Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 2

by Unknown

But does the laboratory itself gain from such divorce? Just the contrary. It is evident that everywhere in the world where the psychological laboratory turns to natural science, the experiments deal mostly with sensation, perception, and reaction; while those laboratories which keep their friendship with epistemology emphasize the higher mental functions, experimenting on attention, memory, association, feeling, emotion, thought, and so on. But is it not clear that only the latter work gives to the psychological laboratory a real right to existence, as the former is almost completely overlapped by the well-established interests of the physiologists? If psychology cannot do anything else than that which physiologists like Helmholtz, Hering, Kries, Mach, Bowditch, and the rest have always done so successfully, then experimental psychology had better give up the trade and leave the study of the mind to the students of the organism.

I have said that we ought not to depend on authorities here. Yet one name, I think, ought to be mentioned gratefully in this hour in which the new psychological laboratory is opened for work. I think of Professor Wundt of Leipzig. The directors of the psychological laboratories in Columbia, and Yale, in Clark and Chicago, in Pennsylvania and Cornell, in Johns Hopkins and Washington, in Leland Stanford and Harvard, and many more are his pupils. Some weeks ago, when I did not foresee our present discussion, I told him of Emerson Hall; and a few days ago I got an answer from which, as my closing word, I may quote in translation. Professor Wundt writes to me: "I am especially glad that you affiliated your new psychological laboratory to philosophy, and that you did not migrate to the naturalists. There seems to be here and there a tendency to such migration, yet I believe that psychology not only now, but for all time, belongs to philosophy: only then can psychology keep its necessary independence." Mr. Chairman, these are the words of the father of experimental psychology. I hope they indicate the policy to which Harvard University will adhere forever.

V. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL LABORATORY IN EMERSON HALL

A monumental staircase leads from the first—the lecture-room—floor of Emerson Hall to the second, the library floor; at the two ends of its broad corridor smaller staircases lead to the third floor, the laboratory. Its general division of space is seen at a glance from the sketch of the ground plan (opposite page 1). Eighteen rooms of various sizes with outside windows form a circle around the central hall which is well lighted by large skylights; but at each end of the hall itself two large windowless spaces are cut off and each of these is divided into three dark rooms. We have thus twenty-four rooms, besides coat-room, toilet-rooms, etc. A further stair leads to the wide attic which is mainly a store-room for the institution.

In order that the laboratory should be adaptable to the most diverse purposes, the permanent differentiation of the rooms has been kept in narrow limits. It seemed unwise to give from the first every room to a special line of research, as the preponderance of special interests may frequently shift; there are years when perhaps studies in physiological and comparative psychology make the largest demand and others in which studies in æsthetical and educational psychology stand in the foreground. A thorough-going specialization, by which special rooms are reserved for tactual studies and others for chronoscope work or for kymograph researches, allows of course certain conveniences in the fixed arrangement of instruments and a certain elaboration of equipment that is built in, but it very much impairs the flexibility of the whole laboratory, and has thus not seemed advisable for an institution whose catholic attitude welcomes investigations as different as those contained in this volume.

To be sure certain constant requirements have demanded a special fitting up of one room as a workshop, one room for the more delicate instruments, one for the beginning course in experimental work, a lecture-room for the courses in comparative psychology, a photography-room, a battery-room, a sound-proof room, the chief animal rooms, and the dark rooms. We have seven light-proof rooms, finished in black, of which two have outside windows for heliostats; of the others, four can be used for optical research; the longest one contains the photometer. Six other rooms, including the lecture-room, may be darkened by opaque blinds. One contains a partition with door and a grooved window-frame fitted with screens in which openings of any desired size and shape may be cut. This window is opposite the main door of the room, and opposite this, across the central hall, some sixty feet away, is the door of another dark room; optical stimuli can thus be given from this window to a subject over seventy feet away.

Several rooms are fitted up with special reference to the investigation of the various forms of organic movement, animal behavior and intelligence. As one result of several investigations in animal psychology already pursued here, the laboratory has a considerable number of devices for testing and making statistical studies of the senses and intelligence, methods of learning and emotional reactions of animals.

Adequate provision is made for the keeping of animals in a large, well-lighted, and well-ventilated corner room. Instead of having aquaria built into the room, an aquarium-table eighteen feet long has been constructed to support moveable aquaria of various sizes. Whenever it is desirable for the purposes of an investigation, any of these aquaria may be moved to the research-room of the investigator or to such quarters as the special conditions of the experiment demand.

The vivarium-room contains, in addition to provisions for water-inhabiting animals, cages of a variety of forms and sizes. The largest of these cages, six and a half feet high, six feet wide, and four feet deep, may be used for birds, monkeys, or any of the medium-sized mammals. Cages for rabbits, guinea-pigs, and other small animals are arranged in frames which support four double compartments. Similarly, small cages suitable for mice, rats, and other small rodents are in supporting frames which carry four of the double cages, each of which is removeable and may be carried to the experimenting-room at the convenience of the experimenter.

In a large unheated room above the main laboratory are tanks for amphibians and reptiles. These tanks, since they can be kept at a low temperature during the winter, are very convenient and useful for frogs, tortoises, and similar hibernating animals.