PREFACE
A GREAT deal of explanation would be necessary were I to try and justify why an economist ventures to rush in where psychologists fear to tread. But this excursion into psychology has little connexion with whatever competence I may possess in another field. It is the outcome of an idea which suggested itself to me as a very young man when I was still uncertain whether to become an economist or a psychologist. But though my work has led me away from psychology, the basic idea then conceived has continued to occupy me; its outlines have gradually developed, and it has often proved helpful in dealing with the problems of the methods of the social sciences. In the end it was concern with the logical character of social theory which forced me to re-examine systematically my ideas on theoretical psychology.
The paper in which as a student more than thirty years ago I first tried to sketch these ideas, and which lies before me as I write, I was certainly wise not to attempt to publish at the time, even though it contains the whole principle of the theory I am now putting forward. My difficulty then was, as I had been aware even at the time, that though I felt that I had found the answer to an important problem, I could not explain precisely what the problem was. The few years for which I then thought to put the draft away have become a much longer period; and it is little likely that the time will still come when I can devote myself wholly to the working out of these ideas. Yet, rightly or wrongly, I feel that during those years I have learnt at least to state the nature of the problem I had been trying to answer. And as the solution at which I then arrived seems to me to be still new and worth consideration, I have now attempted this fuller exposition of what I had clumsily tried to say in my youthful effort.
The origins of this book, therefore, trace back to an approach to the problem that was current a full generation ago. The psychology which, without much guidance, I read in Vienna in 1919 and 1920, and which led me to my problem, was indeed in all essentials still the psychology of before 1914. Most of the movements which in the interval have determined the direction of psychological research were then either unknown to me or still altogether unheard of: behaviourism (except for the work done in Russia by Pavlov and Bechterev), the gestalt school, or the physiological work of such men as Sherrington or Lashley. And although discussions in Vienna at that time was, of course, full of psychoanalysis, I have to admit that I have never been able to derive much profit from that school. The main authors from which I derived my knowledge were still H. von Helmholtz and W. Wundt, W. James and G. E. Müller, and particularly Ernst Mach. I still vividly remember how in reading Mach, in an experience very similar to that which Mach himself describes with reference to Kant’s concept of the Ding an sich, I suddenly realized how a consistent development of Mach’s analysis of perceptual organization made his own concept of sensory elements superfluous and otiose, an idle construction in conflict with most of his acute psychological analysis.
It was with considerable surprise that, thirty years later, in examining the literature of modern psychology I found that the particular problem with which I had been concerned had remained pretty much in the same state in which it had been when it first occupied me. It seems, if this is not too presumptuous for an outsider to suggest, as if this neglect of one of the basic problems of psychology were the result of the prevalence during this period of an all too exclusively empirical approach and of an excessive contempt for ‘speculation’. It seems almost as if ‘speculation’ (which, be it remembered, is merely another word for thinking) had become so discredited among psychologists that it has to be done by outsiders who have no professional reputation to lose. But the fear of following out complex processes of thought, far from having made discussion more precise, appears to have created a situation in which all sorts of obscure concepts, such as ‘representative processes’, ‘perceptual organization’, or ‘organized field’, are used as if they described definite facts, while actually they stand for somewhat vague theories whose exact content requires to be made clear. Nor has the concentration on those facts which were most readily accessible to observation always meant that attention was directed to what is most important. Neither the earlier exclusive emphasis on peripheral responses, nor the more recent concentration on macroscopic or mass processes accessible to anatomical or electrical analysis, have been entirely beneficial to the understanding of the fundamental problems.
Since this book is concerned with some of the most general problems of psychology, I fear that to many contemporary psychologists it will appear to deal more with philosophical than with psychological problems; but I should be sorry if they should regard it for that reason as falling outside their province. It is true that it presents no new facts; but neither does it employ any hypotheses which are not common property of current psychological discussion. Its aim is to work out certain implications of generally accepted facts or assumptions in order to use them as an explanation of the central problem of the nature of mental phenomena. Indeed, if the views generally held on the subject are approximately true, it would seem as if something of the kind here described must happen, and the surprising fact would seem that so little attempt has been made to work out systematically these consequences of existing knowledge. Perhaps such an effort of effectively thinking through these implications requires a combination of qualifications which nobody possesses to a sufficient degree and which the specialist who feels sure in his own field therefore hesitates to undertake. To do it adequately one would indeed have to be equally competent as a psychologist and as a physiologist, as a logician and as a mathematician, and as a physicist and as a philosopher. I need scarcely say that I possess none of these qualifications. But since it is doubtful whether anybody does, and since at least nobody who possesses them as yet has tried his hand at this problem, it is perhaps inevitable that the first attempt should be made by somebody who had to try and acquire the necessary equipment as he went along. A satisfactory execution of the thesis which I have outlined would probably require the collaboration of several specialists in the different fields.
The parts of the problem on which I feel tolerably confident that I have something of importance to say are the statement of the problem, the general principles of its solution, and some of the consequences which follow from the latter for epistemology and the methodology of the sciences. The sections of the book with which I am therefore tolerably satisfied are the beginning and the end: Chapters I and II and Chapters VII and VIII. Perhaps it would have been wiser if I had made no attempt to implement the programme outlined in the earlier chapters, since the central part of the book in which this is attempted is unavoidably both more technical and more amateurish than the rest. Yet it seemed important to illustrate the general principles stated in the earlier chapters by some attempt at elaboration, even at the risk of slipping at particular points. In some ways this would not greatly matter: I am much more concerned about what would constitute an explanation of mental phenomena, than whether the details of this theory are entirely correct. Since we are still in a position where we are not certain what would constitute an explanation, any theory which, if it were correct, would provide one would be a gain, even if it should not be tenable in all respects.
Even the present version of this book has occupied me for several years, and though I have endeavoured to acquaint myself with the relevant literature, I am not sure that I have been able fully to keep up with current developments. It seems as if the problems discussed here were coming back into favour and some recent contributions have come to my knowledge too late to make full use of them. This applies particularly to Professor D. O. Hebb’s Organization of Behaviour which appeared when the final version of the present book was practically finished. That work contains a theory of sensation which in many respects is similar to the one expounded here; and in view of the much greater technical competence of its author I doubted for a while whether publication of the present book was still justified. In the end I decided that the very fullness with which Professor Hebb has worked out the physiological detail has prevented him from bringing out as clearly as might be wished the general principles of the theory; and as I am concerned more with the general significance of a theory of that kind than with its detail, the two books, I hope, are complementary rather than covering the same ground.
I owe a debt of deep gratitude to the London School of Economics and the Committee on Social Thought of the University of Chicago for giving me the leisure to devote so much time to problems which lie outside the field where my main duties lie. To my friends Karl R. Popper and L. von Bertalanffy and to Professor J. C. Eccles I am much indebted for reading and commenting upon earlier drafts of this book. And without the acute criticism of the manuscript by my wife the book would contain even more obscurities and so slovenly expressions than it undoubtedly still does.