The positivist repudiation of Wundt - Kurt Danziger

THE POSITIVIST REPUDIATION OF WUNDT 207
one hand, and social or ethnopsychology, on the other.5 Wundt’s basic position always
remained the same: The field of psychology consists of two complementary halves, in-
dividual and social, for the interaction of the individual with the social environment is as
much a basic datum as the simple existence of the individual. The two fields differ in their
methods. Experimentation has no place in social psychology, while it plays a con-
siderable role for individual psychology because it is a useful tool for investigating the
simpler psychological processes. The complex products of these processes, however, have
a social-historical character and must be investigated by the nonexperimental methods of
social psychology which belong to the Geisteswissenschafen. It is clear, therefore, that
psychology as a whole is not to be counted among the natural sciences, although, in part,
it shares the method of experimentation with the latter.
The popular formula that Wundt’s distinction between psychology and the natural
sciences was based on the distinction between immediate experience and mediated ex-
perience represents a serious oversimplification. What was important was the conse-
quence, deduced by Wundt, that the process of analysis had to lead to quite different
results in natural science and in psychology. In his major methodological treatise, the
Logik, Wundt discussed what he called “the mistaken transfer of the approach
[Betrachtungsweise] of natural science to psychology.” In a natural science, like
chemistry, the aim is to explain compounds in terms of their elements and the external
relations among the elements. The “essential difference between the approaches of the
natural sciences and of psychology” lies in the fact that the latter deals with a form of
synthesis that is “creative,” that is, that produces new values and new meanings in im-
mediate experience. The distinction between the conceptual world of natural science and
psychology’s world of immediate experience entails a very significant methodological
difference. Whereas the former sees complex phenomena in terms of the in-
terrelationships among their elements, the latter must concern itself with novel and
irreducible contents.
A characteristic feature of Wundt’s separation of psychology from the natural
sciences is his distinction between physical and psychic causality:
The question, whether it is possible to indicate principles of psychic causality, which
are equivalent to those physical principles expressed in causal equations, includes
the question about the legitimacy of psychology as an independent discipline, which
in turn includes the further questions about the significance of the Geistes-
wissenschafen in general. If there is nothing but physical causality, then the fate of
all these disciplines is sealed.6
The existence of psychology in Wundt’s sense depended on the acceptance of the notion
of psychic causality. This notion, he claimed, was based on immediate experience, unlike
physical causality, which was concerned with hypothetical conceptual forces. Two
aspects of experience, in particular, constitute the basis of psychic causality: the nature of
the connections among psychic elements, and the attribute of value which is
characteristic of psychic formations. Neither the experience of the peculiar nature of psy-
chic connections nor the experience of value can be derived from physiological (physical)
causality; they are therefore manifestations of a different type of causality, that is, psy-
chic causality. The latter is experienced, while physical causality is conceived.
The chain of physical causes and effects forms a closed system which obeys the law
of the conservation of energy. Mental forces have no place in this system. But neither do
physical causes have any place in the system of mental activity, except as an occasional