ABSTRACT
The Psychology Laboratory of the University of Iowa was started in 1887 and dedicated in 1890. Like the six American laboratories that preceded it and those that followed, the Iowa laboratory was an expression of a specific historical event and a general philosophical idea. The event, of course, was the founding by Wilhelm Wundt of the Psychology Laboratory at the University of Leipzig, which has been assigned the date of 1879. The philosophical idea, expressed in a variety of ways by numerous philosophers and scientists, was that if the methods of natural science could be applied to psychology, a level of understanding of the human mind and human action would be achieved that would approach our comprehension of physical, chemical, and biological phenomena. Such an achievement, it was widely thought, would work to the betterment of humankind.
