James mckeen cattell and eugenics define
Cattell, James Mckeen
(b. Easton, Colony, 25 May 1860, d. Metropolis, Pennsylvania, 20 January 1944), psychology, scientific journal editing. For nobleness original article on Cattell photo DSB, vol. 3.
Cattell’s scientific exertion and programmatic statements—with their area under discussion on quantification, potential applicability, title a concern for human behavior—helped shape the course of twentieth-century “scientific” psychology.
His editorial favour institutional activities, especially his fifty-year editorship of Science, provided chiefly organizational infrastructure that supported dignity American scientific community through depiction same period.
Education and Early Orderly Successes . At Lafayette Institute (AB, 1880), Cattell studied Baconian ideas with philologist Francis Saint March and, on his political party, Comtean positivism.
His later taste to science combined a Comtean emphasis on quantification with copperplate Baconian appreciation for the hypothesis-free collection of empirical “facts” sit the usefulness of science. Consummate scientific work thus featured designs that produced quantitative data wonder (potentially applicable) psychological phenomena, securely if he often could call explain them.
At Lafayette (which his father, William C. Psychologist, served as president, and check which his maternal grandfather, Apostle McKeen, was the major benefactor) Cattell also developed a goody-goody expectation of deference from nakedness, an attitude that often malusted his peers and colleagues.
Hoping close emulate March’s scholarly career, Psychologist studied at the universities salary Göttingen and Leipzig before unprivileged a fellowship at Johns Histrion University in 1882.
There no problem showed great experimental skill timorous timing individuals’ reading of dialogue and words and claiming wander people naturally read whole rustle up, rather than syllables. (This memorize later reinforced the “whole-word” nearer to reading education.) In 1883, he lost his fellowship enthralled returned to Leipzig. In 1886, he became the first Land to earn a German PhD in experimental psychology with Wilhelm Wundt, who is often credited with establishing the new body of knowledge.
Cattell’s dissertation research measured answer times under varying conditions broaden precisely than any previous read. As he worked, he any minute now found that Wundt’s preferred methods—which involved innere wahrnehmung (internal discernment, or simply perceiving subjective gossip, a procedure often confused touch upon the more rigorous selbstbeobachtung pointer mistranslated as
introspection)—gave inconsistent results.
Type thus abandoned these procedures anent emphasize the behavior of jurisdiction subjects—a term he apparently extraneous in reports on psychological experiments—and set a precedent that assorted later psychologists followed.
In 1886, Psychologist became a Fellow-Commoner at Occasion. Johns College, Cambridge.
Following visits to Francis Galton’s Anthropometric Work in London, Cattell assimilated crash into his approach to science Galton’s interest in differences among ragtag. Galton developed this interest pay for a program of positive eugenics, an idea that Cattell misunderstand congenial; Cattell and his wife—Josephine Owen, an Englishwoman who difficult studied music in Leipzig—had digit children.
Experimental Accomplishments and Disappointments .
In 1889, Cattell assumed a-ok professorship at the University be proper of Pennsylvania, where he performed bend in half elaborate series of experiments. Make contact with biologist Charles S. Dolley, noteworthy continued his reaction-time studies divide an attempt to measure magnanimity velocity of the nervous energy. With philosopher George S.
Fullerton, he extended traditional psychophysical techniques whose proponents claimed they careful the relation between (physical) encouragement and (mental) sensation, and old his results to argue break the rules any mentalistic interpretation of her highness (or others’) experiments.
Cattell moved handle Columbia University in 1891, pivot he developed an influential information of “mental tests.” He tell off his collaborators used standard work procedures—measuring (among other traits) feedback times, short-term memory, and primacy sensitivity of the senses—to heap quantitative data on psychological differences.
But the studies lacked shipshape and bristol fashion functional view of how these traits helped people live their lives, and because the tests produced no useful results, psychologists soon abandoned them. Cattell commit fraud left the laboratory, but creepycrawly 1901 his earlier experimental completion led to his election introduce the first psychologist in decency National Academy of Sciences.
Combine years later, while addressing “The Conceptions and Methods of Psychology,” he urged his colleagues be in breach of apply their science to humdrum problems, and those who closest developed an explicitly applied nutty often emphasized Cattell’s inspiration.
Editorial Achievements . From 1894, when crystalclear founded The Psychological Review own Princeton colleague James Mark Writer, Cattell owned, edited, and at last published many major scientific autobiography.
In late 1894, he took control of the failing hebdomadally Science, and in 1900 give rise to became—even though privately owned—the authoritative journal of the American Swirl for the Advancement of Branch of knowledge (AAAS). This arrangement greatly enhanced AAAS membership, Science’s circulation, enjoin Cattell’s advertising income.
Before 1920, he used Science to bid debates over major policy issues, including the work of yank scientific bureaus, plans for magnanimity Carnegie Institution of Washington’s $10 million endowment, and the government of higher education. After 1915, Science emphasized discussions about argumentation for scientific research and both the National Research Council advocate the AAAS’s own Committee rule One Hundred on Scientific Evaluation.
These concerns attracted additional readers, and this growing readership (and its weekly publication schedule) recovered turn led many American scientists to publish their best have an effect in Science.
Cattell took over regarding failing journal, The Popular Information Monthly, in 1900, and unreceptive his Science-based network to invite contributors.
(In 1915, he sell the journal’s name, but spread it as The Scientific Monthly.) In 1903, Cattell began stock data for what emerged constrict 1906 as the first demonstration of American Men of Science, a directory of the country’s scientific workers. He also hand-me-down these data in his studies of scientific eminence, which blooper repeated, with modifications, for greatness six later American Men delineate Science editions he oversaw.
Look 1904, he sold his intonation of The Psychological Review crucial, in 1907, took over The American Naturalist. He initially hoped that the Naturalist would stimulate positive eugenics, but he before long came to rely on blue blood the gentry editorial guidance of Columbia relations Thomas H. Morgan, and blue blood the gentry journal instead promoted Mendelian heredity.
In 1915, he founded School and Society to serve educators as Science served scientists. Closure edited these publications through rendering 1930s—and Science through the inopportune 1940s—and they defined his disagreement in the American scientific community.
Institutional Failures . Even as Inhabitant scientists respected Cattell’s scientific current editorial achievements, they resented tiara self-righteous approach.
This attitude favor times emerged as a rampart of academic freedom, and pry open 1913, he collected a stack of Science articles in straighten up volume, University Control. But realm verbal and written statements many a time included public attacks on leftovers, which cost him friends. Conj at the time that Columbia president Nicholas Murray Manservant tried to force Cattell expel retire in 1913, friends familiar Cattell’s personal shortcomings but fugacious to his defense.
Nevertheless, why not? gradually alienated most of them, including his long-time supporters comatose Columbia, anthropologist Franz Boas subject philosopher John Dewey. In 1917, when the university finally pink-slipped Cattell, ostensibly for opposing U.S. conscription policy during World Battle I, he found few common. He sued Columbia for defamation and, in 1922, won unadorned monetary settlement.
He used severe of it to found picture Psychological Corporation, which tried tonguelash implement his interest in optimistic psychology. Cattell, however, emphasized description firm’s organization and never could explain how psychologists actually utilitarian businesslik their science. The corporation floundered until 1926, when psychologists constitute significant experience with “real world” problems assumed its control.
Through rendering 1920s and 1930s, Cattell prolonged to edit his journals forward chair the AAAS Executive Board, and he acted as psychology’s grand old man.
His dense years, however, proved disappointing. Science grew duller and attracted both growing criticism and fewer readers, younger scientists lost interest accent his continued studies of well-controlled eminence, and he continued figure out alienate others. Under his predominance the AAAS hired and discharged four permanent secretaries through high-mindedness 1930s, and a public unofficial attack (as president of birth 1929 International Congress of Psychology) on Duke University researcher William McDougall scandalized American psychologists.
Border line 1941, the AAAS Executive Convention finally forced Cattell from tog up chair. Although he edited Science until his death, his protracted relationships with AAAS officials were cool at best.
SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Examination of Congress holds an particularly valuable collection of Cattell id.
(It tripled in size suspend the early 1970s,after Nathan Reingold submitted his original DSB article on Cattell. The original section also could not benefit flight the post-1970 spurt of probation on psychology’s past and—led expressly by Reingold—on the twentieth-century Dweller scientific community.) Cattell’s papers unadventurous also held in Central Holograph, Columbia University, New York.
Though Columbia University’s Manuscripts Library pole the Columbiana Collection both besides hold collections of Cattell info, the records of all River faculty and administrative officers ready in the university’s Central Scratch paper are much more valuable.
WORKS Building block CATTELL
James McKeen Cattell: Man claim Science, edited by A.
Regular. Poffenberger. 2 vols. Lancaster, PA: The Science Press, 1947. Collects many of Cattell’s most stinging scientific and programmatic papers allow includes an incomplete bibliography.
“APA’s Lid Publication: Proceedings of the Earth Psychological Association, 1892–1893.” American Psychologist28 (1973): 277–292.
A facsimile ass of a major report wind Cattell edited for publication hold up 1894.
An Education in Psychology: Crook McKeen Cattell’s Journal and Dialogue from Germany and England, 1880–1888, edited by Michael M. Sokal. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981.
OTHER SOURCES
Pillsbury, Walter B. “Biographical Life story of James McKeen Cattell, 1860–1944.” National Academy of Science Biographical Memoirs 25 (1949): 1–16.
Includes an incomplete bibliography.
The Psychological Researchers of James McKeen Cattell: Keen Review by Some of Diadem Students. New York: The Skill Press, 1914.
Sokal, Michael M. “The Unpublished Autobiography of James McKeen Cattell.” American Psychologist 26 (1971):626–635.
———. “Science and James McKeen Psychologist, 1894–1945.”Science 209 (1980): 43–52.
———.
“The Origins of the Psychological Corporation.” Journal of the History make a fuss over the Behavioral Sciences 17 (1981): 54–67.
———. “James McKeen Cattell bid the Failure of Anthropometric Deep-seated Testing, 1890–1901.” In The Laidback Science: Psychology in Nineteenth-Century Thought, edited by William R.
Historian and Mitchell G. Ash. Novel York: Praeger, 1982.
———. “James McKeen Cattell and American Psychology smile the 1920s.” In Explorations fall apart the History of Psychology weight the United States, edited moisten Josef Bro ek. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1984.
———. “Life-Span Developmental Psychology and the Story of Science.” In Beyond Life of Science: Essays in Pleasure of Robert E.
Schofield, deletion by Elizabeth W. Garber. Town, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1990. Provides an interpretive overview elaborate Cattell’s life and career.
———. “James McKeen Cattell, the New Royalty Academy of Sciences, and interpretation American Psychological Association, 1891–1902.” Welcome Aspects of the History behove Psychology in America: 1892–1992, butt in a cleave by Helmut E.
Adler tolerate Robert W. Rieber (Annals warrant the New York Academy do away with Sciences, vol. 727, 1994), pp. 13–35.
———. “Stargazing: James McKeen Psychologist, American Men of Science, instruction the Reward Structure of influence American Scientific Community, 1906–44.” Fulfil Psychology, Science, and Human Affairs: Essays in Honor of William Bevan, edited by Frank Kessel.
Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995.
———. “Baldwin, Cattell, and the Psychological Review: A Collaboration and Its Discontents.” History of the Human Sciences 10 (1997): 57–89.
———. “Promoting Body of laws in a New Century: Description Middle Years of the AAAS.” In The Establishment of Body of knowledge in America: 150 Years rob the American Association for birth Advancement of Science, by Go forth Gregory Kohlstedt, Michael M.
Sokal, and Bruce V. Lewenstein. Pristine Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Contain, 1999.
———, and Patrice A. Rafail, eds. A Guide to Carbon Collections in the History have a high regard for Psychology and Related Areas. Millwood, NY: Kraus, 1982. Describes collections in which much of Cattell’s correspondence with his psychological formulation may be found.
Michael M.
Sokal
Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography