Constructing Scientific Psychology: Karl Lashley's Mind-Brain Debates

by Nadine M. Weidman

• ISBN13: 9780521027779
• ISBN10: 0521027772
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-11-02
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Constructing Scientific Psychology is the first full-scale interpretation of the life and work of the major American neuropsychologist Karl Lashley. It sets Lashley's research at the heart of two controversies that polarized the American life and human sciences in the first half of the twentieth century. These concerned the relationship between 'mind' and 'brain' and the relative roles of 'nature' and 'nurture' in shaping behaviour and intelligence. The book explodes the myth of Lashley's neuropsychology as a fact-driven, 'pure' science by arguing that a belief in the power of heredity and a nativist and deeply conservative racial ideology informed every aspect of his theory and practice.

Table of Contents

Preface	xiii
Acknowledgments	xv
List of abbreviations	xix
Introduction	1	(16)
Lashley and Jennings: The origins of a hereditarian	17	(15)
Lashley, Watson, and the meaning of behaviorism	32	(16)
The pursuit of a neutral science	48	(23)
Neuropsychology and hereditarianism	71	(13)
Psychobiology and Progressivism	84	(21)
Psychobiology and its discontents: The Lashley-Herrick debate	105	(14)
Hull and psychology as a social science	119	(9)
Intelligence testing and thinking machines: The Lashley-Hull debate	128	(15)
Pure psychology	143	(17)
Public science and private life	160	(16)
Genetics, race biology, and depoliticization	176	(11)
Epilogue: Lashley and American neuropsychology	187	(6)
Appendix: Archives holding Lashley material	193	(2)
Bibliography	195	(18)
Index	213