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https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354316679901
Theory & Psychology
2017, Vol. 27(1) 108 –116
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0959354316679901
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Alternative path for the
future or a return to the
past? Araujo’s “philosophical”
history of psychology
Adrian C. Brock
Independent scholar, UK
Abstract
Araujo begins by criticising what he calls the “social turn” in the history of psychology. He singles
out the work of Kurt Danziger for special criticism in this regard. He then outlines the emergence
of an allegedly new field called “History and Philosophy of Science” (HPS) and calls for a different
approach which he labels a “philosophical” history of psychology. Here I examine his criticism of
Danziger’s work and suggest that it is unjustified. I also point out that there is nothing new about
the field of HPS and nothing original about the idea of relating history and philosophy of psychology.
I conclude by suggesting that, although Araujo’s criticism is unjustified, it can give some insight
into where his alternative path for the future will lead. It is an attempt to excise the sociology of
knowledge from historical discourse and to return to a more traditional history of ideas.
Keywords
Kurt Danziger, history and philosophy of science, history of psychology, sociology of scientific
knowledge, Wundt’s methods
Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK)
Araujo’s (2017) point of departure is what he calls “the social turn” (p. 87) in the history
of science and its impact on the history of psychology. He refers to a great deal of the
relevant literature but he discusses three books in more detail. These are Kurt Danziger’s
Constructing the Subject (1990), Martin Kusch’s Psychological Knowledge (1999), and
Gerhard Benetka’s Denkstile der Psychologie [Thought Styles in Psychology] (2002).
What all of them have in common is that they were influenced by a field known as “the
sociology of scientific knowledge” (SSK).
Corresponding author:
Adrian C. Brock, Independent Scholar, 77 High Street, Belmont, Bolton BL7 8AJ, UK.
Email: adrian.c.brock@gmail.com
679901TAP0010.1177/0959354316679901Theory & PsychologyBrock
research-article2016
Comment
Brock 109
The complicated name is due to the fact that there was an earlier positivist sociology
of science that is associated with figures such as Robert Merton. In the early part of the
20th century, it was generally held that, while religious beliefs and political ideologies
could be explained sociologically, scientific knowledge was beyond the pale. The sociol-
ogy of science, therefore, confined itself to examining the kind of social conditions that
would enable science to flourish. As a result of the work of T. S. Kuhn and other develop-
ments in the history and philosophy of science, sociologists of science became less hesi-
tant about applying their theories to scientific knowledge and they did so with some
interesting results (Shapin, 1982).
According to Araujo, one of the problems with this literature is that it neglects phi-
losophy. He also suggests that it is “lacking methodologically” (2017, p. 90). In making
this point, he relies heavily on a critique of the “new” history of psychology that Benjamin
Lovett published in the journal History of Psychology (Lovett, 2006). Lovett was a grad-
uate student in school psychology at the time and his knowledge of the area was weak. I
have responded to his arguments in some detail in another article that I published in the
same journal (Brock, 2016) and there is no point in repeating the contents of that article
here. Instead I will focus on an aspect of Lovett’s criticism that Araujo develops in more
detail: the issue of consistency. According to Araujo, “this poses the most difficult meth-
odological challenges to the new historians” (2017, p. 91).
He singles out Kurt Danziger for special criticism in this regard:
The issue of consistency can be illustrated by considering the specific case of Wundt’s
psychological project. In this area, Danziger’s work is very important. Having spent more than
a decade reevaluating Wundt’s psychological project, he made significant contributions to
Wundt scholarship …. However, his analyses are not without problems. In his Constructing the
Subject (1990), for instance, he argues that in the historiography of psychology “what is missing
is the recognition of the socially constructed nature of psychological knowledge” (p. 2). …
However, in his analysis of Wundt’s key methodological concept—introspection—Danziger
seems to forget his social constructivist approach and, instead of showing the social
determination of Wundt’s concept, moves his analysis toward a conceptual history of
introspection, without showing how this should be integrated into his approach. … Danziger’s
analysis is unable to show the social determinations of Wundt’s epistemic aims, which frustrates
the highest goal of his social constructivist approach. (p. 91)
There is an interesting sequence of logic here. Having portrayed Danziger as a “social
constructivist” who neglects philosophy, the fact that he provides a conceptual history
of introspection is seen as evidence of his inconsistency. A less biased observer might
come to the more obvious conclusion that he does not neglect the philosophical aspects
of the topic.
The whole argument is based on the view that one can write about social construc-
tion or engage in philosophy but not both. Social constructionism can itself be an all-
embracing philosophy and I suspect that the prominence of Kenneth Gergen in this field
has led some psychologists to falsely conclude that everyone else who writes about
social construction shares his anti-realist views (e.g., Gergen, 1985). This is not the
case. As Elder-Vass (2012) has pointed out in his book, The Reality of Social
Construction, we can also maintain that social construction is real. This is Danziger’s
110 Theory & Psychology 27(1)
view. As Stam (1992) wrote in his review of the book: “Danziger relies on recent realist
philosophies of science, particularly those influenced by Bhaskar, to defend some extra-
psychological reality” (p. 631).1
The claim that Danziger fails to demonstrate “social determination” (Araujo, 2017, p.
91) is based on a misunderstanding of what the sociology of knowledge is about. Shapin
(1982) refers to this view as “the coercive model” (p. 194). As in all branches of the
social sciences, there have been different views on the sociology of knowledge but no
one would commit it to one form of explanation. We can certainly portray scientists as
being influenced by their social surroundings but we can also portray them as active
subjects who use their theories to achieve social ends.
Danziger (1990) does relate the method of introspection to the wider society:
During most of the nineteenth century a positive attitude to introspection tended to go with the
philosophy of liberal individualism, while negative attitudes were more likely to be found
among those who stressed the priority of collective interests or institutional requirements.
(p. 23)
Liberal individualism was a significant force in Britain in the 19th century and it was
accompanied by a tendency among the British empiricists to favour the method of intro-
spection. Many Continental thinkers were less enamoured of both. A notable example is
Auguste Comte, who promoted the field of sociology. He argued that the limits of atten-
tion make it impossible for us to engage in complex mental tasks and to observe our-
selves doing it at the same time. One of the British empiricists, John Stuart Mill,
responded by saying that, while we might not be able to engage in complex mental tasks
and observe ourselves doing it at the same time, we could look back on the situation and
remember how we had accomplished those tasks (Wilson, 1991).
Wundt’s methods
Before we can arrive at an understanding of where Wundt stood in relation to these
views, we need to examine Araujo’s claim that introspection was the “key methodo-
logical concept” (2017, p. 91) of Wundt’s psychology. It is the polar opposite of
Danziger’s view:
On this issue (as on several others) he never emerged from the shadow of Kant, which meant
that he basically accepted the object of knowledge to which introspection corresponded but
denigrated the method itself. He never doubted that the private consciousness was the object
that psychology had to study, but he agreed with Kant and later critics like Comte and Lange
that introspection was not the method that would transform this object into a scientific object.
In fact, he went so far as to ridicule the introspectionist, likening him to a Baron von
Münchhausen attempting to pull himself out of the bog by his own pigtail. (1990, p. 34)
Danziger (1990) also suggests that “Wundt would have been horrified to find himself
being classified as an introspectionist” (p. 36). This view is supported by other writers.
Kusch (1999), for example, similarly refers to “Wundt’s opposition to introspection”
(p. 121). How can we explain these radically different views?
Brock 111
Araujo (2017) points out in one of his endnotes that Wundt did not use the term,
“Introspektion.” It was not commonly used in German at the time and it seems to be a
later borrowing from the English language (Koch, 1976). The usual translation was
“Selbstbeobachtung” [self-observation] and there is no question that Wundt rejected it as
a method for psychology. He agreed with Comte that we could not engage in complex
mental tasks and observe ourselves doing it at the same time. In response to J. S. Mill’s
objection, he replied sarcastically that we were unlikely to be able to remember some-
thing that we had not been able to observe (Wundt, 1888). Wundt was particularly force-
ful in expressing these views when he criticised the method of “systematische
experimentelle Selbstbeobachtung” [systematic experimental introspection] that was
used by his contemporaries at the University of Würzburg (e.g., Wundt, 1907).
Wundt advocated a method that he called, “innere Wahrnehmung” [inner percep-
tion]. While it might superficially appear to be equivalent to the English term, “intro-
spection,” it was different in a number of respects. It was an experimental procedure and
it had to be connected to an external stimulus. The reaction had to be immediate and it
had to be repeatable (Wundt, 1888). Wundt’s method was not vastly different from the
psychophysical methods of his predecessors at the University of Leipzig—Ernst Weber
and Gustav Fechner—and it was probably derived from them. We do not usually char-
acterise these methods as “introspection” and it is misleading to describe Wundt’s
method in this way.
Referring to the distinction between “Selbstbeobachtung” and “innere Wahrnehmung,”
which was obviously important to Wundt, Danziger (1990) writes:
It is most unfortunate that English-language references to Wundt’s position have so often failed
to reproduce this basic distinction and have generally used the term, “introspection” to cover
both concepts indiscriminately. This of course makes it impossible to understand Wundt’s
practice. (p. 209)
It is even more unfortunate that Araujo has continued this practice of using the term
“introspection” indiscriminately for both.
More importantly, Wundt did not advocate one method; he advocated two. In contrast
to his experimental psychology, which was concerned with individual consciousness, his
Völkerpsychologie dealt with the collective consciousness of different cultural groups
and it did this by examining their products, most notably language, myth, and custom.
This practice is similar to that of Freud who investigated the individual unconscious by
examining its products, such as dreams and slips of the tongue. Wundt devoted the last
20 years of his life to Völkerpsychologie and he expressed the view that he considered it
to be more important than experimental psychology and that it was destined to eclipse
the latter (Wundt, 1906).
Having arrived at a more accurate view of Wundt’s methods, we are in a better posi-
tion to relate them to the wider society. It is more than obvious from Wundt’s writings
that he was opposed to liberal individualism (e.g., Wundt, 1912), and his emphasis on the
collective aspects of consciousness in his Völkerpsychologie, as well as his rejection of
the methods that we usually associate with the term, “introspection,” place him very
firmly in the anti-individualist camp.
112 Theory & Psychology 27(1)
Space restrictions prevent me from discussing Araujo’s criticism of the other litera-
ture, though much of it is similarly unjustified. The object of the exercise is, of course, to
compare this work unfavourably with his own. He calls his approach a “philosophical”
history of psychology and makes a number of claims for it. I will discuss these claims in
the final part of this comment. For the moment, I want to briefly examine the history of
the relationship between history, philosophy, and sociology of science.
History, philosophy, and sociology of science
According to Araujo, the history of science has existed in splendid isolation, though it
took a “social turn” (2017, p. 89) somewhere along the way. More recently, there have
been calls for the integration of history and philosophy of science and it has led to a new
field of studies:
In recent decades, many authors have argued for an integration of the history of science and the
philosophy of science, leading to proposals for a new field of studies: the history and philosophy
of science (HPS). (p. 93)
Araujo himself can be accused of inconsistency on this point. On the one hand, he uses
words like “new” and “recent” to describe the field. On the other hand, he traces it back
to the 1960s:
From the 1960s onward, official initiatives at integration of the two areas began to appear,
such as the foundation of the first HPS Department in the United States at the University of
Indiana. (p. 93)
He also points out that the journal Studies in History and Philosophy of Science was
founded in 1970. What he does not mention is that the International Union of History
and Philosophy of Science was founded in 1956.2 There is nothing new or recent about
the field.
Araujo bases his claim that the field is “new” on the existence of a contemporary
movement for the integration of history and philosophy of science. One of the works that
he cites has the subtitle: “Renewing the Dialogue between History and Philosophy of
Science” (Arabatzis, 2012). As this subtitle suggests, it is not an attempt to forge a new
relationship but the “renewal” of an existing one.
It is certainly true that not everyone who has been involved with the history of science
or the philosophy of science has been interested in integrating the two. This is particu-
larly true of academics in the United States where specialisation exists to a greater degree
than elsewhere. This situation is also reflected in the organisational structure of the
American Psychological Association, which has a division for theoretical/philosophical
psychology (Division 24) and a division for the history of psychology (Division 26).
However, even in the United States, there is Indiana University and several other univer-
sities with a department or programme of HPS.3
The tendency to combine the two fields is more common in other countries and it is
no coincidence that the relevant sections of the British Psychological Society and the
Brock 113
Canadian Psychological Association define their area of interest as “History and
Philosophy of Psychology.” It may well be the case that some of their members view this
arrangement as a marriage of convenience, but this is by no means true of all. Several
years ago some members of the Canadian section produced an edited book in which they
examined the relationship between history, theory, and philosophy in psychology (Hill &
Kral, 2003). One of its contributors was Kurt Danziger who, according to Araujo,
neglects philosophy (Danziger, 2003).4 In my review of this book for Theory &
Psychology, I also expressed the view that these areas belong together (Brock, 2005).
This was partly due to my own background in HPS.5
Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) was a relative latecomer. It arose in the
1970s and early 1980s and it was an almost exclusively British interest in its early years
(Shapin, 1995). The Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh was an impor-
tant centre and one of its members, David Bloor, published one of the defining state-
ments of the field (Bloor, 1976).
This sequence of events helps to explain why the subject is still generally known as
“History and Philosophy of Science,” though some of the departments and programmes
that have been created in more recent years have used the term, “Science Studies” (or
“Science and Technology Studies”) to allow for the existence of the sociological
approach. The programme in Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego
is a case in point. It included some prominent figures in SSK on its faculty when it was
established in 1989.
This sequence of events also helps to explain the controversies that initially sur-
rounded SSK. Some philosophers of science were reluctant to share their expert
status with this upstart discipline and questioned its right to exist. It did not help that
some sociologists of scientific knowledge claimed that their field would eventually
replace the philosophy of science. As Riesch (2014) has pointed out, it was as much
a competition for resources and social authority as anything else. It gradually began
to dawn on people that the two fields are not incompatible. Just as there has been a
movement to integrate history and philosophy of science, there has been a movement
to integrate philosophy and sociology of science (e.g., Francois, Loewe, Mueller, &
van Kerkhoven, 2011). Some of the best work in the field has successfully combined
all three.
Araujo’s claims
We are now in a better position to assess Araujo’s claims. He is keen to portray HPS, and
more specifically, history and philosophy of psychology, as “a new field of studies”
(2017, p. 93) because it underpins his claims to originality. If it could be shown that both
have already been around for many years, it would suggest that he is reinventing the
wheel.6
The claim that HPS is a new field also underpins his argument that the more socially
oriented histories neglect philosophy. However, as we have seen, SSK is the more recent
of the two. Given that history and philosophy of science were already closely related
when SSK emerged, its practitioners were obliged to address the philosophical implica-
tions of their work.
114 Theory & Psychology 27(1)
The same thing cannot be said of Araujo’s “philosophical” history of psychology. The
word “philosophical” in the name refers only to its subject matter. According to Araujo,
we can write history without any metaphysical assumptions. Presumably the philosophy
that guides the history itself is some form of naive realism.
Araujo claims that his approach is not intended to displace what he calls “social his-
tory” (2017, p. 89). It is meant to be complementary. This approach can only be comple-
mentary if the work of his predecessors is lacking in philosophy, as Araujo claims, but
this is not the case. It also leaves open the question of what the scope and limits of each
one should be. His earlier remark that social history cannot explain the “epistemic aims”
(p. 91) of Wundt’s psychology suggests that he views its role in similar terms to that of
the earlier positivist sociology of science, which confined itself to the peripheral aspects
of science and left the task of explaining scientific knowledge to the philosophers.
The claim that this approach is integrative is also open to doubt. There is nothing
integrative about a dualistic vision of a “philosophical” and a “social” history existing
side by side. On the contrary, it would destroy the integration that already exists.
Conclusion
Araujo’s claim that the work of his predecessors neglects philosophy is based on the
unwarranted assumption that one can write “philosophical” or “social” history but not
both. It is this assumption that leads him to his dualistic vision of the future of the
history of psychology, whereby these two kinds of history exist side by side. However,
as we have seen, there is no reason why these different kinds of history cannot be
integrated and this has already been done in some of the work that he is so keen to
criticise.
The claim that the work of his predecessors is “lacking methodologically” (Araujo,
2017, p. 90) is also unjustified. The more specific claim that Danziger’s work is incon-
sistent is based partly on a misunderstanding of what the sociology of knowledge is
about and partly on a misunderstanding of Wundt’s methods. The connection between
psychology and society will always be elusive if the nature of the psychology and the
nature of the connection have been misunderstood.
Although this criticism is unjustified, it gives some insight into where Araujo’s alter-
native path for the future will lead. His “philosophical” history of psychology is not new
or original and it is neither complementary nor integrative. It is an attempt to excise the
sociology of knowledge from historical discourse and to return to a more traditional his-
tory of ideas.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Brock 115
Notes
1. Danziger discussed the relationship between his social constructionist approach and his
realist philosophy of science in an interview that I conducted for the journal History of
Psychology: “Psychologists construct their objects, the things that they take themselves to
be investigating. They also reconstruct them; that is, they change their definitions of those
objects. They even abandon certain objects and invent new ones. It does not follow from all
that that there are no objects. The interesting question is that of the adequacy of the con-
structed objects to the real objects, which I am not denying are there” (Brock, 2006, pp. 6–7).
2. http://iuhps.net/pages/history.php
3. The University of Notre Dame, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Washington
are a few examples.
4. Araujo writes in an endnote: “I am well aware that Danziger moved from a purely construc-
tionist to a more balanced approach to the history of psychology (Danziger, 2003)” (2017,
p. 101). There has been no such change in Danziger’s views. As noted earlier, Constructing
the Subject is based on a realist philosophy of science (Stam, 1992). Danziger has consistently
maintained this position ever since (Brock, 2006, 2015).
5. I did a Master’s degree in the subject at the University of Cambridge in 1986–87.
6. Araujo comes close to admitting this when he writes in an endnote: “philosophically inclined
histories are not new” (2017, p. 101). He then goes on to say: “debates on the implications of
HPS for the history of psychology are lacking, hence the need for a new approach to be articu-
lated more clearly in the future” (p. 102). This promissory note carefully avoids the problem
of explaining what it is about this allegedly new field of HPS that is capable of transforming
his “philosophically inclined history” into something that is different from its predecessors.
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Author biography
Adrian C. Brock holds an MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of
Cambridge and a PhD in Psychology (history and theory option) from York University in Toronto,
Canada. After teaching at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, USA, and University College Dublin
in Ireland for over 20 years, he took early retirement in order to concentrate on writing and editing.
He is now an independent scholar based in Manchester, England.
