History of Psychology (Introduction)

History and Theory of Psychology: An early 21st century student's perspective

As aspiring students of psychology each of you are wading into a disciplinary stream that came from somewhere and is going somewhere. Before getting in over your head professionally speaking it's only prudent that you gain some notion of how the discipline got the way it is today and where it might be going in the future. A sense of this kind of retrospective and forward reaching analysis is essential to all science (physical, chemical, biological, psychological, sociological, or astronomical) as well as to intelligent living itself.

The historical lectures presented below provide a roughly chronological account of various past eras of thought or practice (from prescientific times up to the relative present) which influenced the theoretical, methodological, and disciplinary development of psychological science. I hope that you will soon begin to recognize that the only bona fide way to contextualize our contemporary professional standards, methodological assumptions, empirical preoccupations, or theoretical viewpoints is by candidly considering: (1) their respective interdisciplinary sources; and (2) their varied practical implications for future research or theory assessment within psychology.

Our present empirical knowledge and professional standards are always relative to not only what has gone before but also to that which will occur afterwards. No one era or period of psychological research and theory has ever, or ever will provide all the answers. There are always investigatory topics selected or left out, other empirical or theoretical issues to emphasize, or new events occurring -both within the discipline and beyond its confines- that would make ultimate for all time answers impossible. But there are notable points in the recorded history of psychological thought or practice in which recurring cycles of argumentative degeneration have been encountered, new empirical evidence has been brought forward, or particularly progressive methodological trends have been adopted. Once each of these are drawn out into the open it will become clear that they collectively constitute an undeniable challenge to some of our well-accepted theories and even hold the potential of improving upon some of our contemporary professional practices or standards.

The twofold task of this course, therefore, is to present both a "descriptive historical" account of past psychology as well as provide specific "prescriptive" suggestions as to which progressive methodological trends would be best to carry forward into 21st century psychology. The descriptive historical content begins by highlighting the long-standing predisciplinary methodological assumptions -regarding how to proceed in answering scientific questions, the nature of human perception, the mind-body relation, etc.- which were not only utilized to establish a distinct discipline of psychology but also heterogeneously applied in various divisive early 20th century systems or schools of psychology. It then indicates in detail how and why these assumptions were considerably homogenized into the tradition of mid-through-late 20th century "General" psychology. The prescriptive theoretical content assesses the practical adequacy of each methodological assumption in each successive era with the intent of indicating which recurring cycles of argumentative degeneration to avoid as well as which progressive trends to retain.

FROM:	TOWARD:
Idealism	Materialism
Mechanical/static analysis	Process analysis
Mind-body dualism	Mind-body monism
Reductionism	Anti-reductionism and Integrative Levels
Non-evolutionary Continuous mental evolution, "accretional" development (quantitative change only)	Truly evolutionary Emergent mental evolution, "dialectical" development (qualitative change as well)
Aristotelian-Newtonian view of lawfulness	Galilean-Lewin view of lawfulness
Indirect perception (enrichment)	Direct perception (differentiation)
Ahistorical invariance, or genes X environment interactions	Individual/Social/Societal transformations
Animal and human Behavior plus mental states (or cognition) as subject matter	Animal and human "Activity" as subject matter (activeness, operations, actions, activity)

Stated plainly, we will tease out the efforts of various figures from each era who attempted to avoid one or more of the methodological snares running down the left side of Table 1, and who thereby made successive approximations of a non-problematic scientific methodology which can potentially be adopted in subsequent psychological endeavor. I am aware of no other textbook that has even attempted such an ambitious prescriptive outline. So, even though this work is written with the student audience in mind, seasoned veterans of previous history and theory of psychology texts should not be surprised to find many novel, unfamiliar, or even challenging points being raised.

In order to embark upon this joint analytical journey a few preliminary definitions and distinctions should be laid out explicitly. First of all, due to the intimate relationship between any scientific endeavor and its cultural-historical context, a brief extract from David Murray's History of Western Psychology (1983) is provided for your periodic reference (Appendix 1). It nicely summarizes the main political, religious, and economic aspects of the rise of Western culture from ancient times up to the relative present. Many of the historical eras he describes will be mentioned as the background for the ideas, beliefs, investigative methods, and theoretical themes of various figures who contributed to the history of psychology.

Similarly, establishing a common understanding regarding some basic philosophical definitions (e.g., ontology, epistemology) early on will be rather useful in emphasizing the similarities and differences between the various kinds of empirical or theoretical positions we will encounter. For now it will suffice to carry out a cursory read through the Overview and Part 1 of Appendix 2. Please note, however, that Figure 1 contained therein depicts a detailed philosophical decision tree which can be referred to at your convenience. It indicates that each of the two fundamentally related philosophical questions -"ontology" (what exists) and "epistemology" (how do we know)- are respectively devisable into a host of mutually exclusive philosophical positions which we will mention in due course. I will occasionally refer you back to that appendix to help distinguish between different kinds of ontological positions (e.g., Materialism vs. Idealism, Reductive vs. Nonreductive materialism) as well as different kinds of epistemological positions (e.g., Realism vs. Anti-Realism, Direct vs. Indirect Realism, Direct vs. Indirect Perception, etc.).

Along with the two fundamental philosophical questions listed above, there is another related preliminary definition -namely "methodology"- to mention because (along with ontology and epistemology) it constitutes a third pillar upon which all philosophical, theological, practical, or scientific positions rely equally. Quite often in 20th century psychology the terms method and methodology were used interchangeably. So, before we elaborate further on what the working relationship between our three positional pillars might be, we have to first explicitly distinguish "methodology and methods" for the sake of clarity.

"Methodology" is something broader than method. Such methodologies, which can be defined as major ways of proceeding to answer a question, or major ways of approaching the subject matter, come in two assorted and mutually exclusionary "materialist or idealist" varieties. In order to answer any posed empirical or theoretical question, one has to have some broad notion as to how to proceed. The whole process of such an investigation, including the general direction of its movement (from outside the mind inward, or from inside the mind outward); the point at which one feels an explanation has been reached; and one's opinion as to whether the resulting knowledge is mind-dependent or mind-independent, constitutes the methodology being utilized. Methodology, then, is something which at least in part dictates the particular investigatory methods (the specific empirical or rational "techniques") to be used.

In contrast to the necessarily exclusionary character of materialist versus idealist methodology, we have two complementary (and potentially complimentary) "methods" of investigation to rely upon. One is "empirical" and the other is "rationalistic." Empirical methods are utilized when designing or conducting experimental or situational research. Their use requires the careful selection of measurement devices or recording equipment, of appropriate subject pools to draw from, and ultimately of the proper statistical techniques in order to adequately analyze the data collected. Such empirical research tends to describe quantitative changes (within and between groups of subjects) under the conditions of laboratory or situational controls, or it attempts to estimate (and rank-order) individual differences in performance on some standardized test. Rational methods, on the other hand, utilize introspective, phenomenological, psychoanalytical, or other such comparative techniques of analysis. Rationalistic research or therapy often attempts to elucidate qualitative differences noted by a philosophically trained individual about himself, or by a professionally trained clinician about a client or patient. Comparative and developmental psychologists, however, have also utilized rationalistic methods when proposing qualitative differences of mental kinds between species, or when they attempt to describe qualitative mental changes across the life-course of human beings respectively.

The historical rub or complication of this seemingly tidy scheme -regarding methods and methodologies- is that both classes of complementary empirical and rational research methods can and have been utilized by those adopting either an idealist or a materialist methodology. For various reasons, this requires that each of us especially when we are looking through the history of our discipline, must maintain a firm grasp of the distinction between methods and methodology.

First of all, even though the methods themselves are in fact "complementary" (they do mix well, they do sum or serve together to complete or fill out our investigation of any specific subject matter), there has been a proclivity in psychology of those adopting empirical methods to be "non-complimentary" of those adopting rational methods and vice versa. Incidentally, that's complimentary with an "i" -meaning actions or expressions showing courteous praise or respect. Quite simply, however, this needless acrimony between the empirical and rational camps of psychological science is based on a false premise: namely that those adopting empirical methods are methodological materialists and vice versa. Further (as indicated in the remaining introductory comments as well as in the five course Sections which follow), it is by way of failing to make the required distinction between methods and methodology that both the ontological status of the "knowledge" obtained from the efforts of those utilizing each class of research and the very proposition of progress in psychology itself has been successively called into question at various points in our disciplinary history.

So, as one small step toward not falling prey to these respective disciplinary foibles, let's consider briefly what the actual working relationship between our three "positional pillars" (ontology, epistemology, and methodology) might be before moving to the other issues in turn.

Matter and idea are two major components of any belief about, practical action toward, or contemplation of the world. The ontological aspect of even the simplest speculative contemplation about the world comes in with respect to which of these two components is believed to be prior (the idea or the matter being thought on). The epistemological aspect comes in with respect to which theory of perceptual access (indirect or direct realism) is appealed to during the elaboration or communication of that contemplative exercise. Furthermore, these ontological and epistemological beliefs (whether they are explicitly acknowledged or not) have a rather predictable pattern of affinity between them. Idealist ontologies tend to appeal to either outright anti-realist or markedly indirect realist epistemological arguments. Materialist ontologies on the other hand, tend to rely upon either naive direct realist or somewhat equivocal indirect realist epistemologies (see Part 2 of Appendix 2 for further elaboration).

These rather wide sweeping statements regarding ontological and epistemological belief apply to not only the "Presocratic" or "Classical" Greek philosophers (who did not as yet differentiate between so-called armchair metaphysical speculation, everyday practical concerns, or scientific investigation of the world), but equally as well to the theological doctrines of the medieval Church from which various early figures in 17th century philosophy of science (like Francis Bacon and Galileo) attempted to free themselves. These statements apply to the contemplative efforts contained in the rational "Cartesian" philosophy of Descartes (which is recognizable as one of the more speculative anticipators of later psychology), as well as to both the more empirically based 18th-19th century endeavors of "associationist" philosophers or physiologists (like Locke, the Mills, Helmholtz, etc.) and to subsequent disciplinary figures in the history of psychology proper right up to the present time.

Later on, we will carefully trace how deeply these underlying ontological and epistemological beliefs were acknowledged in the philosophical or scientific positions of each succeeding era. The point being raised here and now, however, is that once one begins acting upon those beliefs to answer any particular practical or theoretical question about the world, one is necessarily adopting some specific version of an idealist or materialist methodology. This methodological imperative is an inescapable aspect of any philosophical or scientific inquiry. It dictates the starting point for such inquiry as well as the respective order of use and relative emphasis put upon the various rational or empirical methods to be used during investigation.

In some of the earliest Greek examples we will deal with it is easy to tell which methodology is being utilized (Section 1). Those adopting a materialist methodology either contain themselves (like Thales) to statements about a fundamental material element of which every worldly object is made, or proceed (like Democritus) from the outside world inward in their analysis. Those adopting an idealist methodology (like the Sophists and Socrates) proceed from inside the mind and work their way outward to comment on the world of objects and events. Various later examples (from Aristotle onward) are less obvious in this regard but one particularly clear exemplar of this methodological difference (that we will cover in some detail) can be briefly considered.

When Francis Bacon (around the turn of the 16-17th century) was formulating his challenge to the long-standing subordination of philosophy and secular pursuits to the power or doctrines of the Church, he began by seeking out an adequate basis of certainty for such secular knowledge. In answering this question Bacon proceeded in a typically materialist fashion. He suggested that the basis for certainty regarding worldly concerns is not to be found by referring to the abstracted ideal realm of the Scholastic-theologian philosophers, nor was it to be found by referring to the authoritative writings of Aristotle, but in concrete things themselves. More specifically, it is to "nature" (objects in the world) that we must first look if we are seeking to attain the practical advancements in knowledge required by trade, industry, and the formation of a society for the common good (Section 2). In short, Bacon was rejecting the traditionally dogmatic "appeal to authority" theory of truth and putting forward a correspondence theory of truth in its place.

This assumed relation (or "marriage") between the nature of things and the "mind of man" provided a sound footing for intellectual life in England to pull itself away from both the political intransigence and the "eternal" (afterlife) concerns of the Church. For his own part, Bacon utilized such materialist arguments to actively promote educational reform and to help clear away what he viewed as ongoing institutional impediments to the carrying out of practically guided experimentation. Such a materialist methodology has also been incorporated into the "Standard view of science" ever since that time.

Later in the 17th century, a French gentleman, Rene Descartes, also sought out a basis for certainty of knowledge but he did it in a typically idealist fashion. He sought certainty of personal belief by turning to his own mind. More specifically, the immediate certainty of his own doubt about the existence of objects in the world became the basis from which he moves outward to deduce the certainty of his mind, his body, the outside world, and ultimately to certainty about the existence of "God" (Section 2).

Materialist methodology	Concrete > Abstract	Mind-Independence
Idealist methodology	Abstract > Concrete	Mind-Dependence

This methodological difference between Bacon and Descartes is very important because it is anticipated by or repeated in all the philosophical or scientific movements we cover. One makes its initial appeal to that which is concrete -matter (nature)- in order to explain idea (our conception or knowledge about the way things work in the world). The other appeals initially to that which is abstract -idea (doubt or mind)- to explain or account for matter (the existence of the outside world). Both gentlemen can be said to have worked out novel arguments departing from the old theological-idealist doctrine that the universe sprang from the mind of God and was materialized in the act of creation. But while Bacon adhered to a new materialist methodology and ontology, Descartes' methodology retained the idealist ontology of the previous doctrine intact.

In practice, the difference between various materialist and idealist positions is not just ontological and epistemological -these are important enough- but also methodological. The clearly demarcated outline of this materialist versus idealist methodological dichotomy in the above exemplars, however, becomes somewhat blurred in subsequent figures who utilize so-called associationist, introspective, or phenomenological techniques of analysis (Sections 2-4). But if we consider carefully the issue of whether the resulting knowledge obtained by utilizing these techniques is viewed to be "mind-dependent" or "mind-independent," we have an especially powerful way of diagnosing whether we are dealing with a materialist or an idealist methodology in that given case.

We know that we are dealing with an idealist methodology if the world and the knowledge gained from it by our investigatory efforts is being portrayed as mind-dependent. This distinguishing feature is present whether such knowledge is portrayed as dependent upon the whim of "God's mind" (theological idealism), dependent upon appeal to some "generalized mind or abstract realm" (Platonic idealism), or dependent upon "my mind" (as in the subjective idealism of the Sophists or the "phenomenalist" position of Berkeley).

The case by case power of that diagnostic tool for psychologists will start to become apparent when it is pointed out that some figures utilizing so-called "soft" Rationalistic methods (introspective, phenomenological, or psychoanalytical techniques) are under this mind-independence criteria not methodological idealists at all but methodological materialists. Most surprisingly, however, the same point in reverse can be made with regard to the case by case assessment of those who utilize Empiricist methods. Under this mind-dependence criteria, some proponents of so-called "hard" scientific psychology are exposed as methodological idealists and not materialists (Section 3-5).

Throughout the 20th century, psychology students were trained up so very heavily in empirical methods (and more specifically in the "operationist" or "Independent Variable, Dependent Variable" models thereof) that they had some difficulty identifying with the works of figures like John Dewey, C. Lloyd Morgan, Lev Vygotsky, or A.N. Leontyev -whose use of analytical rational methods is not in the idealist tradition of Descartes at all but rather more in the "functional" materialist tradition of William James (Section 4-5). We will strive to remedy this erstwhile shortcoming in training standards by not only exposing you to good materialist exemplars of both complementary methods, but by also helping you recognize and overcome the respective difficulties produced by the methodologically idealist varieties of each.

Theory and Knowledge in the "Standard" versus the "paradigm" view of scientific practice

The main point raised above was that the difference between any particular idealist or materialist position (in philosophy or in science) is not merely ontological or epistemological but methodological too. Even though Appendix 2 fails to mention this rather general point (regarding the working relationship between ontology, epistemology, and methodology), but merely highlights varied problematic and progressive affinities across the ontological-epistemological divide, both these aspects of the argument presented so far will eventually help us make other specific points regarding a much related topic to which we will now turn in only a simplified introductory manner.

This related topic -namely the "Standard view of science"- constitutes a retrospective encapsulation of the working relationship between empirical facts, observational laws, and theories as utilized in progressive scientific practice since the time of Bacon. The strengths and philosophical basis of the Standard view as compared with both the interdisciplinary "Positivist" movement as well as the shifting "paradigm" view of scientific revolutions, will be mentioned with particular regard to their varied influences on psychology.

According to the three-tiered Standard view of scientific practice (Scheffler, 1967/1982), facts in the world are collected into descriptive observational laws and theories are produced to account for or explain those observational regularities. The history of scientific and technological progress, however, has shown that science is "cumulative" at the observational level but not necessarily at the theoretical level. If at any one time there are always competing theories vying for subdisciplinary, disciplinary, or even cultural supremacy what exactly is being accumulated? The simplest answer to that is "knowledge."

One can reasonably assert that collectively we know more today than we did one or two hundred years ago and that the course of intellectual history is such that knowledge and technology expands, increases, and progresses over time. This raises the question of the working relationship between theory and knowledge. Theory is not identical to knowledge. Its functional utility is to "embrace" knowledge. Any theory, whether it be theistic, philosophical, or scientific is a conceptual vehicle in which we each carry our observational knowledge of factual existence. It is also the way in which we articulate our knowledge to each other. To the extent that these theories are true, they express our knowledge about the way things work in the particular aspect of the world under study.

From time to time, and often only after a protracted period of cultural or disciplinary crisis, these theoretical vehicles are found to be inadequate to embrace the knowledge or technical know-how which has accumulated. So we have to either bring about the needed changes in the theories used -so as to embrace the new knowledge that has been obtained through our collective investigatory efforts- or discard those theories altogether.

Occasionally, when the theoretical shift is a major or radical enough one, we may call it a theoretical "revolution." One example of initial theory being adjusted through more inclusive intermediate forms into a full-blown theoretical revolution can be found in the shift from natural theological to natural philosophical to "biological" views of species. Medieval through early 18th century natural theology utilized an "argument from design" (a theory which suggested that currently observable species are qualitatively separate and immutable). A somewhat adjusted secular form of natural philosophy in the late 18th through mid 19th century, however, accounted for the fact that extinct animals could be reconstructed from fossil deposits by relying upon various "catastrophic" theories (e.g., suggesting that a series of floods had wiped out these old creations). But by the late 19th century, that fossil record in combination with careful observation of the habitat of existing creatures allowed a truly biological view of species differentiation to be brought forward. This biological revolution relied upon Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory of "natural selection" (1859, 1872). Similar examples can be obtained from progressive disciplinary developments in 20th century theories regarding the astronomical and subatomic aspects of physics too.

But what about psychology? Has there been any notable theoretical progress or revolutionary shifts in this relative newcomer on the block of scientific disciplines? I suggest an affirmative answer to this question including among others the shift from indirect perception to direct perception, and the shift from interactionist theories of mental development toward transformative ones (Section 3-5). Yet the recognition, adoption, and organized application of these revolutionary theories has been both unwittingly hindered and even intentionally stymied owing to a very complex set of interdisciplinary as well as disciplinary circumstances and politics. These circumstances include not only the tender age of the discipline itself, but also the influence of a wider (and somewhat older) anti-philosophical movement -called "Positivism"- on both: (a) the "operationist" bent of early experimental psychology; and (b) the eventual rise of a various subsequent (rather reactionary) attempts to counter-argue that bent during a difficult period of subdisciplinary fractionation and crisis in psychology. So, let's take up each of these points in turn.

Although psychological thought and practice has a very long prescientific past (see Table 2), psychology as a distinct empirical endeavor or institutionally established "discipline" dates only back to the 1870s when small pools of laboratory based data began to be diverted from other disciplines (like biology and physiology) by various figures in Germany, Britain, and America. During the early part of this period of disciplinization, Wilhelm Wundt in particular was instrumental in moving beyond the borrowed physiological topics regarding bodily substrates (mechanisms of sensory receptors or speed of nervous conduction) toward a novel set of empirical questions under the banner of "mental chronometry." In his Leipzig laboratory (founded 1879) the measurement of so-called choice reaction times (which required experimental subjects to indicate their discrimination between two kinds of presented stimuli by choosing to perform a prespecified reaction with respect to each) was viewed as a means to empirically investigate central though rather elementary psychological processes.

Prescientific period of psychological thought	6th century B.C. -1860s
Period of disciplinization	1870s-1920
Schools and Systems era	1921-1939
Middle of the Road "General" Psychology (operationism)	1940s- early-1970s
Period of Fractionation and Crisis (eclectic psychology)	late-1970s- late-1980s
Postpositivist period of Reconstruction, Integration, and Reformulation	1990s onward

Although Wundt's carefully circumscribed portrayal of "experimental" psychology -as the laboratory measurement of the "Sensory, Ideational, Affective" elements obtained from the "immediate experience" of individual human minds- is almost unrecognizable to us today, his anti-reductive motive for such a portrayal is easily recognizable. Most notably, Wundt was adamant that higher mental processes (e.g., the kind of educational learning processes which develop within the setting of human cultures) would have to be studied outside the laboratory by a more anthropological sister discipline which he called "Volkerpsychologie" (folk psychology).

One of Wundt's British-born American students, Edward B. Titchener, radicalized this initially circumscribed empirical approach by proposing that analytically reductive introspective techniques might be used to break down so-called higher mental processes into their studiable static-mechanical "states" (Section 3). The antiquated details of Titchener's (1896, 1910) empirically reductive approach are only important to us because they provide a stark contemporaneous contrast to the "anti-reductive" efforts of Wundt and the "nonreductive" approach of William James. As a quintessentially American and evolutionary thinker, James can be credited with proposing a more progressive "functionalist" view of higher mental processes in two influential texts (1890, 1892) which became the respective basic training vehicles for an early 20th century generation of graduate and undergraduate psychology students (Section 4).

While all three individuals helped demarcate a new empirical and scientific psychological discipline out from the former merely rationalistic and prescientific tradition of moral philosophy, this early controversy regarding the status of "high mental processes" as subject matter for psychological investigation highlights the fact that many of the divergent methodological assumptions made by the initial disciplinizers of psychology up to 1920 (Wundt, Titchener, James) sprang from much older philosophical sources stretching all the way back to the respective times of Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Descartes, or Kant.

Over the first fifty years of its disciplinary development (1879-1939) there were many widely varying attempts to articulate psychological knowledge which yielded highly divergent "schools and systems." Some utilized mind-body "parallelist" arguments so that they could refer to both mental as well as physiological processes (Wundt), while others emphasized merely "mental content" (Titchener's Structuralism) or referred only to observable "behavior" (Watson's classical behaviorism). Most were dismissive of other approaches but some were more inclusive (e.g., the Functionalist school of James, Dewey, Angell, and Carr). Most were reductive in some way or another, but some attempted anti-reductionist arguments in a bid to provide an account of higher mental processes without breaking them down into smaller mental elements or behavior (e.g., the Würzburg school of Oswald Külpe). In short, widely divergent assumptions regarding the nature of human perception, mind-body relations, individual differences, higher mental processes, or the kinds of causal laws sought after by scientific investigators helped shape the scope and methodological demarcation points between the various early 20th century systems or schools of psychology (Appendix 4).

Various early history of psychology related textbooks attempted to provide an historicized account of these controversial demarcation points as best they could (Boring, 1929a; Murchison, 1926, 1930; Heidbreder, 1933). It was noted that some of the schools and systems were explicitly aimed at outlining the generalized human mind while others exhibited an overemphasis upon the peculiarities and particularities of specially trained individual human minds. It was also recognized that each system or school contained an element of truth. For instance, even Edna Heidbreder -who was already falling under the spell of 19th-century positivistic argumentation (which contained a subtle fact-theory confusion and tended to emphasize the mere collection of facts as the be-all of scientific investigation)- admitted that: "A system may fulfill its [disciplinary] function by... proving itself partly right and partly wrong" (1933, p. 16).

Ironically, when we look back at the early 1930s era of psychology it is clear that the disciplinary problem was that there were too many facts which remained unaccounted for by the various schools or systems of that era. There were already numerous empirical observational regularities being noted by psychologists for which they as yet had no adequate theoretical understanding. What was lacking was not merely a sufficiently firm factual knowledge base, as Heidbreder believed, but adequately developed theory to explain those facts. But even if there had been more sufficiently developed theories available, the necessary and sufficient historical perspective required to practically compare the outcome of adopting one particular theory or system over the others was lacking during this period in which psychology was still in its disciplinary infancy.

By 1938, it was becoming apparent that no single existing system or school was gaining ascendancy over the others regarding their particular take on these ongoing and controversial methodological issues. An era of so-called "middle of the road" General psychology was then embarked upon by influential mid-century figures like R.S. Woodworth and E.G. Boring. This era of General psychology was said to be "positivist" or "operationist" due to its heavy emphasis upon the administration and production of quantitative empirical methods (measurement devices or statistical techniques) versus any further deep consideration on the underlying methodological assumptions or societal implications of that research (Section 5). Psychological experiments, in particular, were portrayed as ahistorical or theoretically "neutral" measurement devices by which the "controversies between the schools can be (happily) left aside..." (Woodworth, 1938; p. 3).

Between 1945 and the early 1970s this officially tentative disciplinary emphasis on both experimental investigation of specific subject areas (like perception, learning, memory, motivation, or personality) as well as on the expanded utilization of individual differences technologies (intelligence, educational, or vocational testing) managed to yield large piles of descriptive observational data and undoubtedly advanced the statistical sophistication of the discipline. Some obvious indicators of disciplinary success in this era include: A veritable explosion in American Psychological Association divisions; the founding of the Educational Testing Service (ETS); the adoption of formalized subdisciplinary handbooks for the training of graduate students; the continued publishing of successive Mental Measurement Yearbooks (MMY); and a periodically revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). An omnibus code of professional ethics for APA members was also attempted and updated throughout this era (Hilgard, 1987, 1988).

Even such ostensibly successful disciplinary traditions, however, have their vulnerabilities and limitations. The Achilles heel of General psychology was eventually found to be that it relied too heavily upon an unduly "anti-metaphysical" tradition of positivist value neutrality regarding the social or institutional implications of its research, measurement, or classification technologies.

Positivism was a tremendously influential interdisciplinary movement in philosophy of science which went through various (19th-to-early-20th century) incarnations including: Social positivism, Empiriocriticism, and Logical positivism. As outlined in Sections 3-5, each of these influenced psychology successively. I want to at least acquaint you with some of the basic features of this movement now, however, because it has a significant bearing upon both our discussion of the intimate relationship between science and the three positional pillars (ontology, epistemology, methodology) mentioned above, as well as upon our present discussion about the status of the Standard view of science.

First of all, I've indicated that the scientific methodology which one adopts while carrying out research is always a reflection of the underlying ontological and epistemological assumptions one has made. The term "metaphysics" was avoided while making this argument for a very good historiographical reason. I avoided that term because the positivists (going all the way back to the beginning of the 19th century) had decided that metaphysics and science don't mix well; they should be separated.

It was Auguste Comte (one of the important early articulators of Social positivism) who put forward a three-stage law (or theory) of intellectual history. He suggested that the way we historically undertook to explain the world was initially theological, but this whole way of doing things became secularized into a metaphysical (or philosophical) understanding of the world, and that -by the 19th century- science had sufficiently proven itself so we could now turn collectively to a scientific (or "positivist") understanding of the world (Abbagnano, 1967).

Roughly speaking these three stages are probably correct. But Comte also asserted that when society gets to the scientific stage there would be no need for any account of metaphysics (philosophy per se) and that the proper, most positive, thing to do toward achieving this end was to cure or "purify" scientific discourse of its contemporary metaphysical content (by which he meant spinning theories out of the head without verifying them in fact). According to Comte, the first stage is theological; that transforms itself into the metaphysical, and at last (once we rid ourselves of all those burdens) we end up with pure science.

This official emphasis on science at the exclusion of metaphysics continued on and was characteristic of the positivist movement right into the early 20th century. The Logical Positivists, in particular, concurred with this rough analysis. In an attempt to demarcate that which is science from that which is metaphysics, they put forward the so-called "principle of verification." Under this principle both "tautological" statements (self-evident or self-contained statements such as mathematical ones like: 2 + 3 = 5), as well as statements that are empirically verifiable (testable) were admissible as scientific. Any statements or propositions which did not fall under these two headings were to be considered as metaphysical and therefore inadmissible.

Comte had intended his three-stage theory of intellectual history to be merely a warning against the tendency of philosophers and theologians to go beyond the world of given observation. Thought which keeps its line of communication open with worldly fact and human practice is scientific thought; that which fails to do so is mere metaphysical speculation. The broad scope of this Comtean provision, for instance, still allowed room for figures like Jeremy Benthem, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill to consider their social "utilitarianism" (which argues that political theory should be based upon a sound understanding of "human nature") as a scientific endeavor (Section 3).

The Logical positivists, however, radicalized this seemingly reasonable Comtean warning to its breaking point. In short, by way of constraining the scope of science to a set of acceptable propositions they were unwittingly casting off the productive "correspondence" theory of truth proposed by Bacon which had still been utilized by early Social positivists like Comte or the Mills. Strict adherence to the new verifiability principle entailed along with it that Logical positivists would begin sliding successively toward adopting a rather poorly recognized and problematic "agreement" theory of truth. The adoption of that theory of truth had more in common with the ontologically agnostic arguments of David Hume (Section 2-3) than it did with what has come to be called the Standard view of science. So, if we are to properly place the methodological assumptions of the Logical positivists within the broadly defined "received" (handed down) context of scientific endeavor, we must recognize their account of science was a severely constrained one.

During the 1920s, Logical positivism was the hottest thing going and a crude form of it swiftly became hegemonic in psychology. Many academic psychologists, that is, started talking the language of Logical positivism. The best known embodiment of such positivism in psychology was "Operationism." This position was formally proposed by S.S. Stevens (1935 a&b, 1936, 1939) and was then taken up informally into the tradition of General psychology thereafter (Section 5).

The positivist doctrine of "pure science" seemed to dictate that scientific psychologists should avoid metaphysics. Since ontology was recognized as one aspect of philosophy, general psychologists began shying away from any hint of theory which made such ontological claims. It was precisely because of the value-ladeness of ontological claims that the operationists set out to to confine themselves to "operationally defined" measurements of ontologically equivocal "hypothetical constructs." From 1948 onwards, both individual differences researchers and experimentalists attempted to live within these constraints. Thus was psychology "purified" of its metaphysical shortcomings (Section 5).

In the ensuing years up to the mid-1960s, this shying away from theory was in full swing. The empirical techniques used in General psychology were supposed to be value neutral because they were "descriptive" only and didn't seem to make any direct ontological claims regarding the actual nature of the underlying psychological processes being measured. In short, under operationism the previously productive line of communication between thought, empirical measurement, and ontological fact was breached. Two of the symptoms of this breach were the conflation between methods and methodology (outlined above); and "methodolatry" (a blind faith in, or undue deference toward the established disciplinary authority of past empirical traditions). The primary characteristic of mid-20th century psychology was one of letting the available empirical techniques dictate and delimit the depth or scope of analysis to mere mathematical or observational description only. Thus was "scientific" psychology of both the experimentalist and the individual differences stripes relieved of its former burden of doing anything else than conducting basic empirical measurements (descriptive statistics), making statistical generalizations (inferential statistics), or suggesting rather circumscribed predictions with regard to that data (hypothesis testing and so-called "ability-achievement discrepancy analysis" respectively).

But according to the Standard view, science does not progress through such sober collection of descriptive or predictive facts alone but by way of noting observational laws and by producing theories to explain the existence of those observational regularities (as well as the exceptions to them). Such theories necessarily involve making ontological claims about the way things are and work in the world (the nature of the development of the subject matter under study). In the discipline of psychology, this requires that we produce theories about the nature of the development of psychological processes.

It will become obvious in Section 5 that this mid-20th century effort to constrain General psychology to merely descriptive measurements or inferential predictions regarding "hypothetical constructs" (like animal learning or human intelligence) was a far more abstract endeavor than the former Jamesian tradition of making empirically and rationally informed pronouncements about the actual nature of psychological processes (like perception, learning, memory, motivation, or personality). General psychology became so abstract and removed from the everyday concerns of the actual people it was supposed to serve, that a disciplinary revolt against it began in the late 1960s.

Successive attempts to provide "Humanistic" or "Existential" alternatives to positivist psychology were tried out from the 1960s through 1990s (Appendix 4). These were more or less sincere bids to make psychology more relevant to human affairs by reasserting the relatively neglected issues of human values, intentional action or motives, emotional or meaningful experience, and social responsibility back into psychological discourse. In short, they were attempts to address the crisis of disciplinary relevance in psychology. It would take some time, however, to work out a viable plan of remedial action in these regards. Many of the initial 1960s era clinical manifestations of this movement were rather wacky, weird, and incoherent. Sigmund Koch's rather bombastic review of this movement (1969), for instance, clearly indicated in a no holds barred fashion that they were operating according to the embarrassing principle of anything goes (see also Nicholson, 2007). This having been said, it was now becoming increasingly hard for academic psychologists to deny that the intentional nature of human life, or the issues of freewill and self-actualization were important for a more well-rounded psychology to address.

The most progressive aspect of the disciplinary crisis itself was that it was recognized at all. Its ongoing expression and serious consideration was indicative of the growing historicization and maturation of the discipline. For instance, from the late 1970s onwards, attention was drawn to the undeniable and perhaps unsustainable fractionation of methodological assumptions existing between rather diverse sets of varied psychological subdisciplines. The sophisticated state of specialization within the discipline seemed to necessitate that any broad-minded or inclusive psychologist would have to accept a flexible "eclectic" methodology when jumping from the biopsychological, neuropsychological, or intentional social aspects of any given psychological subject area (e.g., learning).

The political, legal, and ethical dimensions of psychological practice were also becoming a matter of professional concern. Public scrutiny and debate was being trained, for instance, on the psychological testing industry with its applications in educational and vocational settings; on both the diagnostic clinical criteria used for the assessment of mental patients; as well as on the use of animals in psychological experimentation. These wider social concerns (over the issues of "Race" and sexism in psychology, on patient rights, humane treatment of animals) came as severe shock to the formerly comfortable existence of psychologists trained up during the early and middle part of the 20th century. In a whole host of rather defensive maneuvers, psychologists -in the applied (testing) fields, the clinical or therapeutic field, and the academic research or teaching field- closed up ranks within their respective professional associations or societies to produce face-saving formal policies statements, accreditation boards, ethics in research committees, peer review procedures and the like.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, this defensive posturing continued to manifested itself in both a ubiquity of "political correctness" in our psychology departments and in a proclivity toward intentionally unsystematic content in our textbooks -one being driven by self-serving professional interests and the other by the supposed incentives or demands of the textbook marketplace. Both were strongly indicative of a discipline that was suffering from a chronic case of noncommittal "tactical" eclecticism.

Consider the troubling indecisive content of the textbooks used to introduce you to psychology. Over the last few decades the writers of introductory psychology texts (e.g., R. Atkinson; D. Coon; H. Glietman; R. Silverman; C. Wortman; and P. Zimbardo) almost invariably belong to this noncommittal tactical eclectic group. Their texts are notorious for a so-called "balanced" approach to controversial methodological issues. Their account of "sensation and perception" for instance may contain some historical content and mention rather varying theories (like associationism, Gestalt groupings of sensory elements, or even Gibsonian direct perception), but these are presented in a so-called "nonpartisan" fashion as merely available alternative theories. The practical implications of adopting each theory are either ignored or insufficiently covered so as to effectively preclude the student reader from adopting one theory over the other. The same goes for their coverage of learning, memory, motivation, and personality. Similarly, the metaphors used to describe the mind-body relation will change rather opportunistically between the chapters on biopsychology, learning, motivation, etc. Their treatment of individual differences, again, will vary whether one is reading a chapter on learning or on personality. Finally, the issue of exactly what a psychological law (rather than a biological or physiological law) might be is avoided altogether or simply shifts inconsistently between and even within chapters.

Given these drawn out and partially unnecessary circumstances of disciplinary and theoretical fractionation, it should not be surprising to hear that a renewed interest in the theoretical aspect of psychological inquiry was eventually forthcoming. It was just here, however, that a crucial difference in opinion arose between those theoretical psychologists who accepted the Standard view of science (and thus began working toward a coherent theoretical account of the discipline) versus those who considered that enterprise impossible (and thus adopted a "shifting paradigm" view of scientific revolutions).

At face value this latter "Constructivist" movement sought to attack both the operationist and falsificationist forms of psychological neopositivism on the grounds that they are too confining and dogmatic. What we will eventually come to recognize, however, is that constructivism was not a viable alternative to the ongoing positivist psychology tradition but an extension or rather outcome of it (Section 5).

I classify this latter Constructivist movement as reactionary rather than ameliorative or remedial for two reasons. Firstly, by way of adopting a shifting paradigm view of scientific revolutions, it hindered or destabilized rather than aided the attempt to make psychology more relevant to human affairs. Secondly, as shown below, it amounts to a modern self-contradictory adoption of methodological idealism in its worst possible form. In short, both reactionary aspects of this Constructivist movement mark it out as a necessarily inconsistent and "metaphysically pluralist" approach which denies the very possibility of a coherent and unified psychological science altogether.

For now, in the interest of staying roughly on topic, it will suffice to mention that during the period of disciplinary crisis, a counterproductive shifting "paradigm" view of scientific revolutions (Kuhn, 1962, 1970 a&b) became popular among those writing up the historical and theoretical reviews of psychology itself (Koch, 1969, 1981; Wertheimer, 1972; Gergen, 1981, 1984). In this alternative to the "positivist version" of the Standard view, there is an expressed doubt that true knowledge of the sort claimed by the Standard view is really possible at all. Under this new metaphysically pluralist "alternative," it was argued that what we really have in any theory is not an expression or articulation of knowledge but merely an "interpretation" of the world. If a theory is only an interpretation, and being interpretive is highly personal, then change in theory is brought about by changes in the tastes and whims of individual scientists or by shared fads among influential groups of scientists. Abandonment of a previously accepted theory is not a question of it being inadequate to some underlying progressive increment in knowledge attainment but merely a question of going from one convenient or self-serving understanding of the world to another. The original theoretical understanding somehow loses favor, a new one takes its place, and we have a different interpretation of the world as a result.

The reason we might agree or disagree regarding a given theory, they suggest, has nothing to do with its "truth" value. Instead its acceptability is always subservient to its compatibility or comfort of fit to ongoing traditions of established research practice, with its wider political implications, or with the contemporaneous traditions of textbook writing within a given discipline or subdiscipline. Under this view, a historian of science can note how research traditions are drawn into agreement on a particular topic of research but should not presume to make any claims that the new agreed upon interpretation (paradigm) has any exclusionary truth value with respect to former ones.

So, on the face of it, the important differentiating characteristic between adherents of the Standard view and the paradigm view is their position on whether competing theories are "commensurable" or not. The Standard view (even in its constrained positivistic version) claims that all good theories within a given domain are ultimately commensurable. They are able to be assessed one against the other with respect to their adequacy of accounting for the empirical evidence, even though this comparison may take centuries to carry out. The paradigm view, however, suggests that theories from different eras of research, from different subdisciplines, and even from different individuals are incommensurable. Your interpretation is your interpretation, and there is no "real" way by which I can compare it with my own. They are simply different.

The same goes, they claim, for larger movements in the history of science. We didn't, for instance, move from classical Newtonian notions of universal gravitation toward the Einsteinian theory of general relativity (governing large bodies like planets, moons, or galaxies); nor from ancient indivisibility theories regarding atoms (Democritus) toward Quantum mechanical laws (governing the stability of minute atomic particles and the radioactive decay rates of unstable ones) because modern physicists found these later forms of theory to be more adequate to their respective domains of application, but only because those scientists just got tired of the old physics. There is no factual basis, they suggest, to say that modern physics is anything better than either ancient or classical (17th-to-19th century) physics because they are simply different eras of "discourse" and are therefore not comparable enterprises.

Let's be careful to note, then, that under this paradigm account not only is all theory being recognized as historically "relative" (contextualized within the strengths and weaknesses of a given era of research) but that factual knowledge itself is also being portrayed as historically "relativistic" and necessarily non-cumulative. We do not know more now than we did some three-hundred years ago, they suggest, all we know now is different things.

When radicalized to its rather disconcerting argumentative extreme, this relativistic view comes up with statements which I am sure would make your head spin with incredulity. It suggests for instance that scientific investigators three hundred years ago lived in a different world than our own. What we say doesn't apply to their world and what they said doesn't apply to ours. Furthermore, although studying such historical interpretational curiosities can provide an amusing pastime for so-called history of science buffs, such analysis does not say much (they suggest) about our current existence and certainly nothing about the truth of the matter. I don't know how self-contradictory, sloppy, reactionary, or even silly this explicitly non-cumulative view of knowledge sounds to you but it has seduced a sizable minority of late 20th century history and theory writers so I hope that you can appreciate why it is necessary for me to draw your specific attention to it at the outset of this course (see also Section 5).

Without a doubt, it is often a matter of timing and politics whether a given scientific theory will become "popular" or be met with considerable subdisciplinary resistance or even wider disciplinary intransigence. We will see many instances of this and there is no harm in tracing out or even highlighting such instances per se. But should not the issue of whether the given theory is true also be an issue of grave concern for the historian? Obviously I think it should be, and so does the Standard view of science properly understood.

To put the immediate implication of this point plainly, I believe that all of the useful historical analysis which is contained within the texts of those who adopt either the neopositivist "falsifiability" version of the Standard view or the self-contradictory alternative paradigm view can be subsumed into the writings of those who adopt an "updated" version of the Standard view of scientific progress (see Part 3 of Appendix 2). Updating the Standard view saves us the embarrassment of slipping back into claims about the value-neutral status of our accumulated knowledge or our empirical techniques, and it also helps us retain the realist-materialist methodology which has served us so very well up to the present time. Furthermore, this updated form has the morale boosting advantage of affirming unequivocally that even rather long-lasting, ongoing, and discordant methodological issues (for example whether a scientific law need apply "everywhere and always" or whether such laws are better understood as being "local" in their domain of application) are ultimately able to be worked out by way of noting the respective disruptive or practical outcome of each position on the history of scientific progress.

For psychologists in particular, a firm grounding in the updated Standard view of science (including some appreciation of its supporting realist-materialist philosophical and methodological basis), has major and rather favorable implications for the possibility of deciding what the nature or limits of psychological knowledge might be, as well as for maintaining some informed notion of whether it can ever become a coherent or unified scientific discipline. One would expect under the Standard view to find, over the course of the first hundred years of such a new discipline, a host of competing theories being utilized in differently carved out subdisciplines. We certainly have that in psychology today and this in no way contradicts the Standard view of science as long as it is understood broadly enough.

The claim proposed in Table 2 above is that psychology is currently in the "Postpositivist period of Reconstruction, Integration, and Reformulation." You may not have run across such an explicit claim before so some basic preparatory comments on it will now be provided. These comments are intended to help you begin to consider what their disciplinary implications might be as well as what your personal realization of those implications may require of you in the future.

First of all, with regard to the "postpositivist" aspect, in the early 1950s science was still viewed as a something separated from human values, from ethics, politics, and metaphysics; but now we know differently. There was a host of events in the world -not the least of which was the dawn of the atomic age and Cold War politics with its constant threat of thermonuclear destruction hanging over our heads- which led us to recognize that science could not be "extricated" from questions of values, emotions, professional bias, and vested political interests.

Science is a very value-laden human activity. We engage in science because we have values. We value the outcome of all our practical, professional, and civic activities. We intend and constantly strive to do them better. Just like all human activity, scientific investigation springs from these sorts of values.

In every era of human existence such investigative activities whether they were theological, metaphysical, or scientific have also arisen out of the breakdown of established actions, procedures, or practices. When our normally effective actions are no longer effective, we become concerned and start asking why. Historically speaking, when our regular theological practice and established metaphysical knowledge was exposed as ineffective for the purposes of secular society we turned collectively to science for the new information required. Practical concerns about human beings growing largely out of the industrial revolution are what gave rise to the kinds of questions (about the malleability of the human mind, human perception or behavior) which in turn led to the rise of modern psychology (Section 2-4).

With the wider interdisciplinary demise of positivism in the 1960s, psychologists began to ask all sorts of philosophical, methodological, and theoretical questions which could not be asked under the constraints of operationism. The theoretical aspect of postpositivist psychology, in particular, is really a spin off from our practical concerns and value-laden human existence. It was only when the occasional psychological historian lost sight of this genesis of theory from practical concerns, that they (like the Logical positivists) began suggesting that theory has some separate status untethered by such objectively referential concerns. Put simply, correct theory is what guides action properly and it is therefore to the historical practicalities of adopting one theory over another that we must turn when attempting to resolve our theoretical differences. Again, good or true theory is what guides effective action and it is therefore eventually "accountable" to practice.

In the postpositivist era, scientific "objectivity" is no longer defined as value neutral or "dispassionate" inquiry but as "responsible assertion" (Scheffler, 1967/1982). It is the degree of "correspondence" between our scientific statements about our subject matter and the subject matter itself (as indicated by empirical evidence, our rational analysis of such evidence, and by the outcome of our practical activities) which makes our inquiry objective or not. This reformed definition of scientific objectivity is what helped us move away from the impractical, potentially destructive, consequences of the respective "agreement" or "consensus" theory of truth (which was lurking beneath the positivist version of the Standard view and which was eventually made explicit in the subsequent shifting paradigm view). It is an important aspect of an updated Standard view of scientific practice.

In psychology the adoption of an updated Standard view frees us up to move beyond the confines of merely "descriptive" operationist measurement toward the production of more explanatory theory. It also frees historians of psychology to move beyond the unsatisfying metaphysically pluralist question of "how the various subdisciplines get along with each other," towards reasserting more interesting ontological questions regarding how the actual subject matter or theories contained in each psychological subdiscipline might be "integratively" related in nature. The need for the production of explanatory theory and the answering of such ontological questions regarding psychological processes now constitutes the "required knowledge" for a discipline which has recognized the breakdown of both operationist and Constructivist (metaphysical pluralist) practice.

Secondly, with regard to the "reform" aspect of adopting an updated Standard view I want to be clear on how it ties back into the earlier mentioned working relationship between methodology, epistemology, and ontology. In fact it ties in so very well to certain versions of those three "positional pillars" that we might as well simply contend that together they constitute a new postpositivist "metatheory" under which we can go about reforming the discipline. The term metatheory in its recent usage can be defined loosely as an umbrella of assumptions or practices under which the specific ontological, epistemological, and methodological views of a given group of scientists fall.

Metatheory	View of Scientific Progress	Methodology	Epistemology	Ontology
Positivism (Operationism)	Constrained Standard view	Materialist but slips into Idealism	Indirect Realism shifting into Anti-Realism	Reductive Materialism
Metaphysical Pluralism	paradigms	Idealist	Anti-Realism	Anti-reductionist
Naturalistic Emergentism	Updated Standard view	Materialist	Direct Perception	Nonreductive Materialism

Since it is often advantageous to assert a new position in an affirmative manner, I suppose that it would be helpful to provide you with both a broad categorical label for this new postpositivist metatheory as well as to graphically depict how it contrasts with the two other metatheoretical positions (positivism and metaphysical pluralism) we have introduced. Table 3, therefore, provides such a name and will likely depict these respective contrasts sufficiently enough for our purposes. Section 4, in particular, details my historical argument for the selection of this "Naturalistic emergentism" label, but other affirmational brand names are most certainly possible too.

The traditional psychological anticipators of this combined Naturalistic emergentist metatheory (James, Dewey, Allport, Vygotsky, Gibson, Leontyev) have all adopted both an anti-reductive ontology, a materialist methodology which was inclusive of rational analysis, and a direct realist epistemology (see Section 3-5 in this regard). In its modified postpositivist form, Naturalistic emergentism would openly adopt a "direct perceptionist" epistemology and a nonreductive "integrative levels" account of ontology in order to shore up the Standard view of scientific progress too (see Appendix 2 & Section 5 for further elaboration).

These two modifications redress a little more fully the problems of the "constrained" positivist version of the Standard view in various ways. First of all, they allow for the open recognition of the value ladeness, selectivity, and historically contextualized nature of all empirical or rational endeavors -which was after all the one salient point made by those adopting the paradigm view of scientific revolutions- without leaving us vulnerable to the unsavory relativistic aspects of metaphysical pluralism per se. Secondly (as indicated in Section 5), these particular refinements allow ample room for both the "justification" and the "discovery" aspects of scientific psychological practice -i.e., for the production of descriptive-empirical observational laws as well as explanatory theories which match the nature of the development of the psychological object, event, or processes under study.

In other words, under the postpositivist form of Naturalistic emergentism we psychologists can retain the best aspects of the other two metatheories and combine them in a novel way. We can have our empirical cake and stomach the resulting psychological theories too.

We are currently in the postpositivist reconstruction period of psychology (Table 2) and an explicit adoption of a naturalistic emergentist metatheory (Table 3) seems like a viable way to encapsulate our plan for reforming the discipline along its most progressive methodological lines as indicated by the practical outcome or intellectual history of the discipline itself (Table 1).

But these stages or periods of disciplinary progress are never simply cut and dry. They tend to overlap and are properly speaking only roughly successive. There are always ongoing conservative disciplinary trends and forces to contend with as well as detailed ameliorative policies, procedures, or standards to be put in place and developed further. Such disciplinary change doesn't happen over night nor is it unanimously welcomed especially by those who already hold the institutionally situated high-ground and authoritative power to resist such change.

For instance, one of the most high-profile and disconcerting disciplinary events during the latter part of the disciplinary crisis era was the formation of the "American Psychological Society" in 1988. It seemed to outsiders that this new professional society was started as a defiant attempt by experimental and psychometric psychologists to further their own self-serving agenda of bracketing rather than resolving our wider disciplinary differences. In any case, although this professional maneuver not only foreshadowed but probably aided a minor resurgence of "neopositivism" in academic circles through to the mid-1990s, it did not hold back the tide of public criticism of those particular subdisciplines, nor did it stifle calls for reform even from within its own ranks. As of January 1, 2006, the APS was reconstituted and renamed the "Association for Psychological Science." It is hoped that the new name will not become a mandate to complete the rise of a shadow republic to the more inclusive socially responsive APA, but be taken as an opportunity to begin working with that older association in a more productive manner.

It now appears that most psychologists within the APA and APS recognize that any renewed defensive retrenchment into our respective clinical or research subdisciplines, or any fallback to vapid methodological eclecticism is ill-advised and unnecessary. It isn't advisable because all such delaying tactics in the face of change will eventually be exposed as failing to advance the discipline beyond its noncommittal mid-late 20th century descriptive confines. It isn't necessary because we already have a host of progressive intellectual, analytical, practical, or statistical tools at our disposal by which we can both openly acknowledge our past mistakes and produce a unified psychological discipline that actually works for and with the citizens which it is supposed to serve.

There is simply no denying anymore that the implementation of detailed reform is of crucial disciplinary import. The methodological inconsistencies of early 20th century psychology are still with us and will not simply go away by entrenching our subdisciplinary positions or by sticking our respective heads in the sand and pretending they don't exist. They remain as the as yet unresolved and conflicting underpinnings of a divided collection of subdisciplines within which you will soon be specializing. They are still at play in the self-contradictory textbooks used to train you up, in the journals to which you will be sending your research, as well as in the institutions (applied, clinical, or academic) within which you will be working.

A clearly outlined, partisan assessment of these methodological underpinnings, therefore, is required to not only ease your own legitimate concerns about what sort of profession you are entering into, but also to further advance the discipline itself toward socially responsible applications and explanatory accounts of our various empirical subject areas. In short, our present task is one of sorting through both the informal prehistory and the formalized history of the discipline in search of what to retain and what to abandon in 21st century psychology.

By way of rounding out our introductory comments, there is an important professional divide amongst historians of psychology to which I want to draw your attention. This divide is between "outsider" historians with formalized training in philosophy or the history of science and "insider" psychologist historians with little training in the history or philosophy of science.

At various times, the history of psychology has been portrayed as either "hero-worship" or the telling of "likely stories" (Ash, 1983; Leary, 1987; Leahey, 1991, pp. 30-38). Both characterizations are certainly applicable to the kinds of naive insider history utilized during the early era of psychological disciplinization (1879-1920), a period of time in which psychology was being established as a natural science. These early histories tended to describe the founding of psychological laboratories in glowing terms and outline the work of the institutional heads of those labs in a relatively uncritical manner. As I have pointed out elsewhere, however, the normal review process of the major psychological journals of that era, including Psyc. Bulletin and Psyc. Review, were fairly efficient at exposing the varied creation myths or oversights of these early insider accounts or textbooks ( Ballantyne, December 2002).

The portrayal of psychological history as the telling of likely stories is a more ongoing concern for us as psychologists. It constitutes that which various "overly critical" history and theory texts (from the 1960s-1990s) were arguing against: uncritical insider accounts by those whose primary training is in the empirical-research aspects of the discipline (Furomoto, 1989 verus Mueller, 1979 or Hilgard & McGuire, 1991). The initial whipping-horse of these critical accounts was E.G. Boring's History of Experimental Psychology (2nd ed., 1950), a very influential work indeed. Their analysis spread out thereafter to include rather vicious repudiations of other useful "system and schools" texts, subdisciplinary "sourcebooks," or "basic readings" anthologies being utilized during that era and it has remained a force to be reckoned with ever since (Farr, 1988; Richards, 1987; Smith, 1988; Danziger, 1994).

To cut a long story short, there are two kinds of insider history that such "critical" historians of both stripes dislike intensely: (1) "celebratory" history which does not delve very deeply into its own underlying methodological assumptions; and (2) informal "myopic" history which discusses the immediate procedural rationale or implication of a given empirical study without making much reference to the theoretical aspects of the particular subject area or to the discipline as a whole. Many instances of celebratory history can be found in periodic Annual Review of Psychology reports regarding "recent progress" in the various subject areas of psychology (perception, learning, memory, motivation, personality), and in similar edited anthologies by mainstream psychologists (e.g., Hilgard's Fifty years of psychology, 1988). Examples of myopic history can be found even more regularly in the introductory or discussion sections of APA formatted empirical research reports.

When taken at their face value decontextualized descriptions of "great" psychologists (e.g., R.I. Watson, 1963) or collections of their "basic writings" (Watson, 1979), autobiographical anthologies (the Murchison series, the Krawiec series), mere celebrations of particular research institutes (Bringmann, & Tweney, 1980), as well as overly simplified anthologies of historical writings grouped under seemingly stable headings of perception, learning, motivation, etc., (Dennis, 1949; Herrnstein & Boring, 1966; Diamond, 1974) are most certainly all impoverished forms of insider history. When read in isolation they do not give due coverage to the complexities of the cultural-historical context of scientific advance, to contemporaneous disciplinary standards, or to the considerable historical liquidity of specific subject areas respectively.

It must also be pointed out, however, that the overly critical Zeitgeist (spirit of the times) versions of psychological history are problematic in their own right. To take a rather high-profile example, Kurt Danziger's Constructing the Subject (1990) portrayed the history of methodological change in the discipline as if it were a mere matter of passing fads or a miscellaneous collection of self-contained interpretive research traditions -the main ones being clinical, individual differences, or experimental. Even his rather impressive Naming the Mind (1997), a masterful account of the timing of the adoption of "discursive" disciplinary concepts, abstains from making any historically informed ontological pronouncements regarding the respective reference of such "language" to the underlying processes to which it is supposed to refer. This disconnected Neo-Kantian emphasis on a critical historical account of concepts per se is in my estimation counterproductive because it tends be both anti-empirical and antithetical to even the possibility of scientific advancement if followed through to its logical endpoint (Ballantyne, November 2002).

The insider versus outsider history divide will be surmounted by way of drawing upon the strengths of both combatant camps. We will openly seek out progressive disciplinary trends; borrow argumentative points from interdisciplinary works in the biographical, methodological, or philosophical aspects of scientific history; and even discuss how to recognize, conduct, interpret, and promote relevant research in psychology.

Finally, you will note that I am rather adamant throughout this course that our successive "discursive" controversies and current subdisciplinary or disciplinary limitations can be overcome. This can be done by acknowledging the practical and historical outcome of adopting some rather specific philosophical, methodological, or theoretical traditions over other impractical ones. In the interest of facilitating your individual uptake of this prescriptive outline, Tables 1-3 (above) as well as Appendixes 1-4 have been provided for your periodic reference.

Posted while in progress: April, 2003-January, 2006; Minor Grammatical changes: January, 2008.