Nature, material and mental, knows no values. Yet it is evident that
this alone does not mean that there are no values in reality, for it
would be absurd to think that the system of objects which we call nature
is the whole world of our life-experience. The fact that in physics and
psychology a deliberate description and explanation of nature is going
on, -does this not in itself involve the existence of an acting
personality which, as such, can find no place in the system of nature?
-from Science and Idealism As a psychologist and an innovator of
experimental psychology, Hugo Münsterberg was a powerful influence on
thinking in both the medical and social arenas at the turn of the 20th
century, developing practical applications of psychology to industry,
medicine, education, the arts, and criminal investigation. Here, though,
in this intriguing volume, Münsterberg discusses anxieties and
misapprehensions that still afflict the scientific disciplines today.
Münsterberg-in a transcription of an address given at Yale University in
1906-examines how a system that is "valueless" and orderly, like the
methods of science, nevertheless does not negate the "chaos of
experience" and feeling that characterizes human existence. No reliance
upon science and technology, Münsterberg reassures us, can ever deny or
lessen those qualities of our lives-morals, emotions, senses of beauty
and justice-that we esteem most. Also available from Cosimo Classics:
Münsterberg's The Eternal Life, Psychology and Life, Psychology and
Social Sanity, The War and America, American Traits, and Psychotherapy
OF INTEREST TO: readers of the philosophy of science, students of the
culture wars
