The psychology of evidence.

Abstract

Hermann Ebbinghaus once made the remark that psychology has a long past, but only a short history. Yet if one so construes this short history to include the period of the last half century or so, one finds that it has seen changes which, if they seem at first sight to have been trifling, have been none the less significant and meaningful. On casting around for evidence of this fact one still meets, it is true, with much of the older terminology borrowed from philosophy, and a few of the older and more well-tried concepts. The expression 'mind' is still in use, and the mind-body controversy is not settled once and for all, but the difference, to take an example, between Sir William Hamilton's Lectures and the latest copy of the Journal of Experimental Psychology is a striking one. [...]