Psychology: an elementary text-bookEbbinghaus, Hermann
Science
Psychology: an elementary text-book
Ebbinghaus, Hermann
Psychology
Imagine a servant sent on an errand. He finds it impossible to execute
the instructions received from his master. That ends it, if he is
deficient in intelligence. No instructions have been given for this
case; thus there is nothing to do but to return home. But the thought of
an intelligent servant is more comprehensive. He recalls his master’s
situation and analogous cases; the probable purpose of the master’s
order; other possibilities of realizing the same end. Thus he succeeds
perhaps in reconstructing the totality of the conditions which led his
master to send him, and in meeting these conditions.
Take another example. Of several physicians, all but one are mistaken in
the diagnosis of a case. Why do they differ? Every disease is
characterized by a multitude of symptoms. Some of them are obvious, so
that no one can fail to notice them: the complaints of the patient.
Others are more hidden, but no less important. The physician must search
for them. Each symptom, for example, fever, lack of appetite, dizziness,
megalomania, may appear in very different diseases. A definite group of
symptoms in definite degrees of intensity is characteristic of a
particular disease. Two conditions, therefore, must be fulfilled to make
a correct diagnosis. The symptoms which are hidden must be called up by
those which are obvious, so that the physician can search for them and
determine whether they are present or absent; for without first thinking
of them he cannot search for them. Secondly, the thought of the present
and absent symptoms must reproduce the idea of the disease which is
characterized by the presence or absence of just these symptoms. This
reproduction is possible only in a mind in which all these ideas are
very closely connected, forming a well-organized system. Where this is
not the case, the less obvious symptoms cannot influence the decision,
and the correctness of the diagnosis becomes a matter of chance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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