| At the turn of the century, E. B. Titchener and J. R. Angell argued at some length about the problems of experimental psychology and philosphy. Tichener (1898, 1910) expressed his views in a system that he called "structural" psychology, and Angell (1903, 1907) expressed his views in a system that he called "functional" psychology. Titchener and Angell disagreed not only about the definition of the subject matter of scientific psychology, but also about the assumptions, experimental methods, and objectives that were required for psychology to be scientific. The two systems of psychology incorporated contrasting philosophical points of view, and Titchener and Angell discussed philosophical issues in detail. Their arguments about the relation of psychological to philosophical problems are written in a style appropriate to an earlier period. But in this dissertation, I demonstrated that these arguments are similar to arguments between contemporary psychologists who call their systems "cognitive" psychology and "ecological" psychology. The reason for the similarity in arguments is that the structural and cognitive systems are based on one set of assumptions, and the functional and ecological systems are based on another set of assumptions. Contemporary cognitive and ecological psychologists are arguing about some of the same things that Titchener and Angell argued about over seventy years ago. |
