Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2015
Psychology first became an academic scientific discipline in Germany because Germany developed the modern university system that enabled Wundt and his colleagues to create an experimental psychology grounded upon the earlier success of experimental physiology. However, psychology developed faster institutionally in America than it did in Germany (Ash, 1980; Danziger, 1979). By the end of the nineteenth century, American psychology had an active professional organization, the American Psychological Association (APA), founded in 1892; journals devoted to general, experimental, and applied psychology, such as the American Journal of Psychology, Pedagogical Seminary, Psychological Review, Psychological Index, and Psychological Monographs; and a substantial academic presence within the American university system. By 1892, America had more and better laboratories than did Germany. Formal research laboratories were established at the University of Chicago, and Clark, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Yale Universities; and demonstration facilities for teaching and training were available at Brown University, Catholic University of America, and Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, Illinois, Iowa, and Wellesley Universities (Hale, 1980; O'Donnell, 1985). By 1904, there were forty-nine laboratories, 169 members of the APA, and sixty-two institutions offering three or more courses in psychology; in addition, psychology ranked fourth in the sciences with respect to the number of PhD degrees awarded (Camfield, 1973; Miner, 1904). By 1913, the year that Watson published his behaviorist manifesto Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It, America had surpassed Germany in research publications (Cattell, 1917).
Much the same was true of the academic institutionalization of other social sciences in the early twentieth century. Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) introduced sociology in France at the end of the nineteenth century, but it made slow progress, and by 1930 there were only three chairs in sociology. Yet by 1910, there were about fifty full-time professors of sociology in America, and the subject was taught at around 400 colleges (Smith, 1997).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.