The Monist, Vol. 2, 1891-1892 : $b A quarterly magazineVarious
Philosophy
The Monist, Vol. 2, 1891-1892 : $b A quarterly magazine
Various
Philosophy -- Periodicals
What means ‘to explain’? “To explain means simply to render clear that
which is not clear or to reduce the unknown to the known, the complex
to the simple (p. 104).... It is an indispensable presupposition of
any natural science to consider nature as being capable of explanation
(_erklärbar_), and this presupposition means that natural processes
can be perfectly separated into most simple mechanical processes.
This presumption can be realised to-day only on the basis of the
atom-conception. It is accordingly not an experience, but a postulate
of natural science to derive the whole material world-process from the
mechanism of atoms. A description becomes an explanation in the measure
in which it approaches this aim” (p. 105). The question is, whether in
psychology, description can be supplanted by explanation, whether laws
can be stated instead of mere rules.
Professor Münsterberg takes that ground in psychology which as it appears
to us is the only tenable ground, viz. that feelings are not motions
and cannot be explained as converted physical processes. Professor
Münsterberg says: “A sensation, a feeling, a will can never fill even
the very smallest space. What is extended in space can never itself be
a state of consciousness. To the psychologist this distinction is now
a matter of course, so much so that it is difficult to call to one’s
mind how much trouble it cost to acquire this insight. The object
of psychology accordingly can never be an object in space, it can
never be a process of motion, accordingly, even brain-irritation can
under no circumstances ever become the object of psychology” (p. 97).
Psychology has to investigate the psychical phenomena of the individual
consciousness (p. 102), it has to separate it into its elements, i.
e. those ingredients which are no longer divisible; which being done,
psychology searches for the rules for the combinations of these psychical
elements and shows us the different complex contents which are formed in
this way by the elements up to that totality of single combinations which
is given us as the contents of our spiritual personality (p. 103).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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