The Aim and Progress of Psychology and Other Sciences

This volume is a selection of papers representing the efforts of one student of psychology and of the history and analysis of science, (a) to channel psychology towards the goal of natural science, and (b) to urge that all the constructions of science (descriptions and interpretations) be derived exclusively from contacts with confronted things and events. As the earliest articles indicate, from his first professional concern with psychology, Dr. Kantor has been a reprobative witness of the spiral development of psychology from pure mentalism, through a behavioral era, and back to a modified mentalism. The author has chosen thirty-six papers that have been grouped into eleven sections, each covering important issues within the general scientific or specialized psychological domain. In every case the author’s intention was to indicate the direction psychology and the other sciences should go in order to reach a naturalistic status.

Jacob Robert Kantor (1888?1984) was a prominent systematic psychologist who organized scientific values into a coherent system of psychology. From the interbehavioral perspective, self-actional causes, whether fictional events (e.g., mentalism) or fictional powers attributed to otherwise actual events (brain as cause of behavior), are anathema to the science of psychology. He is the author of a number of books on general logic, psychology, and the logic of science. He has also published numerous articles in scientific journals. Among his publications are The Logic of Modern Science, Psychology and Logic, and The Aim and Progress of Psychology and Other Sciences.