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Chapter 15

Köhlcr (1917) demonstrated in practice how we may prove the presence of

thinking in apes without any introspection and even study the course and structure

of this process through the method of the interpretation of objective reactions.

Korniov (1922) demonstrated how we may measure the energetic budget of dif-

ferent thought operations using the indirect method: the dynamoscope is used by

him as a thermometer. Wundt’s mistake resided in the mechanical application of

equipment and the mathematical method to check and correct. He did not use

them to extend introspection, to liberate himself from it, but to tie himself to it.

In most of Wundt’s investigations introspection was essentially superfluous. It was

only necessary to single out the unsuccessful experiments. In principle it is totally

unnecessary in Kornilov’s theory. But psychology must still create its thermometer.

Korniov’s research indicates the path.

We may summarize the conclusions from our investigation of the narrow sen-

sualist dogma by again referring to Engels’ words about the activity of the eye

which in combination with thinking helps us to discover that ants see what is in-

visible to us.

Psychology has too long striven for experience instead of knowledge. In the

present example it preferred to share with the ants their visual experience of the

sensation of chemical beams rather than to understand their vision scientifically.

As to the methodological spine that is supporting them there are two scientific

systems. Methodology is always like the backbone, the skeleton in the animal’s or-

ganism. Very primitive animals, like the snail and the tortoise, carry their skeleton

on the outside and they can, like an oyster, be separated from their skeleton. What

is left is a poorly differentiated fleshy part. Higher animals carry their skeleton

inside and make it into the internal support, the bone of each of their movements.

In psychology as well we must distinguish lower and higher types of methodological

organization.

This is the best refutation of the sham empiism of the natural sciences. It

turns out that nothing can be transposed from one theory to another. It would

seem that a fact is always a fact. Despite the different points of departure and the

different aims one and the same object (a child) and one and the same method

(objective observation) should make it possible to transpose the facts of psychology

to reflexology. The difference would only be in the interpretation of the same facts.

In the end the systems of Ptolemy27 and Copernicus~ rested upon the same facts

as well. [But] It turns out that facts obtained by means of different principles of

knowledge are different facts.

Thus, the debate about the application of the biogenetic principle in psychology

is not a debate about facts. The facts are indisputable and there are two groups

of them: the recapitulation of the stages the organism goes through in the devel-

opment of its structure as established by natural science and the indisputable traits

of similarity between the phylo- and ontogenesis of the mind. It is particularly im-

portant that neither is there any debate about the latter group. Koffka [1925, pp.

32], who contests this theory and subjects it to a methodological analysis, resolutely

declares that the analogies, from which this false theory proceeds, exist beyond any

doubt. The debate concerns the meaning of these analogies and it turns out that

it cannot be decided without analyzing the principles of child psychology, without

having a general idea of childhood, a conception of the meaning and the biological

sense of childhood, a certain theory of child development. It is quite easy to find

analogies. The question is how to search for them. Similar analogies may be found

in the behavior of adults as well.

‘iWo typical mistakes are possible here: one is made by Hall.29 Thorndike and

Groos have brilliantly exposed it in critical analyses. The latter [Groos, 1904/1921,