The claims of psychology to a place in the circle of the sciences / sessional address of the President, Mr. Serjeant Cox.

  • Edward William Cox
Date:
[1878]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The claims of psychology to a place in the circle of the sciences / sessional address of the President, Mr. Serjeant Cox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    proofs sustained by evidence; realities, not fictions; facts, not dogmas; things, not dreams and desires. Until you produce such credentials, we cannot recognise you as Scientists or Psychology as a Science.” This Society ad- mitted the validity of the objection, accepted the challenge, and is prepared to fight them with facts, phenomena, proofs, realities, things. What it has already done—the subjects it has already examined—the^hc^s it has already collected, —do therefore entitle it to the recognition it claims. Many attempts have been made, and still will be made, to discredit it by imputing to it objects other than its ostensible one. We entirely and indig- nantly repudiate any such design. We are em- bodied for the sole object expressed in our prospectus— The investigation of the forces by which the Mechanism of Man is moved and directed.” We have never departed, and do not intend to depart, from this public profession of our purpose. We have carefully observed it in all our papers and debates. Many of the subjects comprised in the wide range of great themes, of which I have in this address feebly attempted to present the merest outline, have been treated of in this room, and others of them will engage our attention during the present Session, It would, of course, be impossible to single one class of phenomena from out the multitude that belong to Psychology, and because it chances to be unpopular, refuse to subject it to the same scientific examination as we give to the rest. It would be at once cowardly and unwise to decline to view it, and prove it, and try what worth and truth there is in it. Nor, as Mr. GtLADstone contends, is it sufficient cause for turning away from so much as may be true because charlatans have traded upon credulity and imposture has ministered to a frivolous curiosity. The plain duty of Psychologists is to investigate scientifically, with express purpose to eliminate fraud and falsehood, with the sole design of advancing knowledge, and to possess itself of the residuum of that [257]