Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of FeelingStanley, Hiram Miner
Philosophy
Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling
Stanley, Hiram Miner
Emotions
Of all the sciences psychology is, perhaps, the most imperfect. If a
science is a body of knowledge obtained by special research and accepted
by the general _consensus_ of specialists, then psychology is so
defective as to scarcely merit the name of science. This want of
_consensus_ is everywhere apparent, and must especially impress any one
who compares the lack of harmony in manuals of psychology with the
practical unanimity in manuals of botany, geology, physics, and other
sciences. Even in the most fundamental points there is no agreement, as
will be evident in a most summary statement.
It is now something more than a century since the general division of
psychic phenomena into intellect, feeling and will, first came into
repute, but still some psychologists of note do not agree to this
fundamental classification, but would unite feeling and will in a single
order. As to the subdivisions of feeling and will we are confessedly
wholly at sea. In intellect it is only on the lower side, sensation and
perception, that anything of great scientific value has been
accomplished; and even now it cannot be said that the classes of
sensation have been marked off with perfect certainty. In the higher
range of intellect psychology can do scarcely more than accept some
ready-made divisions from common observation and logic. And if so little
has been settled in the comparatively simple work of a descriptive
classification of the facts of mind, we may be assured that still less
has been accomplished toward a scientific _consensus_ for the laws of
mind. Weber’s law alone seems to stand on any secure basis of
experiment, but its range and meaning are still far from being
determined. Even the laws of the association of ideas are still the
subjects of endless controversy. Also in method there is manifestly the
greatest disagreement. The physiological and introspective schools each
magnify their own methods, sometimes so far as to discredit all others.
Physiological method has won for itself a certain standing, indeed, but
just what are its limitations is still far from being settled.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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