II Psychology as a Young Science

IN the first chapter I became slightly autobiographical in order to show why I have found it impossible to become a behaviorist. If I am ever to become one, some adherent of that school will have to effect the conversion. I do not myself see the way.

So far direct experience has been shown to be the raw material of both physics and psychology. If despite this fact the physical sciences are so far ahead of psychology in their development, what shall be our method of imitating their achievements?

Contemporary physics has a real advantage in the careful selection of the experiences which play a decisive rôle in the crucial moments of physical research. Of course, the physicist ignores all “subjective experience,” as defined in the previous chapter, as far as possible, because apparently it has nothing to do with the properties of the physical world. All the difficulties of psychologists who try to observe and describe subjective experience are simply avoided by the physical sciences.

But the selection and exclusion does not stop there. If most “objective experience” was taken as evidence of physical existences and physical events in early investigations, a more critical view of the situation tended to eliminate large parts of this material as well. The process of selection has become particularly severe, since the advancement of science has made it possible almost everywhere to transform qualitative observation into quantitative measurement. At the present time almost all physical measurements are made in an extremely indirect way. We do not observe an experienced counterpart of the physical variable in question; we observe a related but different object the virtue of which is that it lends itself to more exact statement and is shown, or supposed, to be in a well-known functional relationship to the physical variable. Of all possible objective experience nothing seems better to fulfill the requirements of the physicist than the localization of a single line (a needle) on a scale of other lines, especially if this localization becomes the coincidence of the first line (needle) with one of the others (or inclusion between two which are near to each other). The range of direct experiences used in measurement has now reached a minimum value, indeed. It almost seems as if the same scale and the same needle were used universally; it tells a hundred altogether different stories about the physical world. It means “atmospheres” or “volts,” or “ampères” or “temperature” and so forth, as the case may be. In addition to observing a definite coincidence, and controlling the connection of the apparatus with the system to be investigated, the physicist has only to recognize certain words and figures on the scale. That is all the direct experience which enters into the procedure. There is not much opportunity for serious blundering. Even so simple a property as physical size is not measured directly. No physicist measures the length of an object by comparing it with the experienced length of a standard object directly. That would not be accurate enough. Rather he prefers the method of coinciding lines or points. Defining physical length by this method, he measures the length of a line by observing the coincidence of its ends with certain points on a scale.

If now we ask ourselves whether we shall imitate the procedure of the physical sciences in psychology, two answers are to be given to our question, because that procedure has two aspects. In the first place, the procedure involves making statements about physical systems by means of objective experience. As the behavior of men and animals is observed in our objective experience—the direct experience of the subjects not playing any rôle in the matter—such a study is perfectly legitimate and undoubtedly will be much more extended in the future. Though it existed before the days of behaviorism, this school is fundamentally right in praising the advantages of objective procedure as against prevailing introspection. Although behaviorists have gone too far through failing to appreciate that, even in the objective method, direct experience remains the raw material as “the objective experience” of an observer, their error is of no practical importance as long as the second part of their answer to our question is proper. Unfortunately, behaviorism has here tended to take the wrong position.

As we have seen, in present physics objective procedure is characterized by the use of a small group of selected experiences and, consequently, by the exclusion of the great variety of objective experience, the exclusion being made to satisfy the requirements of quantitative measurement. Shall we do the same thing in psychology as a science of behavior? Evidently that will depend upon the nature of behavior itself. It is difficult to judge about a method as such. A method is not good or bad in itself. It is good if it is properly adapted to the essential aspects of my problems and my material; and it is bad if it lacks regard for those essentials or misdirects research. Therefore, what has been shown to be an excellent procedure in one science or for some problems may be altogether useless or even a hindrance in another science or for other problems. In this respect, behavior is easily seen to have distinctly different phases and to give the psychologist different tasks correspondingly. Wherever indirect and quantitative methods can be applied in conformity with the task, they should be applied. Since C. P. Richter and his collaborators at the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic have now discovered a way in which the various drives of animals, and their temporal changes, can be investigated by registering amounts of general or of special activity,⁠[4] we shall be keenly interested in the future development of the method. It is the correct procedure in cases in which total amounts of activity in relation to outer and inner conditions can yield us valuable information.

But what about other cases where either our problems are not of the quantitative type or we have no way as yet to transfer our observations from the direct experiences with which we are concerned to a special region, indirectly connected with the first, but better adapted to finely accurate statement and registration? Obviously, qualitative types of behavior are not less important than quantitative differences of some sort. Where we know about the qualitative varieties which occur in behavior and where, in a concrete case, we are sure about the special type before us under observation, we may be interested in finding ways of quantitative measurement. But the discrimination of qualitative types must be primarily accomplished. During the observation of a puppy under a given set of conditions, this important question will frequently arise: whether certain behavior of the animal represents playful activity or “serious” reaction to the situation. Such a question does not imply “consciousness” in the puppy; it refers to some very characteristic differences in what is being objectively observed. The difference is one of “quality” of behavior. Again, while observing a man in a somewhat critical situation, it may be decisive to observe whether he talks to us in a “steady” or in a “shaky” voice. At the present time this is necessarily a qualitative discrimination; even should we find in the future a method to measure the steadiness of a voice, this method would forever presuppose that in direct observation we know what is meant by unsteadiness as a definite characteristic of the voice.

In a similar way, we are restricted in the application of indirect methods to many other forms of behavior. I take it that the behaviorists hold that we can investigate the “emotional behavior” of subjects without being involved with their “consciousness” or “subjective experience.” Certainly, psychologists have tried to transfer observation in this case to a region of more accurate registration and measurement. Much work has been done to develop pneumographic, plethysmographic, galvanographic methods, and so forth. The result is not altogether encouraging, however; for again, our interpretation of the curves recorded by all these apparatus depends greatly upon simultaneous direct observation; by no means do we feel justified to draw conclusions from the curves alone. All these procedures seem to be more problematic in themselves at the present time than an aid for the solution of psychological problems. In most cases it is easier to see “anger” directly in a subject’s attitude than to state and measure, let us say, the adrenin in his blood.

Why does this difficulty beset behavioristic psychology, and not occur in physics? The answer is simple enough: Physics is an old science and psychology is in its infancy. Over centuries physicists have succeeded in eliminating a great many forms of more direct and qualitative observation, relying upon a small number of indirect and very accurate observations as decisive in experimentation. Their success depended on previously acquired knowledge about the physical world. Most indirect methods and sound measurement presuppose a vast background of knowledge. Qualitative observation, experimentation and analysis have provided the primary knowledge which enabled the physicist to discover where he could measure an important factor, and what physical relation makes an indirect observation capable of indicating occurrences not well observable directly. Oersted had to discover the deflection of a magnet in the neighborhood of an electric current before exact measurement of intensities of current became possible. His was a qualitative, direct observation; indirect and quantitative procedure was the fruit of it. Even in our days, Röntgen did not measure at the start of his investigation of X-rays. He had to discover and to analyze their properties in qualitative experimentation first of all. Later on his rays could become a means of measuring the constants of crystals. Too easily do we forget the simple truth that in their origins as well as at the opening of a new field of special investigation later on, the natural sciences, physics, geology, biology, rely upon qualitative statements almost completely. Certainly, the quantitative and the accurate indirect methods are the most imposing features of exact sciences now when we review them or consider them superficially. But we ought to be aware of the fact that in most cases this procedure is a mere refinement and end result of the underlying free and direct observation, without which there would not have been a basis upon which to build the refined superstructure. In the eighteenth century Cavendish measured the resistances of different materials by comparing the shocks he received in his arm when conductors of those materials were used to connect him with a battery, the other pole of which was in his other hand! Was that improper? On the contrary, it was perfectly sound in a young science, which was trying to find that first knowledge of facts upon which more refined methods may afterwards be founded.

From this it follows that where we have a good quantitative problem in psychology and an accurate method of measuring and registering, as in the case of Richter’s excellent experiments, we can immediately apply the quantitative and indirect procedure, as used in physics. The problems which Galileo attacked in the seventeenth century could be solved quantitatively at once, the qualitative experience of everyday life having sufficiently provided the necessary basis. But for the majority of psychological problems this is not the case. Where do we have that first more or less qualitative knowledge of important functional relationships in psychology which might become the basis for indirect and exact measurement? It does not exist. Since the development of more “exact” methods presupposes its existence, our main task must be the gathering of that knowledge. In most cases our preliminary advance in this direction will have to be crude and qualitative. Whoever protests that conclusion in the name of purism does not understand our actual situation in psychology; he sees neither the nature of, nor the historical background prerequisite for, special quantitative methods. If we wish to imitate the physical sciences, we must not imitate them in their contemporary, most developed form; we must imitate them in their historical youth, when their state of development was comparable to our own at the present time. Otherwise we should behave like boys who try to copy the imposing manners of full-grown men without understanding their raison d’être, also without seeing that in development one cannot jump over intermediate and preliminary phases. A survey of the history of physics is certainly illuminating. Let us imitate the natural sciences, but intelligently!

Behavior is enormously rich in forms and nuances. Only acknowledging this wealth, and studying it directly as it is given in all its fascinating varieties, shall we become able gradually to find those forms of more quantitative, and perhaps more accurate, procedure which may become as adequate for us as are the methods of physics in its realm. At present, and in this broader historical perspective, qualitative observation and analysis may be, in a sense, more exact, i.e., adequate to our subject-matter, than much blind measurement. We shall press forward towards more refined methods, of course; but owing to our situation as beginners, we can go forward only through the use of less refined methods for the time being.

If organisms were more similar to the systems investigated in physics, a great many methods of the physicist might be introduced in our science exactly as the physicist uses them. But the similarity is not very considerable, practically. One of the greatest advantages which makes the physicist’s work so much easier, is the simplicity of his systems. And his systems are simple because in physics the experimenter determines their main properties himself. He prepares them, more or less. I am far from believing that organic processes are of a supernatural kind. On the contrary, the most startling difference between the organism and a simple system investigated by the physicist is the enormous number of physical and chemical processes which, depending upon each other in the most intricate manner, occur in the organism simultaneously. And we are utterly unable to create simple organic systems for elementary study. An amœba is a more complicated system than all known systems of the inorganic world. We also know that, in studying the properties of a nerve-muscle-preparation, we are not investigating “a part” of natural behavior; because, physiologically, its properties are not only simpler but also radically different in some respects from what they would be if the same nerve and muscle were contributing to normal behavior. It is the whole organism, as some behaviorists have rightly said, the behavior of which is our subject-matter. But in the whole organism one can seldom follow the change of one variable alone as the consequence of one change in outer conditions. The change of one factor usually involves concomitant changes in a great many others and these affect the first retroactively. Now, isolation of changes and reduction of variables are the great artifices by which the physicist makes exact measurement possible in his simple systems. Since this procedure does not work in our case, since we have to take the organism more or less as it is, any kind of observation that gives us an expression of its total attitude and activity, of the integrated tendencies and states which it undergoes, will be the right observation to begin with. Such is typical behavior as we see (or hear) it before us, changing, with the conditions we give our subject, in innumerable phases, and much too attractive to be already excluded for the sake of narrowing ideals, taken prematurely from quite another field of research.

In the meantime, however, the outward aspect of physics has been too seductive. Since experimental psychology first became a science, every now and then a wave of blind imitation has swept it off its feet. Fechner himself was the first to copy adult physics when psychology was an embryo. He seems to have been convinced that measuring in itself would make a science out of psychology. We have seen the result: If flowers are impossible without a root and a stem, measuring, which is fruitful only as the most refined consequence of previous qualitative observation and experimentation, necessarily becomes a dead routine without it. Hundreds of thousands of quantitative psychophysical experiments have been made almost in vain, because no one knew just what he was measuring or what were the processes upon which the whole procedure was built. In Fechner’s own day, however, psychology came into existence as a science, not as a result of his psychophysics, but rather casually and in spite of the premature quantitative program.

The lesson seems to have been forgotten, however. Sometimes, when viewing the admirable energy with which “intelligence” is tested quantitatively by hundreds of able psychologists, one is almost reminded of Fechner’s time. In this case, it is true, there seems to be a positive result for practical purposes at least. Apparently something like a crude total ability for certain achievements is measured by those tests which have been invented and applied since Binet and Simon. And since the test-scores show a rather satisfactory correlation with certain general abilities in study or other work of subsequent life, we have in these tests a first approach towards a practical prognosis. Still there is a grave danger in this very success. Do we know or do we learn by those tests what processes and factors, which are masked by the gross scores, coöperate in the test performance? We do not know, nor do we learn much, concerning these factors. Figuratively speaking, a given total score may mean: degree 3 of “intelligence,” together with degree 1 of “accuracy,” with degree 4 of “ambition” and degree 3 of “quickness of fatigue,” or it may mean “intelligence” 6, “accuracy” 2, “ambition” 1, and “quickness of fatigue” 4,—and so forth.⁠[5] Quite a number of different factors may combine in various proportions in order to give the same I.Q. And that fact matters, even for practical purposes. In the educational situation a teacher should treat the child according to the actual nature and strength of the various factors constituting the total I.Q. of a given child. This is not a new criticism, of course, but it must be repeated for the sake of science. We seem to be too well satisfied sometimes by our testing enterprise because it is a quantitative procedure, and as such it appeals to us as thoroughly scientific. This is superficial, however. If we compare the nature of testing with the main traits of our ideal, viz., the procedure of physics, we find a difference which may be decisive. What does the physicist ask when he must face a new field of research? In such cases his questions have been: Is light an oscillatory process? If it is, does it oscillate in the direction of propagation or vertically to it? Is magnetism produced by the magnetic fields of elementary currents in molecular structures? Why does surface tension produce regular forms of liquids and liquid films? How can the spectrum of one element contain thousands of different lines? This is the type of question with which we find the physicist occupied. They are his fundamental problems, in the treatment of which quantitative work appears at definite stages as an aid toward the solution, eventuating finally in the determination of laws, but directed and governed throughout by those questions about the nature of states and processes. What are the phenomena? Are they of one type or another? Such are the main problems of experimental science, in the service of which we find measurement. If now we ask ourselves what problems about the processes underlying intelligent behavior we are solving by our tests, not very many of us will have an answer ready. But some will answer that from now on, intelligence shall be defined as the X which is measured by those tests and that measuring is more scientific than grubbing among the unknown functions of the nervous system. The fact is that we are not in the habit of asking questions about underlying processes in psychology, questions similar to those in which the whole interest of physicists is centered. Instead of imitating the very kernel of physics, we assume merely the outer, quantitative form of exact science. Think of a physicist interested in all types of motors who would restrict his study of them to the following tests to be applied to all the various types: measurement of their volume, of temperature at their surface, of ionization of the air in their neighborhood, of their actual frequency of revolution, and of the total weight of the bodies; who would calculate from these data an average “power-coefficient” for each of them, define “power” by the method, never ask a question about the working process in their interior, and remain satisfied by this quantitative procedure for many years. I know I am exaggerating in some respects if I compare intelligence testing with such an attitude. I do it intentionally in order to call attention to the main point, viz., that admiration for quantitative method leads us almost exclusively to those research tasks which immediately afford us an opportunity for measurement. Given the natural narrowness of human interest, the next consequence will be our failure to see those problems which do not lend themselves immediately to quantitative investigation, problems which may be, however, the more essential and the more scientific, in a deeper meaning of that word. In such problems qualitative observation and experimentation would constitute the first step; but since in adult physics (as it appears from without) these methods seem to be despised, we dare not undertake these fundamental tasks. Wishing to be utterly scientific, we may just miss those opportunities for research which, in our stage as an immature science, would be the most scientific of all. The nature and the actual development of our problems should decide about the methods to be followed. What actually happens, however, is that an imposing method blurs our view of the subject-matter. This method then begins to decide what problems we shall see. I do not object in principle to testing as a preliminary mode of diagnosis and prognosis. But just as the engineer learns from the investigations of processes in physics, even practical diagnosis in applied psychology will never go very far without an eager interest in the inner nature of intelligent behavior. Eventually, if all psychologists occupied with “intelligence” are engineers in the field of testing, who shall investigate the “physics” of intelligence, without which we shall never have a true and sensible engineering?

Occasionally, in animal psychology, the situation has tended to become somewhat similar to that just described. In experimentation on animals almost the only quantitative method is statistical. We do not measure in the proper meaning of that term, but we count positive and negative cases at least. In order to have cases which are comparable, and therefore may be counted, we put our animals in situations where their behavior is restricted to a few types of reaction. These we count and the result of our experiments is given in frequencies enumerating these few possible alternative reactions. I do not criticize the method as such; I have used it myself. But we should never forget that, when used exclusively, it may make our knowledge of behavior narrower. With a given problem in mind we exclude a great many behavior possibilities by our choice of experimental conditions. We do not see them any more. Some psychologists will at least observe the remaining forms of behavior during the experiment as an aid for the interpretation of quantitative results; but others will not, because in their opinion what is not quantitative cannot be scientific. In this case, what is left of the material are abstract figures. Even then the procedure may be valuable, if the experimenter is one of those who always find new and productive problems for experimentation. For most of us, however, conservatism may become the consequence of such an attitude, since, admiring figures and curves, we keep away from the true source of new ideas and new problems in our youthful science: i.e., from a broad outlook upon our subject-matter.

Once more I venture to defend broad and qualitative information as a necessary supplement to quantitative work. Otherwise behavioristic psychology might become as sterile as supposedly it is exact. Too great an interest in present quantitative methods and in their standardization is not a hopeful response to the fact that the development of psychology depends upon the discovery of new methods and problems in the future, and not upon the monotonous repetition of a few standardized methods which fit only our primitive problems. If the reader says that behavioristic psychology does not need this advice, I reply that Watson has been criticized because his well-known observations on children were not made in the sanctified form of quantitatively controlled experiments. I do not think that those observations give quite an adequate account of autochthonous reactions and of learning in children; but, on the other hand, they reveal more interesting facts than we might have learnt from columns of abstract figures. An eminent psychologist was friendly enough to say a few approving words about my own work on intelligent behavior in apes. Still, he added, you have missed the main point by not applying the statistical method. To my mind this means an inability to see the problems which I had tried to treat in a preliminary way. Those problems concerned the characteristic forms of intelligent behavior in a special type of animal, as influenced by various situations. What may be valuable in those observations would disappear in an abstract statistical treatment of the “results.” Am I right then in warning against a one-sided glorification of quantitative procedure as such? Let us apply it, but not before we know by qualitative analysis where to find good problems for quantitative research.

A certain broadmindedness and a clear appreciation of our present predicament would be wholesome, then, in the application of behavioristic methods. There is more in a scientific method than observing, experimenting and measuring. In physics, at least, observing and measuring usually result from definite questions, and these questions are preliminary forms of hypotheses concerning unknown properties of nature. Observed but enigmatic aspects of nature may be deduced and explained from assumptions about unknown parts of it. Taken as such, however, an assumption is not what the physicist wants. Fortunately, a concrete assumption made in order to explain certain observations will always lead to consequences other than those facts for which it was made. These new consequences are to be tested in further observation and experimentation. What is the hidden basis of electrolytical conduction? Arrhenius makes the hypothesis of molecules being dissociated into independent ions. By their charge conduction is explained. But from their assumed independence definite conclusions are to be drawn about the optical properties of the electrolyte. These are tested in new experiments. Thus, productive method contains a bold hypothesis as essentially as it requires adequate observation, and the growth of physics is a constant oscillation from the first to the second and vice versa.

In behavioristic psychology we cannot complain about a lack of unknown parts of the organic systems we study to which to apply productive hypotheses. We know a little about the elementary effects of stimulation upon the sense organs of our subjects; we observe their responsive behavior when it becomes overt. But between the two terms of the sensori-motor circuit there is more terra incognita than was on the map of Africa sixty years ago. If behavior is to be understood as depending upon inner organization as well as outer conditions, we must try to imagine the modes and traits of these inner processes, which are either started from without by environmental stimulation or aroused intra-organically by inner dynamics. For those who know the history of physics and wish to emulate it intelligently in psychology, this task of finding productive assumptions about the hidden parts of behavior will probably appear the most important of all. The whole future development of psychology depends upon it. Here all the creative force of behaviorism ought to be concentrated in a fine emulation of physics. Behaviorism’s critical attitude toward introspection and direct experience is an absolutely negative feature of the movement, at a time when positive ideas are needed. If I feel a little disappointed by the work of behaviorism, the reason is not so much a certain innocence in its treatment of direct experience and in its imitation of adult physics, but its astounding sterility in the development of productive concepts about functions underlying observable behavior. As an imitation of physics it is scarcely a satisfactory achievement for the behaviorist to have taken the old concept of reflex action from physiology (including the reflexes of inner secretion) and to give us no further comprehension into the formation of new individual behavior than is offered by his concepts of positive and negative “conditioning.” Why should behaviorism be so utterly negativistic in its characteristic statements? “Thou shalt not acknowledge direct experience in science” is the first commandment and “Thou shalt not conceive of other functions but reflexes and conditioned reflexes” is the second. I do not see how the behaviorist can reconcile this creed with our actual knowledge of organic processes and of behavior. Nor do I understand why, from the standpoint of “exactness,” the organism should be conceived as such a crude and poor affair. In its effort to imitate the technical procedure of physics, behaviorism often shows a stubborn narrowness; the same attitude becomes quite striking in the exclusion of all but two types of processes from its assumptions about the inner side of behavior. What a strange conservatism and dogmatism in a revolutionary school! Even now, as an adult science, physics is allowed to have at least one new idea about the atom every year. Though our science is so very young, most behaviorists do not even dream of any possible change in the nature of their two fundamental ideas. The truth was revealed to them in its perfection at the birth of behavioristic psychology.

The two behavioristic concepts in question show one remarkable property: If you compare them with various types of processes in the inorganic world of the physicist, you will find that even simple physical systems are by far richer in the variety of their kinds of function than is the nervous system of man in the eyes of a radical behaviorist. A soap-bubble does not show us reflexes, it is true; therefore we cannot expect to find conditioned reflexes in it. Nevertheless those functional properties which the soap-bubble does exhibit are decidedly superior in some respects to the monotony of reflexes and conditioned reflexes. The same thing holds for innumerable structures in the inorganic world. Sometimes their behavior will at once remind us of the behavior of organisms, although they lack reflexes and conditioned reflexes. However, by the standard of exactness as the behaviorist understands it, it would be heresy to follow this hint. His imitation of physics excludes most of the functional possibilities given in physics itself. In organisms there shall be nothing but reflexes. Some members of the school even are beginning to protest cautiously against this strange situation.

It is not probable that an observer, looking upon human and animal behavior without prejudices, would find reflexes and conditioned reflexes as the most natural, or as the only, types of function by which his observations might be explained. For those, however, who are deeply convinced that the theory of original and acquired reflexes is the whole truth about the nervous system, there is no real incentive for the further observation of natural behavior, since they do not feel the need of any new information or new functional concepts. On the other hand, the restriction of observation to counting the frequency of the few reactions retained in standard experiments will protect those conservative concepts; and so one narrowness keeps the other alive.

But even with a more impartial interest in all the various forms of behavior, how shall we find more productive concepts, if the gap between the observable stimulating environment and observable overt responses is as large as we find it in the present stage of physiology? Of course we shall use whatever hint may be given by nerve physiology and endocrinology. But even the more recent discoveries about the all or none law and the metabolism in nervous activity do not give us just that basis which we need for our purposes. In such a situation anything will be valuable upon which we may base a working hypothesis. In a critical predicament even a stone or a chair may become a weapon, though the strategist would despise it in exact warfare. There is no serious danger in developing a working hypothesis upon a somewhat wavering ground, since, in empirical science, such an assumption will be tested and continually corrected in further observation and experimentation. Either it serves as a path toward new explorations, its consequences being verified by success, or it is shown to lead us the wrong way. In the first case no one will have scruples about the previous legitimation of its birth; in the second, we shall discard it as soon as observed facts are against it, or as soon as we find it bare of real productive power.

The basis upon which I propose to build a working hypothesis has much in its favor. In some respects it is just as solid as objective observation is in behavioristic psychology, and in others, it is certainly not insecure enough to raise serious doubts.

In an experiment in behavioristic psychology the “direct experience” of the subject does not play any rôle. If he has such experience I as experimenter do not assume that it has the slightest influence upon the course of the physiological events. My assumptions about those events must be able to explain thoroughly the overt behavior of the physical organism of the subject. Direct experience is not a “force” interfering with the chain of physical causation. (The opposite hypothesis is made by dualists. But I do not think that it, on the other hand, is productive, or that it illuminates the innermost nature of things.)

I cannot exclude my own direct experience in observing behavior, as I cannot avoid dealing with direct experience even when employing the most “indirect” methods of physics. Moreover in behavioristic psychology I have to use objective experience in a great variety of forms which no longer are material for observation in adult physics. If I can rely upon objective experience for my statements about the behavior of the subject I observe objectively in a behavioristic experiment, why should I hesitate to utilize it to develop a working hypothesis in the following manner?

Suppose I am used as a subject in a behavioristic experiment. With me as a subject, behavioristic research would have the same difficulty in developing a working hypothesis about the hidden processes underlying my behavior. But in this case I can help to build a bridge over the “large gap” mentioned above. During much of my own behavior I have direct experience. Now there is no doubt that this experience depends upon some of those processes about which we wish to formulate a working hypothesis. It is more than probable that, under these circumstances, I may use my direct experience in order to guess about these processes. It is granted that direct experience does not accompany all the unobservable events which produce the behavior observable from without; hence the hypothesis I am about to offer has a limited application. But in our crucial situation we have not much to choose. Confident as we are of further help from physiology, we are so utterly in the dark at present that it would be pure folly not to profit by any help that we can get for our work.

Let me declare that I do not propose to “introspect” in the technical meaning of the word. The same kind of simple and naïve statements about experience which I make as an observer of other people, of animals, of instruments and so forth, shall now be used for another purpose. Objective experience depends upon physical events outside my organism and upon physiological events in it concurrently. As depending upon physical events outside my organism, objective experience leads to the construction of the surrounding physical world; as depending upon physiological events in my organism, it gives me hints about these processes. There is no reason at all why the construction of physiological processes directly underlying experience should be impossible, if experience allows us the construction of a physical world outside, which is related to it much less intimately.

Obviously, I must have some leading principle in making my inferences from given properties of direct experience to the properties of concomitant physiological processes. In a more special form such a principle was established by Hering many years ago. Its content is the following: My various experiences can be ordered systematically according to the sorts and degrees of similarity found between them, exactly as animals are ordered in zoölogy and plants in botany. The processes upon which these experiences depend are not known directly; but if I knew their properties, I should be able to order them as systematically according to similarities as I do order the experiences actually. It is possible to imagine a great many different relationships between the two systematic orders, that of experiences and that of physiological processes. But I should have ever so much difficulty in trying to relate definite experiences to definite processes so long as I failed to assume one specific relationship between the two orders, viz., that of congruence or isomorphism in their systematic properties. This principle is sometimes formulated more explicitly in a number of “psychophysical axioms.”⁠[6] Here it will suffice to give some examples of its application.

A sound of given qualitative properties is produced in various degrees of experienced intensity or loudness. The systematic order of all these different experienced intensities may be represented by a straight line, which means that, following that order, we have the impression of moving continually in the same direction. What may correspond to loudnesses in the underlying processes? The principle decides that whatever the concrete nature of these processes, the physiological fundaments of all the experienced degrees of loudness must show the same order as these show themselves, i.e., that of a straight line. More especially: if a definite loudness is situated between two other loudnesses in the systematic order of experiences, the process corresponding to the first shall be between the processes corresponding to the two others in the order of underlying physiological events. That gives the congruence or isomorphism between the two systems, which I mentioned above.

At the present time the all-or-none law does not allow us to choose “intensity of nervous activity” as a physiological correlate of experienced degrees of loudness. But our principle could be equally well applied if frequency or density (number) of elementary currents were taken as the correlate of loudness.

As another example, colors in their relation to underlying processes have been considered so thoroughly by G. E. Müller,⁠[7] that there is no need of repeating his theory here. In some respects his assumptions go far beyond the principle we are discussing here, insofar as he draws conclusions about the retinal processes, whereas the principle as such applies only to the processes underlying visual experience directly. In his hypothesis it also happens that these processes are chemical reactions. Such a transgression of the principle is perfectly sound, however, and shows the productive force of it. If there is congruence between the system of color experiences and that of underlying processes, not all kinds of physical events will appear fit to give a system of so much variety (of so many “dimensions”) as the system of colors is found to possess. Chemical reactions may easily be the only type of event which can be taken into consideration here. So the principle of systematic congruence serves to restrict the number of those physical processes which we may draw upon in developing the concrete hypothesis about the “large gap.”

On the other hand, we have begun to apply the principle itself in a much more general, and at the same time much more concrete, form than either Hering or Müller would have done. As used by these authors it is based upon the logical order in which we arrange certain experiences after abstracting them from their context and judging about their similarities. It attributes a congruent logical order to the underlying processes, similarly abstracted from their dynamic context like dead specimens in a museum. But what about the real concrete order of experiences, which itself is experienced? At this moment I have before me three white points on a black surface, one in the middle of the field and the others in symmetrical positions on both sides of the center one. This is an order again; not an abstract, logical order, however, but a concrete, experienced order. As experienced it depends upon physiological processes in my organism, so that some feature of a physiological function must correspond to it. And applied to this concrete order our principle says that correlated with the visually experienced symmetry there is an homologous symmetry of dynamic context in the underlying processes. Or, in the same example: one point is seen between the others, this relation being experienced exactly as the white of the point is. Again in the underlying processes there must be something functional which corresponds to that “between.” Applied to the concrete order our principle claims that the experienced “between” is accompanied by a functional “between” in the concrete dynamic context of concurrent physiological events. If the principle is applied strictly in this manner to all cases of spatial order in experience, it will lead to the general statement that all experienced order in space is a true representation of a corresponding order in the underlying dynamical context of physiological processes.

This is a bold hypothesis. It has far-reaching consequences, if it is taken seriously enough. Its significance will become clearer in the following chapters where we shall also discuss some misinterpretations which may easily arise. For the present I will offer another application of the same principle. The temporal position of one experience as “between” two others is frequently experienced, in the same way that spatial “betweenness” is. Now as far as it is experienced, time must have a functional correlate in underlying physiological processes no less than experienced space. Again, then, the temporal “between” is correlated with a functional “between” in the concrete dynamic context of physiological events. And if, in this manner, we apply the principle throughout, we will arrive at the proposition that experienced order in time is a true representation of the corresponding concrete order in the underlying dynamical context.

Both temporal and spatial orders do not exhaust the field of application of this principle. More order is experienced than that of space and time. Certain experiences “belong together” in a concrete manner, whereas others do not, or, at least, belong together less intimately. And again this “belonging together” may be itself experienced. The very moment I form this sentence of my manuscript, a shrill, disagreeable voice begins to sing in the neighbor’s house. The context of my sentence is something which, though extended in time, is experienced as belonging together, whereas those sharp notes are experienced as something foreign, as not belonging to that context, though they are experienced at the same time. In this case our principle applied formulates the proposition that to a context, experienced as “one thing” belonging together, there corresponds a dynamical unit or whole in the underlying physiological processes. In this respect again, the order of experience is a true representation of a corresponding functional order in the processes upon which it depends. Perhaps it is this last application of the principle which has the greatest importance for gestalt psychology. In this form, at least, it becomes a radical physiological hypothesis about common sensory experiences as well as about the more subtle and complicated processes involved in observable behavior.

In the last case I have taken an example from outside the realm of objective experience in the more restricted meaning of this term. A sentence I may be forming is not a part of objective experience, as is the chair before me. Still my statement about that experience is no less simple and obvious than were earlier ones about spatial or temporal orders. I admit that this is not always so, however. I do not wish to recommend the observation of subjective experience for our purposes without some limitation; as yet it looks as though only very simple statements about one’s own subjective experience can be made with a high degree of certainty. Moreover, we have enough cases of objective experience to provide an adequate basis for developing a working hypothesis.

In the last paragraphs my own direct experience was taken as a basis for constructing a general working hypothesis about the relation between experience and unobservable constituents of behavior. The only way in which I can bring my observations in that field of direct experience before the scientific public is through spoken or written language, which, as I understand it, refers to my direct experience. However, in terms of the position already taken in this chapter, all language as a series of physiological events is the peripheral outcome of other purely physiological processes in my organism, particularly of those upon which my direct experience depends. My general hypothesis states that the concrete order of actual experience is a true representation of the dynamic order of corresponding physiological processes. Therefore, if, to me, my language is an adequate “symbol” for my own direct experience, it is an objective symbol for those physiological processes at the same time. We may also conclude, then, that it does not matter very much whether I take it as a symbol for one or the other, since in the respects in which they correspond, there is no difference between them.

If I now go back to behavioristic psychology I have to deal with language as one form of behavior observed in my subjects. There is no reason now why I should not take language as a symbol, since only the most superficial view would treat it merely as a phonetical event. The behaviorist himself, when listening to a scientific argument, will find himself reacting not to the phonetical properties of speech, but to its symbolic meaning: he will react in the same way practically to the nouns “experiment” and “Versuch,” to “animal” and “Tier,” though in each case the first and second words are utterly different phonetically. Why should we change that attitude when the other person is called a “subject,” and talks during an experiment?

The language of my subject may be taken either as indicative of direct experience in my subject or of those processes which underlie his direct experience. If the subject says, “This book is bigger than that,” his words may be interpreted as stating a definite direct “comparison-experience” which he is having or the corresponding dynamic relationship in his physiological process. Since, for my hypothesis the same “order” is meant in both cases, the alternative is not important. From the viewpoint of behavioristic psychology the physiological interpretation is necessary, but the other meaning is not excluded. This second interpretation is kept distinct from the causal explanation of observable behavior, but if it is suggested by the words of the subject, it can do no harm. The behavior of a chick can tell me without words that he is able to react to one brightness in its relation to another.⁠[8] If in the course of an experiment, a human subject tells me that he sees one object as brighter than the other, the scientific value of this sentence is exactly the same as that of the chick’s behavior, whether I assume direct experience in the human subject or not. Why then should I decline to accept language as one of the nicest and most instructive forms of behavior? Of course, we can obtain the same results in man as in the chick, without language, by applying the somewhat clumsy, statistical methods of animal psychology, and some behaviorists seem to prefer such a procedure. The only reason I can see for this attitude is historical. Introspectionists have used the “verbal report” in “introspection”; and I am ready to admit that their method was something like a blind alley. But, as is usually the case in such a situation, behaviorists have become negatively conditioned to much more than the “harmful stimulus” alone, so that they shy away not only from introspection but also from all things once connected with it, and primarily from language, though it is in itself utterly innocent.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

W. Köhler: Die Methoden der psychologischen Forschung beim Affen. Abderhaldens Handbuch der biologischen Arbeitsmethoden VI, D. 1921.