Psychological conceptions in other sciences : the Herbert Spencer lecture delivered at Oxford 14 May, 1929 / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Myers, Charles S. (Charles Samuel), 1873-1946.
Date:
1929
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Psychological conceptions in other sciences : the Herbert Spencer lecture delivered at Oxford 14 May, 1929 / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ARGUMENT AN attempt is here made to ascertain whether certain ^principles, conceptions, and attitudes which have been adopted and developed by Psychology may not prove common or helpful to other Sciences. This attempt implies a reversal of the usual practice of describing the ‘higher’ Sciences in the languages of the ‘ lower It is also contrary to the standpoint assumed by those who believe in the ‘ emergence ’ of totally new principles in passing, say, from Physics to Biology or from Biology to Psychology. The psychologist tends rather to regard the new as al¬ ready existing, however imperfectly, in the old. In his attitude to Evolution, he lays less stress on the aggregation of simpler parts to form a more heterogeneous whole, than on the differentiation of new parts out of a developing whole. A similar attitude is finding favour with biologists in regard to the evolution of hereditary units and of bodily structures and functions. For the psychologist Evolution consists rather in the distillation of what has pre-existed vaguely in the apparently simpler (because undifferentiated) organism: the more ‘composite’ products, e.g. music, language, or the perception of objects, precede the more ‘elementary’ (because abstract), e.g. scales, grammar, or the awareness of ‘pure’ sensations. From a similar atti¬ tude proceeds the psychologist’s insistence that the organ¬ ized whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. There is a growing belief among physicists that it is im¬ possible to predict what an individual atom or electron will do, or which of the possible jumps of a quantum will occur next: the laws of Physics are now believed to be derived from, and to be applicable only to, the average conduct of huge aggregates of individuals. Intent on the study of the individual and of the differences between individuals, the psychologist has long found mechanism everywhere, yet prediction impossible largely owing to directive guidance within the individual organism. For him conservation of the individual—making for endurance of identity and for 3639 A 2