On Textbook History of Psychology and Scientizing History Author(s): Laurel Furumoto Source: Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 6, No.

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COMMENTARIES

On Textbook History of Psychology and Scientizing History

LaurelFurumoto
WellesleyCollege I wantto begin by expressingmy appreciation for the liberalpraise Simontonbestowed on my articleon the life and careerof the eminent early-Americanwoman psychologist, Christine Ladd-Franklin (Furumoto, all the more in the context of 1992). It was appreciated Simonton's targetarticle,which had been consistently critical of the historical writing underreview up until thatpoint. Thatbeing said, I focus the remainder of my commentary on two concerns raised for me by Simonton's article-his assumptionthattextbookhistory of psychology constitutes scholarshipin the history of psychology and his program for scientizing history. Simonton's analysis of generalizationsin histories of psychology is confined almost without exception to textbook histories. This is evidenced by the works he cites and by his statement that "almost all the representative quotes were identified not by the author, but ratherby a team of researchassistants [who] ... independently searched for apparentgeneralizations in history textbooks in the university library." In published work (Furumoto, 1989), I addressedthe issue of the problematic natureof textbook history in science in general and in psychology in particular. For example, in his classic work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn (1970) contended that science textbooks and the historical tradition they supply are rewritten after every scientific revolution to portraythe past as developing linearly and cumulatively toward the present vantage. What this accomplishes, Kuhn, wrote, is that "both students and professionals come to feel like participantsin a longstanding historical tradition"(p. 138). The danger that Kuhnpointed out in this practice of rewriting history back from the present is that it truncates scientists' sense of the history of their discipline. More recently, Mitchell G. Ash (1983), a historian of science and an authorityon the history of Gestalt psychology, arguedthat a distinctionshould be made between "textbook history" and "historical scholarship"in psychology. In the United States,accordingto Ash, textbook history of psychology has performed primarilyan ideological function. More specifically, Ash wrote that it has been used as a "legitimation strategy" portraying the field to beginning and advanced students as both a science and as descended from a venerable traditionof knowledge. Ash maintained that, of the two (textbookhistory and historical scholarship),only historicalscholarshipcan lay claim to the production of knowledge. Furthermore,Ash 124 noted, recent historical scholarshipis yielding results that in many cases are incompatible with textbook versionsof psychology's past. Anothercommentaryon the natureof textbook history of psychology recently appearedin a review of a groupof foursuch worksby KerryW. Buckley (1993), historianand biographerof John B. Watson. Buckley maintainedthat "historytextbooks embody and transmit not only facts and ideas but values" and that they serve as "windowsnot only upon history,but upon the arenaof shiftingvalues withinthe professionitself at a given point in time" (p. 359). Therefore,Buckley argued, textbooksthemselves can be thoughtof as "historicalartifacts,productsof a communityof interests" at a particular historicaljuncture;"overtime, they may tell us as much abouttheirown era as aboutthe history of their subject"(p. 359). As previously stated, Simonton's analysis is based almost exclusively on material excerpted from textbook histories of psychology. In fact, Simonton does not even acknowledgethe existence of whatAsh called "historicalscholarship." Takinginto accountthe problematic natureof textbookhistory of psychology coupled with his neglect of scholarshipin the history of psychology seriously calls into question Simonton's many claims about what historianstend to do in their accounts.In other words, even if Simonton's generalizations about histories of psychology are true, they apply to textbookhistorybut not necessarilyto historical scholarship. This inattentivenessto historical scholarship may also explain Simonton'srestrictiveview of historiesof psychology as either "[adopting]a 'greatperson' perspective" or "[assuming] a 'history of ideas' viewpoint." True enough 20 years ago, today these alternatives aremoreaccurately describedas traditional to the of approaches history psychology. If Simonton were to consult what I have come to call the "new history of psychology" (Furumoto, 1989), he would quickly find that it cannot be contained within the categorieshe describes. Before the mid-1970s, work in the history of psychology was dominatedby the traditionalapproachto the history of science. That is, history was writtenby of the discipline-physicists wrote histopractitioners ries of physics, biologists wrote histories of biology, and so forth. These practitioner-historians, by and large, viewed the history of science as a cumulative linearprogressionfromerrorto truth.The historiesthey producedtended to move backwardfrom the present

COMMENTARIES

stateof the field andto concentrate on "greatmen"and ideas." "great During the mid-1970s, ideas from the new history that had already challenged the traditionalapproach withinthe history-of-sciencefield beganto be imported into the history of psychology by some psychologists who had become specialists in historyand some historiansof science who hadbecome interested in the social sciences. Fromthe 1980s to the present,therehas been an outpouringof scholarship-the new historyof psychology-that poses various challenges to the traditional approachto the history of the field. This new historyof psychology is diverseratherthanmonolithic and includes differentvarietiesof criticalhistory(e.g., revisionistscholarshipon the workof WilhelmWundt) and social history (e.g., work focusing on the neglect of contributions made by groups other than White males in the historyof psychology). Despite the diversity of the new historyof psycholthat serve to distinogy, it has several characteristics guish it from the old history: Thenew history tendsto be critical rather thancererather thansimplythe history of monial,contextual thestudyof ideas,andmoreinclusive, goingbeyond men." Thenewhistory utilizes sources "great primary andarchival documents rather than on secondrelying ary sources,whichcan leadto the passingdownof anecdotes andmythsfromonegeneration of textbook writers to thenext.Andfinally, thenewhistory triesto of a period to see issuesas they getinsidethethought atthetime,instead of lookingforantecedappeared ents of current ideas or writinghistorybackwards from the presentcontentof the field. (Furumoto, 1989,p. 18) Centralconcerns of much of the new history are to understand how and why the discipline of psychology came to assume the particular form that it did and the natureof the interactionsbetween psychology and society (see, e.g., Buckley, 1989; Danziger, 1990; Morawski, 1988; O'Donnell, 1985; Sokal, 1987). These issues are typically not addressedby either traditionalhistoryof psychology or textbookhistory,and they do not find a place in what I perceive to be Simonton's conceptionof history. Whereas the impetus of the new history overall is towardhistoricizingpsychology, Simonton'sgoal, as I understandit, is to scientize history. After offering evidence thattextbookhistoriesof psychology areriddled with meta-historicalgeneralizations, Simonton suggests thatit is probablyan inevitablestateof affairs. are However,he recommendsthat,wheneverhistorians details,"they should temptedto transcend "idiographic "check their assertionsagainst what actuallyhas been foundin the scientific literature." Moreover,Simonton exhorts "any scholar planning to write a history or

to peruse the biography(or even an autobiography)" metascientific literatureto learn "which claims have been disconfirmedand which vindicated"and to find "behavioral principlesthatcould be especially valuable in interpreting a specific event or personality." In Simonton's conception, the legitimate sphere of history reduces to recording "idiographic details," whereasall explanationand interpretation become the domain of science. A sharplycontrastingview of the natureof historicalinquiry-and one to which I subscribe-can be found in the writing of Dorothy Ross (1993), historianof Americansocial science and biographerof G. Stanley Hall. Ross (1993) describedtwo different approachesto knowledge-historicism and scientism-and discussed the relationbetweenthem in the social sciences from their origins in the 18th century to the present. Historicism,Ross wrote,"is a mode of reflectionabout humanaffairsthatdevelopedover the course of several centuries"and "meansthe understanding of history as a process of qualitativechange, moved and orderedby forces thatlay within itself' (p. 100). Accordingto Ross (1993), in WesternEuropehistoricism and science temporarily joined in the 18th cenin the work of Adam Smith. tury-for example, in the 19th Ross saw them developWhereas, century, in "more ing self-consciously divergentdirections"(p. 101). Historicists,underthe influence of romanticism, "grounded reasonand value fully within historicalexperience,"whereastheoristsof science, underthe influence of positivism, "declared that the abstractive methodandlawful structure of the natural sciences was the model for all fields of knowledge that aspired to certainty"(p. 101). Ross maintainedthat, despite this divergence in the 19th century, "the social sciences remainedin various ways and to various degrees involved with both theirinheritedtraditions" (p. 101). Turningto the UnitedStates,Ross (1993) notedthat, from their beginnings in the early 19th century, the varieties of social science that developed here employed metaphorsof natureor downplayed the relevance of historyto their subject matter.Nevertheless, Ross observed that American social science was not bereft of historicism,and, in fact, after the Civil War, historicism became a more influential theme in the cultureas well as in the social sciences. Ross observed:
It was not untilthe 1920s thatthe mainstream of all the social science disciplines were capturedby scientism: to model themselves the self-conscious determination exclusively on the naturalsciences, a determination based on some version of the positivist belief that science offered a privilegedaccess to reality. (p. 102)

The social sciences that formed the basis of Ross's (1993) study were economics, sociology, and political science, butcertainlywhatRoss hadto say aboutbeing 125

COMMENTARIES

by scientism"applies to Americanpsychol"captured historwell. Ross made a plea for incorporating ogy as icist and hermeneuticapproachesto knowledge in the social sciences alongside the natural scientific approach. Pointing to Max Weber's historicalmodel of the social sciences as a basis of bridgingthese divergent approaches, Ross observed that "Weber's historical social science allowed diversity"and thatWeber"recognized that the historical field allowed for different kinds of social studies, that asked differentquestions andthereforeemployed differentmethodsandreached differentlevels of generality"(p. 111). I am in sympathy with Ross's (1993) view that the social sciences-to which I would add psychologyshould acknowledge historicism as a legitimate apof knowledge.In line withthis, proachto theproduction I disagree with Simonton's suggestion to historiansof psychology that they confine themselves to using knowledge based on naturalscience to interpretidiographicmaterials,which to me amountsto scientizing history.Rather,I would urgehistorians,as well as other psychologists,to considerfollowing the lead of the new history of psychology-namely, to move in the direction of historicizingpsychology.

References
of a discipline: History of Ash, M. G. (1983). The self-presentation psychology in the United States between pedagogy and scholarship. In L. Graham, W. Lepenies, & P. Weingart (Eds.), Functionsand uses of disciplinaryhistories (Vol. 7, pp. 143Reidel. The Netherlands: 189). Dordrecht, Buckley, K. W. (1989). Mechanicalman:JohnBroadus Watsonand the beginningsof behaviorism.New York:Guilford. Buckley, K. W. (1993). Constructingthe history of psychology to thehistoryofpsychology,History [Reviewof An introduction of psychology,A historyof psychology, & A history of modern psychology].Journalof the Historyof the BehavioralSciences, 29, 356-360. the subject:Historical origins of Danziger,K. (1990). Constructing psychological research. Cambridge,England:CambridgeUniversityPress. Furumoto,L. (1989). The new historyof psychology. In I. S. Cohen (Ed.), The G. Stanley Hall lecture series (Vol. 9, pp. 5-34). Washington,DC: AmericanPsychologicalAssociation. Furumoto, L. (1992). Joining separate spheres-Christine LaddFranklin,woman-scientist(1847-1930). American Psychologist, 47, 175-182. Kuhn,T. S. (1970). Thestructureof scientific revolutions(2nd ed.). Chicago:Universityof Chicago Press. Morawski, J. G. (Ed.). (1988). The rise of experimentation in American psychology. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. O'Donnell, J. M. (1985). The origins of behaviorism: American psychology, 1870-1920. New York: New York University Press. Ross, D. (1993). An historian's view of American social science. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 29, 99112. Sokal, M. M. (Ed.). (1987). Psychological testing and American society, 1890-1930. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Note Laurel Furumoto, Department of Psychology, Wellesley College, 106 CentralStreet,Wellesley, MA 02181-8288.

Psychologyof Science,CognitiveScience,and EmpiricalPhilosophy

Barry Gholson
Universityof Memphis Simontonhas challengedinvestigatorsto establisha new researchprogram(Lakatos,1970) withinthe broad discipline of the psychology of science, the discipline to which he has contributedmuch duringthe past two decades. Researchersin this programwould seek to generalizations empiricallyinvestigatemeta-historical that populate the psychological literature, particularly textbookson the historyof psychology. Simontoncompellingly illustrates the potential rewardsof the proposed research. His level of scholarshipis of a high order, as those familiar with his previous work (e.g., Simonton, 1990) would have anticipated.I find his of thehistoricalgeneralizations-putative organization 126 behaviorallaws-at the level of individuals,ideas, and helpful. groupsparticularly Simontonlucidlydescribeshow to locate, catalogue, and even test many of the various kinds of behavioral laws inferred from historical generalizations in the psychological literature.Given that his challenge is accepted, the resulting researchprogramwill indeed constitutean importantadditionto the psychology of science. Simonton outlines how this new program spansthe science of psychology, the historyof psychology, and the psychology of science. Thus, I want to briefly explore two related research programs-one pursuedby a group of philosophersand the other by