On methodological pluralism,context,and misinterpretation in the historiography of psychology: A reply to Brock and Burman

The advantages of methodological pluralism over dogmatism

Brock refers to my book not only here (Brock, 2017), but also in his reply to Lovett (Brock, 2016, p. 2), which leads to the conclusion that he has read it. Unfortunately, from the “arguments” he presents, it is not obvious that he understood it, assuming he has read it. However, even if he did not read or understand my book, his claims could have benefitted from the examples I offered in the article to which he responded. Regrettably, he ignores them, which, in my view, caused him to misunderstand my primary goal and crucial passages of that paper. Let us examine this in detail, by way of five points.

Brock (2017) begins his reply with a false attribution, namely, that I argued that the social historians in general, and Danziger in particular, neglect philosophy. He repeats this several times throughout the text (e.g., pp. 109, 113, 114). Yet he never provides the concrete passage(s) or a direct quote in which I state this, which it would be impossible to do because I in fact never made any such assertion. Instead, what I did say is that “social histories of psychology cannot address fully [emphasis added] some deep theoretical and conceptual issues underlying psychological projects, which demand a more careful philosophical analysis than is usually offered [emphasis added]” (Araujo, 2017, p. 92). Indeed, how could I have stated what Brock claims, given the fact that in different moments of my book, I recognize and discuss Danziger’s and Kusch’s respective philosophical analyses (Araujo, 2016)? Replying to something that has never been said is not the best way to begin a debate.

A second misunderstanding arises from the relationship between my paper and Lovett’s critique of the new history (Lovett, 2006). In his reply to Lovett, Brock implies, after quoting a passage from my book, that I have “uncritically accepted” Lovett’s article (Brock, 2016, p. 2). Now, in his reply to me, he maintains that I “rely heavily” on Lovett’s critique (Brock, 2017, p. 109). Yet Brock does not explain that he stops his quote precisely at the point where I say what is missing in Lovett’s critique, which demonstrates precisely the opposite of what Brock implied, namely, that I was engaging critically with Lovett’s text. Moreover, the fact that I make positive reference to some of Lovett’s article does not mean that I approve of all of his arguments. To be sure, I accept some points, for which I present independent evidence. Moreover, I do recognize the merits of his paper, although it was not my aim to discuss all of its virtues and shortcomings. But most important for this current exchange, my argument is entirely independent of the correctness of Lovett’s previous critique, as I demonstrate. According to Brock’s logic, however, one cites therefore one “relies heavily.”

Brock’s third misunderstanding pertains to my critique of Danziger. The problem of consistency, as I defend in my paper, has nothing to do with whether or not Danziger’s social constructionism is realist, a topic that in itself deserves more attention, but which goes beyond my goals herein. My critique is logical and methodological, not ontological; this is a crucial difference that seemingly escapes Brock’s attention. As I have stated, Danziger promises, in his Constructing the Subject (Danziger, 1990), something that he does not fulfil: a social constructionist explanation of Wundt’s theoretical positions. In order to illustrate my point, I use the case of introspection. Instead of a social construction of introspection, Danziger offers vague and disparate attributions of social influence, complemented by a very selective and, in my view, superficial conceptual analysis (very close to the “old” history of ideas he criticizes), without explaining how they cohere in logical and methodological terms. For example, there is no mention of how the epistemological intricacies of Wundt’s three different concepts related to the introspective method (reine Selbstbeobachtung, innere Wahrnehmung, and experimentelle Selbstbeobachtung) have been socially constructed. Similarly, there is nothing to indicate just how Locke’s and Kant’s respective positions were socially constructed. In other words, the fact that Danziger alludes to social factors at some points (and not in others) is insufficient to address—and does not constitute an explanation of—Wundt’s theoretical and methodological positions, let alone his philosophical system. This is the problem of consistency that I have pointed out. However, this is not to say that Danziger’s book has no merits, or that his analyses have not brought new insights to Wundt scholarship. My point was rather to specify the limits of his approach using the same historical character (Wundt) as case study. Brock ignores all this, and his reply only repeats what Danziger has already said, which obviously does not address the problem of consistency.

This brings me to the fourth point. Regarding introspection, there is not one, but a series of misunderstandings, ranging from conceptual confusion to misreading. First, Brock criticizes my claim that introspection was a key methodological concept in Wundt’s psychology, saying that my view is “the polar opposite” of Danziger’s and Kusch’s respective analyses (Brock, 2017, p. 110). The problem here is that Brock conflates different meanings of the term “introspection” and ignores a crucial note in my paper: “in the way I use the term ‘introspection’—as a class concept that embraces all the varieties of introspective practice (self-observation, inner perception, retrospection, self-report, etc.)—it also applies to Wundt” (Araujo, 2017, p. 101). This means that I use “introspection” as an umbrella term, one which receives different specifications depending on the context or issue at stake, as I have done in the case of Wundt (Araujo, 2016, pp. 176–180). Therefore, the opposition suggested by Brock disappears as soon as one understands that I was using the term in its more general meaning, which embraces all the particular instances. In this case, then, my interpretation is not the opposite of Danziger’s, as I have recognized (Araujo, 2016, pp. 176–180). It is curious to note that Brock ignored my conceptual clarification, but he did not ignore the first sentence that precedes it in that same note: “Araujo points out in one of his endnotes that Wundt did not use the term, ‘Introspektion’” (Brock, 2017, p. 111). Perhaps this kind of seemingly selective reading can explain at least in part his misunderstandings and conceptual confusions.

Moreover, to say that introspection was a key methodological concept in Wundt’s psychology does not imply that it was the only one, or that Wundt defended a single method for psychological research. That is precisely the reason why I have dedicated about 40 pages of my book to explain the nuances of his position (Araujo, 2016, pp. 167–208), to which Brock does not refer.

Another misunderstanding regarding introspection arises when Brock argues that “Wundt advocated a method that he called, ‘innere Wahrnehmung’ [inner perception]” (Brock, 2017, p. 111). This is a misunderstanding of Wundt’s position, which I have explained in my book (Araujo, 2016, pp. 176–180). Danziger understood the difference between Selbsbeobachtung and innere Wahrnehmung in Wundt’s work (Danziger, 1980, 1990). However, when he described Wundt’s position in English, he failed to mention that Wundt rejected inner perception alone for being too casual, elusive, and scientifically unreliable. This is explicitly stated in his paper Selbstbeobachtung und innere Wahrnehmung (Wundt, 1888, pp. 298–301). Brock mentions this paper, but does not provide the passage that supports his claim. Instead, he relies on Danziger’s description—as he has done before (Brock, 2013)—which does not capture all the subtleties of Wundt’s position. Therefore, he ends up repeating the same mistake.

The last part of Brock’s reply focuses on the relationship between the history of science and the philosophy of science. Here, he claims that since I use the term “new” to characterize the History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) approach, but trace it back to the 1960s, I “can be accused of inconsistency” (Brock, 2017, p. 112). A careful reading of my text reveals that I am using the adjective “new” only for recent, very specific attempts to address the problem of the integration of both fields (history of science and philosophy of science), which surely has a long history, going back even before the 1960s. Many authors see such recent attempts as a new way to address this problem of disciplinary integration, and I follow in their optimism. Of course, only time will tell if this is the right direction to take. Brock, in his turn, conflates institutional arrangements with intellectual integration. The fact that hybrid departments and associations have been created in recent decades does not mean that there has been an effective, substantive integration of both fields—indeed, Thomas Kuhn (1977) himself recognized this distinction. Because the older attempts of effective intellectual dialogue have either failed or been unstable, there have emerged recent attempts to reboot HPS approaches, with unpredictable results. This is what I mean by “new” in the field, which Brock might have understood by attending to the most up-to-date literature.

Based on his previous claim that there is nothing new in HPS, Brock concludes that I am “reinventing the wheel” (Brock, 2017, p. 113), and that my proposal “is an attempt to excise the sociology of knowledge from historical discourse and to return to a more traditional history of ideas” (p. 114). Again, he does not and cannot provide any passage in my paper to support his claim, because nowhere have I said that. On the contrary, I have recognized the merits of a social history of psychology (Araujo, 2016, p. 13, 2017, p. 90). My critique is directed to its limits regarding deep philosophical questions involved in psychological projects, especially in the 19th century. Precisely because of such limits, I claim that a philosophical history of psychology, in light of the examples I gave both in my paper and in my book, can complement those accounts, thereby filling methodological gaps and enlarging our historical understanding. I agree with Brock that the question of integration is open to doubt, but for different reasons. For him, my proposal “would destroy the integration that already exists” (Brock, 2017, p. 114), whereas I believe that such integration does not exist, except in superficial and fragmentary attempts to explain deep theoretical and conceptual issues in terms of vague, imprecise references to social factors, forces, influences, practices, and so on. Yet I do not discard in principle a possibility of future integration. In this sense, I see my proposal as potentially integrative. Time will tell.

This brings me to the last issue. If, as Brock suggests, I am merely reinventing the wheel, he should have been able to demonstrate two things: first, that my attempt to bring the most recent literature on the integration of the history of science and the philosophy of science to a systematic discussion in the history of psychology is not new, by citing the many historians of psychology who have done this before; second, that my approach is only a “return to a more traditional history of ideas,” (Brock, 2017, p. 114) by showing how it merely repeats such aspects of, say, Lovejoy’s proposal or any other author’s approach. Since Brock uses the term “history of ideas” in a broadly general way, without saying precisely whom or what exactly he has in mind, it is difficult to understand his point, given the diversity of approaches that could fall under the same term. Furthermore, he seems to ignore that more traditional histories of ideas do not make use of philosophical analysis in the same way that HPS usually does.

Brock should also have been able to demonstrate that my interpretation of Wundt is not new: for instance, that my explanation for his abandonment of the unconscious or my analysis of the relationship between his psychological and philosophical projects are only repetitions of old, traditional histories. Having failed to demonstrate this, it might have occurred to Brock that there is another, more simple explanation for my claim to have offered an original and detailed account of some aspects of Wundt’s work—namely, the actual novelty of my approach.

On context, interpretation and derived mythologies

Unlike Brock (2017), who—despite his many misunderstandings and misattributions—has actually addressed important questions raised in my paper (Araujo, 2017), Burman’s text can only be considered a reply by family resemblance. Instead of dealing with my arguments and ideas, as I set them forth, he develops a dialogue with a text that I have not in fact written.

This problematic character of Burman’s dialogue is evident in the first page of his reply. According to him, “Araujo (2017) reduces the contemporary History of Psychology to a kind of sociology” (Burman, 2017, p. 117). Where in my paper is such reduction proposed? Burman does not say. He then claims that one cannot separate great men and great ideas from their social and political context, “contrary to Araujo’s suggestion that these things can be treated separately” (p. 118). Again, nowhere in my paper is this assertion to be found. By contrast, what I did suggest was that social approaches are logically insufficient to explain deep philosophical questions involved in some psychological projects; this does not imply a rejection of any contextualization, as I will explain in what follows.

Burman (2017) does not completely disagree with my proposal (as he understands it), and he even comes to see some merit in it, such as its complementary potential (p. 118) and the results of its application to the “unknown Wundt” (p. 118). He also applauds my initiative to strengthen the history of psychology through open methodological debates (p. 121). However, he is not satisfied with my arguments, the exposition of which he finds “problematic” (p. 120). More specifically, he worries that (a) “[my] proposal could be misunderstood as advocating for something akin to an advancement merely of the present state of textbook writing,” and about (b) “how [my] explanation of the approach will be understood; the impact it could have” (p. 121). Finally, he concludes, “That is not a complement to contextualism. It is a counterstrike against it” (p. 122).

These are the few passages of Burman’s text that pertain directly to the arguments and ideas as stated in my paper. The majority of his text consists in a series of digressions and musings that reflect his own historiographical preferences, which bear no direct relationship to my arguments and ideas. In my rejoinder I consider only the passages that I find pertinent to my paper, in order to point out his misinterpretations. More specifically, I focus on the core of his critique—namely, that (a) my proposal allegedly shows no place for context and that (b) a philosophical history of psychology can be contextual without being sociological, as the title of his text suggests. Let us examine this in detail.

First, in order to avoid misunderstandings, it is necessary to clarify what precisely the term “context” means, as Burman does not give a precise definition. Instead, as far as I can tell, context appears in his text in the way described by Peter Galison as “that elusive explanatory structure always invoked, never explained” (2008, p. 112). Moreover, it should be noted that contextualism itself can end up becoming a potential source of new mythologies (Clarke, 2013). This is not the whole story, though. In that same paper, Galison identifies a second, closely related—and, in my view, more important—question, namely, what is the logical force of a contextual explanation? In other words, by offering a certain “context” for, say, a specific idea, what exactly is being claimed? Are we talking about a causal relationship or a weaker form of relation, such as a mere correspondence? By failing to address both questions, Burman missed the central justification of my proposal, which underlies my critique of social approaches to the history of psychology, especially regarding the deep philosophical questions underlying some psychological projects in the 19th century, as exemplified in Wundt’s case. I never claimed that social context should be expelled or separated from a philosophical treatment. Instead, what I did claim was that social approaches were logically insufficient to explain crucial philosophical positions that make those psychological projects intelligible in the first place. As an example, I offered the issue of the unconscious in Wundt. The question I raised is: What is the best explanation for Wundt’s theoretical shifts regarding the unconscious? Both in my paper (Araujo, 2017) and in my book (Araujo, 2016), I argue that Wundt’s abandonment of the unconscious had not been explained in prior scholarship due to a lack of attention to his philosophical positions. What I offered, then, was a philosophical explanation. But this does not entail that my approach lacks context. This claim can be verified by a close reading of my book, in which institutional and broad social aspects of German culture are brought into dialogue with Wundt’s theoretical assumptions. In other words, the fact that I contextualize Wundt’s theory does not imply that such contextualization—in itself or independent of knowledge of Wundt’s philosophical positions—is logically sufficient to explain those specific aspects of his psychological project that I am interested in. In my view, they need a philosophical explanation, to attain a more complete understanding of them.

It is interesting to note that Burman not only cites my book on Wundt with approbation (Burman, 2017, p. 121), but also sees it as highly relevant to my paper. As much as I appreciate his words of praise, I nonetheless wonder why he did not address the substantive questions I raised both in my paper and in my book.

Concluding remarks

Given the present status of the historiography of psychology, I conclude that methodological pluralism is the best strategy to adopt. Moreover, I see substantive methodological discussions as a way to make the historian of psychology more aware of his or her own practices and choices. By contrast, for Brock there seems to be only one way to do history of psychology: emulate Danziger, as there is nothing new to be said or done in methodological terms. For him, every such attempt constitutes a return to the past. Maybe this kind of methodological dogmatism can explain his failure to appreciate alternative approaches. As for Burman, his worries are, in the final analysis, unjustified, and can be avoided by a careful reading of my paper.