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Let us next consider the physiologist Weber and the astronomer Bessel, whose experimental work jointly cut the Gordian knot around psychology’s throat formed from Kant’s unknowable ego and the God-given moral realities of the Scottish School. Weber and Bessel’s efforts indicated both the actuality of a systematic investigation of the senses and behaviour, and the essential role played by measurements such as reaction time and judgements of differences between stimuli in distinguishing between conditions. In 1834 and 1846, Weber published his experimental studies of two-point touch sensitivity and the discrimination of lifted weights (see Boring 1950). The work was systematic in that Weber tested various parts of the body and then made comparisons between the body’s differential ability to distinguish between one and two points. He also noted that lifted weights were more finely discriminated if the person was actively involved in lifting the weight rather than having it placed on their outstretched palm. The lifted weight studies seemed further to suggest a simple rule linking the increase in the weight needed to make it seem heavier than a comparison weight, and the comparison weight itself, the so-called Weber fraction. Bessel in 1822 built on the observation that the astronomer Maskelyne had in 1796 dismissed an assistant for systematically ‘mistaking’ the times of stellar transits by a second. This suggested to Bessel both the existence of consistent individual differences in the timing of actions (referred to as the personal equation ), and the possibility of using latency for differentiating between astronomical judgements. Thus a psychology beckoned that was more physiological, systematic, empirical and secular.

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Encyclopedia of nineteenth-century thought 536

Gustav Fechner, the creator of psychophysics (the study of thresholds and psychological scales), drew heavily upon Weber, with the so-called Weber-Fechner law being only one of the results. Fechner also used Weber’s approach to empirically demonstrate the truth of the holistic philosophy of panpsychism to which he was heavily committed. His Elements of Psychophysics was finally published in 1860, but in such a form that the philosophical components could be easily stripped out, leaving Fechner’s revolutionary methodology, and his results and theories, to be plundered. This was quickly done by the most famous figure in nineteenth-century experimental psychology Wilhelm Wundt, whose laboratory in Leipzig (founded in 1879) had both helped to institutionalize the subject and had acted as a magnet for psychologists from both Europe and the USA. But Fechner was by no means the only influence on Wundt, the associationistic philosophy of John Stuart Mill, for instance, was cited by him for its experimental inspiration, while both Kant and Herbart had contributed to his structural notion of the mind through, for example, their notion of apperception. Equally important was the grounding of psychology in physiology: it should be noted, for example, that Wundt’s major textbook on psychology was entitled Principles of Physiological Psychology (1874/1904), while his long-term association with Helmholtz at Heidelberg had impressed him with the power of a mechanistic biology. Although Wundt’s principle methodology was systematic introspection, whose philosophical roots start at least as early as Kant, he was also happy to collaborate with the Dutch researcher Donders in using reaction times à la Bessel and Helmholtz (who had used it to measure the speed of the nervous impulse) in order to tease apart mental operations, while the continuing work on psychophysics used error counts as their basic measures.

As far as Britain was concerned, the doctrine of associationism was reasserted by J.S.Mill and Alexander Bain during the early and middle parts of the century contra the a priori of the Scottish School and Kant, although Bain added the structuring elements of the Emotions, the Intellect and the Will to the associationistic dynamic. He also pioneered what became the standard order of appearance in all introductory psychology textbooks in his two volumes from 1855 and 1859, that is, starting with neurophysiology and the brain, and then moving on to topics in psychology such as memory, perception, the will, etc., familiar from Dugald Stewart’s Philosophy of Mind. Bain is also famous for founding Mind in 1876, the first psychology journal in English, although after the turn of the century it became the philosophical journal that it is today (see Neary 2001 on the early years of Mind). Although Bain strove to provide a physiological grounding for psychology where possible, the psychology of the mid-nineteenth century was too extended and too philosophical to be so easily captured. Consequently, Bain’s work is as much speculative as empirical and, in this respect, not dissimilar from James’s Principles of Psychology .

The other strand of importance in British and then US psychology is that of adaptation or meaningful change. Since this is often associated with evolutionary doctrines, it is also thought to be exclusively concerned with the impact of Darwinian thinking on psychology, particularly after the publication of the most obviously psychological of his works, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). But just as there were several competing evolutionary accounts in the nineteenth century, so there was at least one major alternative to Darwinian adaptation in psychology; this was developed by HERBERT SPENCER who drew on the more (psychologically) congenial doctrine of

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Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, that is, the direct inheritance of acquired characteristics, or how the giraffe obtained (and kept) its long neck from generation to generation. Spencer’s 1855 Principles of Psychology set out to synthesize the whole of psychology around an evolutionary framework, where associationism provided the mechanism for laying down psychological phenomena such as habits and instincts, with Lamarck’s doctrine assuring their direct transmission to the next generation. Given such intra- and inter-generational plasticity, so the acquired actions etc. could be altered to improve one’s chances of survival in the face of changing circumstances. This proved to be so potent an approach to the psychology of adaptation that William James felt obliged to take on Spencer and the Lamarckians in order to defend his hero Darwin from their attacks (1890:1,270–80), but it was still, in 1890, a close run thing!

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