Ch. 4). One
reason was that the new experimental physiology forced the re-localization of
sensory experience in the central parts of the nervous system – those parts which
were often regarded as the seat of the soul (e.g., the brain).]
Wundt first textbook in the new experimental psychology (1874) contained fully 2/3
sensory physiology and the effect of this was to put the entire discussion of
psychological objects in a functional context (see Ch. 7 for the distinction between
functionalism and structuralism in American psychology). This was very significant
for it meant that whatever is of psychological interest had to be investigated in terms
of stimulation. Thus, the kinds of questions that could be posed were of the kind that
physiology posed, namely the functional dependence of sensory experience as the
effect of conditions of stimulation (namely intensity, weight, spatial location,
temporal duration, etc.). Much later the behaviorists would deem all behavior to be a
function of the stimulus (stimulation). This view was what the psychology texts
during the next 100 years were to perpetuate (see Ch. 7).
If traditional philosophy of mind (empiricism) with its notion of introspection
bequeathed to psychology to notion of its object as inner private experience, the
model of physiological experimentation left psychology no option but to pursue this
study (the introspection of inner private experience) in a functional framework. Now
it was only in the areas of sensation and perception wherein both these approaches
(philosophy of mind and experimental physiology) could be combined. That is why,
in case you wondered, psychology textbooks all begin with these two topics, still,
today (of course, we have added the brain).
All efforts to combine these two approaches in the investigation of topics beyond
sensation and perception presented the new discipline with all sorts of problems (e.g.,
Wurzburg school, the Gestalt school, Titchener’s structuralism) which, in turn, forced
major realignments (see below as well as Chs. 8, 9).
3. The social practice of psychological experimentation
So far I have treated experimentation as though it were a cognitive (rational) activity.
But this ignores a crucial point about modern scientific experimentation (which
distinguishes it from say alchemy) which is that it is a public activity. That is,
experimentation is all about a technique for producing consensus about the facts.
Scientific experiments are supposed to about phenomena that are in principle
accessible to anyone and the procedures for doing should be replicable by all others
who have the necessary training. Thus, a successful program of experimentation
requires a community of investigators able to agree on the veracity of certain
observations because they actually shared their replication (or can in principle do so).
Obviously the effective functioning of such a community involves the acceptance of
certain rules and conventions about the conditions under which the phenomena
(facts) are produced, witnessed, and about the manner in which all such matters are
publicly communicated. Experimentation is not just a matter of cognitive
construction; rather, it is a matter of social arrangement (normative order).
In the middle of the 17th c. the Royal Society of England constituted the original
experimental community but by the 19th c such societies were more specialized. As
the sciences developed, the basic model was extended and variations governing the
scientific community had to be adapted to the “objects” objects of their respective
investigation. But these variations (e.g., with the newly emerging experimental
physiology and of course “physiological psychology”) also retained a common theme
namely they were the means of distinguishing between the production of facts and
the theoretical interpretations of these facts (the latter might vary considerably from
investigator to investigator, but the production of the facts were a common concern
and demanded agreement. What is of particular interest for the history of
psychology is that these societies regulated the public communications within the
community of investigators (within the particular science) as well as the social
relations among its investigators.
The critical step that Wundt took in the formation/establishment of the new
experimental discipline of psychology was not first of all the writing of a textbook
(1874, important as that was), but the setting aside of a special physical space (a room
- the psychology laboratory) for conducting psychological experiments by his senior
students and himself. This happened some five years after he published his textbook.
The lab soon received official recognition as a scientific institute and also received a
budget. In the same year Wundt also started a journal, Philosophische Studien, which
regularly published the experimental reports coming out of his lab. Wundt was of
course fortunate in being at the second largest university in Germany (Leipzig), and
German science was at its height. He quickly gathered many students and more than
150 went to complete their doctorate with Wundt (both in philosophy and sensory
physiology or psychology).
Rather than work in isolation, several students would be doing experimental research
at any one time, sharing facilities and assisting each other in various ways: they
shared theoretical interests, and their experiments had a bearing one on the other. In
other words, the students and Wundt together formed a research community – a
community of experimenters. Students after they graduated went elsewhere and
established laboratories like the one at Leipzig (most notable is perhaps begun by
Titchener at Cornell University). In Germany itself a second laboratory was begun at
the University of Gottingen and in 1890 a second professional journal was added
(Journal of psychology and the physiology of the sense organs).
In order for this experimental community to thrive, as it certainly did, certain
technologies (material, literary, and social) were needed to regulate its internal life.
The material technology could be taken over directly from experimental physiology,
as well the literary conventions of communicating the procedures and results of
experimental investigations could also be adopted from existing models and it was
only gradually that the special features of psychological experimentation led to new
textual means of presenting experimental results (graphs and tables). In the early
years, it was the regulation of the social relationships inherent in the practice of
psychological research that presented the most interesting problems.
Thus, the classical work in sensory physiology by Weber, Hering, Helmholtz, and
Fechner was carried out by single investigators. They communicated their findings in
monographs and papers of the form that was pretty standard in Germany by mid-19th
c. The question of communication therefore only arose when their work was
published.
But Wundt established his laboratory explicitly for the benefit of his students, so that
they would have a place to do their experimental work, which for many of them
would be the basis of their doctoral dissertation and scientific publications. In doing
so, Wundt was simply following the general trend in Germany of translating the ideal
linkage between teaching and research into a specific socially organized form.
Increasingly the new sciences were linking the production of knowledge to the
training of recruits (teaching) at universities, institutes or laboratories, and Wundt
followed this pattern. But this meant that the research coming out of his lab was
essentially collaborative in which several individuals worked on different aspects of
the same problem or on related problems. This kind of collaboration made it possible
to share the tedium that characterized much of the research especially in
psychophysics. It also made possible the exploitation of rather complex recording
equipment (e.g., chronoscope, kymograph or what became known as “brass
instrument psychology”) that was becoming available. But these advantages were
available only insofar as the collaboration was extended from the usual convergence
between studies (experiments) to the systematic division of labor within a study
(experiment).
The latter had profound implications for the nature of psychological research. The
division of labor that was adopted in Wundt’s lab was none other than the wellknown division between the roles of experimenter and subject in psychological
experiments. But this division had no fundamental theoretical significance
whatsoever for the Leipzig group and was simply undertaken as a practical response
to the conditions of research in Wundt’s lab (use of instruments and recording
devices). As in other scientific experiments the observational data that constituted the
experimental yield consisted mostly of instrument readings (e.g., time measurements)
or simple sensory judgments (relative size or weight or brightness of two presented
physical stimuli). But these targets (judgments) were categorized as psychological
stimuli; that is, as events that depended on an individual’s conscious response. In
other words, variations in the sensory target were of interest not because of what they
might indicate about its own physical nature but because of what they might signify
about the nature of consciousness of the respondent (this was the function of
introspection).
But this change in interpretative framework within which individual observations
were placed also entailed certain changes in the way in which individual investigators
interacted with the apparatus and with other investigators who might be assisting
them in the experiment. Individual consciousness being the object of investigation
had to be shielded from external and internal influences of unknown effect which
might distort the particular response of interest. So that it seemed desirable to get
immediate responses (again this was the way Wundt systematized introspection) that
allowed for no time reflection and to keep the responding individual in ignorance of
the precise short-term variations in the stimulus conditions to which he was to
respond. (Note this was not the same ignorance as that of being ignorant of the
purpose of the experiment – which the early investigators did not deem to be
desirable at all.) Obviously, this made it extremely difficult for individuals to
experiment on themselves (as the early psychophysicists did) without assistance. The
task of simultaneously manipulating the apparatus and playing the role of the
possessor of the shielded private consciousness whose precise responses were the
object of investigation was not easy; in fact it was impossible. To share the burden
one had to make use of other members of laboratory, or of friends (Wundt and his
students regularly changed places in acting as repondents or experimenters). This
necessary collaboration thus took the form of a division of labor between those that
manipulated the apparatus and those whose consciousness was being investigated.
Now the effect of these practical measures was not foreseen and hardly noticed for
several generations. What occurred in practice was the development of a
fundamental difference between the social conditions of experimentation in the
natural sciences compared to the psychology. In the natural sciences any division of
labor within the experimental investigation was unconnected to the relation between
investigator and object of investigation. Thus in chemistry one person might do the
distillation process while another might weigh the residue but none of this affected
their relation to the chemical object itself. However in the psychological experiment
one person would function as the repository of the object (private experience, or
“first’ person experience) of investigation, or the source of data, while the other
person would merely manipulate the apparatus. This meant however that this division
of labor resulted in a product (data) that was itself the product of a social interaction
(division of labor) which defined the object of investigation. In contrast to the natural
sciences wherein the division of labor was ad hoc, in psychological experimentation
the division of labor between experimenters and experimental subjects quickly
developed into a universally accepted structural feature of the psychological
experiment as such.
So once the psychological laboratory was established, self-experimentation declined
rapidly and quickly reports on self-experimentation (e.g., Fechner) were no longer
published or at least very few were published. One reason was the rise of socially
organized research and the establishment of research laboratories (which was true for
the other sciences as well, except that in case of psychology this socially organized
research was there form the beginning). The second reason was of course
psychology’s peculiar subject matter (object) which was individual private
consciousness. The latter made it inevitable that whenever an experimental division
of labor was adopted it would take the form of a division of labor between the role of
experimenter (manipulator) and experimental subject who was the data source. The
resulting product of psychological investigation depended not only on the interaction
of investigators who all had the same fundamental relation to the object of
investigation, but also depended on a unique kind of social interaction between the
experimenter role and the subject role.
This special social organization of the psychological experiment is reflected in a
certain discourse that was published in these early studies. When describing the
procedural aspects of experiments these published articles not only referred to the
apparatus but also to the human participants in the experimental situation. That is,
these human participants were referred to in terms of the activity they had been
assigned by the experimental division of labor. So we get references to the
“discriminator”, “associator”, or “reactor” depending on the activity they performed
in the experiment. Similarly, those who arranged and read the apparatus were referred
to as “manipulator,” “signaler,” and “reader” because manipulated the apparatus
signaled the experimental stimuli, and read the experimental results. The published
reports not only referred to the collaborators’ function (in what the collaborators did
in the experiment) but the collaborators were also mentioned by their proper name, as
historical persons (who were responding on their private experience), collaborating in
experiment even as they were also described in terms of just what they in the
experiment.
Later this changed as the institutionalization of the psychological laboratory spread
rapidly – thus, we now get “observer” or “reactor” or just “person under experiment”
on the one hand and “experimenter” on the other hand. In other words, as
psychological experimentation matured, the reports or scientific articles began to
reflect simply the division of labor without specific reference to just what either side
did specifically in the experiment. Similarly, as the laboratories became
institutionalized there was also a standardization of terminology. In Leipzig in 1879
and the following years, there was not yet a uniformity of terminology that referred to
the experimental participants. Thus, even when two investigators were concerned
with the same research topic, they might use different terms (say “reactors” or
“observers”) to refer to their experimental subject (collaborators), but gradually usage
became more standardized even though complete standardization did not occur until
well into the 20th c. when the use of “experimenter” and “subject” became
commonplace (but note that later it was the experimenter (“third” person) who
became the “expert” on the subject’s private experience - or behavior; the subject
simply provided the data or response which the experimenter then
interpreted/explained).
The social process that is reflected in these developments clearly involved the
institutionalization of psychological experimentation. In the1880s the Leipzig lab
showed a distinct pattern of practice that defined for its participants/students just what
the psychological experiment looked like. Thus model was quickly emulated
elsewhere and included not only an inventory of apparatus and the kinds of research
problems that defined psychological research, but also involved the social
arrangements required of psychological experimentation. There began a tradition of
just how the psychological experiment ought to be conducted/structured. This
tradition depended on (1) a certain definition of the “object” of psychological
experimentation, (2) on the specific heritage of experimentation in sensory
physiology (the function of “stimulation”), and (3) on some local conditions that gave
particular form to the social arrangements of psychological experimentation.
But this tradition only extended so far as there was the historical conjunction of these
three factors. Changes in any one of these factors would produce as different model
of experimentation. See below.