The Crisis in Psychology

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reflects everything; a stone reacts in principle to everything. But these reactions

equal the stimulation: causa aequat effectum. [34] The reaction of the organism is

“richer”: it is not like an effect, it expends potential forces, it selects stimuli. Red,

blue, loud, sour—it is a world cut into portions. Psychology’s task is to clarify the

advantage of the fact that the eye does not perceive many of the things known to

optics. From the lower forms of reactions to the higher ones there leads, as it were,

the narrowing opening of a funnel.

It would be a mistake to think that we do not see what is for us biologically

useless. Would it really be useless to see microbes? The sense organs show clear

traces of the fact that they are in the first place organs of selection. ‘Taste is obvi-

ously a selection organ for digestion, smell is part of the respiratory process. Like

the customs checkpoints at the border, they test the stimuli coming from outside.

Each organ takes the world cum grano sails [35]—with a coefficient of specification,

as Hegel says, [and] with an indication of the relation, where the quality of one

object determines the intensity and character of the quantitative influence of an-

other quality. For this reason there is a complete analogy between the selection of

the eye and the further selection of the instrument: both are organs of selection

(accomplish what we accomplish in the experiment). So that the fact that scientific

knowledge transcends the boundaries of perception is rooted in the psychological

essence of knowledge itself.

From this it follows that as methods for judging scientific truth, direct evidence

and analogy are in principle completely identical. Both must be subjected to critical

examination; both can deceive and tell the truth. The direct evidence that the sun

turns around the earth deceives us; the analogy upon which spectral analysis is

built, leads to the truth. On these grounds some have rightly defended the legiti-

macy of analogy as a basic method of zoopsychology. This is fully acceptable, one

must only point out the conditions under which the analogy will be correct. So far

the analogy in zoopsychology has led to anecdotes and curious incidents, because

it was observed where it actually cannot exist. It can, however, also lead to spectral

analysis. That is why methodologically speaking the situation in physics and psy-

chology is in principle the same. The difference is one of degree.

The mental sequence we experience is a fragment: where do all the elements

of mental life disappear and where do they come from? We are compelled to con-

tinue the known sequence with a hypothetical one. It was precisely in this sense

that Høffding [1908, p. 92/114] introduced this concept which corresponds with the

concept of potential energy in physics. This is why Leibnitz26 introduced the infi-

nitely small elements of consciousness [cf. Høffding, 1908, p. 108].

We are forced to continue the life of consciousness into the unconscious in order not

to fall into absurdities [ibid., p. 286].

However, for Høffding (ibid., p. 117) “the unconscious is a boundary concept in

science” and at this boundary we may “weigh the possibilities” through a hypothesis,

but

a real extension of our factual knowledge is impossible. ... Compared to the physical

world, we experience the mental world as a fragment; only through a hypothesis can

we supplement it.

But even this respect for the boundary of science seems to other authors in-

sufficient. About the unconscious it is only allowed to say that it exists. By its very

defmition it is not an object for experimental verification. lb argue its existence by

means of observations, as Høffding attempts, is illegitimate. This word has two

meanings, there are two types of unconscious which we must not mix up—the de-