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The Crisis in Psychology

Finally, let us proceed to a positive definition of the general science. It might seem that if the difference between general and special science as to their subject matter, method, and goal of study is merely relative and not absolute, quantitative and not fundamental, we lose any ground to distinguish them theoretically. It might seem that there is no general science at all as distinct from the special sciences. But this is not true, of course. Quantity turns into quality here and provides the basis for a qualitatively distinct science. However the latter is not torn away from the given family of sciences and transferred to logic. The fact that at the root of every scientific concept lies a fact does not mean that the fact is represented in every scientific concept in the same way. In the mathematical concept of infinity reality is represented in a way completely different from the way it is represented in the concept of the conditional reflex. In the concepts of a higher order with which the general science is dealing, reality is represented in another way than in the concepts of an empirical science. And the way, character, and form in which reality is represented in the various sciences in every case determines the structure of every discipline.

But this difference in the way of representing reality, i.e., in the structure of the concepts, should not be understood as something absolute either. There are many transitional levels between an empirical science and a general one. Binswanger [1922, p. 4] says that not a single science that deserves the name can “leave it at the simple accumulation of concepts, it strives rather to systematically develop concepts into rules, rules into laws, laws into theories.” The elaboration of concepts, methods, and theories takes place within the science itself during the whole course of scientific knowledge acquisition, i.e., the transition from one pole to the other, from fact to concept, is accomplished without pausing for a single minute. And thereby the logical abyss, the impassable line between general and special science is erased, whereas the factual independence and necessity of a general science is created. Just like the special science itself internally takes care of all the work of funneling facts via rules into laws and laws via theories into hypotheses, general science carries out the same work, by the same method, with the same goals, but for a number of the various special sciences.

This is entirely similar to Spinoza’s argumentation about method. A theory of method is, of course, the production of means of production, to take a comparison from the field of industry. But in industry the production of means of production is no special, primordial production, but forms part of the general process of production and itself depends upon the same methods and tools of production as all other production.

Spinoza [1677/1955, pp. 11-12] argues that

we must first take care not to commit ourselves to a search going back to infinity, that is, in order to discover the best method for finding the truth, there is no need of another method to discover such method; nor of a third method for discovering the second, and so on to infinity. By such proceedings, we should never arrive at the knowledge of the truth, or, indeed, at any knowledge at all. The matter stands on the same footing as the making of material tools, which might be argued about in a similar way. For, in order to work iron, a hammer is needed, and the hammer cannot be forthcoming unless it has been made; but in order to make it, there was need of another hammer and other tools, and so on to infinity. We might thus vainly endeavor to prove that men have no power of working iron. But as men at first made use of the instruments supplied by nature to accomplish very easy pieces of workmanship, laboriously and imperfectly, and then, when these were finished, wrought other things more difficult with less labor and greater perfection; and so gradually mounted from the simplest operations to the making of tools, and from the making of tools to the making of more complex tools, and fresh feats of workmanship, till they arrived at making, with small expenditure of labor, the vast number of complicated mechanisms