SOURCE: “Edward Thorndike: Revolutionary Psychologist, Ambiguous Biologist,” in American Psychologist, Vol. 53, No. 10, October, 1998, pp. 1128-34.

In the following essay, Galef argues that while Thorndike's contributions to the field of comparative psychology as an empiricist are invaluable, his misconceptions about biology remain damaging to his discipline.

Publication in June 1898 of Edward Thorndike's doctoral thesis, [Animal Intelligence] the first dissertation in psychology in which animals served as subjects, marked a turning point in the history of the study of behavior in North America. There can be little question that Thorndike knew that his thesis pointed the way to a new kind of behavioral research. As he wrote to his fiancée, Beth Moulton, a few months into drafting the final document, “My thesis is a beauty … I've got some theories which knock the old authorities into a grease spot” (quoted in Joncich, 1968, p. 146). Indeed, the opening chapter of Thorndike's dissertation...