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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLI. No. 1054 



the complexity of our subject-matter any 

 method that can give a point of attack is 

 to be encouraged on general principles. 

 The methods that prove fruitless will dis- 

 appear soon, the valuable ones will assert 

 themselves. Meanwhile a broad hospitality 

 that will encourage originality, rather than 

 a hidebound insistence upon any single 

 method, will certainly be beneficial for the 

 advancement of the science. 



That the advocates of a method are prone 

 to exalt the method at the expense of the 

 science, to make over the science if not the 

 man to conform to the needs of their 

 method, can be seen to-day in the writings 

 of both introspectionists and behaviorists. 

 The introspectionists in general desire to 

 put all the essential mental operations on 

 the inside, to find them in images, while 

 Watson, their newest and most vigorous 

 opponent, would put all on the outside. 

 Thus in the thought processes the more 

 thoroughgoing believers in images insist 

 that thinking that does not go on in images 

 is not thinking, or that the individuals who 

 announce that they do not use images have 

 overlooked their images through faulty ob- 

 servation of some sort. They themselves 

 heap up images for each of the reasoning 

 operations, in spite of the fact that many 

 of the processes they mention are obviously 

 individual if not irrelevant to the end that 

 is accomplished. Watson, similarly, after 

 announcing that psychology is a branch of 

 behaviorism and its method is the observa- 

 tion of external responses under experi- 

 mental conditions, feels himself compelled 

 to transfer the thinking process in its en- 

 tirety to the outside where the experimenter 

 can discover all that goes on. Thinking 

 must be found in contractions of the larynx, 

 in slight movements of the larynx, or in 

 other movements at present undiscovered 

 which must however lie upon the surface 

 of the body. It is not apparent why he 



should insist on the slight movements of 

 the larynx, for which delicate apparatus 

 should be used, rather than upon the full 

 movements of speech which may be even 

 more completely analyzed by the ear. If 

 the language of the individual does not tell 

 us why he reaches certain conclusions when 

 he thinks aloud, I can not see how the 

 slight movements made when he thinks to 

 himself are to be of any greater aid. So far 

 as any evidence on the subject exists, the 

 movements in thinking are but faint replicas 

 of the movements of ordinary speech. 



If we take the thinking process as an 

 instance, I am inclined to believe that the 

 great difficulty is not so much with the 

 method as with the v/ay in which it is ap- 

 plied. Advocates of both tend to deal too 

 much with irrelevant materials. As an 

 impartial onlooker I am convinced that 

 much of the imagery that we hear so much 

 of in the long introspective accounts is 

 wholly or largely irrelevant to the prob- 

 lems, and I am sure if I may indulge for a 

 moment in the cocksureness that I am 

 criticizing, that the slight recorded move- 

 ments that are mentioned on the other side 

 would be at most irrelevant accompani- 

 ments, rather than essential conditions of 

 the thought process. If one observe any 

 bit of thinking as revealed in the speech 

 of another or in one's own consciousness, if 

 one happen to have a consciousness, it is 

 seen that there is no difficulty in knowing 

 that a conclusion has been reached and in 

 deciding that it is or is not adequate. How 

 the conclusion is reached, and why it seems 

 adequate or inadequate, is revealed neither 

 to introspection nor to observation. To 

 answer either of these questions one must 

 proceed as one would in the natural sci- 

 ences by varying the antecedents of each 

 process until one discovers that certain are 

 the real causes and others are chance ac- 

 companiments. If experimentation is not 



