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The Crisis in Psychology
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descriptions there is much of the philistine way of judgment. Therefore, neither radical nor half-hearted behaviorism will ever find—either in style and language, or in principle and method—the
boundary
between everyday and philistine understanding. Having liberated themselves from the “alchemy” in language, the behaviorists have polluted it with everyday, non-terminologieal speech. This makes them akin to Cbelpanov: the whole difference can be attributed to the life style of the American or Russian philistine. The reproach that the new psychology is a philistine psychology is therefore partially justified.
This vagueness of language in the Americans, which Blonsky considers a lack of pedantry, is viewed by Pavlov [1928/1963, pp. 213-214] as a failing. He views it as a
gross defect which prevents the success of the work, but which, I have no doubt, will sooner or later be removed. I refer to the application of psychological concepts and classifications in this essentially objective study of the behavior of animals. Herein lies the cause of the fortuitous and conditional character of their complicated methods, and the fragmentary and unsystematic character of their results, which have no well planned basis to rest on.
One could not express the role and function of language in scientific investigation more clearly. And Pavlov’s entire success is first of all due to the enormous consistency in his language. His investigations led to a theory of higher nervous activity and animal behavior, rather than a chapter on the functioning of the salivary glands, exclusively because he lifted the study of salivary secretion to an enormously high theoretical level and created a transparent system of concepts that lies at the basis of the science. One must marvel at Pavlov’s principled stand in methodological matters. His book introduces us into the laboratory of his investigations and teaches us how to create a scientific language. At first, what does it matter what we call the phenomenon? But gradually each step is strengthened by a new word, each new principle requires a term. He clarifies the sense and meaning of the use of new terms. The selection of terms and concepts predetermines the outcome of an investigation:
I cannot understand how the non-spatial concepts of contemporary psychology can be fitted into the material structure of the brain [ibid., p. 224].
When Thorndike speaks of a mood reaction and studies it, he creates concepts and laws that lead us away from the brain. To have recourse to such a method Pavlov calls cowardice. Partly out of habit, partly from a “certain anxiety,” be resorted to psychological explanations.
But soon I understood that they were bad servants. For me there arose difficulties when I could see no natural relations between the phenomena. The succor of psychology was only in words (the animal has ‘remembered,’ the animal ‘wished,’ the animal ‘thought’), i.e.,
it
was only a method of indetenninate thinking without a basis in fact
(italics mine, L. V.) [ibid., p. 237].
He regards the manner in which psychologists express themselves as an insult against serious thinking.
And when Pavlov introduced in his laboratories a penalty for the use of psychological terms this was no less important and revealing for the history of the theory of the science than the debate about the symbol of faith for the history of religion. Only Chelpanov can laugh about this: the scientist does not fine for [the use of] an incorrect term in a textbook or in the exposition of a subject,
but in the laboratory—in the process of the investigation.
Obviously, such a fine was imposed for the non-causal, non-spatial, indeterminate, mythological thinking that came with that word and that threatened to blow up the whole cause and to introduce—as
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