for the "D" sections of
The Principles of Psychology, William James, 1897
The American Psychological Association Thesaurus, 1979
Diane Nahl
1976
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Table of Contents |
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I. Introduction |
In the academic setting there is an artificial distinction made between the history of psychology and psychology, as if to say that the history is not the psychology. This distinction is reflected by the fact that courses in the history of psychology are not required though courses in methodology, statistics, physiology, personality theory, etc. are. There are reasons to believe that this is a false distinction. Such an oversimplified view is detrimental to the training of psychologists and therefore to the field itself.
The empirical study of history reveals the historical function of articles in the scientific literature. The body of articles in the literature amounts to a citation network which shows how the integration of each reputable scientific article into the field is accomplished. Each article is tied into the field, in terms of its scientific contributions, by citing relevant articles and by being cited in other articles. The introduction section of an article establishes the basis for the research being reported in the new article by citing other previous relevant research (certain articles are cited more often than others in a given sub-field establishing them as historical references and standards). The reference section of an article further proves the historical ties of an article by providing verifiability of professionalism (publication sources, multiple authorship, how current the research is, length of article, etc.).
Miley (1975) did an extensive review of the recent literature which deals with the problem of information dissemination in the scientific literature. Since the general trend in the literature is increasing at an exponential rate, where the amount of information to be made accessible to researchers is manageable only with the help of computerized access and classification systems, citation system research is an important endeavor. Ziman (1969), as quoted in Miley, noted that:
It is very rare to find a reputable paper that contains no references to other research. Indeed, one relies on the citations to show its place in the whole scientific structure, just as one relies on a man's kinship affiliations to show his place in the tribe.
It is easy to see that the modern research article serves an historical integrative function. The question now arises as to the importance and validity of an historicalizing practice that relies exclusively on "blind analyses". That is, all measures of relationship between topics are determined by automated statistical procedures rather than the more traditional approach to the study of history which involves not blind comparisons, but instead a clinical reading and examination of the text that contains the author's argument. Surely, it is here that is to be found the contribution or noncontribution of the individual scientific pioneer. The purpose of this paper is to show how these two forms of history can be interrelated. Leo Postman put it aptly when he said that:
The importance of historical sophistication for the cumulative and orderly progress of a science, and especially of a young discipline like psychology, needs hardly to be defended. Without such sophistication, Boring warned us more than thirty years ago in the preface to his History of Experimental Psychology, the investigator "sees the present in distorted perspective, he mistakes old facts and old views for new, and he remains unable to evaluate the significance of new movements and methods." As the volume of psychological research expands at an accelerated rate, this judgment is more valid than ever. (Postman 1961 as quoted in Jakobovits and Gordon 1976)
In my opinion the Boring prototype (biographical prototype) is interesting and useful for what it tries to do (this is the prototype followed by Dr. M. E. Bitterman in his lectures for Psy. 423, Fall 1976). The empirical prototype (American Psychological Association prototype) also has its place in the field of psychology as it serves scientific functions in that it contributes techniques for the study of the field of Psychology itself. It is also evident that although both of these approaches to the history of psychology are useful and relevant, a mere acceptance of the two prototypes as perspectives is not sufficient to justify their usefulness in the study of the field. Rather, a synthesis is called for in terms of what way be called a scientific history which integrates the biographical prototype with the APA prototype. The APA Central Office plays a 'centralizing' part in determining the topical organization in psychology by determining indices. Psychological Abstracts is an example of this centralizing influence as indicated by its wide circulation (compared to the smaller, more specialized circulations of all other APA journals combined). Publisher's Junk Mail sent out in voluminous quantities determines, by listing, the topics of psychology. The topics are presented in book titles, tables of contents, and book descriptions. A third example of this centralizing influence is seen in the Federal Government Manpower Statistics forms, where the categories for indicating area of affiliation or specialization are predetermined, and therefore standardized. I am going to examine in this paper some techniques for synthesizing the two prototypes.
The practice of titling is so commonplace that its significance is not generally realized. In psychology, the two obvious areas where titling is significant are book titles and article titles. Two important historicalizing functions are served by titling: an archival function and an integrative function. The archival function serves to document and identify each piece of scientific writing contributed to the literature. Library catalogues allow access to the information through the titles of the works. The integrative function of titles refers to the fact that the actual process of choosing the words for the title of an article determines the location in the literature of the particular title. The author then, in titling, relegates his article to certain areas in the literature, thus tying his research into the body of scientific articles.
The external organization of a publication unit is mediated by titles. The title is the link between the text and indices, catalogues, journal or source of publication, and the author. All publication units require titles in order to be assimilated into the literature as the title serves as the identification marker which distinguishes a particular unit of text from all others. A title is thus a signature establishing the sociolegal identity of a unit of text (note publisher's reference to an article with fifteen pages as a fifteen page signature) and indicating ownership. The title is the chief source used in the abstracting-indexing process for determining the location of a body of text in the literature. (Less frequently used sources are abstracts and the text of the article which may be scanned). That is, the words in the title are placed in indexical lists (e.g. Psychological Abstracts) which allow access to the particular place in the literature where a given unit of text may be found. Thus it is evident that a title is a necessary organizational component to any official piece of text which is seen historically as "the literature".
The internal organizational format of titles is the same as for text, that is, without grammatical alteration, any title can stand as part of the text. The title is thus included as part of the text or article while it, as title occupies a position as an elevated sentence part for the purposes of identifying the article. Without grammatical alteration, such titles (taken from a sample list of Bittenman's article titles) as the following can be accommodated in the text:
1. The measurement of autokinetic movement...has not been adequately examined.
2. A further study of differential afferent consequences in nondifferential reinforcement...will be presented.
3. Simultaneous and successive discrimination under identical stimulating conditions...can be achieved through...
Titles occupy the same internal organizational level as the text, whereas, some headlines (e.g. English The Family Way; Over 20 Tricks Magician Set) occupy another level.
The unit of reporting experimental research and theoretical advances is the journal article. The conventional method for referring to articles in the literature is by bibliographical citations found in the reference section of an article. Xhignesse and Osgood (1967) have stated that
Journals are a part of the formal channel of scientific communication as well as storage elements for the summary accounts of research undertakings. Analysis of bibliographical citations thus can reveal certain characteristics of the pattern of information flow created by scientists in their work.
The investigators report in their findings that, as expected, journals in the psychological network studied tend to cite each other in equivalent proportions, thus indicating a pattern of information flow. The investigators further note that examination of trends across time in networks as well as comparing different networks are useful in the handling of the ever increasing input of information. From an historical perspective, the relevance of documenting patterns of information flow through the analysis of interreferences is apparent. The data reported by Xhignesse and Osgood, namely that journal A tends to cite journal B as often as journal B cited journal A, shows that there is a high degree of organization in the psychological literature. Traditionally textbooks have served an integrative function by gathering together several theories under one cover.
Miley (1975) has shown that the integrating function of the blind analyses done on the citation system are closely related to the integrative function of textbooks.
The body of scientific literature may be regarded as a space divided into areas which can be called topic domains. The de}imitation, emergence, disappearance, proportion of overlap, etc. of topic domains is an historical process inherent in the literature. One -approach to the empirical study of history is available through comparisons of indices. For example, comparison of the index section of a contemporary text versus a classical text for a given field gives an indication about the expansion and contraction of topic domains chronologically. In a paper prepared for Psych. 705H, Pall 1976, I employed an indexical concordance contrasts technique to compare the indices for the D section of The Principles of Psychology by William James to The American Psychological Association Thesaurus. Using this technique to analyze the indices yields information about divergent and convergent patterns of topic fragmentation in terms of percentage of overlap of indexical entries from one index to the other for a particular topic domain. For example, the topic domain category of Physiology contains ninety-six entries with 32 percent represented by James and 45 percent represented by the APA. Both sample indices contain comparable amounts of items in the topic domain though 83 percent of the entries in the category are from the APA with 17 percent from James (giving the false appearance that the James index does not have a comparable amount of references in the topic domain). There is a marked divergent pattern for this category. Comparison of the percentage of entries from each index shows how the topics fragmented, for instance, there is a marked shift from sensory perception and brain degenerations in James to central nervous system functions and degenerations (including the brain), organic bodily functions, and a particular emphasis on drugs in the APA. For the entire D section, 31 percent of the James sample is represented in the APA while 10 percent of the APA is found in James, thus, the pattern is shown to be divergent. These proportions hold up for other sections of the two indices (e.g. section A's). Thus, the comparison of indices across time spans affords a glimpse of the shifting sands in the content of topic domains, giving us a slide show as it were, of the historical process.
This assignment consists of a review, analysis, and discussion of an historical system in the field of psychology in the context of an undergraduate course in the history of psychology. In considering this assignment, I saw two alternatives, one alternative attempts to simulate the pure scholarly approach in the biographical prototype. Since it takes years of study and experience to acquire the expertise to do an analysis along these lines, namely, familiarity with the original texts and major works of a theorist -, familiarity with the context surrounding the system in terms of the Zeitgeist, and other factors contributing to the ability of the historian to present a coherent and meaningful view of history, it therefore is understandable how the undergraduate student who is inexperienced ends up with a simulated version of the scholarly approach. Rather than do the simulated version which would not be of interest to people like Dr. M. E. Bitternam or Edith Heidbreder, I instead decided to present 'real" history, by which I mean a piece of original research. At the same time, however, I didn't want to merely do a blind empirical investigation like Miley's citation analysis. Therefore, I decided to do an original investigation of the notion of topic domain, as will be described below.
If my idea of topic domain has any validity it should be possible to demonstrate that it is a workable unit of analysis in the study of history of psychology. Suppose for instance-that we delineated fragments of topic domains and used these to compare the scientific contributions of eminent men. Such a comparison should not only have face validity but should also lead to more specific and particular information about them than would be possible by a study of each of them separately. This additional information should furthermore be of historical interest and allow the development of empirical hypotheses about their relationships and differences.
To test the possibility of this approach, I selected four eminent psychologists who could be said to be in the same specialized area as the instructor for this course, Dr. M. E. Bitterman, himself being such a scientist. Having consulted a number of people familiar with Dr. Bitterman's work I came up with the following fours T.C. Schneirla, B. F. Skinner, N. J. Mackintosh, and Frank Beach. I must confess that, though I've heard of Skinner, I had not heard of the other three, this fact reflecting my ignorance rather than the lack of their eminence, of which I had been assured by those who know more. It is plain therefore, that if my method works here, it will have met a stringent criterion.
My first step was to delineate the topic domains over which the five scientists would be compared. I obtained a complete bibliographical reference on each of the five men. The total number of publications listed in the bibliographies range from a low 48 (Mackintosh) to a high 156 (Bitterman). Schneirla was next with 122 and Beach and Skinner had 87 and 63 respectively. By scanning the titles listed in the bibliographies I induced seven categories of topic domains which appeared to cover, more or less, their work. The categories received the following titles:
I Theoretical Contributions
II Behavioral Engineering
III Discrimination
IV Technical Innovations
V Central Nervous System
VI Consciousness
VII Observed Behavior
The bibliographies are appended. For any further information the reader may wish about them. Table 1 presents the results. Inspection of the pattern of percentages reveals the following facts:
1) In all cases with the exception of Bitterman, the heaviest area of contribution for this group of men is in the category of Theoretical Contributions. Variation among them within this community is also detectable with Skinner leading the group - and Mackintosh trailing him.
2) The second category, Behavioral Engineering, is a topic domain in which all five make about equal and solid contribution.
3) The third category, Discrimination, is clearly a specialty area for Mackintosh only with Bitterman being the only one who shares this specialty with Mackintosh to some extent at least.
4) Categories four, Technical Innovations, and six, Consciousness, are specialties that are relatively under represented in the work of the group.
5) Categories five, Central Nervous System, and seven
Observed Behavior, are specialties strong for Beach and Schnierla respectively.