Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 2 — John Shaqi
Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 2
Science
Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 2
Psychology, Experimental
Its position on Harvard Square, with
the continuous noise and the vibration of the ground, is perfectly
prohibitory for large groups of psychological studies and disturbing
for every kind of work for which concentration of attention is a
fundamental condition. Finally a psychological laboratory, perhaps
still more than a physical one, needs in its whole construction a
perfect adaptation to its special purpose; the walls, the shape, and
the connection of the rooms, everything must be built, as has been
done in other universities, for the special end. We have merely the
rooms of the old Law School with thin partitions dividing them. In
short everything is in a state which was tolerable during the last few
years only because it was felt as provisional, but the time when the
psychological laboratory must have really adequate quarters cannot be
postponed much longer.
The needs of the psychological work can thus be easily demonstrated to
every beholder; but while perhaps less offensive on the surface, the
outer conditions of the other branches of the Philosophical Department
are not therefore less unsatisfactory. The advanced student of logic
or ethics does not need a laboratory, but he needs seminary-rooms with
a working library where his work may have a local centre, where he
can meet his instructors and his fellow students engaged in related
researches, where he may leave his books and papers. To-day all this
theoretical work has no home at all; the seminaries seek refuge in
an empty room of the laboratory at a late evening hour, in a chance
lecture-room, or in private homes; there is nowhere continuity, no
place to collect or to deposit, no opportunity to meet beyond official
hours, no feeling of coherence suggested by surroundings. The most
advanced research work of the country is thus done under external
conditions which suggest the spirit of a schoolroom, conditions which
deprive students and instructors equally of the chance to make our
seminaries the fitting forms for their rich content. But if all this is
most deeply felt by the advanced students, it is not less true and not
less deplorable for the undergraduate courses. There is nowhere fixity
of association between the work and the room. The philosophy courses
are scattered over the whole yard, wandering each year from one quarter
to the other, creeping in wherever a vacant room can be found, not even
the instructors knowing where their nearest colleagues are meeting
students. The dignity and the unity of the work are equally threatened
by such a state of affairs. There remains not even a possibility for
the instructor to meet his students before or after the lecture; his
room is filled up to the time when he begins and a new class rushes
in before he has answered questions. A business-like restlessness
intrudes into the instruction, and yet philosophy above all needs a
certain repose and dignity.
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