Questions and Exercises
Many of the books to which you will be referred, now and later, have appeared in numerous editions, library and popular, English and American. The references are made so complete that you will easily find the corresponding passages in editions other than those used by the author.
(1) Discuss the following definitions of science. If you have access to the books, read the passages in which the definitions occur; if not, do the best you can with your present knowledge. Try to see a reason even for the definitions that you cannot accept.
(a) Science is perfected common sense (Huxley). The definition accords with the view of Spencer that science and ordinary knowledge are allied in nature, and that the one is but a perfected and extended form of the other. What is there in the common interests of these two men, or in the period in which they lived, to account for such a definition?
(b) Reduced to its lowest terms, science is the observation of phenomena and the colligation of the results of observation into groups (Hill).
(c) When may any subject be said to enter the scientific stage? I suppose when the facts of it begin to resolve themselves into groups; when phenomena are no longer isolated experiences, but appear in connection and order; when, after certain antecedents, certain consequents are uniformly seen to follow; when facts enough have been collected to furnish a basis for conjectural explanation, and when conjectures have so far ceased to be utterly vague, that it is possible in some degree to foresee the future by the help of them (Froude).
(d) Mechanics is the science of motion; and its problem is to describe the motions that occur in nature completely and in the simplest way (Kirchhoff). Can this definition of mechanics be generalised, so that it applies to science at large?
T. H. Huxley, Science Primers: Introductory, 1880, 18 f.; H. Spencer, The Genesis of Science, in Essays, ii., 1891, 8; A. Hill, Introduction to Science, 1900, 3; J. A. Froude, The Science of History, in Short Studies on Great Subjects, First Series, i., 1901, 13 f.; G. R. Kirchhoff, Vorlesungen über mathematische Physik: Mechanik, 1883, 1.
(2) Helmholtz tells us that whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediately practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain; and Clifford asserts that the most useful parts of science have been investigated for the sake of truth, and not for their usefulness. Yet Pearson holds that one of the claims of science to our support is the increased comfort that it adds to practical life. How do you reconcile these statements?
H. von Helmholtz, On the Relation of Natural Science to General Science, in Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects, i., 1904, 25; W. K. Clifford, On Some of the Conditions of Mental Development, in Lectures and Essays, i., 1879, 104; K. Pearson, The Grammar of Science, ch. i., 1900, 29 f., 37.
(3) Discuss the following definitions of psychology:
(a) The science which describes and explains the phenomena of consciousness, as such (Ladd).
(b) The science of behaviour (Pillsbury).
(c) The science of individual experience (Ward).
(d) The positive science of mental process (Stout).
G. T. Ladd, Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, 1894, 1; W. B. Pillsbury, The Essentials of Psychology, 1911, 5; J. Ward, Psychology, in Encyclopædia Britannica, xxii., 1911, 548; G. F. Stout, Analytic Psychology, i., 1896, 1.
(4) Can you bring the following series of statements into relation, and show that they illustrate natural (even necessary) stages in the history of human thought? (Note the phrasing in every case!)
(a) The savage thinker seems to have taken for granted, as a matter of course, the ordinary operations of his own mind. It hardly occurred to him to think about the machinery of thinking (Tylor).
(b) The modern mind is, what the ancient mind was not, brooding and self-conscious; and its meditative self-consciousness has discovered depths in the human soul which the Greeks and Romans did not dream of, and would not have understood (Mill).
(c) When to save his own soul became man’s first business, he must needs know that soul, must study, must examine it. Prescribed as a duty, introspection became at once a main characteristic of religious life (Burr).
(d) There is nothing more interesting to the ordinary individual than the workings of his own mind. This interest alone would justify the existence of the science [of psychology] (Pillsbury).
(e) If we could say in English ‘it thinks’, as we say ‘it rains’ or ‘it blows’, we should be stating the fact most simply and with the minimum of assumption (James).
E. B. Tylor, Animism, in Primitive Culture, i., 1891, 497; W. Knight, Rectorial Addresses delivered at the University of St. Andrews, 1863-1893; J. S. Mill, 1894, 38; A. R. Burr, Religious Confession and Confessants, 1914, 86; W. B. Pillsbury, op. cit., 5; W. James, The Principles of Psychology, i., 1890, 224 f.
(5) What is the earliest notion of your own mind that you can recall?
(6) Four newspapers describe the same gown as gold brocade, white silk, light mauve, and sea-green with cream or ivory sheen on it. How could this difference of report have arisen?
(7) Newton is said to have discovered the law of gravitation by observing the fall of an apple from a bough. Was this a simple observation, or could it be said to have anything of the experiment about it?
(8) What are the characteristics of a good observer? of a good experimenter?
(9) The older psychologies speak, in technical terms, not of mental processes but of powers, faculties, capacities of the mind. What view of mind do these expressions imply?
(10) Rousseau remarked that definitions would be all very well if we did not use words to make them; les définitions pourraient être bonnes si l’on n’employait pas des mots pour les faire (Œuvres complètes de J. J. Rousseau: Émile, tome i., 1823, livre ii., 160). Illustrate this remark by reference to psychology.
(11) Try to describe your experience on some occasion which leads you to say: (a) I have made up my mind; (b) I have half a mind to do so-and-so; (c) That puts me in mind of so-and-so. Try to get down to the bare facts; it will be difficult; but try again and again, and do not be satisfied to report meanings.
(12) Describe your fountain-pen from the points of view of common sense, of physics, and of psychology. Do not attempt too much detail, but get the differences in point of view clearly on paper.