Mechanism and contextualism in psychology

Abstract

Psychology was established as a separate discipline when it split from philosophy. With the founding of Wundt’s lab and subsequent developments by Külpe, Titchener, and others, psychology was championed initially as a distinct science, in which controlled experiments played a major role. A parallel approach, beginning with Wundt, that eschews causal explanations established through controlled experiments and focuses on qualitative descriptions based on the subjective experiences of individuals, also developed. We describe alternative positions throughout the history of psychology as to whether these approaches accomplish the goals of treating psychology as a natural science. From a historical account, the mechanistic worldview provides a foundation for psychological science, as compared to a contextualistic worldview. We conclude that a mechanistic worldview, as seen in the history of psychology, has appropriate goals for the approach of continuing psychology’s development as a natural science, with the distinction between worldviews remaining a prominent philosophical task.