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Article ID: CBB001221626

Has Psychology “Found Its True Path”? Methods, Objectivity, and Cries of “Crisis” in Early Twentieth-Century French Psychology (2012)

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 43
Pages: 445--454
Publication date: 2012
Language: English

Publication Date: 2012
Edition Details: Part of a special section: “Assimilating Knowledge---Food and Nutrition in Early Modern Physiologies and Psychology, A Science in Crisis? A Century of Reflections and Debates”

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Psychology Experimental psychology Objectivity Methodology of science; scientific method 20th century France Kostylev, Nikolai Nikolaevich

This article explores how French psychologists understood the state of their field during the first quarter of the twentieth century, and whether they thought it was in crisis. The article begins with the Russian-born psychologist Nicolas Kostyleff and his announcement in 1911 that experimental psychology was facing a crisis. After briefly situating Kostyleff, the article examines his analysis of the troubles facing experimental psychology and his proposed solution, as well as the rather muted response his diagnosis received from the French psychological community. The optimism about the field evident in many of the accounts surveying French psychology during the early twentieth century notwithstanding, a few others did join Kostyleff in declaring that all was not well with experimental psychology. Together their pronouncements suggest that under the surface, important unresolved issues faced the French psychological community. Two are singled out: What was the proper methodology for psychology as a positive science? And what kinds of practices could claim to be objective, and in what sense? The article concludes by examining what these anxieties reveal about the type of science that French psychologists hoped to pursue.

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Description Explores the reaction to the announcement by Nicolas Kostyleff in 1911 that experimental psychology was facing a crisis.

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Article Sturm, Thomas; Mülberger, Annette (2012) Crisis Discussions in Psychology---New Historical and Philosophical Perspectives. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (p. 425). unapi

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