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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    These conclusions form the starting-point of this Lecture. Instead, on the one hand, of adopting Spencer’s proce¬ dure of attempting to describe the apparently complex in terms of the apparently simple; instead, on the other hand, of resting content with the supposition that entirely new principles emerge as we pass from lower-level to higher- level systems of activity within the Universe, I propose to ascertain whether some of those ‘higher’ principles are not, however vaguely, already recognizable at lower levels. I propose, in fact, to consider how far our knowledge of the mental world is helpfully applicable to the material world, how far conceptions and attitudes which have been specially employed and developed by Psychology may also prove—or have also proved—useful and common to other Sciences. At one time it was usual to distinguish ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ qualities in objects. The secondary qualities, e.g. those of colour, sound, smell, taste, and temperature, were regarded as purely subjective, due to stimulation of some appropriate sense organ. On the other hand, the primary qualities, e.g. those of size, shape, hardness, move¬ ment, and weight, were held to be independent of the sense organs through which they were experienced. They were the ‘real’ properties of matter; and so long as the physicist regarded them as such, the philosopher naturally tended to rest content. Not so, however, the psychologist. By him the primary qualities have long been regarded as not a whit more real than the secondary. Even Spencer in his day fully recognized—‘ What we are conscious of as proper¬ ties of matter, even down to its weight and resistance, are but subjective affections produced by objective agencies that are unknown and unknowable . . . symbols of actions out of ourselves, the natures of which we cannot even con¬ ceive.’1 For him not only Matter and Motion but also Space and Time are derivable from ‘mental relations’.2 The physicist has been fast approaching a similar point of view, discarding, one by one, conceptions (which were 1 Principles of Psychology, vol. i, p. 206. 2 First Principles, p. 169.