Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 757 pages of information about Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1.

Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 757 pages of information about Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1.

The special phenomena in the framework of the psychological sciences group themselves in the same logical order, from the whole to the part.  The psychological totality is empirical mankind, and as we select the earth as the one part of the universe which is the habitat of man, so our scientific interest must move from the whole psychical humanity to those phenomena of human life which are the vehicle of our civilization, from mankind to its most important function, the association of man; and as we moved from earth to the special objects on earth, so we may turn from association to the special phenomena which result from association.  If we separated further the inorganic from the organic, we must here separate the products of undifferentiated and of differentiated association.  The science of mankind is race psychology, the science of the association of man is sociology, the science of the results of undifferentiated association is Voelkerpsychologie, folk psychology.  The science of products of differentiated association has no special name; its subject matter is the whole of historical civilization considered as a psychological naturalistic phenomenon.  As soon as we follow the ramification still further we have to do with the special kinds of these products, that is, with the volitions, thoughts, appreciations and beliefs.  In the undifferentiated associations they give us morals and habits, languages and enjoyments and mythological ideas, while the individually differentiated association gives political, legal and economic life, knowledge, art and religion:  all of course merely as causal, not as teleological processes, and thus merely as psychological and not as historical material.  Here, as with the physical phenomena, the structure, the special laws and the development must be everywhere separated, giving us three sciences in every case.  For instance, the study of mankind deals with the differences of mental structure in psychical anthropology, with the special psychical laws in race psychology and with the development in comparative psychology.  The chief point for us is that social psychology, race psychology, sociology, folk psychology, etc., are under this system sharply differentiated sciences and that they do not at all overlap the real historical sciences.  There is no historical product of civilization which does not come under their method but it must be conceived as a causal phenomenon, not as related to the purposes of the real man, and thus even the development means merely a growing complication of naturalistic processes and not history in the teleological sense.

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Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.