ABSTRACT
The argument proceeds in an apparently dialectical spirit setting R. I. Watson’s program against Max Wertheimer’s dense account of the experimental study of motion. Paolo Bozzi’s stress on the temporal coincidence between the publication of Wertheimer’s original text and that of Watson’s founding manifesto of Behaviourismi is one of the author’s rhetorical ploys which neither determine nor condition the argumentative scheme, which develops independently of this coincidence but rather on grounds that concern psychology’s epistemic and methodological standing. The “psychologically given” takes on an ontological significance in declaring that the object of psychology is defined by the recognition of the priority of experiential contents, of what they bear witness to. The consequences of disregarding the priority of the phenomenal datum in favor of the physical are well known.
