|
|
John Gach Books, Inc. 10514 Marriottsville Road (Rear Building) PO Box 267 Randallstown, Maryland 21133 |
|
|
|
John Gach Books, Inc. 10514 Marriottsville Road (Rear Building) PO Box 267 Randallstown, Maryland 21133 |
|
Return to Gach Books home page
New Arrivals
Browse by Date of List
Search our online inventory
Inquire
Jessop p. 95; Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century British Philosophers I: 54-55. A Scottish metaphysician who apparently made his living as a tutor, Baxter wrote several philosophical books, of which this is by far his most important. According to Baxter, matter is not immortal, while the human soul is both immaterial and immortal. Baxter addresses significant mind-body issues, such as whether disembodied life is like embodied life, e.g., can disembodied human souls act, perceive, and remember as they did when embodied? Section VI (pages 196-299) deals entirely with dreaming (expanded in the 1737 second edition into most of the second volume). Baxter argues that dreaming is not just "the effect of mechanism" but "the effect of a living designing cause." Section VII attempts to refute Berkeley's "scheme against the existence of matter."
Jessop p. 95. A Scottish metaphysician who apparently made his living as a tutor, Baxter wrote several philosophical books, of which this is by far his most important. Most of the second volume is devoted to a discussion of dreaming. "The main issues dealt with in it are whether the soul is material or immaterial; whether it is immortal; and, if it is immortal, whether disembodied life is like embodied life. For instance, can disembodied human souls act, perceive and remember just as they did when embodied? Three other subjects discussed in the Enquiry are whether dreaming is 'the effect of mechanism' or 'the effect of a living designing cause' (Baxter opts for the latter); whether Berkeley's 'scheme against the existence of matter' is conclusive (Baxter holds that it is not); and whether matter is eternal (Baxter holds it is not)" [Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century British Philosophers 1: 54-55].
GM-5 4846; Wozniak Mind & Body #56 & page 52. The 2nd edition contains a new 5 page preface."Gathering a potpourri of some three dozen physical and mental symptoms (including insomnia, hyperaesthesia, pain, tinnitus, headache, inability to control the attention, mental irritability, hopelessness, and morbid fears), Beard characterized neurasthenia as a 'functional' nervous disorder. By this he meant simply to express his faith in the unity of the disease and in the eventual identification of an underlying organic pathology. Heavily dependent on the metaphors of the day, Beard conceptualized neurasthenia as a diminution or even complete failure in the power of the nervous system viewed as a closed circuit energized with a fixed quantity of nervous force. Individuals hereditarily underendowed with a supply of nervous energy might, under the varied and pressing demands of 19th century life, suffer in effect from a kind of circuit overload. Treatment, tailored to the individual, typically included some combination of diet, rest (with or without isolation) or work, massage, hydrotherapeutics, laxatives, cathartics, counter-irritants, internal medications, mental therapeutics, and galvanotherapy. … Concern with the peculiar problem of the relationship between mind and the function of the nervous system was no longer restricted to philosophers and scientists. [By the early 1890s] neurasthenia had joined hypnotic trance phenomena, mediumistic spiritualism, hallucinations, insanity, mental health, psychical phenomena, mental healing, and the nature of mind and will as given in consciousness as common currency among educated Americans" [Wozniak p. 52].
GM-5 4995.1 (1884 1st); Norman Catalog 211; Crabtree 1127; Wozniak Mind and Body, #24 & pp. 28-29. An important text for the history of both hypnotism and psychotherapy. Bernheim was the first to treat neuroses hypnotically. Crabtree construes this as a separate book, but I regard it as an enlarged version of the original text.The first part republishes Bernheim's 1884 text that introduced Liébault's work to a broad audience. In it he sharply contrasts his purely psychological conception of hypnotism with Charcot's physiologically based notion, which viewed it as a pathological condition found only in hysterics. In the second and new part of the book "Bernheim discusses suggestion as a therapeutic agent. . . . This work became the basic text used by the adherents of the Nancy School and holds a unique place in the history of hypnotism" [Crabtree].
Grinstein 10365 & 317; Norman Catalog F150 (this copy).
An important text both for the literature of hypnotism and psychotherapy. Bernheim was the first to treat neuroses hypnotically. This second German edition omits the case histories translated for the first German edition by Springer, and contains both Bernheim's foreword for the 1891 French edition an entirely new, much shorter preface by Freud in which he stated that scientific understanding of hypnosis & suggestion had advanced so much as to render his first preface out of date.
Wozniak Mind & Body #50; Atwater Catalog #409. There were three American editions (1832, 1833, & 1845) and seven British editions between 1836 and 1844."At the time, fear was growing that the human nervous system was ill-adapted to cope with the increasing complexity of 'modern' life and that, as a result, insanity was on the increase. Brigham's work was the first published contribution to mental hygiene compiled for popular consumption. Written to stem the 'growing tide of insanity,' it provided the average reader with advice on the proper education of children, the importance of physical health, the dangers of excess mental excitement, and the need for improved education of women. For the first time, the importance of maintaining mental health became part of the American cultural ideal" [Wozniak, p. 49].
Jessop page 105; Wozniak Mind & Body page 36; Hunter & Macalpine, pp. 752-3; Diamond 12.8. Perhaps the last truly important philosophical and psychological work from the Scottish Enlightenment and a book that profoundly influenced thinking in both fields, especially in 19th century America, the predominant philosophy & psychology of which was Scotch-realist until nearly the end of the century.Important in the development of association psychology, Brown solved the problem of objective reference by appealing to the felt resistance of muscular exertion. for the origin or our idea of an external world. Brown linked Berkeley to Lotze und Wundt through his theory of space perception and furthered associationism by postulating the secondary laws of association, termed by Brown laws of suggestion: relative duration of the sensations; their relative liveliness, frequency, & recency; the reinforcement of one idea by many others; individual differences; the attending circumstances. His primary laws were similarity; contrast; spatial & temporal contiguity.
Wozniak Mind and Body #7. Diamond Roots of Psychology #2.6, 8.12, 10.3, 15.11. DSB 3: 1-3; Welcome II, 283 (1824 4th edition only); Edwards, Dictionary of Philosophy 2:3-4. Zusne Names in the History of Psychology #80.One of the foundation texts for physiological psychology, the Rapports first appeared as articles in the Mémoire de l'Institut National from 1798-1801, then as a separate two volume book in 1802. Cabanis' most important work, in which he attempts to explain mental phenomena wholly in terms of physiological states, helped lay the materialist-monist foundation for later 19th century medicine and experimental psychology. Though neither a materialist nor an atheist, Cabanis, who had been trained as a physician and wrote several medical works, helped spread the radical naturalism inaugurated by La Mettrie in the 1740s. It was here that Cabanis famously wrote that "the brain digests impressions and organically excretes thought."
Meynell p. 88.
GM 4968; Heirs of Hippocrates 935; DSB 3: 381; Edwards, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2: 180-182; Diamond 16.6; Wozniak Mind and Body, p. 33; Rieber catalog #114.
- A classic contribution to psychology and a high spot of French Enlightenment philosophy. Stimulated both by Diderot's 1749 book on the blind and by the French translations of Locke and Newton that he had read, Condillac attempted to refute Berkeley's idealism by founding human mental phenomena entirely on sensation, as illustrated by his famous fiction of a statue endowed at first with only the sense of smell. Though Condillac's attempt was not entirely successful (as Wozniak points out, "Condillac's extreme sensationalism runs afoul of the obvious fact of variation … in biological constitution"), nevertheless he influenced just about every 18th century author who wrote on philosophical psychology after the publication of his treatise .
- A clear and highly influential consequence of Condillac's analysis was its conclusion that psychology had perforce to be nominalistic. As Brett wrote, "Condillac thinks that Locke did not really get away from the obsession of innate ideas; he is himself more thorough and tells us that all general ideas are merely ways of regarding special or particular ideas. When we consider similarities we move toward general ideas: if we consider differences we make species; as both are operations of the mind there is no need to assume that the general ideas point to any distinct class of objects, the real universals for example. Psychology, within its own limits, must side with the nominalists" [Brett's History of Psychology, abridged edition, p. 470].
Entirely devoted to psychological topics, with its seven chapters being on natural heritage; on degenerations in man; on moral and criminal epidemics; body v. mind; illusions and hallucinations; on somnambulism; reverie and abstraction.
GM-5 1389; Norman Catalog 862; Heirs of Hippocrates 1159; Wellcome III, p. 84; Brazier Neurophysiology in the 19th Century, pp. 114-117; Clarke & O'Malley Human Brain and Spinal Cord, pp. 392-395, 476-480, 598-602, 825-827; McHenry pp. 146-149; Wozniak Wozniak Mind & Body: Renè Descartes to William James, pp. 15-16 & #12. After Gall and Spurzheim broke up their collaboration in 1813, Gall completed the last two volumes on his own. The text volumes were reset in quarto format and reissued with the atlas, which is how the set is more commonly found. A second edition, revised by Gall, appeared 1822-1825 without the plates but with replies by Gall to his critics, an English edition of which was published in Boston in 1835.
- "Gall and his pupil Spurzheim introduced the theory of localization of cerebral function and made the first attempt to map the cerebral cortex. Gall and Spurzheim's names are usually associated with the pseudoscience of phrenology, which grew out of his attempts to establish the existence of separate loci in the brain for each of its intellectual and emotional functions; his finding, although wrong, contain the seeds not only of the modern theory of cerebral localization of funciton but of comparative psychology and personality theory as well. Gall also revolutionized brain dissection techniques by gently separating the structures with a blunt instrument instead of slicing them with a sharp knife — a method that allowed him to make anatomical observations of fundamental importance" [Norman Catalog].
- "Gall and Spurzheim established the fact that the white matter of the brain consists of nerver fibers and that the gray matter of the cerebral cortex represents the organs of mental activity. They were the first to demonstrate that the trigeminal nerve was not merely attached to the pons, but that it sent its root fibers as far down as the inferior olive in the medulla. In addition, they confirmed once and forever the medullary decussation of the pyramids" [McHenry, Garrison's History of Neurology p. 146].
- "The essence of Gall's method of localization lay in correlating variations in character with variations in external craniological signs. … Gall's assumptions may have been flawed and his followers may have taken his ideas to dogmatic extremes; but there was nothing wrong with his scientific logic or with the rigorous empiricism of his attempt to correlate observable talents with what he believed to be observable indices of the brain. Indeed, it was Gall who lay the foundation for the biologically based, functional psychology that was soon to follow. In postulating a set of innate, mental traits inherited through the form of the cerebral organ, he moved away from the extreme tabula rasa view of sensationalists such as Condillac. For the normative and exclusively intellectual faculties of the sensationalists, Gall attempted to substitute faculties defined in terms of everyday activities of daily life that were adaptive in the surrounding environment and that varied among individuals and between species. For speculation concerning both the classification of functions and appropriate anatomical units, he substituted objective observation" [Wozniak, pp. 15-16].
Argues for a correlative psycho-physical interactionism, a compromise between parallelism and interactionism. Han was In 1922 Associate Professor of Psychology and Logic in the National University of Peking.
Norman Catalog 1003; Rieber Catalog 189; Diamond 13.8 & 22.7; Boring 1950 pp. 193-99; Wozniak Mind & Body #29, p.33. The foundation text for association psychology, often regarded as the first physiological psychology, since Hartley "consistently and consecutively stated his propositions in mental and physical terminology" [Zusne, p. 42].Hartley's most influential book — although its influence lay in the 19th rather than the 18th century, the first edition attracting little notice. Hartley's views on sensation were taken directly from Newton's Principia, while his theory of vibrations was inspired by the latter's Optics. Both physiological psychology and associationism derive from this book.
For his abridgment of of Hartley's little-read 1749 treatise Priestley omitted most of the first volume, which dealt almost entirely with Hartley's theory of vibrations, and included only material relating to the association of ideas, though he did devote the 17 pages of his first introductory essay to Hartley's doctrine of vibrations. His second introductory essay (pages xxii-xlvi) gives a general view of the doctrine of association of ideas. Priestly reproduces Hartley's complete original table-of-contents, including the sections omitted in his abridgment.Hartley's most influential book — although its influence lay in the 19th rather than the 18th century, the first edition attracting little notice. Priestley's edition drew attention to Hartley's ideas, making the association of ideas part of mainstream psychology, albeit in the 19th rather than the 18th century. Hartley's views on sensation were taken directly from Newton's Principia, while his theory of vibrations was inspired by the latter's Optics. Both physiological psychology and associationism derive from this book.
Volume 3 is titled Notes and Additions to Dr. Hartley's Observations on Man by Herman Andrew Pistorius … Translated from the German original … to which is prefixed a Sketch of the Life and Character of Dr. Hartley. Also published in a single 4to volume and reprinted in 1801. This is the best and most complete edition, restoring the important section on the theory of vibrations which Priestley had deleted from his 1775 edition.Hartley's most influential book - although its influence lay in the 19th rather than the 18th century, the first edition attracting little notice. Hartley's views on sensation were taken direct from Newton's Principia, while his theory of vibrations was inspired by the latter's Optics. Both physiological psychology and associationism derive from this book.
GM-5 1513; Cushing H231; Waller 4299; Heirs of Hippocrates 1887; Wozniak Body & Mind #41 & pp. 42-43 [all the 1st German]. Translation of the 1909-11 3rd revised edition.
- "Because Helmholtz's name is linked so closely with physics and electrophysiology, it is sometimes forgotten that he was a physician who held posts at a number of prominent medical schools. It was during his tenure at Heidelberg that this monumental treatise on optics was written. Originally issued in parts between 1856 and 1866, the work provided the first real descriptoin of optical physiology including the mechanism of accomodation, the phenomenon of color vision, and the measurement of lens curvature" [Heirs].
- This and Helmholtz's 1863 Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen "defined the problematic for the experimental psychology of visual and auditory perception for decades to follow. In the Optik Helmholtz extended Müller's doctrine of the specific energies of nerves to offer a comprehensive theory of color vision and a famous unconscious inference theory of perception. In the theory of color vision, Helmholtz reasoned that just as the differences between sensations of sound and light reflect the specific qualities of auditory and visual nerves, sensations of color may depend on different kinds of nerves within the visual system. Since the laws of color mixture suggest that virtually all hues can be obtained by various combinations of three primary colors, it seemed to Helmholtz that the perceived hue, brightness, and saturation of color must be derived from varying activity in three primary kinds of nerve fibers in the eye.
- In his theory of perception, Helmholtz started from the recognition that Müller's doctrine of specific nerve energies implied the fact that sensations do not provide direct access to objects and events but only serve the mind as signs of reality. Perception, on this view, requires an active, unconscious, automatic, logical process on the part of the perceiver which utilizes the information provided by sensation to infer the properties of external objects and events. In this regard, Helmholtz anticipated much of later top-down cognitive psychology" [Wozniak pp. 42-43].
Boring History of Experimental Psychology, 2nd ed., pp. 251-261 (from which the quotes are taken); Diamond Roots of Psychology 25.4; Brett A History of Psychology Vol. III, pp. 43-62; Jones Life and Work of Sigmund Freud Vol. I, pp. 371-374; Klein A History of Scientific Psychology, pp. 760-773; Wozniak Mind and Brain #35 & p. 37. Herbart's second and most important book on psychology, and the Ursprung for modern psychology through its direct influence on Fechner and Wundt, and its indirect influence on Freud. Herbart regarded psychology as a scientific enterprise founded on experience, albeit not experimental, descriptive or physiological. Nonetheless, the differences in the intensities of ideas ("Vorstellungen") were measurable, direct consequences of which were his notions of the limen or threshhold of consciousness, and of the ability of ideas to retain influence while unconscious. As Boring pointed out, Fechner invented experimental psychology by uniting Herbart's mathematics with Weber's use of experiment. Herbart's concept of the limen "might almost be said to have made psychophysics possible." Wundt drew on Herbart's exposition of a doctrine of the unconscious to explain perception by unconscous inference, while Fechner took from Herbart "the notion of the measurement of the magnitude of conscious data, the notion of analysis, and most important of all, the notion of the limen. … The conception of active ideas striving for realization … [affected] abnormal psychology greatly. Freud's early description of the unconscious might almost have come directly from Herbart, although it did not."Born at Oldenburg, Herbart studied with Fichte at Jena and gave his first philosophical lectures at Göttingen around 1805. In 1809 he assumed Kant's position as professor of philosophy at Königsberg. In 1833 he returned to Göttingen, where he remained as professor of philosophy until his death.
Fay page 120; Wozniak Mind & Body: Renè Descartes to William James p. 50 & #53.
One of the most important pre-Jamesian psychological texts and the second significant American contribution to epistemology (after Jonathan Edwards). In our experience the first edition is quite rare. Persius, "generally considered to be America's first systematic philosopher, was born in Bethel, Connecticut and educated at Union College, where he served as Professor of Mental and Moral Pilosophy from 1855-1866 and as President from 1866 to his retirement in 1868. The fundamental principle on which Hickock based his philosophical system was the essential compatibility of rational and empirical modes of thought. Whereas ideas are tested in the empirical domain by their experimental consequences and in the rational domain by their internal coherence, properly carried out, both methods will lead to the same facts and principles and neither approach should be neglected in favor of the other. In keeping with this principle, Hickock published both a Rational Psychology (1849) and, in 1854, an Empirical Psychology" [Wozniak p. 50].
Wozniak catalog #62.
The greatest book ever published on the psychology of religion.
Wozniak Mind and Body #32 and pp. 34-35; Warda 195.
- Kant's major contribution to the nascent disciplines of psychiatry & psychology in which he classified the mental diseases and analyzed sensation, imagination, & feeling, concluding that the study of man could not be scientific since it was not mathematizable.
- A bona fide psychological treatise, "[l]ong ignored, probably in part because of its pronounced sympathy for a soon to be discredited physiognomy, the Anthropologie is, nonetheless, a fascinating little book. Here Kant analyzes the nature of the cognitive powers, feelings of pleasure and displeasure, affects, passions, and character in the context of a denial of the possibility of an empirical science of conscious process. The Anthropologie went through two editions during Kant's lifetime and several later printings and helped to define the context within which not only Herbart and Fechner but phenomenologically oriented physiologists such as Purkyne, Weber, and Müller worked to establish the science of conscious phenomena that Kant was unable to envision" [Wozniak, page 35].
Laurie was Professor of Education at the University of Edinburgh and Gifford Lecturer there 1905-06.
Two texts in German, all others in French or Latin.
"In the Syst&me nouveau de la nature (1695) and the Eclaircissement du nouveau sisteme (1696), Leibniz presented the famous articulation of psychophysical parallelism in which he adapted an occasionalist metaphor to support the view that soul and body exist in a pre-established harmony. Comparing soul and body to two clocks that agree perfectly, Leibniz argued that there are only three possible sources for this agreement. It may occur through mutual influence (interactionalism), through the efforts of a skilled workman who regulates the clocks and keeps them in accord (occasionalism), or by virtue of the fact that they have been so constructed from the outset that their future harmony is assured (parallelism). Leibniz rejects interactionism because it is impossible to conceive of material particlews passing from one substance to the other and occasionalism as invoking the intervention of a Deus ex machina in a natural series of events. All that remains is parallelism — the notion that mind and body exist in a harmony that has been pre-established by God from the moment of creation" [Wozniak Mind and Body: René to William James, p. 8].
Wozniak Mind & Body: Renè Descartes to William James #10. Largely devoted to discussion of the nervous system, animal automatism, and the reflex theory.The classic formulation of dual-aspect monism. Lewes held that mental and physical descriptions were not intertranslatable and, thus, that the psychological was not reducible to the physical.
GM #4967. PMM #164; Wozniak Mind & Body #27 (all the first edition); Yolton 64; Oxford Companion to Philosophy, p. 62 ("associationism"); Brett History of Psychology, 2: 262-263 and Diamond Roots of Psychology 12.3 (both the 4th edition); Hunter & Macalpine, pp. 236-239 (1st & 4th editions). The penultimate lifetime edition, the last lifetime edition issued with the frontis portrait, and—other than the first—the most important edition, for it is in this edition that Locke added the chapter on the association of ideas (Book II Chapter XXXIII), as well as a chapter on enthusiasm. Locke's chapter title—though not his actual discussion of the subject—is the origin of associationism, as elaborated much later by Hartley, Hume, James Mill, and Bain and, mistaken interpretation or not, is consensually regarded as the Ursprung of experimental psychology as opposed to merely speculative philosophical psychology.
- The foundation text for empirical psychology and the beginning of British empiricism. One of the great books in the history of thought. Of this 4th edition Diamond wrote: "Locke, who was too reasonable a man to be even a thoroughgoing empiricist …, was not at all an associationist. Association had no part in the original Essay, but in the fourth edition he added a chapter pointing to the chance 'connexion of ideas' (probably his rendering of 'liaison des idées,' which he would have met in Malebranche) as a major source of error in thinking. The more fortunate phrase, association of ideas, occurs only in the chapter title and is perhaps derived from the word consociatione which Molyneux used in the Latin edition which was being prepared simultaneously and for which the chapter was indeed written. In time, however, this phrase became so riveted to Locke's name that the later associationists came to look upon him as their founder" [Diamond p. 281].
- "In the chapter 'Of Association of Ideas' which first appeared in the fourth edition … Locke continued where Hobbes had left off and showed that feelings as well as ideas were associated and aroused in the same way. Recognition of this fact has given psychotherapy one of its important tools. Locke explained by it how a person might react emotionally to a certain situation without necessarily knowing why and in this foresaw the mechanism Freud called transference. … Locke anticipated also the psychological 'complexes' which have dominated psychopathology in modern times" [Hunter & Macalpine]. Locke also articulated the classical distinction between idiocy and madness (Chapter XI, sect. 12 & 13, page 77 in the 4th edition), which remained the standard right up to modern times.
GM #4967. PMM #164; Wozniak Mind & Body #27 (all the first edition); Yolton 65. The last lifetime edition.The foundation text for empirical psychology and the beginning of British empiricism. One of the great books in the history of thought.
The principal proponent of Cartesianism, Malebranche studied philosophy at the Collège de la Marche and theology at the Sorbonne; in 1660 he joined the congregation of the Oratory, becoming a priest in 1664. He is most famous for his 1674 On the Search for Truth. His last book, this is his major statement on free will and physical determinism.
Collie Henry Maudsley: Victorian Psychiatrist A.2b; Wozniak Classics in Psychology, pp. 26-29.The most complete exposition of Maudsley's radically monist views. Maudsley's insistence throughout his life on the dependence of mental functions upon body events is, in fact, his major contribution to psychiatry. Maudsley "championed a mind/body view that might best be called aterialist functionalism,' a view that is probably still the predominant position among modern psychologists and psychiatrists. The essence of this perspective is an unwavering belief in the functional dependence of mind on body and brain" [Wozniak Classics, p. 27].
Zusne Biographical Dictionary of Psychology, pp. 308-9; Norman Catalog 1568 (original German edition); DSB: 567-74; Wozniak Mind and Body #38 & pp. 38-39. The first textbook of physiology (first published in German in four parts from 1833 to 1840) and a key book in the emergence of the still-dominant monist-materialist model in medicine and psychology. A vastly influential text. Müller's doctrine of specific nerve energies, of great importance in the history of psychology, first became widely known through his Handbuch.
- "Müller's work began a new era in the study of physiology: he pioneered the use of experimental methods in medicine, introduced the element of psychology into physiological investigation … and made the first attempts to explain physiological problems in terms of existing comparative physical and chemical knowledge" [Norman Catalog].
- "Fundamentally, the doctrine [of specific nerve energies] involved two cardinal principles. The first of these principles was that the mind is directly aware not of objects in the physical world but of states of the nervous system. The nervous system, in other words, serves as an intermediary between the world and the mind and thus imposes its own nature on mental processes. The second was that the qualities of the sensory nerves of which the mind receives knowledge in sensation are specific to the various senses, the nerve of vision being normally as insensible to sound as the nerve of audition is to light" [Wozniak p. 39].
Contains chapters on the reciprocity of bodily & mental influence applied to education; phrenology; materialism; mental properties, their healthful tendencies & disordered influence; mental diseases; influence of mind over body; influence of body over mind. In his bibliography of hypnotism Adam Crabtree noted that Newnham was probably the first 19th century English writer to write about the importance of animal magnetism (in his 1830 Essay on Superstition).Like his father, a general practitioner in Farnham, Surrey, Newnham had studied medicine at Guy's Hospital and in Paris. The DNB notes that he was a favorite pupil of Astley Cooper and was an early member of the group that turned into the British Medical Association. Also a member of the Royal Society of Literature, Newnham published both medical works and books relating to religion, mental philosophy, and psychology.
Wozniak Mind & Body #11; Sadoff Catalog page 62.
Prince's first book and the classic formulation of psychical monism. Based on Prince's medical thesis at Harvard, for which he won the Boylston Prize. Prince here "concerned himself with justifying the intuitive belief that our thoughts have something to do with the production of our actions. … After rejecting parallelism as being at variance with this intuition, Prince presented the classic formulation of the mind-stuff metaphysic: 'instead of there being one substance with two properties or "aspects," — mind and motion, — there is one substance, mind; and the other apparent property, motion, is only the way in which this real substance, mind, is apprehended by a second organims: only the sensations of, or effect upon, the second organism, when acted upon (ideally) by the real substance, mind' (pp. 28-29). For Prince, in other words, the psychical monism of mind-stuff constituted a modern form of immaterialism" [Wozniak Mind and Body: From René Descartes to William James, p. 14 & #11].
Fay p.110; Wozniak Mind & Body: Renè Descartes to William James, p.50. An early American female contribution to psychology and mental philosophy.Born Elizabeth Stryker in New Utrecht, Long Island and educated by private tutors, Ricord married Dr. J. B. Ricord in 1810 and opened in 1829 a seminary for young ladies in Geneva, New York, of which she was principal until 1842. "What makes Ricord's work virtually unique for her period is her expressed concern with gender differencess in character, especially a perceived lack in women of habits of patient attention. This she ascribes to the fact that: 'The first perceptions of their minds are directed to the minutia of domestic concerns … the system adopted for their education has in a measure cut them off from the studies that help to form character … the time alloted them in the pursuit of science, has not been sufficient to establish such settled habits of thought, as might in after life help them to resist the vagaries of fantasy' (p. 134). Ricord, like [Catherine] Beecher, was dedicated to raising the status of women through education; and, like Beecher, she made the study of the mind a starting point for that effort" [Wozniak, p. 50].
Wozniak Mind & Body #45; Fay p. 71. One of the first significant native American contributions to psychology in general and to physiological psychology in particular.
- "Rush's psychology was most strongly influenced by the eminent British philosopher, David Hartley. Hartley meshed the 18th-century concepts of motion and Newtonian physics into his theory of the nervous system wherein he postulated that vibrations of minute particles of nervous ether caused nervous impulses which resulted in communication. According to Hartley, the mind is a 'tabula ras' on which these vibrations project perceptions; through the process of association, these perceptions fill the mind with ideas. Rush abstracted this vibrations concept into simple motion, and made association but one of his six operations of the mind.
- Patterning his theory after the Scottish school of mental philosophy, Rush postulated that there existed in the mind certain basic capacities or faculties. These faculties were innate but could be stimulated into action and growth. Following Aristotelian terminology, he called these mental faculties 'internal senses.' His choice of nine faculties is a considerable extension of the traditional three: reason, emotion and will, but falls far below the numbers given by the Scottish school. Rush grouped these nine faculties into three categories: the moral faculties included the moral faculty proper, conscience, and sense of deity; the intellectual faculties incorporated understanding, memory, and imagination. The remaining three were the passions, will, and the principle of faith (the 'believing faculty'). Each faculty had separate powers but coordinated with the other eight. This type of theory, when combined with the idea that each faculty was represented by a separate area in the brain, secured popular acceptance in the 19th century as Prhenology — a term Rush may have introduced, not for the movement but to designate his own medical psychology" [Eric Carlson's introduction to Benjamin Rush, M.D.: Two Essays on the Mind, Brunner/Mazel, 1972, pp. viii-ix].
Wozniak Mind & Body #15.
A monumentally important book, Spencer's Principles marked a turning point in the history of psychology by grounding psychology in evolutionary biology. "Spencer stressed three basic evolutionary principles that transformed his view of mind and brain into one to which the cortical localization of function was a simple logical corollary. In so doing he lay the groundwork for Hughlings Jackson's evolutionary conception of the nervous system and extension of the sensory-motor organizational hypothesis to the cerebrum. Spencer's key principles were adaptation, continuity, and development" [Wozniak Mind and Body, p. 19].
Not in OCLC.
Crabtree 1988 #949.
"Hearing of a man who had been cured of rheumatism by the shock of being in a railway accident, Tuke decided to devote his attention to the influence of the mind upon the body. The resultant work which contains numerous case illustrations, investigates the influence of the mind, the emotions, and the will on the nervous and muscular systems, and then takes up the influence of the mind on the body in the cure of disease. In a long discussion of the nature of imagination and its part in the process, Tuke compares the adherents of animal magnetism (mesmerism) to those who see purely psychological forces operating in magnetic healing" {Crabtree].
Wozniak Mind & Body: Renè Descartes to William James #48; Fay American Psychology Before William James, pp. 91-109; Roback History of American Psychology, pp. 50-54. Preceded by the publication in 1826 of the first 13 chapters under the same title by J. Griffin in Brunswick (we've never seen a copy). Published anonymously without Upham's name on the title-page, this was the first textbook of mental philosophy (i.e., psychology) and the most influential American textbook of psychology before James. Mostly an exposition along Lockean & Scottish-realist lines, Upham's book has long sections on language, thought, & signs. Immensely popular—there were many editions into the 1860's—Upham kept revising it, especially the section on language.Upham was professor of mental and moral philosophy at Bowdoin (originally appointed professor of metaphysics and ethics Feb 1825). His book was based on his lectures at Bowdoin on the understanding of the human mind (Longfellow and Hawthorne were in his first class). In 1831 he enlarged the work to two volumes, retitling it Elements of Mental Philosophy — a much more explicitly psychological title than the Scottish-derived "Intellectual" of the first edition. While in the 1827 book Upham resisted any classification of mind, in its 1831 incarnation he argued that the operations of mind fell naturally into two categories: intellect and sentience. With the publication in 1834 of his Philosophical and Practical Treatise on the Will, Upham expanded his classificatory scheme to include volition as a third high level category. Upham represents both the culmination of the Puritan tradition in philosophy and the foundation for an indigenous American psychological tradition. "Generally eclectic in his orientation, Upham drew the major inspiration for the first edition of his textbook from Locke and Reid, turning more heavily to Brown in later editions. His treatment of will reflected an attempt to reach a compromise between an ontological pre-determinism inherited from his Calvinist ancestors and the evidence of consciousness as to mental freedom. Indeed, Upham's most important contribution to American thought and culture may have been the extent to which he introduced generations of American students to the exploration of human conscious experience as a source of psychological understanding" [Wozniak p. 48].
Wozniak Mind & Body: Renè Descartes to William James #48; Fay American Psychology Before William James, pp. 91-109; Roback History of American Psychology, pp. 50-54.
Wozniak Mind & Body: Renè Descartes to William James page 48 & #48; Fay American Psychology Before William James, pp. 91-109; Roback History of American Psychology, pp. 50-54. A complete reworking of his 1827 Elements of Intellectual Philosophy, the first textbook of mental philosophy (i.e., psychology). This incarnation is much less Lockean than the 1827 book, relying much more on Thomas Reid, Thomas Brown, and Dugald Stewart—the appendix "Of the Varieties of Intellectual Character" is taken from Volume Third of Stewart's Elements of the Human Mind. Where in 1827 Upham had imposed no classificatory scheme on the operations of mind, here he has decidedly done so, the text being divided into the following sections: Introduction. Part First: Immateriality and General Laws of the Mind. Part Second, Class I: Intellectual States of the Mind, of External Origin. Part Second, Second Class: Intellectual States of Internal Origins. Part Third: Language or Signs of Mental States. Part Fourth: Sentient States of the Mind, Class First: Emotions; Class Second: Desires. Part Fifth: Disordered Mental Action. Part the Fifth contains two chapters: "Excited Conceptions or Apparitions"; and "Mental Alienation."The most influential American textbook of psychology before James, which Upham kept revising and fiddling with until the definitive state of the text appeared in 1869. Upham was professor of mental and moral philosophy at Bowdoin College. With the publication in 1834 of his Philosophical and Practical Treatise on the Will, Upham expanded his classificatory scheme to include volition as a third high level category comparable to intellect and sentience. "Generally eclectic in his orientation, Upham drew the major inspiration for the first edition of his textbook from Locke and Reid, turning more heavily to Brown in later editions. His treatment of will reflected an attempt to reach a compromise between an ontological pre-determinism inherited from his Calvinist ancestors and the evidence of consciousness as to mental freedom. Indeed, Upham's most important contribution to American thought and culture may have been the extent to which he introduced generations of American students to the exploration of human conscious experience as a source of psychological understanding" [Wozniak p. 48].
University of Pennsylvania medical thesis in which the author advocated psychophysical parallelism.
DSB XI:199-201; GM 1457; not in the Norman Catalogue (which means he never found a decent copy to buy); not in Heirs of Hippocrates; not in Waller; Boring's History of Experimental Psychology, 2nd ed., pp. 110-113; Zusne's Biographical Dictionary of Psychology, p. 454; Wozniak Mind and Brain ##37 & page 38. Weber "introduced new methods of measuring sensitivity, establishing perception as an experimental rather than an observational discipline. Working initially with the discrimination of lifted weights, Weber demonstrated that the smallest appreciable difference was a constant fraction of their actual weights. … [He went on to propose] a general law of discrimination that applied to all modalities but with fractions specific to the judgments involved. … He introduced the use of calipers to measure two-point thresholds on the skin surface and found that sensitivity varied enormously, with greatest sensitivity around the lips and least on the trunk. The magnitude of the thresholds depended on the areas of the skin stimulated, which led Weber to introduce the concept of sensory circles—areas on the skin surface that can result in the stimulation of a single peripheral nerve. … His work represents a distinct shift in the psychology of perception from philosophy towards physiology, from speculation to experimentation, and from qualitative to quantitative approaches" [Nicholas J. Wade, Perception and Illusion, pp. 137-138]%%"Whereas Purkyne had shown the value of applying the experimental method to the phenomenology of sensation, Weber extended the approach beyond experimentation to quantification" [Wozniak, p. 38].Weber spent his entire professional career at the University of Leipzig, where in 1817 he qualified as docent with a thesis on the comparative anatomy of the nervus sympathicus, was appointed the following year professor extraordinarius of comparative anatomy, and in 1821 was nominated to the chair of human anatomy, which in 1840 was joined with physiology. Though the bulk of the present work is devoted to the sense of touch (pages 44-175), in De pulsu Weber "showed that the pulse is a wave in the arteries caused by the heart action and that its propagation … is much faster than the flow of blood …" [DSB XI, p. 200]. He more fully developed the ideas first broached here in De tactu in his 1846 "Der Tastsinn und das Gemeingefühl", published as the section on touch in Wagner's Handwörterbuch der Physiologie. De tactu and "Der Tastsinn" were translated into English in 1978.
GM-5 1463 (citing the journal appearances but mistakenly omitting the book); Heirs of Hippocrates 1981; Wozniak Mind and Body #40 & pp. 41-42; DSB XIV. Wundt's second—and first psychological—book, consisting of six papers originally published in the Zeitschrift für rationelle Medicin 1858-1862 (in vols. 4, 7, 12, 14, 15). For their publication in book form Wundt added an important 22 page introduction, "Ueber die Methoden in der Psychologie," in which he stressed—in quite modern-sounding terms—the need for psychology to be empirical and based on induction.
- "Carrying out much of his experimental work in his own home and on his own time, Wundt began the study of sense perception that led to a series of publications collected, in 1872, as his Beiträge zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmung. … In these articles, Wundt provided the basics of a psychological theory of the perception of space (including some discussion of the need for unconscious inference, apparently arrived at in independence of Helmholtz [whose assistant at Heidelberg Wundt was], reviewed the history of theories of vision, analyzed the psychological function of sensations arising from visual accomodation and eye movement, presented the results of experiments on binocular contrast effects and stereoscopic fusion, and argued, contra Herbart, that the content of consciousness at a given instant always consists of a single, unconsciously integrated percept.
- Although the body of the Beiträge is important in its own right for exemplifying the direction that Wundt' work was taking, it is his introduction on method, written specifically for the Beiträge, which marked the emergence of Wundt's plan for an experimental psychology. Rejecting a metaphysical foundation for psychology, Wundt argued for the need to transcend the limitations of the direct study of consciousness through the use of genetic, comparative, statistical, historical, and, particularly, experimental methods. Only in this way, he suggested, would it be possible to come to a needed understanding of conscious phenomena as 'complex products of the unconscious mind' (p. xvi)" [Wozniak pp. 41-42].
Wozniak Mind & Body #43 & page 48; Norman Catalog #2270.Section 2: Mind/Body, Nonantiquarian Books
First published in two fascicules 1873-74, Wundt's Grundzüge went through five revisions. "Wundt first conceived a physiological psychology in 1858 while working as an assistant to Helmholtz, and produced two works on the subject before producing the Grundzüge, which made his reputation" [Norman catalog]. Systematically covering the range of psychological fact, the Grundzüge — though titled a "physiological psychology" — was Wundt's "great argument for an experimental psychology" (Boring 1950, p. 323).
Return to Gach Books home page
New Arrivals
Browse by Date of List
Search our online inventory