What Man Has Made of Man: A Study of the Consequences of Platonism and Positivism in Psychology

260 Pages·1938·12.194 MB·English

by  Mortimer J. Adler

WHAT MAN HAS MADE OF MAN
A
of the of Platonism
Study Consequences
and Positivism in
Psychology
BY MORTIMER ADLER
J.
AssociateProfessorofthePhilosophyorLaw,UniversityofChicago
With an Introduction by
DR. FRANZ ALEXANDER
Director ofthe Institute forPsychoanalysis in Chicago
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO * NEW YORK TORONTO ' 1938
ADLER WHAT MAN HAS MADE OF MAN
COPYRIGHT BY MORTIMER ADLER
- 1937 - J.
Allrightsreserved,includingthe right toreproduce thisbook
}
orany portion thereof, inany form
FIRST EDITION, SEPTEMBER 1937
REPRINTED JANUARY 1938
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY H. WOLFF NEW YOR
TO
MY
PARENTS
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
ix
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
xvii
LECTURE THE CONCEPTION OF SCIENCE IN THE
i.
MODERN WORLD
3
LECTURE 2. THE POSITION OF PSYCHOLOGY: IN
PHILOSOPHY AND AMONG THE
NATURAL SCIENCES
31
LECTURE THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 61
3.
LECTURE PSYCHOANALYSIS AS PSYCHOLOGY
4. 94
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES
124
EPILOGUE
235
LIST OF PRINCIPAL NOTES
245
vu
INTRODUCTION
BY DR. FRANZ ALEXANDER
IT is unusual to write an introduction to a book of an author whose
conclusions, approach to his problems and whole outlook are
diametrically opposite to those of the author of the introduction.
Why did I then accept Mr. Adler's suggestion to write an intro-
duction to his book and why did Mr. Adler ask me to do so, are
both questions which require an explanation. The circumstances
under which these four lectures originated will elucidate this para-
dox.
Engaged in psychoanalytic teaching and clinical studies for a
long period of time, I gradually came to the conviction that in this
field as in others where students are using a highly standardized
technical procedure and are mainly absorbed in minute observa-
tion of facts, briefly in all preeminently empirical fields, the stu-
dents are apt to lose perspective towards their own work. This
conviction goes back to those early days that I spent as a research
worker in physiology in an experimental laboratory. There, I
became first acquainted with the characteristic mentality of mod-
ern scientific research. There I learned the mores and virtues
of modern research and first recognized the danger which con-
fronts the scientific worker of the present day. This danger is not
restricted to scientific laboratories, it is a general problem of the
present age. Man, the inventor of the machine, has become the
slave of the machine, and the scientist, in developing highly refined
methods of investigation, has become not the master but the slave
of his laboratory equipment. An extreme amount of specializa-
tion of interest and mechanization of activity has taken place and a
scotoma for essentials has developed; a naive belief in the magic
omnipotence of specific technical procedures leads to a routine,
often sterile submersion in details without interest in or under-
of connections.
standing larger
IX
INTRODUCTION
It is no exaggeration to say that in many scientific centers not
the interest in certain fundamental problems but the fortuitous
possession of some new apparatus directs the research work: a new
laboratory technique is introduced which spreads like afad to all
laboratories; then everywhere problems are selected which can be
approached by this new technique or apparatus. Scientific inter-
est in the fundamentals is lost, research is dictated more or less
at random by the technical facilities at the worker's disposal.
This attitude necessarily must lead to that caricature of scientific
ethics which regards suspiciously everything that entails reason-
ing and not merely observation and is contemptuous about
theories, not to say hypotheses that are not as yet proven. There
is a naive adoration of "pure facts" which are collected without
any leading ideas.
Psychoanalysis is a highly empirical field in which the student
is exposed to an extreme variety of observations and in a certain
sense unique facts, as every patient presents a unique combina-
tion of common elements. Today the psychoanalytic clinician is
undergoing a healthy reaction against the present abundance of
theory and generalizations. He is in the process of accepting the
mentality of the natural scientist and is assuming all the virtues and
weaknesses of our era of laboratory research. Like his other clini-
cal colleagues also he uses a highly standardized and refined tech-
nique but pays a high price for his technical skill: he is gradu-
ally losing perspective and correct judgment regarding the validity
and limitations of his technique and of his scientific work in
general.
To expose the students and the members of the staff of the
Psychoanalytic Institute of Chicago to a lecture course dealing
withepistemology andmethodology seemed to me therefore highly
indicated. I hoped that such a course would make them more con-
scious of and critical toward the methods, achievements and
sig-
nificance of their own field. Although one could not anticipate
full agreement with all of Mr. Adler's conclusions, it was to be
expected that the discussion of problems of psychological meth-
odology by an expert such as Mr. Adler would be a real chal-
lenge and a healthy stimulus for all of us, which would stop us
for a moment in our daily work and induce us to give ourselves
an account of what we are
really doing.
This experiment was successful in one respect. Although Mr.
Adler was not able to convince his audience of the validity of any
of his major statements, he aroused interest in this type of reflec-
tion, so direly needed in any group of specialists.
INTRODUCTION
During the discussions that followed each of his lectures Mr.
Adler has realized the basic disagreement of his audience with his
theses and was therefore hesitant to publish his lectures without
giving me an opportunity to state these fundamental controversies
in the form of an introduction to his book.
During these discussions it became evident that our disagree-
ment represents two diametrically opposite points of view, and
illustrates the unsurmountable gap between what could be called
a scientific Weltanschauung and the dogmatic attitude of a Thir-
teenth Century scholastic. As Mr. Adler himself very correctly
put it, his lectures represent something which might have been
the attitude of a contemporary pupil of Thomas Aquinas, or per-
haps of Thomas himself if he could come to life again and be
confronted with the new discoveries of Sigmund Freud. If for
nothing else, then as such an anachronism, Mr. Adler's lectures
may have the interest and value of a curiosity. It became obvious
that according to Mr. Adler since the times of Aristotle and his
belated scholastic pupil, Thomas Aquinas, man really did not con-
tribute anything much of value to the inventory of his knowledge
about the surrounding world and himself. Such radical new ac-
complishments as the recognition of the fact of biological evolu-
tion, the technical achievements of physics, chemistry and medi-
cine, the better understanding of mental diseases, which have
resulted in an ever-growing capacity of modern psychiatry to cure
psychopathological processes, are of no great importance for him.
This contempt for "practical" accomplishments explains why he
considers the futile speculations and meditations about human
nature of ancient and medieval philosophers like Aristotle and
Thomas Aquinas to be superior to our detailed and precise knowl-
edge of normal and pathological mental processes which enable us
to influence these processes in a desired direction and thus cure
mental ailments. Mr. Adler does not evaluate scientific concepts
according to the degree to which they increase our ability to
control and influence natural phenomena but according to their
ability to be fitted into some preconceived rigid and abstract logi-
cal construction. The gap between these two attitudes cannot be
bridged. In the following I shall state the main points of our con-
troversy.
i. Mr. Adler defines philosophy as a body of logical conclu-
sions drawn from common sense observations, and science as a
body of conclusions drawn from specific observations obtained by
specific investigative methods. I agree with Mr. Adler's definition
of science but not with his definition of philosophy. Mr. Adler
xi
INTRODUCTION
reduces philosophy to reasoning about inadequate (common sense)
observations, science representing at the same time reasoning
about more adequate observations obtained by refined and im-
proved methods of investigation. And yet, in order to save the
medieval hegemony of philosophy, with a peculiar twist of rea-
soning Mr. Adler tries to subordinate science that is to say con-
clusions drawn from improved observations to philosophy, which
according to his own definition consists of conclusions from inade-
quate observations. If Adler's definition of philosophy is correct,
philosophy should be discarded in the proportion to which scien-
tific knowledge progresses by the use of steadily improving special
techniques of investigation. With this definition, Adler himself
speaks the death sentence of philosophy. However I am much
more inclined to accept the view of those philosophers (a view
which was most convincingly expressed by Bernard Alexander)
who consider philosophic reflection as the manifestation of a deep
and universal need in human beings to orient themselves towards
the universe with which they are confronted. Science must neces-
sarily leave this deep need for orientation to a high degree un-
fulfilled because due to its nature its answers are disconnected
and restricted to isolated portions of reality, namely to those fields
that have already been scientifically explored, and also because
scientific answers are necessarily incomplete due to the high claims
regarding validity which science sets to itself. In view of this in-
complete nature of science, only two attitudes remain for a human
being in handling his desire to orient himself in the world in which
he lives:
A
a. kind of agnosticism, contenting himself with the answers
which science can offer at any given time, abandoning the wish
for an integrated concept of the universe.
b. An attempt to integrate the isolated and disconnected an-
swers of science into a Weltbild. This is philosophy. Such a phil-
of the world however must be consistent with
osophical picture
what is known by science. It tries to integrate the results of scien-
tific investigations into the best possible synthesis of current
knowledge. Therefore philosophy never can disprove science, on
the contrary it must always be ready to be corrected by new
scientific discoveries. In this sense philosophy never can become
superfluous as long as human beings continue to ponder over the
world in which they live.
2. One of Mr. Adler's fundamental convictions is that the act
of reasoning itself cannot be studied scientifically: that in this
regard it has an exceptional position among all psychological
xii
INTRODUCTION
processes. Since the reasoning faculties have been subjected suc-
cessfully both to psychological and physiological investigation,
this statement does not need further discussion. Freud's studies of
rational thinking, his understanding of it as motor innervations
with small quantities of energy on a trial and error basis, his com-
parative studies of rational thinking in contrast to thinking in
dreams, his classical study of denial, and finally his demonstration
of the influence of emotional factors upon rational thought have
shown that the reasoning process can be psychologically analysed
and genetically understood as the result of a process of adjustment
of the biological individual to its environment. Furthermore the
first promising steps have been made by the method of brain oper-
ation to establish the relation of rational processes such as the
faculty for abstraction, to brain functions.
3. Perhaps the greatest gap between Adler's concepts and the
viewpoint assumed by psychoanalysts consists in his insistence
uponthe non-animal nature of human beings, in his contention that
there is no evolutionary continuity between men and brutes. Adler
belongs to that rapidly diminishing, in fact today almost extinct
species of thinkers who still try desperately to disregard the solid
facts of evolution. The type of argument which is used can be
best characterised by quoting the distinguished American thinker,
James Harvey Robinson.1
/
"Having myself given much time to the comings and goings of be-
liefs in the past, I see how great a part mere ignorance and confusion
always play in blocking the ready acceptance of new knowledge.
... It is true the biologists have, many of them, given up what they
call 'Darwinism'; they have surrendered Spencer's notion of the hered-
itary transmission of acquired characters, and they even use the word
'evolution' timidly and with many reservations. But this does not mean
that they have any doubts that mankind is a species of animal, sprung
in some mysterious and as yet unexplained'manner from extinct 'wild
creatures of the forests and plains. This they simply take for granted;
for, unlike the public at large, they distinguish carefully between the
varied and impressive evidence which appears to confirm man's ani-
malhood and the several theories which have been advanced from time
to time by Lamarck, Darwin, Spencer, Haeckel, and others, to account
for the process by which organic life, including man, has developed.
The first confusion of which we must relieve ourselves is that between
the facts, on the one hand, revealed by geology, biology and compara-
tive anatomy, and, on the other hand, the conjectures suggested to
1 Robinson, James Harvey: The Human Comedy, New York, Harper & Bros.,
'937. PP- 23-4-
xiii
INTRODUCTION
explain the history of life. As time has gone on the facts which compel
anyone acquainted with them to accept man's essentially animal nature
have become more abundant and unmistakable, while many of the
older theories of evolution have, as a result of further study and in-
creasing knowledge, shown themselves to a great extent untenable.
Much Tight has been cast of late on the history of life, but in some
respects it seems more mysterious than ever before."
Adler, like some theologists, in order to refute the unassailable
fact of evolution, takes advantage of recent controversies regard-
ing those detailed mechanisms by which man has developed into
his present form from more primitive beings.
His methodological discussion about the discontinuity of the
different realms of knowledge, his insistence upon unsurmount-
able gaps between the inanimate world, animals and man, are
based on a refusal to draw the correct conclusion from the factual
evidence which we possess regarding the relationships between
these different sections of the universe. Even though scientists
are not able to reduce the processes of life to physics and chem-
istry there is no doubt that the process of life consists in a specific
combination of exactly the same processes as are known in the
physics and chemistry of nonliving substances. The specificity
of life consists in the specificity of the combination of those
partial processes which constitute life and which are identical
with the chemical processes of nonliving substances. It is true
that the specific principles of this coordination are not known
as yet. Nevertheless it is quite possible that some time in the
future when we shall possess the knowledge of the characteristic
combination of physico-chemical processes in the living cell we
shall be able to create living substance from nonliving substance.
It is needless to say that the difference between the higher animals
and man isfar less incisive than that between animals and inanimate
nature. The psychoanalyst considers the difference between man
and animals as definitely of quantitative nature because he can ob-
serve that the new-born infant shows no human but merely animal
characteristics. The difference between men and animals, which is
one of Adler's fundamental theses, comes gradually about during
the individual's development from an ovum to an adult.
4. Adler's efforts to demonstrate that the Freudian concepts of
personality have been anticipated if not more completely elabo-
rated by Aristotle are based upon entirely formalistic and verbal
comparisons. Aristotle's theory of personality has the same rela-
tion to the Freudian as Democritus' concept of the atom bears
xiv