REPORT OF ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON PSYCHOLOGY 



CONTENTS. 



Page 



I. General Considerations 197 



II. Most Important Practical Undertakings 202 



III. Specific Recomtnendations . 208 



IV. Equipment and Maintenance of Psychological Department, with Esti- 



mates of Cost 209 



V. Immediate Procedure , 213 



Appendix 214 



To the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Institution. 



Gentlemen : In preparing this report certain general considera- 

 tions occurred to the mind of your committee : 



I. General Considerations. 



Psychology stands over against the natural and physical sciences, 

 as underlying what may be grouped together as the sciences of man. 

 This latter group of vSciences includes anthropology broadly defined, 

 history, and the mental sciences proper in their association with the 

 moral and social sciences. It has become more and more the recog- 

 nized view that exact work in psychology must precede and furnish 

 the foundations of the scientific structure in each of these branches 

 of knowledge. Accordingly, if we should say that physics and 

 chemistry were the fundamental physical sciences, and that biology, 

 used to include both botany and zoology, v/as the fundamental 

 science of life, psychology would bold a corresponding place in re- 

 lation to the entire group of what we have called above the sciences 

 of man. Too great importance, accordingly, cannot be attached to 

 the treatment of this subject in any scheme of the sciences adopted 

 by the Carnegie Institution, which proposes to encourage and pro- 

 vide for research in science generally. The fact that the physical 

 and natural sciences have already had a richer development should 

 not prejudice the claim of psychology to the fullest recognition ; on 

 the contrarj', such a fact only gives increased emphasis to tiie needs 

 of this department, provided the provision made for it can be both 

 definite and fruitful. 



The history of this science in the last twenty years has been one 

 of remarkable progress. Psychology has become a positive science, 



(197) 



