JOHN A.
POPPLESTONE, Akron/ USA
The Influence of
the Apparatus of the Leipzig Laboratory in the United States: 1880 - 1910
The framework of the new science as formulated at Leipzig was
eagerly received abroad, in fact visitors hurried here to absorb it, and the
patterns they learned have been developed and enlarged up to the present time,
and there are no convincing indications of any cessation of growth. The
endorsement of laboratory experimentation has been both consistent and fervent
in the United States. Historians have, with commendable scholarly zeal,
assessed and re-assessed the intellectual content of this success story as well
as the cognitive characteristics of the individuals who shaped the field. The
result is a body of literature on the history of psychology, but - strangely -
much of this neglects the research tools and practices even though the use of
apparatus - whether created, adapted or adopted - was the symbol of
departure from the past. Because history has devoted more attention to research
outcome than to research process many present day psychologists, even those who
are sophisticated about most aspects of the past, have merely an informal
knowledge of "brass instruments".
The purpose of this paper is to call
attention to the research tools that were in use between 1880 and 1910, the era
during which laboratory psychology reached a definitive form and also the one
during which WUNDT prepared the five editions of the Grundzüge (1880,
1887, 1895, 1908-11). These volumes constitute a lode of information about the
pioneer laboratory. DIAMOND (1976) has observed that "successive revisions
of the Grundzüge ... provided more and more information, including
detailed illustrations of experimental apparatus, constituting virtual
manuals" (p. 528).
The figures in these books are not
restricted to individual appliances but include experimental set-ups that show
various units required for special tasks. In the last edition, the most mature,
there are nearly 50 engravings of apparatus, with accompanying explanations of
their construction and use. This collection can be interpreted as the sine
qua non of equipment and all of it must have been in Leipzig, but it
appears that for only six pieces can WUNDT be considered the sole designer.
Implements become old, out-of-date, or out-of-fashion before they gain the status of antiquity. Because degradation antedates approbation attempts to retrieve information about historic apparatus have to contend with the effects of negligence, disposal, and even the obliteration that is intrinsic to war. In spite of numerous and varied assaults some instruments have survived and those that are still extant speak strongly, even through depreciation, of the beginnings of the discipline. The pieces are decorative, elegant, massive, of sturdy construction and stand not merely as tools but as affirmations of the importance of the work being done.
Today we are, perhaps, so confident of our discipline that we
may not appreciate the tentative nature of the nineteenth century psychology
laboratory. Research was perceived as the means of gaining acceptance as
a science, but conducting it demanded reliance on utensils of well established
fields such as biology, chemistry, and physics. This borrowed equipment was
honored and evidence is accumulating that in early investigations precision was
concentrated around its use. Other procedures - for example, subject treatment,
stimulus exposure, and intertrial intervals - were inconsistent and, at times,
capricious, but the instruments were handled with care, conscientiously
calibrated, and the mechanical regulation was maximal for the technology of the
era.
Let us look at some of these objects:
Instruments were exported to America from
various places but those that originated in Leipzig were most prized. The aura
is illustrated in TITCHENER's qualification of his recommendation of education
in psychology in the United States. In this he conveyed the impression that
instruments in situ were somehow superior. Specifically he said, "A
large percentage of students will doubtless continue to spend a year in Germany
for the sake of acquiring the language and seeing the German equipment."
(TITCHENER, 1898, p. 330) (Italics mine).
An anecdote of only a decade ago provides a
second illustration of the importance of apparatus from the WUNDT laboratory.
As late as 1968, the laboratory of the University of Nebraska housed a tall
oak-cased clock with a pendulum. There was an oral tradition at the University
of Nebraska that this time piece was a duplicate of one in the Leipzig
laboratory and that it had been brought to America in 1886 by HARRY KIRKE WOLFE
when, after completing a doctorate under WUNDT, he returned to America to found
the laboratory at Nebraska. Following accession at the Archives of the History
of American Psychology at Akron the clock was cleaned and during this process
the label "Waterbury" was found inside the clock. This implied that
the device may have actually been manufactured in Waterbury, Connecticut, and
this turned out to be the case. The Company Catalog of 1908-1909 (p. 154) lists
this model as "Regulator No. 70" and gives the price as $133.50. In
other words, the glamour of the German laboratory had extended the actual age
of this clock and enhanced it with a fictitious provenance.
German instruments were not however always
practical and discrepancies between the ideal and the real are apparent in
inventories of laboratory equipment. The listing for Harvard University in 1893
(MÜNSTERBERG) consists of appliances that were obtained from 75 different
manufacturers or distributors. Of these, 25 or one-third of the total were
German, 18 American, 12 English, 10 French, and the remaining 10 were scattered
among various locales. Although the modal number was from Germany, at least two
thirds of the pieces came from different countries.
A Cornell University Inventory published in 1900 (TITCHENER),
seven years after the Harvard listing, included 372 varieties of equipment. A
breakdown of the national origin of the instruments in this laboratory discloses
that the modal number, 189, was from American suppliers. The remainder of the
equipment had, in descending order, been purchased in France, England, and the
Netherlands.
In 1901 TITCHENER listed 29 "Firms
Recommended for the Supply of Psychological Instruments." Of these, 12
were American and nine German and the remaining eight were distributed among
four other nations. In 1905, TITCHENER brought this ledger up to date and again
the pattern was one of dominance of American and German suppliers with the
former in the lead.
The raw figures suggest that within twenty
years after the founding of the Leipzig laboratory the German apparatus was
being overtaken by American objects, but these quantitative data conceal an
important qualitative difference. An examination of specific instruments
reveals that German, and in a much smaller amount other European firms, were
responsible for expensive, complicated tools whereas American firms were apt to
be producing appurtenances, such as needles, papers, and other consumables.
TITCHENER was aware of this and in 1898 he
wrote, "the research apparatus is preponderantly German in origin"
(p. 321) whereas the equipment used in the introductory laboratory course was
almost wholly American. That is to say that the education of beginners could be
carried out by means of local, inexpensive and expendable materials but
scholarly, innovative research required imported, and most probably German,
apparatus.
There did develop after the turn of the
century a decline of the hegemony of the German manufactured apparatus. This
was due to several variables other than the level of sophistication of the
customers and one of these contributors was CHRISTIAN STOELTING, the founder of
a company that for many years dominated American psychological apparatus.
STOELTING (1943) is reputed to have spent long periods of time working with
TITCHENER while he was writing the four volume Experimental Psychology.
STOELTING was involved with the designing, suggesting, and modeling of
equipment and TITCHENER, in the edition of 1901, refers the reader to the
Chicago Laboratory Supply and Scale Company (later to be known as the STOELTING
Company) for "certain of the instruments recommended in the text."
(p. 434) By 1905 TITCHENER speaks of STOELTING, "This firm has now
undertaken to furnish complete sets of the apparatus required for the present
Course." (p. 423)
Similarly the dominant Manual of Tests
by WHIPPLE (1914) was coordinated with STOELTING. No European manufacturer
supplied such a wide range of products for use in a psychology laboratory and
this product development facilitated dominance of the market.
Local enterprise was further advanced by
the youth experimental psychology and the unique needs of the laboratory. In
1898, TITCHENER recommended the employment of a mechanic in the laboratory
since "I suppose that in all original work, in whatever science, is likely
to require newly constructed apparatus. But the older sciences are at this
advantage, that they have a large store of designs to draw upon; so that the
new appliance may take shape, at least in large measure, from the recombination
and readjustment of older devices. Experimental psychology is still so young
that each new problem must be faced independently, and instruments contrived to
meet its peculiar exigencies." (p. 320).
An imported science in infancy would be
served by imported apparatus, but as it grew, matured, and at the same time
became indigenous it came to require indigenous instruments.
CHRISTIAN H. STOELTING: American Journal of
Psychology, 1943, 56, 450.
DIAMOND, S. WILHELM WUNDT: In C. C.
GILLISPIE (Ed.) Dictionary
of Scientific Biography (No. XIV). New York: Scribner. 1976.
MÜNSTERBERG, H.: Psychological Laboratory
at Harvard University, Cambridge,
Massachusetts: 1893.
TITCHENER, E. B.: A psychological
laboratory. Mind, 1898, 7, 311 - 551.
TITCHENER, E. B.: The equipment of a
psychological laboratory. American Journal of Psychology, 1900, 11, 251 - 265.
TITCHENER, E. B.: The psychological
laboratory of Cornell University. Worcester, Massachusetts: Oliver B. Wood, 1900.
(b)
TITCHENER, E. B.: Experimental psychology,
Vol. I. Qualitative experiments, Part II. Instructor's manual. New York:
Macmillan, 1901.
TITCHENER, E. B.: Experimental psychology,
Vol. II. Quantitative experiments, Part II. Instructor's manual. New York: Macmillan,
1905.
WHIPPLE, G. M.: Manual of mental and physical tests. Part I:
Simpler processes. Baltimore: Warwick and York, 1914.
WUNDT, W.: Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie.
(3 vols.) Leipzig: Engelmann, 1908 - 1911. (6th and final ed.)