Chris: You gave a thoughtful answer to the MS's original query. It reminded me of a little story that you may not have heard about the origin of gestalt psychology . Here goes: one evening, Wertheimer invited Kohler, and Koffka over to his apartment for a pasta dinner. When they arrived, Koffka mentioned how good everything smelled. Werthiemer said that he would appreciate their help carrying in the containers of various sauces he had prepared. After a little wine, he said it was time to eat and they went to the kitchen to bring things out to the dining room. K&K each carried one of the sauce containers and Wertheimer brought the pasta that was in an enormous cauldron. It was heavy, and Wertheimer was a little unsteady from the drinks and, as he stumbled on the doorsill into the DR, the droped the pasta kettle. Well, it was so big and heavy that it crashed right through the floor into the apartment below. Koffka came over and asked if W were OK, looked where the kettle had fallen though, and exclaimed, "That hole is bigger than some of these pots!" Thus was born ...
Perhaps you've already heard this; it was first told to me ca. 1965 at Buffalo by my mentor, Bill Hayes. (Running and ducking) David ----------------- >>> "Christopher D. Green" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 05/07/08 3:37 PM >>> Stuart McKelvie wrote: > Could a case be made for the first systematic approach to what we know today > as neuroscience as emanating from the lab and pen of Donald Olding Hebb > (Organization of Behaviour, 1949)? He studied at Chicago with Lashley, who I think would have a better claim than Dear Old D.O. Jack Orbach has even argued that "Lashley anticipated Hebb's introduction of the reverberatory circuit by some 12 years." (http://www.cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/cgi/psyc/ptopic?topic=lashley-hebb) Returning to Michael's original question, I think that the notion of a "school" is problematic here. It was a carry over from Germany, where a "school of thought" arose at literal *school* where one professor expounded a particular view and students were expected to fall in line: Wundt at Leipzig, Stumpf at Berlin, GE Mueller at Goettingen, etc. Although many textbooks (following Boring, who followed Titchener) like to talk about American "schools" of psychology, that only really ever happened with at Cornell (Titchener) and Chicago (Dewey & Angell, and even there....). Even at Harvard, James was balanced out by a number of competing voices (e.g., Muensterberg), and James never really had a "doctrine" for his students to follow (except for, perhaps, pragmatic philosophy, which manifested itself in so many different ways it could hardly be called a "doctrine"). Ironically, because Canadian schools followed the British college model more closely that the American, there were traditional "schools" of psychological thought up here more so than in the US, but they are not known to psychologists today because they followed the old "mental science" model: John (not-B) Watson at Queens, John Clark Murray at McGill, George Paxton Young at Toronto. The equivalent in the US would be people like James McCosh at Princeton, Noah Porter at Yale, etc. (though they rose to be college presidents). Regards, Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ phone: 416-736-2100 ext. 66164 fax: 416-736-5814 --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
