Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Psychological Review, Vol. 6
My address deals with the limits of psychology. I know quite well that such a choice easily suggests the suspicion of heresy; whoever asks eagerly for the limits of a science appears to the first glance in a hostile attitude towards it. To emphasize its limiting boundaries means to restrain its rights and to lessen its freedom. It seems, indeed, almost an anti-psychological under taking for any one to say to this young science, which is so full of the Spirit of enterprise Keep within the bounds of your domain. But you remember the word of Kant It is not augmentation, but deformation of the sciences, if we efface their limits. Kant is speaking of logic, but at present his word seems to be for no field truer than for psychology. Psychology, it seems to me, encouraged by its quick triumphs over its old-fashioned meta physical rival, to-day moves instinctively towards an expansion istic policy. A psychological imperialism which dictates laws to the whole world of inner experience seems often to be the goal. But sciences are not like the domiciles of nations; their limits cannot be changed by mere agreement. The presuppo sitions with which a science starts decide for all time as to the possibilities of its outer extension. The botanists may resolve to-morrow that from now on they will study the movements of the stars also; it is their private matter to choose whether they want to be botanists only or also astronomers, but they can never decide that astronomy shall become in future a part of botany, supposing that they do not claim the Milky Way as a big vege table. Every extension beyond the sharp limits which are de termined by the logical presuppositions can thus be only the triumph of confusion, and the ultimate arbitration, which is the function of epistemology, must always decide against it. It is thus love and devotion for psychology which demands that its energies be not wasted by the hopeless task of transgressions into other fields.
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