THE RENAISSANCE OF PSYCHOLOGY 



with its mention we may as well face the aggressively 

 contentious issue of behaviorism which holds that at 

 the beginning was the conditioned reflex, and there has 

 been nothing since. In every logical sense the copyrighted 

 "behaviorism" for which John B. Watson claims pro- 

 prietary rights, filed (presumably in the Library of Con- 

 gress) in 1912, has no place in a serious and responsible 

 discussion of the origins and tenets of modern psychology. 

 It is included with apologies; but its omission might be 

 misunderstood. The claim that scientific psychology 

 began when the term "consciousness" was dropped and 

 "behavior" substituted, is as false as it is trivial and 

 captious. The turn away from the emphasis on the "ra- 

 tional" processes, detachedly considered, toward the 

 inclusion of all varieties of mental behavior, is a gradually 

 increasing by-product of the naturalistic trend above 

 outlined. It appears in successive waves, the first at least 

 a hundred years ago. With few if any exceptions all modern 

 psychologists are behaviorists. 



To charter the word "behaviorism" for one's personal 

 vehicle is an impertinence in one sense or the other. No 

 man of science has any time or taste for the querulous game 

 of logomachy. As for the radical and far-reaching con- 

 clusions which Dr. Watson regards as "behavioristic," 

 they belong to the story of the mental vagaries of able 

 minds. It is because his views for a time found a limited 

 following that their mention is warranted as a perturbing 

 incident in the orderly progress of modern psychology. 



The study of the reflexes, including the limited order 

 of "conditioned" reflexes with which the serious work of 

 Dr. Watson was concerned, emphasizes the basic impor- 

 tance of primitive, lowly behavior patterns. But the com- 



Foster's "History of Physiology, etc." (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 

 1901), takes the story to the point at which the recent reflexology of Pavlov 

 continues it. 



[63] 



