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Psychological Progress in 1907.

Year: 1908
Type: article
Abstract: Judged within the close range of its dying hours, the year 1907 does not seem to be conspicuous in the annual achievements of psychology.Sketching its story is a task not unlike that ancient one of making bricks without straw.Activity there has been in research and discussion, and in bringing to completion important projects already known.But no new methods have come in to modify the technique.No new principles have been announced that would change the fundamental points of view of the science.It may even be chronicled that this psychological year has been marked by an absence of general tendencies which have been so noticeable in the onward movement among its predecessors.The angle of individual straws has shown the winds to have been blowing in all directions.This may in part be incidental to the marked falling off in the literary undertakings so characteristic of the science a decade or so ago when the great series of treatises were appearing in America, England, France and Germany.That modern psychology is still an unsettled science is to be seen in the continued debate as to its real nature and the assumptions upon which its constructive activities are to be based.In his last work, 1 in which he sang his swan song, Mobius reveals, as he thinks, the utter hopelessness of psychology in its struggle to become a science.The only basis of science is the physical.The mental life, made up of thoughts and feelings, is different from nature.The difficulties confronting psychology as a ' physical' explanation of experience are to be removed by a recognition of the central importance of metaphysics and the need for positing the existence of souls in every physical and biological unit.In other words, psychology as a science must yield Die Hoffnungslosigkeit aller Psychologie, 1907.
DOI: 10.1037/h0073196
Language: English
Field: Psychology
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2917412268
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Cited by: 8
Related to: 10