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he extended the Bell-Magendie law a stage higher so that the thalamus was the highest sensory center and the corpus striatum the motor ganglion.54 From the physiological writings of Johannes Müller he adopted an emphasis on motion which was novel for the associationist tradition, whose stress on sensation had developed naturally from their interest in epistemology.55 This new emphasis provided psychology with a balanced sensory-motor view. Instead of concentrating on how we come to know through suffering experience, Bain inaugurated an interest in behavior which eventually became the dominant theme in behaviorist psychology — the concept of reinforcement.
In evaluating Bain's systematic treatises more broadly,56 one must conclude that associationism provided an inadequate explanation of the complex phenomena of emotion, instinct, and the biological functions which Gall had stressed.57 Also, while Bain attempted to correlate most of the functions of the brain with psychological processes, he left out the cortex and provided theories which had little contact with general biology.
Where Bain gave the association psychology a new emphasis on motion and a new alliance with physiology, Herbert Spencer provided it with a new foundation in evolutionary biology. Like Bain, Spencer derived his initial interest in psychology from phrenology and even wrote several phrenological articles and designed an instrument for measuring bumps.58 The psychological portions of his first book, Social Statics (1851), were based on a phrenological view of man and of adaptation.59 We are fortunate in having an essay written in his phrenological period and partially revised after he came under the influence of the associationists George Henry Lewes and John Stuart Mill.60 One can point with some confidence to the place in the text where his revision stopped, since the language shifts abruptly from associationist terms to phrenological faculties. 61
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54 Robert B. Todd and William Bowman, The Physiological Anatomy and Physiology of Man, 2 vols. (London: Parker, 1845), pp. 350-351; Bain, The Senses, pp. 40-47, 53, and 3rd ed. (1868), pp. 44-45.
55 Müller, Elements of Physiology, Vol. I, p. 828; Vol. II, pp. 931-950; Bain, The Senses (1855), pp. v-vi, 289; (1868), pp. 59, 64-73, 290-91, 296-306; cf. Mill, Dissertations and Discussions, Vol. III, p. 121.
56 Bain, The Senses (1855); The Emotions and the Will (London: Parker, 1859). 57 Bain's On the Study of Character was a failure. It went unnoticed by the critics and by Bain's contemporaries. There was no second edition. For criticisms of the adequacy of l9th-century associationism for explaining the phenomena of emotions and personality, see Mill, Dissertations and Discussions, Vol. III, p. 132; Ribot, English Psychology, p. 327; Gordon W. Allport, Personality. A Psychological Interpretation (New York: Holt, 1937), p. 87.
58 Herbert Spencer, An Autobiography, 2 vols. (London: Williams & Norgate, 1904), Vol. I, pp. 200-203, 225, 227-228, 246-247, 297, 378-379, 540-543, The Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer, ed. David Duncan (London: Methuen, 1908), p. 40; George B. Denton, "Early Psychological Theories of Herbert Spencer," American Journal of Psychology 1921, 32: 5-15; Jefferson, Selected Papers pp. 35-44.
59 Herbert Spencer, Social Statics (London: Chapman, 1851), pp. 5, 19-20, 32-38 75-89, 274, 280, 466.
60 Herbert Spencer, "The Philosophy of Style," in Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative, 3 vols. (London: Williams & Norgate, 1901), Vol. II, pp. 333-369- Spencer Autobiography, Vol. I, pp. 225, 405. On the influence of Lewes and Mill, see ibid., pp. 378-379, 391-392, Life and Letters, pp. 418, 544.
61 The transition occurs in Essays, Vol. II, p. 360. The last sentence in associationist language refers to "mental energy" and "strain on the attention." The next sentence contains the first mention of "perceptive faculties." The MS in the British Museum appears to be a re-copy of the revised essay and neither confirms nor refutes my reading (MS, p. 113). |
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