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The Parallel Development of Method in Physics and Psychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Charles Hartshorne
Charles Hartshorne*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.
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Extract

There is a significant and a too little noted analogy between the histories of the physical and the “mental” sciences—especially psychology—an analogy capable of throwing much light upon the present-day problems of the latter. Some aspects of this analogy have become commonplaces, but others have been almost completely overlooked.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , October 1934 , pp. 446 - 459
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1934

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References

1. C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers (Cambridge, Mass., 1931), 1. 170, and p. 362. Also Vol. 6. And see my article, “Continuity, the Form of Forms, in Charles Peirce,” The Monist, 1929, pp. 521–534.

2. The late Ralph Eaton was one of these, according to a conversation I had with him.

3. Georges Dwelshauvers, Traité de Psychologie, p. 389.

4. Richard Müller-Freienfels, Das Denken u. d. Phantasie (Leipzig, 1916), S. 241. Cf. C. S. Peirce, Collected Works, Vol. vi, Bk. 1, Ch. 5, or Chance, Love and Logic, pp. 203 f., 222 ff.

5. Op. cit., p. 408.

6. I have dealt with this subject in The Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation (The University of Chicago Press, 1934). See my paper on “Sense Quality and Feeling Tone,” Proc. of the Oxford (7th) International Congress of Philosophy, pp. 168–172. A recent statement of the experimental evidence confirming the position is given by Heinz Werner in his article, “l'Unité des sens,” Journal de Psychologie, XXXI, pp. 190–205. See also the series “Untersuchungen über Empfindung und Empfinden” by Werner, Zietz, and others in Zeitschrift für Psychologie, Vol. 114, pp. 152 ff.; Vol. 117, pp. 230 ff.; Vol. 121, pp. 257 ff.; Vol. 125, pp. 249–288; Vol. 127, pp. 265–289.

7. For an eminent physiologist's conception of a similar program see Ralph S. Little, “The Living and the Non-living,” The American Naturalist, Vol. 68, pp. 304 ff., and his article in this journal, vol. 1, p. 296.

8. See The Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation, p. 28 and secs. 28, 37–40, for some suggestions as to how the psychic can be translated into behavioristic and therefore publically verifiable and potentially scientific terms. Since this book has been interpreted (see the review in vol. 1, p. 361, of this journal) as an attempt to substitute qualitative for quantitative analysis, it may be permissible to point out that my intention at least was rather to substitute a geometry of qualities for their mere classification, and that since geometry is the foundation of measurement, such a shift could hardly interfere with and ought immeasurably to facilitate the application of quantitative ideas. I should like also to express my sense of the unusual merits and general fairness of Mr. Ruddick's review.

9. Cf. J. B. S. Haldane's article in the first number of this journal.

10. See Hartshorne, op. cit., Secs. 22(3), 28, 32.

11. Ibid., Sec. 33.