Watson, Sr., R.I. (1978). The great psychologists. (4th
edition). New York: J.B. Lippincott Co.
CHAPTER 9
KANT AND HERBART:
HERBART AND EXPERIENCE, METAPHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS
Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) was a professor at Gottingen
and' at Konigsberg, where he filled the chair vacated by Kant.
Earlier, while a tutor in Switzerland, he had made the acquaintance
of Pestalozzi, the educator, who directed his attention to pedagogical
problems as a supplement to already formed philosophical and psychological
interests. An account of his psychology is contained in the Lehrbuch
zur Psychologie,25 appearing in 1816, and in his more extensive
Psychologie als Wissenscha f t, neugregriindet au f Erfahrung
Metaphysik and Mathematik,26 which appeared in 1824 and 1825.
The full title of this, his major book, gives the clue to the
nature of his psychology; it is a science based upon experience,
metaphysics, and mathematics. These three strands will become
obvious in the account that follows.
Herbart was enough of a philosophical follower of Leibniz and
Kant to insist that there be metaphysical assumptions underlying
his psychology. Herbart's starting point was his concept of being.27
His general conception of the universe was that of independent
elements called reals. To some extent he was following Leibniz,
but, unlike Leibniz, he did not regard reals as all sharing in
the common characteristic of consciousness. Moreover, Herbart's
mechanical interaction, discussed in a moment, is the antithesis
of Leibniz's conception of pre-established harmony. Despite his
dependence upon metaphysics, he was led by his particular definition
of being to define psychology as the "mechanics of the mind."'
However, in keeping with the trend of the times to minimize the
mind in favor of an emphasis upon consciousness, he proceeds to
explain mental states as an interaction of ideas. The mind is
the stage on which the vastly more important players, the ideas,
carry on their parts.
Mechanics, once introduced as the basis of psychology, was conceived
of as dealing with statics and dynamics in a way similar to that
in which these branches of mechanics were then regarded in the
physical sciences. Herbart held that experimentation in psychology
is impossible.28 To remain a science, psychology must, at least,
be mathematical. He, therefore, prepared a series of equations
which dealt with psychological matters. For example, in dealing
with how much of an idea is suppressed, he postulated that a equals
the suppressed portion of the ideas in time (indicated by t),
and S is the aggregate amount suppressed. Then a - S (1 - e-t)
. He carried on no actual measurements. The mathematical values
he assigned in any given equation were always some guess based
on rational plausibility, and his mathematical formulations served
only as illustrations.
Herbart's system of psychology concerned elementary bits of experiences,
sensations in our terminology, which combined to form ideas. Ideas,
he held, are the real contents of the mind. To this extent he
followed the British associationists. However, the mechanics of
Newton and the theory of ideas as activity of Leibniz supplied
for him the means of making a substantial modification of British
associationism-the conceiving of ideas to be forces. Ideas as
combined according to British associationism did so in what he
conceived to be a relatively passive fashion. In this connection
Herbart argued that the associations with which the British associationists
had dealt are in reality much more complicated, digressive, and
diversive than they had described them to be?9 The associationists
had assumed, implicitly or otherwise, only the attraction of ideas
without particular attention to the nature of the force involved.
Herbart postulated both attraction and repulsion of ideas, particularly
when ideas clash. Ideas become forces when they resist one another.30
Some ideas do not resist one another, and for these associations
a conventional explanation is sufficient. These are the ideas
that are neither opposed nor contrasted with one another as a
tone and a color which unhindered form a complex.31
But there are other ideas which are contrasted, such as red and
yellow, which may become blended or fused but never form a complex.
Sometimes ideas are so resistive as not to form even loosely affiliated
complexes. One idea may be so much a hindrance to another that
the second is not even available in consciousness.32 This hindered
idea, although not in consciousness, still exists. Inhibited though
these ideas may be, they remained existent as tendencies, although
in a fashion that Herbart does not make clear. Ideas may arrest,
but they cannot destroy one another. When the hindrance is lifted,
the idea will again appear in consciousness.
This entering into consciousness requires the conceptionalization
of a threshold of consciousness. That is to say, the readily verified
subjective phenomena of thinking of something which was not in
consciousness a moment before, required, in the opinion of Herbart,
that there must be ‘a level below which an idea is unconscious
and which must raise abovethat level to become conscious. He also
used this conception of threshold to explain sleep. If only a
few active ideas are present, we have dreaming; if all active
ideas are driven below the threshold, we have the unconsciousness
that is deep sleep.33' Herbart pointed out that since an idea,
once created, is never lost, this makes very remarkable a comparison
of the paltriness of those ideas of which a person is conscious
at any given moment with the multitude
of ideas he may have potentially at his disposal. The explanation
for this poverty of ideas present in consciousness as contrasted
to the wealth of tendencies available lies in the threshold of
consciousness. Besides those few grasped at a given moment, a
person can, by quick transition, bring in other ideas in complex
relations and modify them.34
Some ideas move into consciousness relatively readily, others
do not. Submerged ideas move above the threshold to the full focus
of attention if they are consonant with the apperceptive mass
or dominant system of ideas, a conception derived from Leibniz.
An idea that comes into consciousness combines with the extant
ideas to the extent that is congruent with those already in consciousness.
There is a unity of consciousnessattention, as one might call
it-so that one cannot attend to two ideas at once except in so
far as they will unite into a single complex idea. When one idea
is at the focus of the consciousness it forces incongruous ideas
into the background or out of consciousness altogether. Combined
ideas form wholes and a combination of related ideas form an apperceptive
mass, into which relevant ideas are welcomed but irrelevant ones
are excluded.
Ideas are active and may struggle with one another for a place
in consciousness; Herbart's concept of threshold and its correlary
that there are both conscious and unconscious mental processes
are distinct advances over earlier views. For example, Herbart
gave psychology the beginning of a theory of inhibition, or interference
in learning, which was to reappear in many guises and in theories
in times to come extending from Pavlov's "conditioned reflex"
to Freud's "repression." However, his contribution in
this area should not be overestimated. Darwinism, medical psychology,
and psychiatry contributed much more than did Herbart to the understanding
of the dynamics of unconscious processes. The concept of psychology
as a science had begun to take form with Herbart's claim that
it was mathematical, but use of the experimental method, basic
to the science, had yet to be worked out. Despite .the sterility
of Herbart's calculus of the mind, it encouraged Fechner, who
combined the Herbartian emphasis upon mathematics with Weber's
use of experiment.
Herbart did much to make clear that psychology was crucial for
educational theory and practice. It was his theory of apperception
that had the most direct and influential application to education.
As has already been seen it was on the background of previous
experience that a new idea was assimilated in the apperceptive
mass. If information is to be acquired as easily and as rapidly
as possible, it follows that in teaching one should introduce
new material by building upon the apperceptive mass of already
familiar ideas. Relevant ideas, then, will be most easily assimilated
to the apperceptive mass, while irrelevant ideas will tend to
be resisted and, consequently, will not be assimilated as readily.
This reasoning eventually led educators to adopt the practice
of planning lessons so that the pupil passed from already familiar
to closely related unfamiliar elements. Herbart's work35 was also
influential in exposing the shallowness and sterility of a faculty
psychology which was so prevalent during this time.
SIGNIFICANCE
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the philosophically
rooted views of Wolff, Herbart, and Kant helped to prepare the
way for a psychology separate from philosophy. Wolff espoused
the separation of empirical and rational psychology. Kant made
a sharp, often emphasized distinction between a philosophical
theory of knowledge and an empirical psychology. Herbart considered
that psychology should be based upon mathematics and experience
as well as metaphysics. Although each of these philosophers showed
to his own satisfaction that psychology was halting, limited,
and relatively unimportant, they proceeded to make distinctions
which helped psychology to emerge as a separate science, once
answers to their arguments could be found. Psychophysics and physiology,
fields in which the next developments in psychology took place,
helped to supply the answers.