ABSTRACT

The methodology of the sciences establishes a fundamental distinction between sciences that study facts, and sciences that establish norms. Pedagogics, without question, is at the boundary between these two types of sciences. Empirical psychology also was transformed into a “psychology without any assumption of a soul,” or “psychology without any metaphysics,” or “psychology based on experience.” Even empirical psychology, in the person of its strongest proponents, suggested the importance of the motor aspect in the study of mental processes. Originally, when it first emerged, educational psychology aroused great hopes, and it seemed to everyone that, under the guidance of educational psychology, education would, in fact, become as exact a process as technology. In fact, in the classical development, educational psychology stood far closer to a concept of mental health than to pedagogics proper. Thus, psychology cannot directly produce any sort of pedagogical conclusions.