science can. Psychology cannot get along without hypotheses; hypotheses are always in a certain sense confessions of ignorance, and where we are ignorant there is nothing to do but to confess. Here, again, the quarrel is not so much about introducing hypotheses as about the kind of hypotheses introduced. Where we do not know we are forced to guess, and though one man's guess is not as good as another's, there is usually room for difference of opinion. But one man's guess seems so plausible to him and so satisfactory, that he can see nothing in the other man's, and he shows his contempt by calling the latter's metaphysical. The Germans define a professor as a person who does not agree with you. In the same way we might define a metaphysical theory as one which does not agree with our own. The physiologist, for example, insists that the introduction of certain hypotheses into psychology is metaphysical, and repudiates the kind of psychology that is guilty of such behavior. He will have nothing to do with soul or psychic dispositions or unconscious processes because these concepts are metaphysical. But the question here is simply, Do these conceptions or theories really explain the facts? If they do not, they are to be rejected, not because they are metaphysical theories, but because they are inadequate theories. As a rule the thinkers who proclaim such a violent dislike for metaphysics are not so hostile to it as they say; their bark is worse than their bite. They simply repudiate a certain kind of metaphysics, the other fellow's; with their own system they are well pleased; for them it explains the facts and is a fact. A wise remark of Heinrich Hertz, a scientist of no mean repute, is in place here: "No problem," he says, "that makes any impression upon us can be disposed of by being designated as metaphysical; every thinking mind has, as such, needs which the natural scientist is in the habit of calling metaphysical."[1]
The truth is we cannot advance very far into psychology
- ↑ All the discussions concerning the place of psychology are influenced by certain presuppositions upon the acceptance or rejection of which the outcome depends. In order to answer the question, we must first form some conception of the relation between psychology and natural science. We cannot do that without defining psychology and natural science. How shall we differentiate them ? Is their subject
