between autobigraphy and reality

download between autobigraphy and reality

of 25

Transcript of between autobigraphy and reality

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    1/25

    Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79103www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsa

    Between autobiography and reality: Poppersinductive years

    Michel ter Hark Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen, A-weg 30, 9718 CW Groningen, The Netherlands

    Received 27 April 2001

    Abstract

    On the basis of his unpublished thesis Gewohnheit und Gesetzerlebnis in der Erziehung(19267) a historical reconstruction is given of the genesis of Poppers ideas on induction anddemarcation which differs radically from his own account in Unended quest . It is shown notonly that he wholeheartedly endorses inductive epistemology and psychology but also that hisdemarcation criterion is inductivistic. Moreover it is shown that his later demarcation thesisarises not from his worries about, on the one hand, Marxism and psychoanalysis and, on theother hand, Einsteins physics, but rather from his urgent preoccupation with providing peda-gogy with a psychological foundation, which has its sources in Karl Bu hlers cognitive psy-chology as well as, surprisingly, Adlers Characterology. Aside from Adler some lesser knownpsychologists, such as Karl Groos, will also be seen to have played a formative role on Pop-pers early thinking. 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

    Keywords: Pedagogy of labour; Dogmatic thinking; Denkpsychologie ; Adler; Anxiety

    Despite having written an intellectual autobiography, the picture of the writerswhose work probably contributed most signicantly to the development of Poppersthought remains rather sketchy. In particular, Poppers early years as a pedagogueand psychologist remain wrapped in mist. As we know from the autobiography, theyoung Popper co-operated with the psychologist Alfred Adler in his clinics for chil-dren and young people in the working-class districts of Vienna. It is also knownthat Popper wrote a doctoral dissertation in psychology under Karl Bu hler, Zur

    Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie (1928). Poppers denigrating comments on thisearly work (a kind of hasty last minute affair) have induced historians and commen-tators to ignore it completely. Still, as I have shown in an earlier article, Poppers

    0039-3681/02/$ - see front matter 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.PII: S 0039-3 681(01 )00030 -9

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    2/25

    80 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79103

    dissertation is invaluable for a better and historically more informed understandingof the genesis of his ideas on the human mind and (scienti c) knowledge. 1 One of the most surprising things to be learnt from this dissertation is the importance of the Denkpsychologie of the rather unknown, indeed much neglected, Jewish psychologistOtto Selz. Aside from Karl Bu hler, Selz was the most important precursor of Pop-per s ideas on mind and (scienti c) knowledge. What I have not yet considered (andto my knowledge no one else has either) is another and slightly earlier unpublishedmanuscript. It is a thesis under the title Gewohnheit und Gesetzerlebnis in der Erzie-hung submitted by Popper to the Institute of Education of the City of Vienna in1927 (and referred to by him as On habit and belief in laws ).2 In contrast to thedissertation of 1928, Popper s retrospective accounts of Gewohnheit und Gesetzer-lebnis are fairly positive. He even refers to this manuscript as an important sourcefor his solution of the problem of induction, in which he rejects Hume s approachand proposes an alternative theory.

    In this article I concern myself with a reconstruction of the genesis of Popper sideas between 1926 and 1928. The most surprising result of this reconstruction willbe that, in contrast to what he urges us to believe, Popper had neither arrived at hiscriticism of induction in this period nor formulated his criterion of demarcation.Instead of being involved in abstract epistemological and methodological problems,Popper in this period attempted to nd his way in the different elds of psychology.The general picture that emerges is that a signi cant shift occurred in Popper s viewsabout psychology between 1926 and 1928. Judged by Popper s autobiographical

    essay in Conjectures and refutations (1963, hereafter C&R ), the thesis is concernedwith psychological phenomena of both dogmatic and critical thinking. To sketch theensuing scenario in advance: in 1926, Popper developed a view of dogmatic thinkingclosely linked to the individual psychology of Alfred Adler, the personalistic psy-chology of William Stern and the introspective psychology of Karl Bu hler. Two yearslater, under the in uence of Bu hler and especially of Otto Selz, Popper favoured abiological and genetic approach to individual and scienti c cognition. Not until1930 1933 did he become aware of a possible connection between a Selzian biologi-cally oriented Denkpsychologie and his earlier theory of dogmatic versus criticalthinking. The full development of this theory, however, would have to wait until

    1948, the year in which he published his theory of the Searchlight. In this brilliantmetaphor, Popper s ideas on dogmatic thinking and the method of trial and errornally came together.

    1. The unpublished manuscripts

    We see from the Unended quest that the notion of dogmatic thinking arose in thecontext of a critical appraisal of Hume s theory of induction. Popper characterizes

    1 See ter Hark (1993).2 Recently the thesis has become available for scienti c consultation thanks to the Hoover Institution

    Archives. Popper s thesis has been catalogued under the Collection title K. Popper, Box 12, folder 11.

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    3/25

    81 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    dogmatic thinking as the expectation of nding regularities everywhere and theattempt to nd them even where there are none. Moreover, we stick to our expec-tations even when they are inadequate and we ought to accept defeat (Popper, 1963,p. 49). Hume s theory of inductive learning has it that the strength of a belief orexpectation is a product of repetition and, hence, grows with experience. Accord-ingly, Popper attributes to Hume the idea that the strength of a person s beliefs variesinversely with the degree to which he is a primitive person. Popper s ndings in1926 7 suggest that: dogmatic thinking, an uncontrolled wish to impose regularities,a manifest pleasure in rites and in repetition as such, are characteristic of primitivesand children; and increasing experience and maturity sometimes create an attitudeof caution and criticism rather than of dogmatism (Popper, 1963, p. 49).

    In a similar passage in Unended quest , Popper goes on to say that his theory of

    dogmatic thinking made him reject Hume s epistemological theory of learning byinduction and that it also led him to see that there is no such thing as an unprejudicedobservation. All observation is an activity with an aim . . . There is no such thingas passive experience; no passively impressed association of impressed ideas. Experi-ence is the result of active exploration by the organism, of the search for regularitiesor invariants (Popper, 1974, pp. 51 52). He concludes that he solved the problemof induction in 1926 by the simple discovery that induction by repetition did notexist . . . the alleged inductive method of science had to be replaced by the methodof (dogmatic) trial and (critical) error elimination (ibid., p. 52).

    After this sketch of the genesis of his epistemological ideas, Popper goes on tocomment, in the autobiographical essay of C&R , that there is a point of agreementbetween his distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking and psychoanalyticaccounts of neuroses. A neurosis is a personal set pattern adopted very early in lifeand maintained throughout, and every new experience is interpreted in terms of it;verifying it, as it were, and contributing to its rigidity (Popper, 1963, p. 49). Thisreference to psychoanalysis is not meant as a part of Popper s autobiographicalsketch, but rather as an independent and later insight. So the impression is reinforcedthat the notion of dogmatic thinking was primarily elaborated in the context of acritical appraisal of Hume s theory of induction. However, scrutiny of Popper s thesisof 1926 7 reveals the reverse: the psychoanalytic and, more particularly, Adlerianview of dogmatic thinking came rst, and the epistemological view later and inany case later than 1926 7; hence Popper s famous epistemological theory is absentin his pedagogical-psychological thesis. Popper s thesis of 1926 7, Gewohnheit undGesetzerlebnis in der Erziehung , is a psychological attempt to answer some urgentpractical pedagogical questions, rather than an abstract treatment of the problem of induction. Indeed, it is clear from the rst sentences of the Preface that induction isnot a topic of (critical) discussion at all:

    The work at hand, although in its main parts highly theoretical, has yet arisen outof practical experience and has nally to serve practice again. Its method, there-fore, is essentially inductive . (Popper, 1927, p. 3; my italics)

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    4/25

    82 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    This remark clearly con icts with Popper s autobiographical contention of havingsolved the problem of induction in 1926 7.

    Perhaps this claim is too hasty. In a section of Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie (The possibility of a deductive psychology of knowledge ), writ-ten between 1930 3, Popper speaks of a lost second part of Gewohnheit und Gesetz-erlebnis : This work is no longer to be found and must be regarded as lost . Theoryof the intellect was the theoretical part of Gewohnheit und Gesetzerlebnis in derErziehung: eine pa dagogisch-strukturpsychologische Monographie (Popper, 1979,pp. 28 29, note 23). 3 (What Popper terms his theory of the intellect correspondsto his sketch of a deductive psychology of knowledge.) In Unended quest the thesisis called un nished. After having outlined the psychological and logical criticism of Hume s theory of induction, Popper adds in a footnote that the same ideas are tobe found in his thesis Gewohnheit und Gesetzerlebnis , which I presented (in anunnished state) in 1927, and in which I argued against Hume s idea that habit ismerely the (passive) result of repetitive association (Popper, 1974, p. 209, note 55).A glance at the content of Popper s thesis, however, will show that the hypothesisthat it is un nished is much more likely than that (part of) it is lost.

    Gewohnheit und Gesetzerlebnis in der Erziehung reads as a carefully constructedand self-contained empirical-psychological investigation. The text falls into two mainparts and nine sections. The rst part (sections 1 6) contains a Preface and an exten-sive introduction, concerned largely with an outline of the problem and of Popper smethodological stance. The second part is called The Psychology of the Experience

    of Law . This part contains one section ( Abschnitt ) called Phenomenology , andis further divided into three subsections encompassing 83 pages. Two other sectionsare also promised. Section Two is to be concerned with theory. In this section Popperproposes to offer a causal-teleological explanatory theory on the (inductive) basis of the phenomenological facts gathered in section one. Section Two, however, wasnever written. A third section, also unwritten, was to deal with applications of Pop-per s theory to several areas of psychology. The impression that these two sectionshave not in fact been written is reinforced by the fact that the manuscript ends witha bibliography. The concluding sentences leave no doubt about the self-containedcharacter of the manuscript: With this we conclude our empirical-psychological

    investigation . . . (Popper, 1927, p. 127).Given that two sections were not written, Popper s thesis is clearly un nished.The next question is whether it is un nished with respect to Popper s epistemologicalcriticism of Hume s idea that habit is merely the (passive) result of repetitive associ-ation (see above). If so, it is natural to expect to come upon parts of this epistem-ology in the written part. In the sections to follow, it will become clear that this isnot the case. We will see that the thesis is un nished not so much in an epistemologi-cal sense, as in a pedagogical-psychological one.

    Further support for the claim that the theory of the intellect , or the deductive

    3 The original addition in der Erziehung has been left out by Popper in all his later references tothis thesis except in Popper (1979).

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    5/25

    83 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    psychology of knowledge, had not been written nor even conceived in 1926 7 comesfrom Popper s Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie . Had the theory been lostor unnished, it would be natural to expect some references to it in this methodolog-ical psychological dissertation of 1928. In fact, the two unpublished manuscriptsreveal themselves to be to be quite unrelated. 4 Although Buhler plays a crucial rolein both, the dissertation of 1928 is silent about the distinction between dogmaticthinking and critical thinking which played such a crucial role in the thesis of 1926 7.

    These con icts between, on the one hand, Popper s autobiographical account of the genesis of his ideas on induction and demarcation and, on the other, my brief reconstruction on the basis of his two unpublished psychological manuscripts areworthy of deeper investigation.

    2. The pedagogical problem of self-activity

    Popper s Gewohnheit und Gesetzerlebnis in der Erziehung is not just a thesis inpedagogy, as the title seems to convey; it is also, indeed more so, a psychologicalstudy rmly rooted in the tradition of German child psychology and the Denkpsychol-ogie . The subtitle of the thesis is signi cant in this respect: A pedagogical-structural-psychological monograph . Psychological monographs, at that time, were part of aspeci c method of investigation in child psychology. This method of observationwas a further speci cation of what was called occasional observation , a method

    unguided by a speci c selection of what is being observed. The method of mono-graphs implied a re nement of the area of observation as well as of the problemsdealt with. In particular, the in uential child psychologist William Stern inspired aseries of monographs on various aspects of the mental development of children.Elsa Ko hler s Die Perso nlichkeit des dreija hrigen Kindes (Ko hler, 1926) is also amonograph in that tradition and, as we shall see later, one of Popper s most importantexamples in that part of his monograph devoted to a phenomenological descriptionof what he calls Gesetzerlebnis . There Popper focuses upon that aspect of mentallife commonly referred to as dogmatic thinking . The very form and method of Popper s thesis rmly establishes it in the tradition of German child psychology.

    Popper s description and analysis of the phenomenon of Gesetzerlebnis is his con-tribution to a solution of the psychological problem of the monograph. A pedagogicalproblem, however, has been the occasion for writing this monograph. As Popperexplains in the Preface of the monograph:

    4 In his dissertation of 1928, Popper defends the program of Karl Bu hler (1927a), a book which doesnot yet occur in the bibliography of Gewohnung und Gesetzerlebnis in der Erziehung . In his dissertationPopper attempts to do two things. His rst goal is to defend Bu hler s pluralistic methodology against theobjections of contemporary physicalism. Popper s second goal is to show that Bu hler s pluralistic method-ology will display itself also inevitable in the Denkpsychologie (Popper, 1928, p. 5). Furthermore hewishes to show that this pluralistic methodology will have to be understood as a biologically orientedmethod in the broadest sense of that term . Especially with respect to this latter goal, Popper draws onthe work of Otto Selz. For this, see ter Hark (1993).

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    6/25

    84 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    My experiences as a pedagogue with children were the occasion: convinced of the importance of the principle of the self-activity of the child, I had to see soonthat there are limits put to this self-activity, especially in social education.

    As it was my goal to determine these limits more precisely certain psychologicalobservations of the children forced themselves upon me again and again. (Popper,1927, p. 3)

    The pedagogical problem of the thesis has its roots in the Arbeitspa dagogik (work pedagogy) of Ernst Burger and Aloys Fischer. The idea of the pedagogy of labourgoes back to the eighteenth century, to the work of Pestalozzi and Fro bel. A numberof factors abetted the further development of the pedagogy of labour and of variousschools of labour. Industrialisation and the attendant separation of home and work called for new ways of teaching children to work. Consequently, work became adecisive factor in school education. Developmental psychology was a second factorin the development of the labour schools. Psychologists acknowledged the impor-tance of activity for the mental and physical development of the child. Wundt, forinstance, emphasized the indispensable role of the motoric system in the developmentof the imagination of children. Gradually the insight emerged that mind and bodywere of equal importance in the child s development.

    Self-activity ( Selbstta tigkeit ) is at the centre of the idea of labour schools, asdeveloped by Wundt and William Stern. Stern coined the term personalistic psy-

    chology , by which he intended explicitly to distinguish himself from the non-per-sonalistic and objectivistic approach to mental life of the natural sciences and physio-logical psychology. In opposition to associationism and sensualism, Sternemphasized that the person is a living whole which continually seeks to realizegoals related to this whole. The behaviour of the person becomes understandableonly from the perspective of such goals. Personalistic psychology, then, is a teleologi-cal (or nalistic) psychology and, as such, contrasts sharply with an explanatorypsychology which seeks to dissolve the person into elements and to discover causalconnections between those elements. In his Die menschliche Perso nlichkeit , Stern,who also worked in close contact with the reform movement, emphasized the impor-

    tance of spontaneous activities for the development of the child. By a spontaneousact Stern understands an activity which starts within the person himself and proceedsfrom the inner to the outer (Stern, 1923, p. 136).

    Stern s personalistic philosophy provided the labour schools with a teleologicalperspective upon the education of the child. As Burger, whose work explicitly relieson Stern, puts it: the principle of work in a broad sense is the principle of sponta-neity: This means nothing more than that the pupil has to be active himself as muchas possible. Activity occasioned by external factors does not suf ce, rather theactivity must come from the pupil itself, i.e. has to be spontaneous . . . The generallaw of the work schools is: Let the pupil be self-active! , or more speci cally:

    What the pupil is capable of, should not be done by the teacher but by the pupil (Burger, 1923, p. 457). Education is not achieved by rote, by demonstration andimitation with prepared questions and answers; rather a process is not educative

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    7/25

    85 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    until the pupil is self-active, observes itself, thinks itself, acts itself (Burger, 1923,p. 445).

    Popper s preliminary remarks about the goal of pedagogy follow Burger s concep-tion of work pedagogy in detail. He subscribes to Burger s denition of work, asmay be attested by his quote from Burger: Work in a pedagogical sense is goal-directed human activity by means of which values of Bildung and indirectly alsoeconomical values are created (Popper, 1927, p. 12; Burger p. 440). Popper alsotakes over Burger s indication of the goal of work pedagogy. Following Burger, hedescribes the speci c goal of education as free self-determination ( freieSelbstbestimmung ). Education must be shaped by the goal of bringing the child toa free disposal of itself through its own talents, and a free survey of the possiblescope, presuppositions and effects of its decisions. Appealing to Burger s principleof the complete education, the principles of activity and spontaneity (Popper, 1927,p. 9), Popper emphasizes that a free survey of the relevant presuppositions anddecisions can never be passive knowledge, but has to be active and actively acquired.At this point Popper s familiar distinction between dogmatic and critical thinkingmakes its rst appearance:

    Free thinking, however, is critical thinking dogmatic thinking is unfree: Underfree thinking one can only understand thinking without prejudices , that is, think-ing which judges states of affairs, without presupposing the result (the judgement)of judging; critical thinking is also thinking guided by reasons; it is active and

    spontaneous Selbst-denken , in contrast to dogmatic thought, which does not touchthe accepted (adopted) judgement . (Popper, 1927, p. 10)

    The pedagogical context in which this distinction between dogmatic and criticalthinking is introduced for the rst time differs signi cantly from the psychologicaland epistemological factors discussed by Popper in his later works. There he wishesus to believe that the distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking was partand parcel of a psychological theory of trial and error, and that this theory wouldenable him to supplant Hume s inadequate inductive theory of habit by a deductivetheory. As I will argue now it is not so much Hume s problem but what I will dub

    Burger s problem that preoccupies Popper in his monograph.The distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking, says Popper, leads in parti-cular to the pedagogical problem of An education through habit . The concept of habit ( Gewohnheit ) plays an important role in educational theories. Popper s mainquestion is whether an education in which habit plays a prominent role is of anypositive value. A super cial consideration of the concept of habit reveals how prob-lematic it is to combine an education through habit with an education that conformsto the ideals of Burger s work pedagogy, in which self-determination is the goal;for inherent in the concept of habit is a strong passive element, a moment of automa-tism, the loss of insightful, active thought and its replacement by automatic associ-

    ation (Popper, 1927, p. 11). Rather than claiming that dogmatic thinking is a neces-sary stage before critical thinking can emerge the leitmotiv of Poppers s laterpreoccupation with dogmatic thinking Popper is worried about the social effects

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    8/25

    86 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    of an education through habit: It will be clear from the start that habit etc. as ameans of education may have only a narrowly con ned scope if it will not runcounter to the tasks of the educating generation (Popper, 1927, p. 11).

    Any pedagogy that is keenly aware of the dif culty and necessity of determiningthe scope of the role of habit in education is the very pedagogy that considers theself-activity of the child to be of paramount importance hence the work pedagogy.In promoting the self-activity of children Burger is well aware of the inherent dangersof his plea. In particular, those who wish to stimulate children to productive work take the wrong course, according to Burger. Productive work is not synonymouswith work, for there is also reproductive work. Underestimating and bypassing repro-ductive work is tantamount to ignoring the three distinct stages of development:the stage of sensibility, the stage of habit ( Gewohnheit ) and the stage of free self-determination. To be sure, there are transitions between these stages, and it some-times happens that a pupil shows early talent for productive work. However, aboutthe productive capacities of young children one need have no illusions, Burger warns.What children of the lower schools produce is almost always reproductive. AsBurger puts it: Productivity is the nal term, the conclusion in the education of labour, and we would contravene the pedagogical principle of development were weto require of the lower classes what can only be afforded by the higher or higheststages of teaching (Burger, 1923, p. 453). Burger s pedagogy of labour, then, eventhough promoting the spontaneity and self-activity of children, clearly recognizesthe force of the distinct and earlier stage of habit and urges teachers to adapt their

    way of teaching to this speci c stage, that is, to opt for a dogmatic way of teaching.In the section A problem of the work pedagogy , Popper elaborates on Burger sview. A familiar problem of the pedagogy of labour, Popper points out, is to deter-mine where and when it is necessary to put limits to the free activity of pupils (Popper, 1927, p. 12). As he reminds his readers, the problem is noted at severalplaces in Burger s book for instance, when he asserts that a teacher can be forcedto apply the dogmatic way of teaching ( dogmatische Lehrweise ) as long as thepupil is not yet capable of independent work. Overlooking such limits can lead tograve problems, such as that of the child s incapacity, due to insuf cient knowledge,to meet the demands of drawing certain consequences. In this way the teacher teaches

    everything but he raises no character (Popper, 1927, p. 13). As Popper indicates,providing the boundary between the stage of habit and the stage of self-determi-nation (spontaneity) with an exact psychological foundation is a central problemof his thesis. To this end, he focuses on certain questions. Is the road to independentthought and action practicable at every stage of the development of the child? Howis the inclination to passivity, dogmatic thinking and surrender to authority psycho-logically grounded in the nature of the child? When and how is the transition toindependent thought, to spontaneity, possible? Are there cases in which the materialrequires a dogmatic way of learning on the part of the child? And, nally, to whatextent can the principle of spontaneity also be realized in cases where the precon-

    ditions of independent thought are not yet available? Popper proposes that claritycan be achieved in these matters only by a painstaking analysis of what he callsGesetzerlebnis , which is the task of the psychological part of his monograph.

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    9/25

    87 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    As will be clear from this historical sketch of the problem of Popper s thesis,Burger s practical problem is far removed from the abstract issue of Hume s problemof induction. To the extent that Popper answers Burger s problem, the thesis is aboutwhat would nowadays be called philosophy of education rather than philosophy of science or general epistemology. In the preface to the thesis, however, there occursa remark that seems to point to more far-reaching ambitions on Popper s behalf thanthe solution of practical problems:

    The psychological and also philosophical consequences of the psychology of theexperience of law/regularity prove to be so far-reaching that they surpass thepedagogical application, although they too transcend largely the problem, inimportance; therefore they will also be indicated in the work at hand. (Popper,1927, p. 4)

    Despite the fact that Popper does not say explicitly what these consequences are, itis clear from the same preface that he must be alluding to his earlier quoted remark to the effect that habit implies the loss of insightful thought and instead results inautomatic association. His newly coined concept of Gesetzerlebnis arises from ananalysis of what one traditionally takes to be habits . Furthermore, It is knownthat the concept of habituation plays a decisive role in educational theories; bymeans of the investigation at hand it will have to undergo a revolutionary revision (Popper, 1927, pp. 3 4). With this in mind Popper seems to be concerned with

    Hume s problem after all; for in the autobiographical essay Science: conjectures and refutations , when discussing Hume s psychological explanation of induction in termsof habit, Popper makes a similar remark.

    Popper s contention there is that Hume s psychological theory would hardly havebeen as revolutionary as Hume thought, indeed, it would be part of common sense. 5

    The similarity between these two passages, however, should not mislead one to sup-pose that Popper would have reached his alternative to Hume s psychology in histhesis of 1927 after all. The point is that what Popper discusses under the topic of Hume s psychology in the 1963 essay consists of three different claims: one concern-ing the typical result of repetition, a second concerning the genesis of habits, and a

    third claim concerning the character of those experiences or modes of behaviourwhich may be described as believing in a law . The revolutionary revision of whichPopper speaks in his thesis concerns only the rst claim, not the second one. SincePopper s rejection of the second claim that habits do not originate in repetition, asHume would have it, but begin, in the sense of expectations, before repetition canplay any part whatsoever is the core of his alternative deductive psychologicaltheory, it follows that he had not taken his anti-Humean stance in 1927.

    Apart from the above quotation about habit, there is only one other passage inPopper s thesis where he brings in his theory of habit. There it becomes clear thatPopper s theory of habit is in fact a theory of the mechanisation of acquired activities

    5 See Popper (1963), p. 43.

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    10/25

    88 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    in the manner of the psychologist Karl Groos. A comparison of Popper s theory of habit and Karl Groos s theory of habit reveals similarities too great to be accidental. 6

    Popper s claim that frequent repetition leads to automatic association and loss of attention is strongly reminiscent of Groos s law of the mechanisation of newlyacquired activities. As Groos formulates this law: By this is meant that with increas-ing exercise consciousness, which played a leading role during the rst acquisitionof the activity, fades into the background (Groos, 1923, p. 52).

    To understand Popper s early theory of dogmatic thinking, then, requires that wesee him as joining in the child psychology of Bu hler and, as I will argue, of Stern,Groos, Elsa Kohler and even Adler. Against this historical background it will becomeclear that Popper s analysis of dogmatic thinking cannot be credited with a greatdeal of originality, for it will be seen that he is largely casting into his own vocabu-lary conceptual distinctions found in the writings of the above mentioned psychol-ogists.

    3. The inductive method of science and of Poppers thesis

    After observing that it is the task of the modern Denkpsychologie to subject thephenomena of dogmatic and critical thought to a thorough investigation, Popperproceeds to a discussion of some general methodological presuppositions . Theseremarks are Popper s rst steps in methodology or the philosophy of science, and

    they deserve our careful attention. The most surprising thing about these early metho-dological remarks is that they show no sign of Popper s deductive method of dog-matic trial and critical error elimination. Even though the notions of dogmatic andcritical thinking gure prominently in the thesis, no connection is establishedbetween these psychological notions and methodology. Instead Popper s methodol-ogical stance is traditional or in other words: inductive.

    The immediate background of Popper s inductive methodology is provided by Denkpsychologie . As Popper explains, the reason for including these methodologicalremarks resides in the fact that there is as yet no unitary school within Denkpsycholo-gie and that disagreements about methods of research dominate. Agreement exists

    only with respect to the idea that psychological research has to be strictly empirical.Before turning to the factual psychological investigations of his monograph, Popperfeels obliged to formulate his methodological stance more precisely. A crucial con-dition on an empirical science is that a rigorous distinction be made betweendescriptive and explanatory elements, between psychological phenomenology and psychological theory (Popper, 1927, p. 18). Accordingly, the target of Popper smethodological considerations is twofold: to distinguish the task and scope of a

    6 Popper also mentions Groos (1923) explicitly both in the text and in the bibliography. In the texthe refers to Groos s theory of exercise ( U bung ) in the context of a discussion of the role of playing forthe development of the childish intellect.

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    11/25

    89 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    phenomenological psychology from a general conception of the empirical sciences,and to show the importance of theory construction for psychology.

    Before he explains further what he intends by the idea of descriptive psychology,Popper turns to a discussion that foreshadows his later problem of demarcation.Decisive for the character of an empirical science, Popper contends:

    is that a theory may only be formed inductively, through abstraction from empiri-cal facts, and may never be projected into the facts. The following route is theresult:

    unprejudiced description (phenomenology) of empirical facts

    attempt at abstraction

    ordered representation (from a theoretical perspective). . . (Popper, 1927, p. 20)

    The sequel to this passage demonstrates that Popper s appeal to the inductive methodis made precisely in the context of distinguishing empirical science from other intel-lectual enterprises, which is the (later) demarcation problem. Popper points out aninherent danger of the inductive method which lurks especially in the coils of psycho-analysis. His point is that the rst phenomenological stage will always be fecundatedby the third theoretical stage, provided that the facts are selected in such a way asto ll certain gaps in the theory. The danger is that:

    . . . the phenomenology, the description, which should be purely empirical,unprejudiced, gets in uenced by the theory itself, which has as a consequencethat she presupposes the theory for which she should have to deliver the induc-tively based evidence in the rst place; this would clearly be what is called acircular conclusion, a petitio principii .

    This is precisely the mistake into which for instance psychoanalytical movements(Freud, Adler) have fallen. . . (Popper, 1927, p. 21)

    Popper s criticism of psychoanalysis seems to be modelled on Stern s generalcriticism of psychoanalysis. According to Stern, psychoanalysis is an example of anold vice of child psychology: [t]he wish to see in the child an adult in small (Stern,1914, p. 11). Psychoanalysis is foremost a theory of adult (neurotic) mental life andits focus upon the child is mainly derived from its contention that infantile experi-ences are decisive for adult mental life. Although this has led to many importantand often unnoticed phenomena, the countless misinterpretations, exaggerations andinvalid generalisations of psychoanalysis force themselves upon the experts of childpsychology and the unprejudiced observer of the healthy infantile mind (Stern,1914, p. 11). Stern s methodology of unprejudiced observation is straightforwardly

    inductive. His methodology for observation consists of three basic rules. The rst isthe strict separation of the actually observed fact (the action, the expression, thewords one hears, and so on) and the interpretation ( Deutung ) of these facts. Both

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    12/25

    90 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    have to be registered separately and one has always to justify the adequacy or prob-ability of the attempted interpretation. The second rule is that the interpretation hasto be in conformity with the mental life of the child. According to Stern, this meansthat the interpretation of the child s mental life must be distinguished from the mentallife of adults with respect to the greater simplicity and the diffuse nature of earlymental life. The third rule forbids general psychological statements, interpretations,explanations, for which no observational facts can be added as adequate evidence (Stern, 1914, p. 15). Although Popper s later reservations as regards psychoanalysisare already present, he is still far removed from his well known (deductive) viewthat there is no observation that is not theory-impregnated. Indeed, like Stern, hisopposition to this imminent danger is precisely to keep strictly separate the stageof pure phenomenological description of facts and the theory that is derived fromsuch descriptions.

    Even more importantly, the danger of registering empirical descriptions whichhave been contaminated by preconceived interpretations of the facts turns out to bevery real for Popper s own project; for in his empirical description of the phenom-enon of Gesetzerlebnis Popper will draw upon concepts derived from the Individual- psychologie of Adler and of Characterology. It is unsurprising that Popper, at thevery point of raising the question: Which are the characteristics of the class of empirical facts which form and demarcate the objects of psychology? , continuesin the following way:

    We believe it to be very important to separate ( trennen ) psychology and theclosely related characterology which operates for the most part with psychologi-cal concepts. We will return to this demarcation ( Abgrenzung ); here we wantonly to determine brie y the characterology as that view (already science?)which we can adequately distinguish as comparative doctrine of personality from psychology . (Popper, 1927, pp. 21 22)

    By Characterology Popper means all the attempts to make the completeness of theEgo , the personality, into an object of scienti c investigation (Popper, 1927, p.21, footnote). Like Stern, Popper reckons Adler among the Characterologists, and,

    like Stern, his attitude towards Adler is both critical and sympathetic.7

    Despite theirfailure properly to conform to the inductive method and in particular to the attendantseparation of theory and (unprejudiced) observation, Characterology and the Individ-ualpsychologie of Adler were not (yet) condemned by Popper as pseudo-science, as

    7 Although Stern also lets Adler have it sometimes, in general he is positive about Adler s Individual- psychologie , as the following remark testi es: Fertile points of view for child psychology come fromattempts of the school of Alfred Adler who is to a certain extent opposed to Freud; the goal of thisindividual psychology is not so much to discover one-sided sexual guidelines in the child s mind butgeneral-characterological ones (Stern, 1914, p. 12). In this respect it is also noteworthy that the psycho-logical theory with which Adler was most in sympathy was that of Stern. As Adler himself acknowledges:William Stern, in a different way, has arrived at results similar to mine (Adler, 1912, p. 1). That partof Stern s theory to which Adler feels most indebted is its personalism.

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    13/25

    91 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    they would be later after he had developed his deductive criterion of demarcation.Indeed, in the above passage Popper clearly hesitates whether to call Characterology(empirical) science or not. It is this tension between criticism and endorsement of Characterology which provided the main motive for Popper s rst considerations of the demarcation problem.

    Had Popper been completely converted to the empirical Denkpsychologie , the needto bring in Characterology and the theories of Freud and Adler would have beenmuch less urgent. Ku lpe, among others, had paved the way for a strictly empiricalapproach, concerning which there need be no worries about metaphysical trespassers.To be sure, the boundary between empirical and metaphysical psychology is noteasily drawn, since the limits of what one calls empirical can be and have beendrawn variously and loosely. In this way, many proponents of an empirical psy-chology have operated with concepts the objects of which would have quali ed asmetaphysical were a more rigid boundary of the empirical to be used. (Conceptsreferring to the unconscious are an obvious example.) Within the Denkpsychologieof Ku lpe and Bu hler the tradition in which Popper stands the concept of theunconscious plays no role. Indeed, Bu hler has even more reservations against Freudthan Ku lpe has.

    The context of what Popper in 1927 called demarcation ( Abgrenzung ) is differentfrom the context of the demarcation problem in his mature writings, even thoughFreud and Adler gure in both. For one thing, the discussion in 1927 is a discussionwithin psychology and not, as in 1963, between psychoanalysis (and Marxism) on

    the one hand and physics on the other. For another, the boundary lines were drawnvery differently in 1927 and 1963 (respectively): rather than relying on a deductivemethod as a criterion of demarcation, as in 1963, the young Popper relied in 1927on the inductive method. A third point is that the (inductive) boundary lines werenot by then drawn as rigidly as they would be in 1963. Although critical of Freud,Adler and Characterology, the young Popper at the same time was indebted to them,especially to Adler and Characterology. This tension between criticism and endorse-ment is the most important (implicit) reason for Popper s earliest methodologicalclaims.

    Before Popper returns to the relationship between Characterology or the theory

    of the personality and psychology proper he delineates in more detail the empiricalobject of the latter. His speci c views about the object of psychology resemble Ku l-pes Bewusstseinspsychologie (Ku lpe, 1922). Like Ku lpe, Popper refers to thedescriptive task of psychology as phenomenology, and, like Ku lpe, he warns againstthe confusion of this idea with Husserl s phenomenology. The task of phenomeno-logical psychology, according to Popper, is the study of what is directly given tous only through inner experience, hence through the experience of self-observation (Popper, 1927, p. 22). Also like Ku lpe, Popper observes that the study of experienceproceeds analytically. Experiences are divided into more elementary experiences,such as impressions and images, and more complex ones.

    Popper s views of the relationship between complex and elementary experiencesare closely related to his (positive) views concerning the relationship betweenCharacterology and Denkpsychologie . Popper sketches a conception of (the whole

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    14/25

    92 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    of) psychology in which both approaches have a place. He distinguishes betweenCharacterology as the comparative study of personality and psychology as the com-parative study of experience. The former studies Typical personalities, conceivedas a whole (p. 28). Psychology, on the other hand, studies Typical experiences ,impressions, images; experiences of judgements and of feeling; complex experiences(structures) and courses of experience (p. 28). The relationship between these twoforms of psychology is explained further by a distinction between complex andelementary experiences. Experiences, or Erlebnisse , Popper emphasizes, can alwaysbe described in either of two ways: as part of a whole, or analytically in terms of their elementary parts. These are different descriptions in the sense that the wholeis more than the sum of its parts. Qua empirical science, psychology ought to proceedbottom-up by describing rst the elementary experiences ( Elementarerlebnisse )then always the higher experiences, complexes or structures (Popper, 1927, p. 26).It is important to note that Popper means by empirical science the unprejudicedphenomenological description of either complex structures or elementary experi-ences. As Popper sees it, the heart of the method of modern psychology is thisempirical description rather than theory formation. However, sometimes a top-downapproach is also allowed. As Popper puts it:

    . . . the phenomenological description of higher structural experiences as wholescan of course go on ahead of the closed structure ( Aufbau ) of science, that is,such descriptions can also be given (for instance by the Characterology ) when

    a precise analysis supported by a scienti c substructure ( Unterbau ) of the con-cerning structure cannot yet be provided, as the constituting experiences of thishigher structural experience are themselves structures. (Popper, 1927, p. 26)

    Characterology analyses the values of certain personalities and their life history, andas such its method is as divergent as the methods of the Geisteswissenschaften , butsince it operates with psychological concepts, Characterology can bene t psychologyby providing it with preliminary structural descriptions. As we will see below, Pop-per s very notion of Gesetzerlebnis , or, as he also puts it, the typical experienceof dogmatic thinking , is an example of a structural or complex experience. This

    means that his distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking is related to atradition the rejection of which is one of the most conspicuous features of his laterwork. Popper s own account of the genesis of the demarcation problem seems notonly to ignore the importance of empirical psychology but also to disown his Adler-ian in uence.

    4. Bu hlerian Denkpsychologie

    The phenomenological and unprejudiced description of experiences typical of dog-

    matic thinking the topic of the second part of Popper s thesis is preceded by sometheoretical considerations. As Popper puts it, the only thing known about the objectof investigation is that the typical experiences of dogmatic thinking display a very

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    15/25

    93 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    complex structure, a structure that he describes at the beginning of his thesis in thefollowing way:

    We will use the terms dogmatic and critical in a more liberal sense than isoften usual: By dogmatic thinking we wish to mean a type of thinking that ischaracterized by the mere acceptance of and sticking to certain principles. Theseprinciples are adopted, blindly taken for true, without even recognizing the possi-bility of their falsehood; that is, they are in particular not investigated as to theircorrectness through experience; one sticks to them; that is, one applies them stub-bornly wherever they seem to be applicable. . . (Popper, 1927, p. 16)

    Critical thinking, by contrast, can be characterized by such questions as Is itreally true? , Does it really have to be that way? , etc. Critical thought attemptsto question the principles that are initially received blindly and maintained dog-matically. It asks for proof, above all on the basis of experience. . . (Popper, 1927,p. 17)

    Even so, to determine the object of investigation more precisely, theoretical consider-ations are unavoidable. Faithful to the inductive method, Popper hastens to add thatThis theoretical consideration may of course not go so far as to commit the mistakeof anticipating in a speculative way what has to be described empirically (Popper,1927, p. 34).

    Popper s theoretical perspective ensues from the theory of judgement in the tra-dition of Brentano and Meinong. 8 He summarizes the principal claims of this schoolas follows:

    1. Judgements form a distinctive class of experiences , they are not connections(sums) of images but structural experiences; thus one speaks of the function of judgement.

    2. The core of the judgement-experience is an experience of certainty (Gewissheitserlebnis ); this does not exist in and for itself but is only intentional,

    directed upon a state of affairs (Sachverhalt ), hence a Knowing that somethingis or counts . (Buhler, Archiv fu r Psychologie , 9, (1907), pp. 367 ff.

    8 Popper relies primarily on the work of B. Erdmann, Otto Selz, Karl Bu hler and Stumpf. In hisdissertation one year later, Popper (1928) would distinguish at least nine different schools working in thearea of Denkpsychologie . From his discussion there it can be concluded that he had not yet, in 1927,made up his mind completely with respect to Denkpsychologie , for in 1928 he speaks of the school of Ku lpe, and distinguishes this school from the schools of, respectively, Brentano, Meinong and Stumpf.Moreover it is the school of Ku lpe, also called the Wu rzburger Schule , to which Popper feels mostlyattracted. From the bibliography in Gewohnheit und Gesetzerlebnis it is clear that Popper is alreadyfamiliar with some of the important authors and publications in Denkpsychologie . Besides many referencesto Karl Bu hler s work in developmental psychology, psychology of perception and cognitive psychology,there are references to Selz s rst great publication of 1913 (Selz, 1913).

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    16/25

    94 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    3. The experience of certainty is characterized by the fact that the awareness of correctness possesses a degree (Georg Elias Mu ller Zur Analyse der Geda chtnis-ta tigkeit des Vorstellungsverlaufes , 1913, part III, p. 265), or by the fact thatthere are different degrees of the experience of certainty, such as to mean, belief,conviction, certainty . (Hume)

    (Popper, 1927, pp. 34 35)

    Closer scrutiny reveals that Popper relies primarily on the description of Denkpsycho-logie by Bu hler in his Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes (1922), in particular ina paragraph called Zur Analyse der Denkprozesse .

    The rst point re ects not only Brentano s contention as to the inadequacy of asensualistic approach to thought, but above all the experimental results of membersof the Wu rzburger School, especially Bu hler. Thought, according to Bu hler in hisdoctoral dissertation, is something which shows no sensory quality, no sensoryintensity. Something of which we may rightly predicate degrees of clearness, degreesof certainty, a vividness by means of which it arouses our psychic interest; which,however, in its content is quite differently determined from everything that is ulti-mately reducible to sensations (Bu hler 1907, p. 315). As the second point indicates,thoughts are determined indirectly by their (intentional) relationships to facts, arelation for which Bu hler coins the term consciousness that . Judgements of factscan only succeed if a Gewissheitserlebnis occurs. Bu hler takes over this term from

    the associationistic psychologist G. E. Mu ller, who comes closest to Hume (Bu hler,1922, p. 387). 9 Buhler elaborates upon the work of Mu ller and explains the experi-ence of certainty as an intentional phenomenon. Accordingly, the certainty expressesitself typically in that-clauses , i.e. Bu hler s knowing that something is the case orcounts .10 From Bu hler s developmental perspective, questions as to when, how andwhy the rst doubts and experiences of certainty arise in the child s mind, as to howconsideration and insight arise, are fundamental issues for a theory of judgement.

    According to Popper, the Denkpsychologie has focused mainly on the phenomenonof critical thinking. As an exemplary example of critical thinking he selects thispassage from Buhler:

    Doubt and certainty, the intentional search for grounds and the grasp of connec-tions of justi cations or, as we might put it succinctly, consideration and insight,all belong to the same department of our mind the core of which is the veryknowing of facts and connections between facts. (Bu hler, 1922, p. 372)

    9 Mu ller deviates from Hume to the extent that he does not identify the experience of certainty withHume s degrees of the force and vivacity of impressions and ideas; but an explicit answer on his partto the question of what this experience consists of is not put forward.

    10 It is also noteworthy that this passage shows no signs of Popper s later alternative view of theingredients of the mind in terms of anticipations, expectations and problems. Popper s description of critical thinking similarly joins the phenomenological path laid down by Bu hler, and is far removed fromthe biologically oriented approach of his later work.

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    17/25

    95 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    Popper s goal is to provide examples of Setzungen determinations or judge-ments of facts which do not t the above description in terms of critical thinking;hence Setzungen of dogmatic thinking. 11 Dogmatic thinking soon turns out to bemore complex than the concept of Setzung what Brentano calls Existentialer-lebnis suggests, and this is Popper s reason for coining the term Gesetzerlebnis .Dogmatic thinking is a truly complex experience, a thought-experience that can bedecomposed into three phases, according to Popper: those of Einstellung or attitude,Setzung or determination, and Festhalten or sticking to . It is Popper s contentionthat this complexity has not only been overlooked by Brentano but that neither is itcaptured by the distinction of mechanical from insightful thinking which plays sucha prominent role in the Denkpsychologie . The only exception to this turns out to beBuhler not that Bu hler would have introduced the concept Popper is interested in;rather Bu hler s various descriptions and explanations of the thought processes of children provide Popper with the elements that together constitute the complexexperience of dogmatic thinking.

    Determinations of dogmatic thinking, Popper emphasizes, are extremely character-istic of the intellectual life of young children. Rather than relying on his own experi-ences with young children, in his capacity as a social worker, Popper points toBuhler s Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes as a rich source of examples of dog-matic thinking. One of his examples is provided by Bu hler s observation of the useof two-word sentences by young children. If a child has learned a certain two-wordsentence, such as Daddy sweet , it can be observed that it applies the same predicate

    to all the persons in its presence. The child simply repeats its capacity of judging;it retains its way of procedure and transposes it to other cases (Bu hler, 1922, p.403). Popper adds that the underlining is not Bu hler s but his own, indicating therebythat he is making explicit what is implicit in Bu hler. A comparison of this way of thinking with Buhler s sketch of insightful and critical thinking leads Popper to notethe following striking differences:

    In both cases we are dealing with determinations ; but in the one case withexclusive insightful determinations (critical judgement), in the other case clearlywith determinations that are completely uncritical and that have come about by

    a mere sticking to a procedure and (uncritical) transfer to other cases ; no signof doubt and certainty, goal-directed search for grounds and so on . . . (Popper,1927, p. 37)

    Popper concedes that his distinction between dogmatic thinking and critical think-ing is very similar to the distinction made by the school of Meinong between mechan-ical thinking and insightful thinking, yet he contends that this distinction is notexhaustive and that it does not capture the distinction between dogmatic and criticalthinking. Again Bu hler provides important clues. Bu hler observes that the formation

    11 The generic term Setzung is used by him in the sense of a general Existential-Erlebnis , whereashe reserves the term judgement for critical thinking.

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    18/25

    96 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    of a new form of words by analogy with another form is at rst sight mechanicaland associationistic. However, on closer inspection we cannot pass by the evidentfact that there are methods behind this behaviour. What returns in all cases areparticular ways of procedure applied to changing material (Bu hler, 1922, p. 403).Popper comments:

    As Bu hler speaks at other places explicitly of a sticking to the ways of procedurewe can say that already Bu hler has not only initiated our new antithesis : criticalthinking dogmatic thinking , but has even indicated accurately its most conspicu-ous phenomenon: sticking to ( Festhalten ). (Popper, 1927, p. 38)

    A third element in the Gesetzerlebnis is what Popper calls the Einstellung auf dieSetzung , the attitude towards the determination. In the case of both dogmatic andcritical thinking, Popper emphasizes that the determination must be prepared for bya certain interest in it. As regards dogmatic thinking Popper speaks of an attitudetowards the unknown . Here, too, the similarity between Popper and Groos s theoryof habit is too great to be accidental. The next section on the phenomenology of theGesetzerlebnis is the best place to pursue this comparison in more detail.

    5. The phenomenology of Gesetzerlebnis

    Following a tradition of child psychology, Popper commences his empirical chap-ter with a few remarks concerning the method of observation. It soon becomes clearthat observation is not the appropriate term for characterizing Popper s method.Instead of relying on his own observations of children during his work in Adler schild guidance clinics, Popper derives his observations from various sorts of litera-ture, ranging from autobiographies to psychological studies, notably Karl Bu hler s Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes , Elsa Ko hler s Die Perso nlichkeit des dreija h-rigen Kindes (1926) and Charlotte Bu hler s Das Seelenleben des Jugendlichen (C.Buhler, 1927b). His reason for this is ingenious, and impressive testimony to hisunconditional surrender to the inductive method. In these books, Popper argues, the

    very phenomena he is interested in are depicted without the authors realizing theirconnection with the concept of Gesetzerlebnis . Accordingly, this literature wouldcontain unprejudiced reports, providing a solid and safe basis for an inductive gen-eralization in terms of the notion of Gesetzerlebnis .12

    Yet the extent to which these studies are free from theoretical interpretations of thefacts is disputable. Only Elsa Ko hler s Die Perso nlichkeit des dreija hrigen Kindes isan exercise in pure phenomenology, whereas in the work of Karl and CharlotteBuhler theory and observation are often dif cult to separate. Moreover, as we saw

    12 See Popper (1927), p. 44, and also his remark a few pages later. On the contrary, as he puts it, itis not allowed that the theoretical anticipation amounts to a theoretical interpretation of the material inthe direction of the induction of the Gesetzerlebnisses (Popper, 1927, p. 44).

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    19/25

    97 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    in the preceding section, the notion of Gesetzerlebnis , although not mentioned assuch, surfaces implicitly in Bu hler s theoretical chapter on Denkpsychologie . As wewill see in the present section, elements of the notion of Gesetzerlebnis , in particularthe attitude towards the unknown , can be traced to the theory of the genesis of theintellect, as developed by Groos, Stern and Karl Bu hler. Finally, Popper s explicittheoretical explanation of the phenomenon of Gesetzerlebnis bears striking simi-larities to Charlotte Bu hler s notion of Soll-Beziehungen .

    The rst element to be discussed in detail by Popper is the attitude towards theunknown. The material is divided into three kinds of psychological phenomena: the Angst for strangeness; credulity and the need for order; and nally curiosity. 13 Forone familiar only with Popper s later remarks on dogmatic thinking the choice of these phenomena may seem surprising, but against the historical background of childpsychology they are quite common. The notion of fear or anxiety plays a role inboth the individual psychology of Adler and the theory of the genesis of the intellectof Groos and Stern. Despite the fact that Popper mentions neither Groos nor Stern,his treatment of the rst component of the Gesetzerlebnis , his use of the expressionfear for the unknown , turns out to be the same as Stern s, and simply a differentname for what Groos calls fear for what is unhabitual .

    Groos s theory of the genesis of the intellect accords an important role to theconcepts of habit and the unhabitual. Habit was seen to operate at the physiologicallevel. Once acquired activities have been exercised frequently they become fullymechanised, no longer requiring conscious attention. What Groos called a potential

    concept is the immediate effect of habit. Habit and hence potential concepts implythat we expect certain things to happen or to be encountered in certain situations.Groos, however, speaks not of expectation but of a Bereitschaft of the organism.The choice of this term is motivated by his theory of habit: the (habitual) readinessfor certain things to happen in speci c circumstances is typically not a consciousexperience. Rather, only when something unexpected occurs are we surprised, andthis very surprise betrays that we were prepared for what is habitual. On the otherhand, if something that is inhabitual and unexpected pops up, this will draw one sattention involuntarily. When this surprise is accompanied by a re exive contractionof the body, Groos speaks of a shock ( Chok ). The shock accompanied by strong

    aversive feelings Groos calls the fear for the Unheimlichen .The following remark is the clearest evidence for Popper s endorsement of Groos stheory of habit and what is unhabitual:

    The fear for the unknown, the feeling of displeasure, crosses the threshold of consciousness more easily than does the feeling of pleasure, the pleasure aboutwhat is known, since repetitions numb the irritability. (Popper, 1927, p. 54)

    Like Groos, Popper maintains that what is known, what is habitual, typically does

    13 A full discussion of these phenomena would go far beyond the ambit of this article. I shall con nemyself to the rst phenomenon.

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    20/25

    98 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    not catch one s attention. Against this background, his choice of the term Einstellungis also signi cant, and reminiscent of Groos. 14 Also like Groos, Popper maintainsthat what is unknown or unhabitual crosses the level of consciousness more easily.Finally, like Groos, Popper maintains that this consciousness typically takes the formof fear or anxiety.

    Construing a theory of the genesis of the intellect was a project common to thework of Groos, Stern and Karl Bu hler. It is unsurprising, therefore, to see Popperalso discussing and using concepts derived from Stern and Bu hler in his attempt atan analysis of the fear of the unknown. A distinction relevant for a proper understand-ing of habit and fear of the unhabitual is the one between feeling of familiarity and feeling of strangeness . Buhler explains the presence of anxiety typically notbefore the rst three months in terms of the impression of strangeness. New andunhabitual impressions cause in the child negative reactions, according to Bu hler.Popper sees Buhler s view as agreeing with his own view of fear of the unknown,but his remark that fear occurs especially when there is a certain differentiationbetween the feeling of familiarity and the feeling of strangeness makes him morean ally of Stern. 15

    Popper s subsequent treatment of a series of fear phenomena, such as the fear of being left alone, regularly shifts from a purely phenomenological description to atheoretical explanation. For instance, Popper rejects Bu hler s genetic explanation of the fear of being left alone in terms of the lack of usual sense impressions, and hesuggests instead that the phenomenon can be more adequately explained in terms of

    fear of the unknown. What is especially interesting is the more speci c form of Popper s explanation which comes to the fore in his discussion of the fear of humans.According to Popper, the fear of the unknown equally plays a role here: a dark feeling that strange people are to a certain degree always unknown, unpredictable,uncontrollable (Popper, 1927, p. 53). A general principle that fear is founded onthe unknown, on the lack of Setzungen (Popper, 1927, p. 61), is put forward as thedecisive feature of a psychological theory of fear. In this explanatory sketch, thenotion of control plays a crucial role. Just as what is familiar is equated with whatis controlled by determinations and judgements, what is unknown becomes equatedwith what is not yet under the control of such determinations and judgements. 16

    It is at this point that the in uence of Adler s individual psychology and Charac-

    14 Even his later characterization of expectations as a preparation for a reaction recalls Groos. AsPopper puts it then: we become conscious of many of our expectations only when they are disappointed (Popper, 1972, p. 344).

    15 As Stern explains, surprise about new impressions is especially unlustbetont when the impressionsof the familiar and the unhabitual become fused. In such cases the feeling of familiarity is as little pushedback as it is satis ed. This situation leads not simply to the fear for the unknown , but also to the fearfor the Unheimlichen (Stern, 1914, p. 109). Popper (1927) also uses twice the expression das Unheim-liche , pp. 51, 53.

    16 Popper (1927), pp. 49, 61.

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    21/25

    99 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    terology becomes most evident. 17 Having explained the fear of other people in termsof what is unknown and uncontrollable, Popper adds in a footnote: Perhaps herelies the root of an explanation for a series of neurotic phenomena which for instanceAlfred Adler characterises aptly by the craving for controlling strange people (Popper, 1927, p. 53). That the role of Adler is not restricted to a footnote becomesclear upon reading the appendix to this section, in which Popper deals with a coreelement of Adler s individual psychology his notion of assurance ( Sicherung ):

    The concept of Sicherung , which we take over from [Alfred Adler s] Individ-ualpsychologie , has, from our strict methodological perspective, the bad taste of a speculative prejudiced interpretation of the phenomena: in Adler s schoolthe concept means roughly: a safety measure against a disagreeable experience;the bad taste of an interpretation comes from the fact that in the Adlerian schoolthe disagreeable experience ultimately always amounts to a debasement (thefeeling of inferiority ), and this a priori, for nowhere do we encounter an unpreju-diced phenomenology and empirically guaranteed theory. (Popper, 1927, p. 62)

    Popper s adoption of the concept of Sicherung is accompanied by the same sorts of objections raised by Stern to Adler s theory. Stern, too, concedes the importance of the concept of Sicherung for the explanation of mental life, but objects to Adler sunfounded generalization of the concept. In particular, Stern objects that to maintainthat every form of self-defence and assurance compensates for feelings of inferiority

    is to overlook the fact that there are defensive reactions that result from merestrength. It is also to fail to recognize the real weakness of (neurotic) reactions of assurance. Despite these shortcomings, the concepts of self-defence and assurancecan be used to explain a number of conspicuous aspects of mental life and behaviour.As Stern points out, following Karl Groos, the fear of what is unhabitual is itself aform of assurance. Because human beings are forcefully attracted by what is new,they are easily disposed to yield to it without precaution. To counter this tendencyhuman beings need to protect themselves. This self-protection takes the form of anegative attitude towards what is new , an attitude accomplished by fear of theunknown. 18

    The intimate connection between fear and assurance, emphasized by Adler, Groosand Stern, is taken over by Popper: One takes safety measures because one is infear (Popper, 1927, p. 64). However, he is not much interested in the many differentforms of assurance as regards fear in general. Rather his focus is upon forms of assurance that are characteristic of the fear for the unknown. Nowhere in Popper s

    17 Like Popper, Adler especially emphasises the fear of being left alone as the most primitive form inwhich anxiety manifests itself in young children. This desire of the child is not satis ed when the mother joins it again; the child exploits the return of the mother for other purposes. If the mother leaves thechild again, the child will call her back in fear from which it can be concluded, according to Adler, thatthe presence of the mother is a fact irrelevant for overcoming fear: Danger is absolutely out of thequestion; the child really desires to put the mother in its service, to control her (Adler, 1927, p. 192).

    18 Stern (1914), p. 455.

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    22/25

    100 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    thesis is his involvement with Characterology more evident, for the concepts hediscusses cowardliness and mistrust rather than belonging to Denkpsychologie ,are typically used in making inferences about other people s personality character-istics. Cowardliness, according to Popper, is an assurance against the unpleasantexperience of Angst . [T]he coward wishes rather not to risk anything ; he is con-stantly on the alert for the situation in which he really has to be afraid of something:in this way he spares and indulges himself (thus is weak of will ) (Popper, 1927,p. 65). He goes on: For us this assurance is interesting since we can determine inthis form of not-risking a rejection of what is new (p. 65). Many forms of thisrejection are tantamount to a retaining of the old, hence a form of conservatism, towhich Popper returns at the end of his monograph.

    Despite the fact that Popper is not in the least concerned with methodology orphilosophy of science, it is not dif cult to discern in these remarks germs of hislater methodology. The concept of assurance survived Popper s changeover frompsychology to philosophy and is discussed by him in the context of a methodologicaldescription of dogmatic thinking in 1963. There the dogmatic attitude is one whichrejects what is new and holds on to what is familiar. His opposite description of thecritical attitude equally reveals the in uence of his own roots in characterology:the critical attitude is the one which takes (intellectual) risks by putting forwardbold theories .

    In his paragraph Die Setzung des Sachverhaltes Popper discusses the secondelement of the Gesetzerlebnis . I will bypass Popper s speculations about latent deter-

    minations in terms of associative mental mechanisms, and turn instead to his descrip-tion of direct expressions of determinations of facts. The experience of a determi-nation can express itself directly in several ways: in a judgement, in an expressivemovement, and in a sticking to a judgement. Drawing on various descriptions of Elsa Ko hler, Popper claims that the expression That s how it is, that s how it alwaysmust be is typical of dogmatic thinking. The most striking feature of this formulais the marginal differentiation of the particular and the general, the individual andthe typical (Popper, 1927, p. 110). Characteristic of the dogmatic thinking of chil-dren is the inclination to raise every judgement, even particular and individual ones,to the level of general and typical judgements. In this way particular cases are being

    put forward as representative for a whole class of cases. This inclination also explainsthe frequent occurrence of judgements for which the corresponding inductive basisis lacking (Popper, 1927, p. 113).

    Without mentioning Charlotte Bu hler (1927), Popper subsequently introduces thedistinction between Soll-Beziehungen and Seinsbeziehungen .19 In all areas of themental activity of young children, Bu hler argues, Soll-Beziehungen occur earlier thanSeinsbeziehungen , which are derived from the empirical facts themselves. Childishthinking is characterized by high-handed speculation that is not afraid of stretchingthe truth. In particular, the child is very quick in providing an interpretation foralmost everything and it proceeds in such a way as if everything in the world is

    19 See Karl Bu hler, Das handelnde Lebewesen: Bedu rfnis und Gelegenheit, in Bu hler (1969), p. 205.

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    23/25

    101 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    made for and through human beings. Accordingly, everything has to adapt itself tothe plans and wishes of human beings. Likewise Popper maintains that dogmatic judgement, rather than being a simple judgement about the existence of a fact, usurpsparticular facts in terms of generalizations ( Musserlebenis ) and normative require-ments ( Sollerlebnis ).

    Finally, Popper is capable of explaining why dogmatic thinking does not displaythe empirical features which have been held typical of insightful and hence criticalthinking by almost all psychologists since Hume, viz., the degrees of certainty. Forthrough the very formula What is, is necessarily so, must and always has to be thatway , one is removed from any scruples of certainty, indeed [the formula] is thevery prohibition of it (Popper, 1927, p. 116). In this way, too, it becomes under-standable why dogmatic thinking not only strives after generalizations and generalvalidity but also contains a normative element that above all demands of all experi-ence to subject itself once the judgement has been passed on it (Popper, 1927,p. 116).

    In the nal and shortest paragraph, Popper discusses several forms of sticking to judgements and determinations: conservatism and pedantry. Conservatism amountsto holding on to what is familiar and old, the fear of what is new. Many examplesare offered by the play of young children. To mention just one example, Popperrefers to the fact that the play of children has been largely unchanged from antiquityuntil now. Pedantry is described by Popper, following the examples of Karl andCharlotte Buhler, as sticking to a regular course of the day, an order in games, and

    so on. For instance, Karl Bu hler describes a group of memories of children whichoccur in the form of expectations; expectations about the time of dinner, of walking,and so on. According to Popper, these examples are not just forms of habit, for if the child comes to a new surrounding, it does not attempt to continue the old regu-larity, but rather sticks pedantically to that order which it imposes on that new sur-rounding.

    6. Conclusion

    It is time to come to conclusions. Popper s autobiographical outline of his earliestpublished work has been seen to differ in subtle but yet signi cant ways from hisactual thesis, Gewohnheit und Gesetzerlebnis in der Erziehung . Already the Englishtranslation of this title is misleading as to its true content. On habit and belief , asit is sometimes translated, is misleading in that the term belief does not capturethe connotation of Erlebnis and suggests instead the Humean notion of Erfahrung .In the tradition in which Popper was operating in 1927, Erlebnis refers to thecontents of consciousness, rather than experience in the sense of the imprint of sensedata from the outer world upon the mind. In Popper s hands the term also highlightsthe linkage between conscious experiences and feelings, especially the feelings of

    fear and anxiety. Apart from this misleading later terminology, the thesis is in noway involved with what Popper calls the problem of induction. It is true that Popperannounces in the preface of his thesis a rejection of the traditional concept of habit,

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    24/25

    102 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    but this revolution turns out to be no more than an adoption of Karl Groos s theoryof the mechanisation of habit rather than the intended rejection of Hume s inductivetheory of the genesis of habits.

    The problem of demarcation, as we know it from Popper s published work, isequally absent. However, a related discussion about the boundary between Adleriancharacterology and empirical psychology, in the sense of Ku lpe s and Bu hler s Denk- psychologie , is touched upon by Popper. Rather than rejecting Characterology aspseudo-science, we have seen that Popper s attitude is much more compromising.His own description of the dogmatic attitude even reveals clear traces of his af nitywith Characterology. Moreover, the thesis shows Popper subscribing as a matter of course to an inductive rather than a deductive criterion of demarcation. The pointneeds emphasizing that in his endorsement of an inductive criterion Popper wasnot simply paying lip-service to standard views about empirical science proceedinginductively from unprejudiced observation. First of all, the psychologists to whosework Popper s views about empirical science were mostly due William Stern,Oswald Ku lpe and Karl Buhler adopted the inductive method. Secondly, as wehave seen, an important later insight contributing to a deductive criterion of demar-cation was lacking in the discussions of 1927. This is Popper s point to the effectthat there can be no critical phase without a preceding dogmatic phase, a phase inwhich an expectation is formed so that error elimination can begin to work on it.This view implies a much more positive appreciation of the role of dogmatic thinkingthan is to be found in Popper s thesis. There his attitude towards dogmatic thinking

    is quite different and sometimes straightforwardly negative, for instance, as aphenomenon that stands in the way of an education in which the child reaches inde-pendence through self-activity. It is true that, like Burger, the young Popper acknowl-edged the force of the earlier stage of habit and sought to determine where andwhen it is necessary to put limits to the free activity of pupils (Popper, 1927, p.12); but this was more a psychological problem of determining when the transitionfrom dogmatic thinking to self-activity could be made in education than a philosophi-cal claim to the effect that, since dogmatic thinking necessarily precedes criticalthinking, Hume s theory of learning and acquiring knowledge by induction wouldhave to be discarded. To support my view that Popper uses more than just the predi-

    cate inductive to emphasize the danger of dogmatic thinking, and of selecting thefacts to t some preconceived theory, I will nally refer to a passage in which hepoints out that dogmatic thinking is not only typical of young children but that evencritical adults sometimes fall prey to it. This happens most often, according to Pop-per, when important decisions have to be made, when attention is focused on oneparticular fact at the cost of other equally relevant facts. An interesting class of such judgements are what he calls interrupted inductive judgements (Popper, 1927, p.118). Typical examples of such jumping to conclusions are to be found in the wide-spread dogmatism of the judgement of persons, the well known rst impression ,that is always the correct one (Popper, 1927, p. 119). These dogmatically formed

    inductive judgements Poppers contrasts with what he clearly takes to be the one andonly correctly formed judgements: critical inductive judgements . The logical fea-tures of this class of judgements also leave no doubt about his endorsement of induc-

  • 8/14/2019 between autobigraphy and reality

    25/25

    103 M. ter Hark / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 79 103

    tion, both in methodology and in psychology: they require time and inductivematerial (Popper, 1927, p. 118).

    Acknowledgements

    I wish to thank the Hoover Institution Archives for their permission to publishfragments from Popper s unpublished thesis Gewohnheit und Gesetzerlebnis in derErziehung (1927). I wish to thank Professor John Woods for polishing my English.

    References

    Adler, A. (1912). U ber den nervo sen Charakter . Wiesbaden.Adler, A. (1927). Menschenkenntnis . Leipzig.Buhler, C. (1927a). Das Seelenleben des Jugendlichen . Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer.Buhler, K. (1907). Tatsachen und Probleme zu einer Psychologie der Denkvorga nge. Archiv fu r die ges-

    amte Psychologie , IX , 297365.Buhler, K. (1922). Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes . Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer.Buhler, K. (1927b). Die Krise der Psychologie . Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer.Buhler, K. (1969). Die Uhren der Lebewesen und Fragmente aus dem Nachlass . Wien: Hermann

    Bohlaus Nachf.Burger, E. (1923). Arbeitspa dagogik . Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann.Groos, K. (1923). Das Seelenlebem des Kindes . Berlin: Verlag von Reuther and Reichard.

    Hark ter, M. R. M. (1993). Problems and psychologism: Popper as the heir to Otto Selz. Studies in Historyand Philosophy of Science , 24 , 585609.Kohler, E. (1926). Die Perso nlichkeit des dreija hrigen Kindes . Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel.Ku lpe, O. (1922). Vorlesungen u ber psychologie . Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel.Popper, K. (1927) Gewohnheit und Gesetzerlebnis in der Erziehung , unpublished manuscript.Popper, K. (1928) Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie , unpublished manuscript.Popper, K. (1963). Conjectures and refutations: The growth of scientic knowledge . London: Routledge

    and Kegan Paul.Popper, K. (1972). Objective knowledge . Oxford: Clarendon Press.Popper, K. (1974). Unended quest . London: Routledge.Popper, K. (1979). Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie . Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr.Selz, O. (1913). U ber die Gesetze des geordneten Denkverlaufs . Stuttgart: Verlag von W. Spemann.

    Stern, W. (1923). Die menschliche Perso nlichkeit . Leipzig: Barth.Stern, W. (1914). Psychologie der fru hen Kindheit . Leipzig: Verlag von Quelle and Meyer.