Untersuchungen über die Bedeutung der Deszendenztheorie für die Psychologie (English: Examinations of the Implications of the Theory of Common Descent for Psychology) is a book written by German psychologist, pedagogist, aesthetician and philosopher Max E. Ettlinger. It was published in 1903 for the (English: Görres Society).
Context Ettlinger's book presents a criticism of many of the contemporary scientific and philosophical notions. He especially focuses on the impact of these discoveries on psychology and the accompanying philosophical debate, referring to the works of authors such as Charles Darwin, Edward Thorndike and Ernst Häckel. This relates Ettlinger's criticism to many of the developments of psychology as a discipline during the prior centuries.
Common descent and psychology The idea of common descent, stating that all life forms originated from one or several primitive common ancestors, influenced the way psychology as a discipline and specifically psychological methods of investigation developed, which prompted Ettlinger to write the book. At the end of the 19th century the field of comparative psychology emerged as a consequence of Darwin's observations of evolutionary mechanisms. Through this theoretical framework, and by popularizing the theory of common descent Darwin also made it relevant for psychologists to compare animals to humans mentally. Although possible comparisons between animal and human minds had been previously stressed in the writings of enlightenment thinkers such as David Hume, most philosophical thought had seen a clear distinction between animals and humans in the development of certain mental faculties. This way of thinking about mental processes in animals was continued in the late 19th century by those who had otherwise accepted Darwin's theory and the principle of natural selection, including Alfred Wallace who was a strong proponent of Darwinism but excluded the human mind as its subject. This disagreement of Darwinists about the applicability of natural selection to the human mind is also picked up by Ettlinger in the book.
Darwin's theory of natural selection had been under debate at the time, among others by Ettlinger himself, although the number of academics adopting alternative theories such as that of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck to explain the problems common descent posed had declined towards the turn of the century. The problem of blending inheritance, which had been used to criticize the theory of natural selection in its early stages, had largely been resolved by the independent rediscovery of the importance of Mendel's work by Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns, and Erich von Tschermak in 1900. Although the general problem of blending inheritance had been resolved there was still no sufficient explanation of the mechanisms behind inheritance and how genes were passed on from one generation to the next.
Despite lacking clarity about the specifics of Darwinian evolution, the theory rapidly spread to Germany, where it was defended among others by Ernst Häckel, and encouraged psychologists worldwide to expand the study of animals beyond the already existing biological field of comparative anatomy to comparative psychology. Animal research was favored over research in humans as certain behavioral processes could be made visible more easily, for instance by surgical operations on animals' nervous systems. Early comparative psychology still had to deal with problems such as the frequent anthropomorphising of animals by researchers and the coherent integration of anatomical knowledge about the nervous system with that of reflexes and with psychological causation, which also had implications for works on the philosophy of mind. One of Ettlinger's aims in his work was to point out those weaknesses, by explaining the state of animal psychology.
Common descent and the mind body problem The predominant philosophy of mind around 1903, and up until the 1960s had been that of dualism, seeing the mind as a non-physical and the body as a physical entity. Dualism is a hypernym, including several different views of the mind body problem. Historically, interactionism, in which the mind interacts with the body in some undefined way has been contrasted to parallelism in which the mind and body do not interact causally but act in parallel, in such a manner that all mental and bodily events are correlated, leading to a coherent subjective experience. This debate makes up one of the central topics of "Untersuchungen über die Bedeutung der Deszendenztheorie für die Psychologie", forming the main subject of the first of six chapters, as a broad answer to the problem is seen as a prerequisite for the debate about comparative psychology by Ettlinger.
Prior to the beginning of comparative psychology, most psychological research had focussed on the contrast between people's perceptions and the actual world, accompanied by the philosophical debate around the mind-body problem. Most psychological research on animals had been anecdotal, as may be seen in the pioneering work of Romanes, and included frequent anthropomorphisms making the formation of a coherent theoretical framework difficult to achieve. In 1989 a new way of conducting psychological research gained popularity when Edward Thorndike published his work on the law of effect which later became the basis of operant conditioning. Through the employment of his so-called Puzzle-Boxes, Thorndike was able to show that certain actions in animals could be increased in the frequency of their occurrence if those actions were followed by a stimulus, usually consisting of food, that was perceived as positive by the animal. Aversive stimuli following a behavior on the other hand would decrease the frequency with which an action would be performed. The methodology used by Thorndike and the resulting observation about learning in animals constituted a step towards an objective animal psychology attempting to satisfy Morgan's Canon. A further step in this direction was made at the turn of the century with Ivan Pavlov's serendipity of what later became known as classical conditioning. With these discoveries the examination of subjective experience through introspection was no longer the only way to conduct research in animals and a solution to the mind body problem was not a necessary prerequisite for conducting animal research.
Opposing the scientific trends in psychology, Ettlinger was a strong opponent of such a behavioral approach to conducting research, describing it in the terms of Friedrich Albert Lange as "Psychology without Soul". He specifically opposed Wilhelm Wundt's idea of a parallelist approach to psychology. He further rejected a materialist view of the human mind that sets it equal with the brain and its processes. To support this argument he pointed towards the insufficiently clear localization of brain areas, the ability to partially regain mental functions after brain injury through recruitment of unaffected brain areas, as well as the lack of a physiological explanation for memory-formation through integration of different sensory modalities, and, more important still, no existing prospects of explaining the existence of judgment and free will on a physical basis. Instead, Ettlinger held an interactionist view of the mind and the brain, in which after brain injury, the mind would merely lose its means of communication with the body.
Common descent and the church Major criticisms against Darwinism and therefore indirectly against the new comparative psychology emanated from the Catholic church under Pope Leo XIII. Ettlinger had been part of the neo-scholastic movement at the time of writing the book. Neo-Scholasticism had emerged in the late 19th century as a philosophical defense by the Catholic church against enlightenment ideas and the movement known as modernism which were seen as harmful to Christian morality. The philosophy was in the following carried on by the Society of Jesus. Some authors also suggest that the rise of the Neo-Scholastic movement was largely driven by the adoption of evolution within scientific communities, pointing towards a perceived threat of the church's influence in science not only due to the enlightenment but also due to Darwin's theory directly. Ettlinger himself expressed his optimistic views about the movement, believing that it would eventually reunite science with a theological world view. In doing so, Ettlinger also denounced religious arguments stating that the fact that science does not disprove the existence of God proves God's existence, showing a critical view on the defense of Christianity against science.
Unlike most of his Catholic contemporaries, Ettlinger did not oppose Darwinian evolution because of its incompatibility with a Christian faith. Ettlinger saw the fact that Darwin's most important student George John Romanes was able to return to a Christian world view as proof that Darwinism would not contradict religious ideas. He evaluated the reason for Darwin's own atheism to be his rigid way of thinking and his exclusively "inductive" mind. Instead, Ettlinger criticized the theory objectively based on the unresolved problems it presented.
In their 1903 annual report the Görres Society, for which the book was published, described its mission to conduct science in the name of the Catholic faith as challenged by the fact that Catholics had become a minority among scientist. It was argued by the society's president Georg von Hertling that the Görres Society should compensate for this shortcoming by publishing scientific works. He wrote that the increasing public belief in their biased and unreasonable scientific practices has made it harder for Catholic scholars to gain recognition. Ettlinger was closely affiliated with the society through Hertling who was his teacher and a central figure in his conversion to Catholicism. In 1906 he was responsible for founding the natural science section of the Görres Society together with the Jesuit Erich Wasmann, allegedly as a response to Häcke's foundation of the "Deutsche Monistenbund", which was based on a materialist, monist philosophy of mind.
The purpose of the book Ettlinger's religious but critical views of psychology and philosophy are reflected in a quoted bible verse above the preface of the book:
He expresses his opinion that the advances in experimental psychology, made in the previous century, do not allow for the use of an often ambiguous "popular psychology", in trying to answer the important philosophical and scientific questions around the implications of common descent for psychology. The book aims at creating such an approach to the theory of common descent. Ettlinger further describes that the book was not entirely unique in its content as similar points had been raised by Carl Stumpf and Oswald Külpers before the book could be published. Despite having published the work for a Catholic organization, Ettlinger describes his intent as an objective examination of the theory of common descent unaffected by the broader philosophical and theological attempts to answer the world riddles. This objective writing style Ettlinger exhibits and his agreeable treatment of intellectual opponents have been notice in many of his other works as well.
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