Eleven chapters consider the elevation of psychology to the status of a natural science, identifying the intellectual, social, technological, and institutional currents influencing this development. Individual chapters examine the place of numerous tendencies within psychology, including eugenics, phrenology, the study of memory, the psychology of mathematical beauty, cognitive science, and genetics and embryology. The contributions of key individuals are also discussed, among them Wundt, Mach, Babbage, Marx, and Dilthey. The authors are professors of psychology, history, technology, religion, and the humanities.
Table of Contents:
- Eugenics and Other Victorian “Secular Religions,” Raymond E. Fancher
- Practical Phrenology and Psychological Counseling in the 19th United States, Michael M. Sokal
- Sealing Off the Discipline: William Wundt and the Psychology of Memory, Kurt Danziger
- Psychology and Memory in the Midst of Change: The Social Concerns of Late-19th-Century North American Psychologists, Marlene Shore
- The Psychology of Mathematical Beauty in the Nineteenth Century: The Golden Section, John G. Benjafield
- Cause Into Function: Ernst Mach and Reconstructing Explanation in Psychology, Andrew S. Winston
- Charles Babbage, the Analytical Engine, and the Possibility of a 19th-Century Cognitive Science, Christopher D. Green
- Instincts and Instruments, Katharine Anderson
- Philosophic Doubts About Psychology as a Natural Science, Charles W. Tolman
- Karl Marx and Wilhelm Dilthey on the Socio-Historical Conceptualization of the Mind, Thomas Teo
- Early Development and Psychology: Genetic and Embryological Influences, 1880-1920, Fredric Weizmann