Kurt Danziger Quotes

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Internal perception also fails as a method for scientific psychology. In the nature of the case, it must be casual and therefore unsystematic. It excludes all deliberate investigation, because as soon as it becomes aware of itself it turns into the self-observation that is open to all the well-known and valid criticisms. It is, indeed, the basis of a psychology of consciousness, in the sense that conscious processes must be perceived to be known, but for a science it is not enough.

Kurt Danziger
The basis for Wundt's initial discussion of the problem of introspection is provided by his insistence on the distinction between self-observation (Selbstbeobachtung) and internal perception (innere Warhnemung).

Kurt Danziger
For applied psychology, whether American or German, it never had the slightest appeal, as is shown by the figures for the relevant journals, Zeitschrift fiir angewandte Psychologie, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Journal of Educational Psychology. Applied psychology had committed itself to knowledge goals that were unlikely to be advanced by the kind of investigative practice associated with Wundt's laboratory. What it was after was knowledge that could be quickly utilized by agencies of social control so as to make their work more efficient and more rationally defensible.

Kurt Danziger
In the case of psychology, of course, it is not only the concepts and methods of the discipline that undergo constant historical change, but the very subject matter itself. Human subjectivity, the reality behind the objects of psychological investigation, is itself strongly implicated in the historical process, both as agent and as product.

Kurt Danziger
Here we are more likely to come across fields that are structured in an agonistic manner, fields which are characterized by deep divisions between alternative schools of thought rather than by the achievement of a general working consensus.

Kurt Danziger
History is not the arena in which natural scientists look for the truth; quite the contrary, they believe it cannot be found there but rather in the laboratory. From their point of view history will at best yield up stale truths that have been superseded.

Kurt Danziger
The reaction time studies conducted during the first few years of Wundt's laboratory constitute the first historical example of a coherent research program, explicitly directed toward psychological issues and involving a number of interlocking studies.

Kurt Danziger
Wundt sought to achieve was a rejuvenation of philosophical inquiry by new means, not the constitution of a completely new discipline.

Kurt Danziger
Where the insider's engagement with the discipline's concepts and practices is combined with the moral distance maintained by the outsider one has reason to look for the emergence of a historiography that is both critical and effective.

Kurt Danziger
For such fields deep historical studies can have considerable contemporary relevance and hence fall within the boundaries of the field itself. Weber and Durkheim are still studied by sociologists, just as Adam Smith and Ricardo are still studied by economists, whereas Galilean and Newtonian studies are not part of physics but of an altogether different discipline, the history of science.

Kurt Danziger
What exactly constitutes a field like scientific psychology? Is it constituted by its most innovative and influential contributors; by the scientific findings that it has produced; by the theories it has elaborated; by its concepts, techniques, or professional associations? Obviously, all this and more goes into the making of a field, but most of us would probably see some of these components as playing a more essential role than others. Even if we refuse to commit ourselves explicitly we are likely to imply that certain components define the field more effectively than others by the way we organize our knowledge.

Kurt Danziger
Psychological research on populations had a tendency to replace the social categories that defined populations in real life with populations defined in terms of nonsocial categories. American psychology aimed to be a socially relevant science, but not a social science. Its approach was to be that of a natural science, although its ultimate field of application was to be found among members of real societies.

Kurt Danziger
The severe restrictions which Wundt placed on introspection also manifest themselves in the types of judgment that his experimental subjects were required to make. In accordance with the precept that internal perception can only become observation insofar as it is linked to controllable external stimuli, the introspective reports from his laboratory are very largely limited to judgments of size, intensity, and duration of physical stimuli, supplemented at times by judgments of their simultaneity and succession.

Kurt Danziger