The teacher's handbook of psychology : on the basis of "Outlines of psychology" / by James Sully.

  • James Sully
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The teacher's handbook of psychology : on the basis of "Outlines of psychology" / by James Sully. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    44/616 (page 24)
    General Knowledge of Mind. As has been ob- served, science consists of generalised knowledge, that is, of knowledge expressed in the general form. Psychology after collecting observations of mental facts or pheno- mena proceeds to generalise by arranging or classifying these facts. In this way it reaches the conception of a class or group of facts, e.g., “an emotion ”. In so doing it overlooks the differences between fear, anger, and other varieties, and fixes its attention on their com- mon features or characters. A good scientific classifica- tion of the several varieties of psychical phenomena is a matter of great practical importance, whether we are dealing with mind in the earlier or in the later stages of development. Thus the teacher will be in a far better position to understand and to act beneficially upon a child’s mind when he is able, through the possession of good general conceptions, to reduce in his thought its intricate tangle of processes to order and simplicity. The last and most important stage of the generalising process of scientific investigation is Induction or the discovery of laws. Such Induction is in the physical sciences mostly concerned with what is known as causal dependence. Thus the chemist seeks to discover the conditions on which the fusion or separation of elements depends, the physiologist the conditions of diet, etc., which favour health and disease.^ Psychology is also concerned with this problem of causal dependence. Thus ^ Induction, which will be explained more fully-by-and by, means reasoning from observations of particular facts to some principle which they illustrate. On the meaning of the terms laio and coiidition as used in science see above (pp. 4 and 9).