Mechanics has enjoyed some four centuries of sustained development without producing results in psychology or economics. The mental sciences have enjoyed a couple centuries of sustained development without requiring mechanical intervention. To use the standard economic argument, if there was a connection worth pursuing, would not one have already been made?

In fact, people have made numerous attempts at connecting mechanics and mind. Although those attempts at establishing such connections have failed, there are identifiable changes in scientific circumstances that explain why a mechanical approach to psychology and economics should prove more fruitful now.

To see the reasons for the lack of successful connections in the past, this chapter examines some of the difficulties prevailing at earlier times and how they have undercut historical attempts at connecting physics and psychology. Readers wishing to proceed to mechanics proper can skip ahead to Chapter 4 or Chapter 5 without loss of understanding.

Impediments to understanding

Why have the mental sciences lagged the physical so markedly? The answer could involve social factors, such as the stimulus to physical discovery made by war and trade, but one might expect that discoveries about the mind might benefit these activities to some extent as well, as was assumed by Joseph Göbbels and is known by advertising agencies today.