It is, I suppose, unquestionable that the Physiologische Psychologie marks an epoch in the history of Psychology, and that the moderns have advanced far beyond their predecessors, both as regards method and result. To support the latter view, I need only instance three recent discussions: those of the so-called Time-sense, of Attention, and of Recognition and Association. Experiment has yielded sound fruit, with promise of more: small wonder that those who "go down to do their work in laboratories" are in good heart. There is no lack of problems; but the principle of psychophysical parallelism, while on the one hand it renders possible a scientific psychology by admitting experiment, on the other necessarily restricts the sphere of the science. It is undoubtedly true that laboratory psychology "has to do with nothing but processes or events." The consideration of 'the conscious subject' and its implications must be relegated to some other discipline, since experimental psychology cannot go behind its first principle.[1] We are only dealing with an example of that division of subject-matter which characterizes the progress of scientific knowledge in general; and if there is an irony discoverable in many psychological references to metaphysics, that is due, I take it, to the psychologist's belief that the metaphysician is, after all, very largely dependent on him. There can hardly be a sound metaphysic without a sound psychology; and, until this has been furnished, the psychologist naturally distrusts metaphysical construction.
E. B. Titchener.
- ↑ The adoption of this principle, as a working hypothesis, has been amply justified by its results. Cf. James, Textbook, pp. 6, 7.
