and method. For was it not precisely Galileo's shift of interest and method from Aristotelian forces within a single body to the complex interaction between bodies which made mechanics into a definite natural science? Similarly, in psychology when we confine our observations to the interaction between bodies, in this case stimuli objects and responses, then we can organize a series of data which will be thoroughly objective.

A second very fundamental and fruitful influence upon psychological thought is the Freudian development. This movement we look upon as an influence from the field of abnormal behavior. The Freudians (we mean to refer to the general psychopathological movement) working with imperfect, dissociated responses hit upon a scheme referring those disordered responses to actual disrupting conditions in the lives of the patients. This resulted in the development of a viewpoint which stressed the problem of adaptation. The underlying method of the Freudian movement came to be thought of as readapting individuals to their external circumstances. To be sure, the Freudians themselves did not look upon their work in this light and their constant stress of the sex instinct and the "unconscious" meant that they were looking for the causes of abnormal action and were attempting to correct such behavior by operating upon some power, in most cases very mysteriously thought of as residing in the "unconscious" of the individual. In practice, however, the situation worked out otherwise. Even in the case of their most far fetched Edipus complexes they attempted to correct the adaptations of a patient to some other person and in this manner very thoroughly manifested the value of a stimulus-response viewpoint in psychology. Possibly it is not unfair to say that in spite of the great opposition that the Freudian theory brought out in the minds of psychologists no question exists at all but that these same psychologists were thoroughly impressed with the importance of the new stimulus-response attitude which was developed. Possibly the fact that the two influences we are mentioning, namely, the conditioned reflex experiments and the Freudian development, came about at the same time, served to emphasize and support the objective psychological views that were being developed simultaneously with them. This point is manifest in the fact that some writers are attempting to work out the Freudian psychotherapeutics in terms of conditioned reflexes, the sex factors being made into responses which are conditioned. That psychologists are greatly influenced by the

Freudian attitude is manifest by the stream of Freudian suggestions that are steadily flowing into psychological treatises.

Possibly it would not be inappropriate to sum up our whole discussion of recent textbooks by saying that psychology is now more than ever receptive to various sorts of objective suggestion. Also we might add that this condition represents a general intellectual attitude. As a matter of current cultural history we might point out that there is a wave of objectivism (or realism as it is otherwise put) sweeping the whole intellectual sea. The development of objective psychology parallels the development of realism in ethics, in literature and in other fields. In other words, each of these different movements may be taken to be merely symptoms of a more or less general intellectual condition.

If our suggestion is correct that a thoroughgoing objective psychology, a psychology based upon definitely established stimulusresponse interaction, would constitute a Galilean achievement in the field of psychology, we are of course far from believing or suggesting that any such transformation has been achieved. Let us repeat again that we have been constantly emphasizing merely what are apparent trends in psychology which point the way toward this objective goal, but fully as many signs there are that this goal is far from having been reached. In fact it is true that in some of the textbooks which exhibit the most radical attempt to objectify psychology there is at the same time a very strong current of subjectivistic materials.

To be really objective psychology must give up many ideas which it now strongly entrenches in its traditions and which while they linger must permanently prevent psychology from being a full fledged natural science. One of the outstanding of these traditions is the notion that psychology deals with some sort of power or process which manifests itself in action. This kind of force is most commonly exploited in the discussion of instincts. In such discussion this power is presumed to manifest itself in various kinds of unlearned actions or tendencies which shape the life and action of the person aside from any training or other conditioning contact with circumstances. Again, this power or force is presumed to operate through the possession by the person of some innate intelligence prior to any kind of training or development. Training for those who hold to this view is presumed to be merely the occasion of the operation of this power instead of being a process of its development. In still another way this force is employed in psychology and that is

by endowing the nervous system with all sorts of mysterious determining powers. Our point is that as long as these factless notions are operating in psychology there cannot be developed a definite objective science based upon the observation of actually existing interacting organisms and their stimuli. And so while we have unquestionably found evidences of a growing objectivity in the psychological books of the past decade, the persistent existence of the force conception to which we have referred makes it highly problematic whether the general run of textbooks even in the next decade will discover to us a truly objective psychology.

REFERENCES

I. ANGELL, J. R. Introduction to Psychology. New York: Holt, 1918. Pp. vi+281.

2. BECHTEREW, W. v. La psychologie objective. Paris: Alcan, 1913, Pp. iii+473.

3. BREESE, B. B. Psychology. New York: Scribner's, 1917. Pp. x+482. 4. BRIERLY, S. S. An Introduction to Psychology. 1921. London: Methuen. Pp. VII, 152.

5. HUNTER, W. S. General Psychology. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1919. Pp. xiii+351.

6. MCDOUGALL, W. Psychology: The Study of Behavior. New York: Holt, 1912. Pp. 254.

7. MEYER, M. F. The Psychology of the Other One. 1921. Columbia, Mo.: Missouri Book Co. Pp. 439.

8. MÜNSTERBERG, H. Psychology, General and Applied. New York: Appleton, 1914. Pp. xiv+487.

9. OGDEN, R. M. An Introduction to General Psychology. New York: Longmans, Green, 1914. Pp. xvii+270.

10. PILLSBURY, W. B. The Fundamentals of Psychology. New York: Macmillan, 1916. Pp. viii+562.

11. SMITH, S., and GUTHRIE, E. Chapters in General Psychology. 1921. Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press. Pp. 181.

12. TITCHENER, E. B. A Beginner's Psychology. New York: Macmillan, 1915. Pp. xvi+362.

13. WARREN, H. C. Human Psychology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1919. Pp. xx+460.

14. WATSON, J. B. Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1919. Pp. ix+429.

15. WOODWORTH, R. S. Psychology: A Study of Mental Life. New York: Holt, 1921. Pp. x+580.

A NOTE ON THEORIES OF LEARNING

JOSEPH PETERSON

Peabody College

DISCUSSION

A theory to have scientific value must fulfill at least two conditions which we may state as follows: First, it must picture to us what probably goes on in certain of the gaps between perceived successive processes that cannot be kept under direct continuous observation; that is, where observation is impossible, it must answer plausibly the question How? or What goes on? But it must, in the second place, give this answer in such terms or in such a manner that the hypothecated connection is susceptible of experimental test. If either of these conditions is not fulfilled the theory is not helpful to scientific progress, and in such a case it makes little difference whether or not it is true, if, indeed, truth or falsity can be ascribed to it at all. Often the statement of what goes on under certain conditions must be made in very general and indefinite terms, because of the lack of relevant knowledge; but the theory may still be valuable if it is susceptible of experimental verification and opens the way for more definite supplementary hypotheses as knowledge in the field increases.

The trouble with many of our theories of learning-which are designed to supply knowledge regarding the organic processes going on between the stimuli of certain situations confronted by the individual and the modifications in his responses effected successively by them is that they have no scientific value, according to the above criteria. It makes no difference whether or not they are true from some standpoints. Such theories we can continue to incorporate in textbooks, as we are doing, and we may require successive generations to learn and pass examinations on them, only to teach in turn to other "learners "; but we get no real returns either in increased knowledge of psychology or in ability to control human nature. has been encouraging of late to see an increased activity among psychologists toward answering the question, How are errors eliminated in learning so that the fittest acts, of all those brought out by the situations, survive in the form of definitely integrated responses known as habits?

It

This is probably one of the most important problems before our science. It seems to me that we understand fairly well how varied responses arise when behavior is impeded or obstructed, but we cannot answer the question just stated. We know, moreover, that when an animal is hungry or under the pressure of some painful stimulus or of some inner "drive," or instinctive determining tendency, it will persist in responses toward rather definite ends, whether consciously anticipated by it or not; but we do not know why it does not in successive trials under similar circumstances continue to repeat random, trial and error, responses characteristic of the first trial. That seems to be the real problem of learning to-day. A recent experiment reported by Kuo,1 from the University of California, divides unsuccessful acts into two classes, merely excessive acts and ill-adaptive acts. The latter are those which check or disrupt activity making toward consummatory reaction, or which bring physical punishment, while the former class are those which merely delay the consummatory act. Kuo experimented with rats in a simple multiple choice apparatus with four compartments, of which one "led the animal to the food box by a short path; another, by a longer path; another confined the animal for a period of time; and a fourth provided an electric shock punishment." Entrance to the second of these compartments was assumed to illustrate excessive acts, while entrance to the last two constituted ill-adaptive acts. It is further assumed "that the electric shock was more ill-adaptive than confinement." Hunger was the primary motive used, and five trials were given each animal daily. Punishment by confinement lasted twenty seconds, and that by electric shock was severe enough to “make the animal squeal every time and immediately jump back from the compartment."

Results show clearly that electric shock is most effective in the elimination of unsuccessful movements, confinement coming next. The long path compartment was eliminated very slowly by all but two rats. "And in many cases the shifting from the long path compartment to the short path compartment came about suddenly and in spite of frequency." Two of the rats eliminated the short path early in the experiment and continued to follow the long one. It is concluded" that frequency and recency as such have very little to do with the matter of elimination in this experiment."

1 Kuo, Z. Y. The nature of Unsuccessful Acts and Their Order of Elimination in Animal Learning. J. of Compar. Psychol., 1922, 2, 1–27.