THE RENAISSANCE OF PSYCHOLOGY 



into the biological field. Dunlap, aiming at a rigidly- 

 scientific conception, regards psychology as psycho-biology. 



A comment upon the place of "animal psychology" 

 in the psychological renaissance of the twentieth century 

 is particularly in point. There the biological trend in 

 interpreting the domain of mind appears most command- 

 ingly, and from there it has spread to other problems and 

 has determined, above all else, the general point of view 

 from which the entire field of mental phenomena shall 

 be approached. Recent advances in the concept of the units 

 and varieties of behavior shape the working principles 

 of the modern psychologist; they apply from reflexes to 

 personality. Without the illumination of studies in animal 

 behavior, the correct approach to the study of human 

 behavior would have been impossible. By no expansion of 

 the movement that founded the Wundtian type of labora- 

 tory would the illuminating views of human response 

 have been possible. The convergence of the experimental 

 method and the biological viewpoint made modern 

 psychology.^ 



The older tendency was to humanize animal behavior, 

 to apply crudely, and with prejudice, types of conduct 

 that arise from awareness of motive and process and goal 

 to the limited and differently oriented capacities of animals. 

 The fallacy of that procedure has become obvious. The 

 reverse approach constitutes the distinctive merit of the 

 behavioristic position. Thorndike (about 1890) formulated 

 experimental methods appropriate to the animal problem; 

 Lloyd Morgan had previously exposed the weakness of 

 the humanistic approach; Loeb introduced the mechanistic 

 concept, perhaps too rigidly; Jennings showed the vari- 



^ A concise history of the stages by which animal lore, from ancient times to 

 our own, became a branch of scientific psychology, is presented in a convenient 

 form by C. J. Warden, "A Short Outline of Comparative Psychology," W. W. 

 Norton & Company, New York, 1927. 



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