Introduction

The psychology of ontogenesis may perhaps be seen as having differentiated out of a more general "comparative" or "genetic" psychology. In any event, it is important to see developmental psychology by and large as progressing alongside experimental psychology, the science of adult human behaviour. Psychology as an empirical discipline emerged from a background of positivism and associationism. What of developmental psychology as such? It must be stressed that developmental psychology has never stood in a straightforwardly subordinate relationship to psychology in general. Moreover, the claims which are specific to developmental psychology rest on more general, traditional assumptions concerning the Darwinian influence, and these assumptions are themselves coming to be seen by historians of biology as quite misleading. Non-Darwinian biology focused on highlevel laws governing evolutionary change, and hence on directionality and progress in evolution.