ABSTRACT
In Boston, William James published The Principles of Psychology (1890). His broad, eclectic view of the field would shape the discipline and serve as a touchstone for generations of students afterwards. Psychologist James McKeen Cattell arrived at New York’s Columbia University in 1890, looking to extend work he had begun in Pennsylvania on his new “mental tests.” He had happened upon an idea that would soon spawn a full-blown industry in the US: testing nearly every student in nearly every school to assess their scholastic aptitude. Two of Cattell’s students, Robert S. Woodworth and Edward L. Thorndike, showed that an old educational assumption, that traditional topics like Greek and mathematics would “discipline” the mind to facilitate the learning of new topics, was untrue: training of this sort did not easily transfer from one topic to another. Thorndike also pioneered experimental studies of animal learning and, later, of quantitative educational testing. Woodworth became most famous for his landmark textbook on general experimental psychology. At Harvard, James hired Hugo Münsterberg to expand and direct the Harvard psychological laboratory. On his arrival, Münsterberg positioned himself as a “pure” experimentalist, dubious of all practical applications. After a decade in America, though, he would change his position dramatically.
