Mary Whiton Calkins
A Reconciliation Between Structural And Functional Psychology [1]
Mary Whiton Calkins (1906)
First published in Psychological Review, 13, 61-81.
In his address, delivered last August in Capetown before the British Association
for the Advancement of Science, Professor George H. Darwin thus contrasts the,
biological and the physical sciences: "The biologist," he says, "adopting as his
unit the animal as a whole, discusses its relationships to other animals and to
the surrounding condition. The physicist *** is irresistibly impelled to form
theories as to the intimate constitution of the ultimate parts of matter." By
these words Mr. Darwin indicates a distinction between two fundamental
scientific procedures: on the one hand, the study of the scientific phenomenon
as a complex of elements, on the other hand, the study of it as related to its
environment. The first is known as the structural, the second -- for reasons
that I shall later elaborate -- may be named the functional method in science.
Mr. Darwin's special purpose in distinguishing between these two scientific
conceptions is, as he says, to discuss "the extent to which ideas, parallel to
those which have done so much toward elucidating the problems of life hold good,
also, in the world of matter. I believe," Mr. Darwin adds, "that it will be
possible to show that in this respect there exists a re- [p. 61] semblance
between the two realms of nature which is not mere fanciful."[2] And his
conclusion is that communities of atoms, no less than communities of animals or
even than political communities, are subordinated to the law of natural
selection, in other words that they are in a perpetual struggle for existence.
Their 'stability,' he asserts, is "a property of relationship to surrounding
conditions. *** The existence of some is so precarious that the chemist in his
laboratory can, barely retain them for a moment; others are so stubborn that he
can barely break them up. *** The more persistent or more stable combinations
succeed in their struggle for life."
For the purposes of this address, the significant feature of the passage I have
quoted is not its specific application of the conception of natural selection to
atoms -- but its extension, to the whole domain of science, of the doctrine that
all phenomena are fundamentally related to environment and must be studied from
the standpoint of these relationships. Such an extension of the functional
procedure does not, however, it must next be observed, interfere with the
constant validity of the structural procedure -- the analysis of phenomena into
elements. Mr. Darwin does not suppose that the physicist will cease to feel an
irresistible interest in the intimate constitution of the ultimate parts of
matter because he interests himself, also, in the relations among each other of
these very ultimate parts. What Mr. Darwin is trying to accomplish is in fact
not the annihilation but the supplementation of the old method of analysis. He
is arguing that a physical or a chemical phenomenon has both to be analyzed into
its elements and to be described as a complex of relationships with coordinate
phenomena. He claims, in other words, that the biologist holds no exclusive
right to the functional method, or -- as he might well add -- the physicist to
the structural method.
I have dwelt at such relative length on Mr. Darwin's discussion, because I wish
to make his plea for the union of the two -- [p. 63] scientific conceptions the
basis of this evening's address before the American Association of Psychology.
In contemporary psychology, the two procedures, structural and functional, are
too often opposed to the point of mutual exclusion. The structural psychologist
is often wont to ignore functional relations and the functional psychologist to
condemn structural psychology as an artificial, abstract, and inadequate account
of consciousness. The object of this paper is to show that the two conceptions,
structural and functional, are readily combined, if only the basal fact of
psychology be conceived as a conscious self, that is, as a self-being-conscious.
The combination of the two procedures is -- I shall argue -- in this way made
possible, because a self-being-conscious is not only analyzable into elements
but is also a complex of relations to its environment, social and physical. In
more detail, my procedure in this paper will be as follows: I shall first
attempt to describe the nature of the psychologist's self, distinguishing it as
basal phenomenon of psychology on the one hand from the psychic event -- the
mental process or idea -- and on the other hand from the biologist's, the
philosopher's, and the sociologist's self. I shall next try to show that this
psychologist's self is rightly conceived as fundamental both to structural and
to functional psychology, and that it should therefore be studied by both
methods. I shall, finally, point out that psychic experiences may adequately be
described in terms of such a self.
I. THE CONSCIOUS SELF AS BASAL FACT OF PSYCHOLOGY.
By self as psychic fact I mean what the plain man means by self, in so far as
this does not involve the view that body constitutes part of a self.[3] This
conscious self, the plain man's self, in the developed form in which we commonly
study it, is in the first place realized as underlying the experiences of the
moment -- as having percepts, images, and the like, or, more exactly, as
'perceiving,' 'imagining,' and 'feeling.' And, in the second place, every self,
besides being fundamental to its own ideas or experiences, is also a related
self. That is to say, I [p. 64] am always conscious of myself as in some way
related to my environment, social. or physical.
This doctrine of the self as the fundamental psychic phenomenon must be
defended, first of all, from the counter-theory that the basal fact of
psychology is the psychic event, and its corollary that a self is a mere series
or system of such psychic events. The psychic fact, conceived after this second
fashion, has been named by Locke the 'idea,' by Hume the 'perception,' by
Spencer the 'feeling.' Titchener, one of the most consistent of modern upholders
of the structural doctrine, calls the psychic event 'mental process.' Locke's
term, 'idea,'[4] seems to me the simplest and the best to designate the psychic
phenomenon from this point of view: the fact of consciousness, considered as
strictly individual, in artificial isolation from other facts, and -- in
particular -- considered quite apart from any self or mind. As thus employed, in
Locke's fashion, the term 'idea' of course covers emotion, belief, and volition
as well as percept, image, and thought.
I have on other occasions argued that psychology, thus conceived as dealing with
ideas, that is, with psychic events, is a perfectly consistent science, and that
every sort of concrete conscious experience, thought and volition quite as well
as percept and image, may be described simply as consisting of certain elements
of consciousness. But in spite of the abstract possibility of conceiving
consciousness as a series of ideas and psychology as the science of this stream
of, ideas, I am none the less convinced ,that not the idea but the self should
be taken as the basal fact of psychology. There are two reasons for the
superiority of this self-doctrine. In the first place, the idea is itself an
abstraction which invariably implies a self. And, in the second place, the
description of consciousness through the analysis of ideas is not a full and
adequate account of actual conscious experience. These assertions must be
separately considered.
Every idea implies a self somewhat as every sector implies [p. 65] a circle, or
as every cell implies an animal body. No one can conceive of an idea except as
the idea of a self: in other words, the idea is immediately and unavoidably
known to be somebody's idea. In the words of Lipps, "the immediately experienced
I (das unmittelbar erleble Ich) is the central point of the life of
consciousness. To every content of consciousness," he adds, "belongs this
relatedness to the I."[5]
One may find, indeed, in every manual of psychology confirmation, intended or
unintended, of this assertion that the idea, the psychic event, always implies
the self as its necessary background.[6] One may gain warrant, also, for the
second count in the indictment, the charge that the idea, or psychic event, when
conceived as basal fact of psychology, is not merely an abstraction, but an
abstraction in terms of which conscious experiences are not adequately
described. This follows from what has been said concerning the related nature of
the self. Obviously, the experiences of a self, which is a bundle of relations
both to selves and to things, need a further statement than that in terms of a
succession of its own ideas. This is as evident as that the full description of
a given animal must not merely enumerate the different structures ...
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