The positivist repudiation of Wundt - Kurt Danziger

226 KURT DANZIGER
ple of Priignanz, for example, is a principle of psychic causality, formally not dissimilar
to the kinds of principles Wundt developed. Kurt Lewin’s concept of the life space, in
which only psychological forces could have psychological effects, is a further develop-
ment of the idea, and theories of cognitive balance and dissonance represent some of its
more recent incarnations. Freud committed himself to psychic causality with the princi-
ple of psychic determinism which came to play such a central role in his system. But none
of these later attempts to provide psychology with its own form of causality appear to
have owed anything to Wundt’s treatment of the to pi^.^'
Nevertheless, the clash between Wundt and the positivists remains historically in-
structive. It foreshadowed the most general, the most significant line of division among
psychologists during the years to come. That division was based on conflicting
philosophies of science. On the one hand, there were those whose conception of the
nature of science was essentially Machian and for whom psychology was part of a
hierarchical system of the sciences in which the aim of explanation was the reduction of
each level of generalization to the next, more fundamental, level. On the other hand,
there were those who regarded science as aiming at more than the economical formula-
tion of functional relationships and whose affirmation of a specifically psychological
level of causality, in whatever form, opened doors to the humanistic disciplines. This
division was marked by successive attempts to reformulate the theories of the second
type in terms that were acceptable to the positivist ethos, attempts that necessarily
deprived those theories of their essential content and changed them into something far
removed from the original conception. (Attempts to reformulate Freudian theories in
behaviorist terms represent extreme examples of this trend.) This sterile process was
largely determined by the fact that in psychology positivism had become identified with
scientific orthodoxy. Those who found themselves outside the positivist pale were often
hampered by a failure to appreciate the real nature of the division which, of course, in-
volved much more than strictly psychological questions. In this respect they might have
profited from Wundt’s remarkable insights into the nature of the issues raised by psy-
chology’s status as a science.
NOTES
I. It was C. H. Judd, the chosen translator of the Grundriss, who faithfully represented the spirit of
Wundt’s psychology in America, not Titchener. For a general expression of that spirit see Judd’s autobiographical
statement in Carl Murchison, A History of Psychology in Autobiography (Worcester, Mass.:
Clark University Press, 1932). See also Richard J. Anderson, “The Untranslated Content of Wundt’s
Grundziige der physiologischen Psychologie,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences I 1 (1975):
381-386. An excellent contemporary analysis of the fundamental principles of Wundt’s psychology is to be
found in Arthur L. Blumenthal, “A Reappraisal of Wilhelm Wundt,” American Psychologist 30 (1975):
1081-1088. See also D. B. Klein, A Hisfory of Scientific Psychology (New York: Basic Books, 1970).
2. At least he notes the Machian position of KUlpe and Titchener; for some reason he does not make it
explicit that Ebbinghaus adopted the same position. See Edwin G. Boring, A History of Experimental
Ps.ychology, 2d ed. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1950), chap. 18.
3. Rudolf Willy, “Die Krisis in der Psychologie,” Vierteljahrschrvt Jur wissenschaftliche Philosophie
21 (1897): 79-96.
4. Boring, Experimental Psychology, p. 431. Boring’s notion of orthodoxy excludes a major part of
European experimental psychology, including the majority of Wundt’s disciples, the most prominent
of whom formed the so-called second Leipzig school - men like Krueger, Wirth, and Sander.