{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/wikisource_The_Analysis_of_Mind_Preface/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/wikisource_The_Analysis_of_Mind_Preface","id":"wikisource_The_Analysis_of_Mind_Preface","license":"Public Domain / CC-BY-SA (see source)","rights_basis":"wikisource_site_inclusion_policy","source":"wikisource","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Analysis_of_Mind/Preface","summary":null,"tags":["Headers_applying_DefaultSort_key","Subpages"],"text":"This book has grown out of an attempt to harmonize two different\ntendencies, one in psychology, the other in physics, with both of\nwhich I find myself in sympathy, although at first sight they\nmight seem inconsistent. On the one hand, many psychologists,\nespecially those of the behaviourist school, tend to adopt what\nis essentially a materialistic position, as a matter of method if\nnot of metaphysics. They make psychology increasingly dependent\non physiology and external observation, and tend to think of\nmatter as something much more solid and indubitable than mind.\nMeanwhile the physicists, especially Einstein and other exponents\nof the theory of relativity, have been making \"matter\" less and\nless material. Their world consists of \"events,\" from which\n\"matter\" is derived by a logical construction. Whoever reads, for\nexample, Professor Eddington's \"Space, Time and Gravitation\"\n(Cambridge University Press, 1920), will see that an\nold-fashioned materialism can receive no support from modern\nphysics. I think that what has permanent value in the outlook of\nthe behaviourists is the feeling that physics is the most\nfundamental science at present in existence. But this position\ncannot be called materialistic, if, as seems to be the case,\nphysics does not assume the existence of matter.\n\nThe view that seems to me to reconcile the materialistic tendency\nof psychology with the anti-materialistic tendency of physics is\nthe view of William James and the American new realists,\naccording to which the \"stuff\" of the world is neither mental nor\nmaterial, but a \"neutral stuff,\" out of which both are\nconstructed. I have endeavoured in this work to develop this view\nin some detail as regards the phenomena with which psychology is\nconcerned.\n\nMy thanks are due to Professor John B. Watson and to Dr. T. P.\nNunn for reading my MSS. at an early stage and helping me with\nmany valuable suggestions; also to Mr. A. Wohlgemuth for much\nvery useful information as regards important literature. I have\nalso to acknowledge the help of the editor of this Library of\nPhilosophy, Professor Muirhead, for several suggestions by which\nI have profited.\n\nThe work has been given in the form of lectures both in London\nand Peking, and one lecture, that on Desire, has been published\nin the Athenaeum.\n\nThere are a few allusions to China in this book, all of which\nwere written before I had been in China, and are not intended to\nbe taken by the reader as geographically accurate. I have used\n\"China\" merely as a synonym for \"a distant country,\" when I\nwanted illustrations of unfamiliar things.\n\nPeking, January 1921.","title":"The Analysis of Mind/Preface","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":430}