The positivist repudiation of Wundt - Kurt Danziger

230 KURT DANZIGER
in the inevitability of progress. (Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Wissenschaftslehre [Tiibingen:
J. C. B. Mohr, 19681, pp. 49-63. Original date, 1905).
77. It is noteworthy that this is one point on which Titchener explicitly disagrees with Avenarius, who
attempted to use phenomenal experience as a starting point, which would include the experience of value,
because he wished to avoid the crude metaphysics of a position like Titchener’s.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
Titchener, Systematic Psychology, p. 32.
Boring, Physical Dimensions, p. 6.
Ibid., p. 7.
Ibid., pp. 6, 8.
Ibid., p. 31.
Ibid., p. 222.
Clark Leonard Hull, “Knowledge and Purpose as Habit Mechanisms,” Psychological Review
37 (1930): 511-525.
85. See Brian D. Mackenzie, “Behaviourism and Positivism,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral
Sciences 8 (1972): 222-23 1.
86. Some psychologists continued to draw their inspiration from the earlier Machian positivism, and this
entailed certain differences among the schools of behaviorism. B. F. Skinner, at any rate, has always been
clear about the status and antecedents of his behaviorism: “To me behaviorism is a special case of a philosophy
of science which first took shape in the writings of Ernst Mach, Henri Poincark and Percy Bridgrnan.”
See B. F. Skinner in Edwin G. Boring and L. A. Lindzey, A History of Psychology in Autobiography,
vol. 5 (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1967).
87. There is a useful bibliography on the fundamental objections of Boltzmann, Max Planck, and Albert
Einstein to Mach’s conception of physics in John T. Blackmore, Ernst Mach (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1972).
88. Some aspects of this topic are pursued elsewhere. See Kurt Danziger, “The Social Origins of Modern
Psychology: Positivist Sociology and the Sociology of Knowledge,” in The Social Context of Psychological
Theory, ed. A. R. Buss (New York: Irvington, 1979).
89. Wilhelm Wundt, Die Psychologie im Kampf ums Dasein (Stuttgart: Kraner, 1913).
90. Wundt, “Uber reine und angewandte Psychologie.”
91. Quite recently there has been a revival of interest in Wundt’s formulations in the areas of psycho-
linguistics, emotion, and cognition. In many respects his approach has stood the test of time far better than
that of his successors. See especially Arthur L.. Blumenthal, The Process of Cognition (Englewood Cliffs,
N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1977).