The Crisis in Psychology

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go through both phases in their development. The majority knows only a general

science in its first phase. The reason for this will become clear as soon as we care-

fully state the qualitative difference of the second phase.

We have seen that the explanatory principle carries us beyond the boundaries

of a given science and must interpret the whole unified area of knowledge as a

special category or stage of being amidst a number of other categories, i.e., at stake

are highly generalized, ultimate, essentially philosophical principles. In this sense

the general science is the philosophy of the special disciplines.

In this sense Binswanger [1922, p. 3] says that a general science such as, for

example, general biology elaborates the foundations and problems of a whole area

of being. Interestingly, the first book that lay the foundation of general biology was

called “The philosophy of zoology” (Lamarck11). The further a general investigation

penetrates, continues Binswanger, the larger the area it covers, the more abstract

and more remote from directly perceived reality the subject matter of such an in-

vestigation will become. Instead of living plants, animals, persons, the subject matter

of science becomes the manifestations of life and, finally, life itself, just as in physics

force and matter replaced bodies and theft changes. Sooner or later for each science

the moment comes when it must accept itself as a whole, reflect upon its methods

and shift the attention from the facts and phenomena to the concepts it utilizes.

But from this moment on the general science is distinct from the special one not

because it is broader in scope, but because it is organized in a qualitatively different

way. No longer does it study the same objects as the special science; rather, it

investigates the concepts of this science. It becomes a critical study in the sense

Kant used this expression. No longer being a biological or physical investigation,

the critical investigation is concerned with the concepts of biology or physics. Con-

sequently, general psychology is defined by Binswanger as a critical reflection upon

the basic concepts of psychology, in short, as “a critique of psychology.” It is a

branch of general methodology, i.e., of the part of logic that studies the different

applications of logical forms and norms in the various sciences in accordance with

the formal and material reality of the nature of theft objects, theft procedures, and

theft problems. [6]

This argumentation, based on formal logical premises, is only half true. It is

correct that the general science is a theory of ultimate foundations, of the general

principles and problems of a given area of knowledge, and that consequently its

subject matter, methods of investigation, criteria and tasks are different from those

in the special disciplines. But it is incorrect to view it as merely a part of logic, as

merely a logical discipline, as if general biology is no longer a biological discipline

but a logical one, as if general psychology stops being psychology but becomes logic.

It is incorrect to! view it as merely critique in the Kantian sense, to assume that it

only studies concepts. It is first of all incorrect historically, but also according to

the essence of the matter and the inner nature of scientific knowledge.

It is incorrect historically, i.e., it does not correspond with the actual state of

affairs in any science. There does not exist a single general science in the form

described by Binswanger. Not even general biology in the form in which it actually

exists, the biology whose foundations were laid by the works of Lamarck and Dar-

win, the biology which is until now the canon of genuine knowledge of living matter,

is, of course, part of logic, but a natural science, albeit of the highest level. Of

course, it does not deal with living, concrete objects such as plants and animals,

but with abstractions such as organism, evolution of species, natural selection and

life, but in the final analysis it nevertheless studies by means of these abstractions

the same reality as zoology and botany. It would be as much a mistake to say that

it studjes concepts and not the reality reflected in these concepts, as it would to