Searching for the Searchlight Theory: From Karl Popper to Otto Selz

Journal of the History of Ideas

Volumn 64, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 465-487

  Ter Hark, Michel ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GRONINGEN   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0142230884     PISSN: 00225037     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3654236     Document Type: Review

References (60)

1. Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (Oxford, 1972), 341-62.
2. See especially Popper, Objective Knowledge, chapter 3 and Popper, Unended Quest (London, 1974), throughout, and Popper, All Life is Problem Solving (London, 1999), chap. 1.
3. See especially Popper, Objective Knowledge, chapter 3 and Popper, Unended Quest (London, 1974), throughout, and Popper, All Life is Problem Solving (London, 1999), chap. 1.
4. See especially Popper, Objective Knowledge, chapter 3 and Popper, Unended Quest (London, 1974), throughout, and Popper, All Life is Problem Solving (London, 1999), chap. 1.
5. See Michel ter Hark, "Between Autobiography and Reality: Popper's Inductive Years," in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (forthcoming).
6. Quoted in H. Seebohm, Otto Selz, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Psychologie (Heidelberg, 1970),15.
7. Otto Selz, "Die experimentelle Untersuchung des Willensaktes," Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 57 (1910), 247-70.
8. Seebohm, Otto Selz, 278.
9. Adriaen de Groot, Thought and Choice in Chess (The Hague, 1965), 51.
10. This criticism is taken over by Karl Duncker in Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens (Berlin, 1935).
11. Otto Selz, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums (Bonn, 1922), 114.
12. See Duncker, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens, quoted in J. M. Mandler and G. Mandler, Thinking: From Association to Gestalt (New York, 1694), 264 and Jean Piaget, Psychologie der Intelligenz, 42, and Hebart A. Simon, "Otto Selz and Information-Processing Psychology," in Otto Selz: His Contribution to Psychology, ed. N. H. Frijda and A. D. de Groot (The Hague, 1980), 155.
13. See Duncker, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens, quoted in J. M. Mandler and G. Mandler, Thinking: From Association to Gestalt (New York, 1694), 264 and Jean Piaget, Psychologie der Intelligenz, 42, and Hebart A. Simon, "Otto Selz and Information-Processing Psychology," in Otto Selz: His Contribution to Psychology, ed. N. H. Frijda and A. D. de Groot (The Hague, 1980), 155.
14. See Duncker, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens, quoted in J. M. Mandler and G. Mandler, Thinking: From Association to Gestalt (New York, 1694), 264 and Jean Piaget, Psychologie der Intelligenz, 42, and Hebart A. Simon, "Otto Selz and Information-Processing Psychology," in Otto Selz: His Contribution to Psychology, ed. N. H. Frijda and A. D. de Groot (The Hague, 1980), 155.
15. See Duncker, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens, quoted in J. M. Mandler and G. Mandler, Thinking: From Association to Gestalt (New York, 1694), 264 and Jean Piaget, Psychologie der Intelligenz, 42, and Hebart A. Simon, "Otto Selz and Information-Processing Psychology," in Otto Selz: His Contribution to Psychology, ed. N. H. Frijda and A. D. de Groot (The Hague, 1980), 155.
16. Otto Selz, Kurzgefasste Darstellung (Bonn, 1924), 33.
17. Otto Selz, "Die Umgestaltung der Grundanschauungen vom intellektuellen Geschehen," in Kanstudien, 32(1927), 229.
18. During the First World War Selz was invited to study the psychological causes of flight-accidents, a study which also contributed to his insights into the nature of skills. Otto Selz, "Überden Anteil individueller Eigenschaften der Flugzeugführer und Beobachter an Fliegerunfallen," Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie, 15 (1919), 254-300.
19. Selz, Kurzgefasste Darstellung, 48ff.
20. Otto Selz, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums (Bonn, 1922), and Selz, Kurzgefasste Darstellung.
21. Otto Selz, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums (Bonn, 1922), and Selz, Kurzgefasste Darstellung.
22. Selz, Zur Psychologie, xii. See also Selz, Kurzgefasste Darstellung.
23. Selz, Zur Psychologie, xii. See also Selz, Kurzgefasste Darstellung.
24. Malachi H. Hacohen, Karl Popper: The Formative Years 1902-1945 (Cambridge, 2000). The importance of this subgoal has been overlooked by Hacohen in his brief discussion of Popper's dissertation. Moreover Hacohen fails to relate both the Bucket theory and the Searchlight theory to Popper's endorsement of Selz in respectively in Popper, "Die Gedächtnispflege unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Selbsttätigkeit," Die Quelle, 81 (1931), 607-19, and Popper, Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie (unpublished manuscript).
25. Malachi H. Hacohen, Karl Popper: The Formative Years 1902-1945 (Cambridge, 2000). The importance of this subgoal has been overlooked by Hacohen in his brief discussion of Popper's dissertation. Moreover Hacohen fails to relate both the Bucket theory and the Searchlight theory to Popper's endorsement of Selz in respectively in Popper, "Die Gedächtnispflege unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Selbsttätigkeit," Die Quelle, 81 (1931), 607-19, and Popper, Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie (unpublished manuscript).
26. Malachi H. Hacohen, Karl Popper: The Formative Years 1902-1945 (Cambridge, 2000). The importance of this subgoal has been overlooked by Hacohen in his brief discussion of Popper's dissertation. Moreover Hacohen fails to relate both the Bucket theory and the Searchlight theory to Popper's endorsement of Selz in respectively in Popper, "Die Gedächtnispflege unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Selbsttätigkeit," Die Quelle, 81 (1931), 607-19, and Popper, Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie (unpublished manuscript).
27. Karl Popper, Über die Vorstellungen der Tiere (Leipzig und Bern, unpublished manuscript, 1928), 49.
28. I b i d
29. Ernst Mach, Die Principien der Wärmelehre (Leipzig, 1896), 416, and Popper, Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie (unpublished manuscript, 1928), 51.
30. Ernst Mach, Die Principien der Wärmelehre (Leipzig, 1896), 416, and Popper, Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie (unpublished manuscript, 1928), 51.
31. Hans Volkelt, Über die Vorstellungen der Tiere (Leipzig und Bern, 1914), 106.
32. Popper, Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie, 52. Since complex-qualities are always imbued with feelings the animal has, one might also say that different visual impressions "are embedded in the same feelings."
33. Volkelt, Über die Vorstellungen der Tiere, 98.
34. Ibid., 36-37
35. Popper, Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie, 54.
36. Popper, Über die Vorstellungen der Tiere, 57-58.
37. Popper, Über die Vorstellungen der Tiere, 77.
38. Popper, Über die Vorstellungen der Tiere, 69-70.
39. Michel ter Hark, "Between Autobiography and Reality: Popper's Inductive Years," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (forthcoming). To the extent that the article is about pedagogy, and especially about certain psychological presuppositions of pedagogy, it is a continuation not of the dissertation on cognitive psychology but of the thesis on dogmatic thinking of 1927. Indeed, some of the pedagogical questions left unanswered by Popper in his thesis now receive a clear and definitive answer.
40. Popper does not refer to his 1931 article in his later discussions of the Bucket theory.
41. Karl Popper, "Die Gedächtnispflege unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Selbsttätigkeit," in Die Quelle, 81 (1931), 610.
42. Ibid., 613.
43. I b i d.
44. Popper, Die Quelle, 616.
45. I b i d
46. Popper, Die Quelle, 614.
47. Ibid., 613.
48. Ibid., 618.
49. This prejudice automatically leads to an inductivistic prejudice in the field of the theory of knowledge, according to Popper.
50. Karl Poppper, Die beiden Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie (Tübungen, 1979), 23.
51. Popper, Die beiden Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie, 24.
52. I b i d.
53. I b i d.
54. Ibid., 24-25.
55. H. S. Jennings, Behavior of the Lower Organisms (London, 1905). Indeed the cornerstone element of Jennings's theory is what he calls the law of the resolution of physiological states, saying that the resolution of one physiological state into another becomes easier and more rapid after it has taken place a number of times. This associative law accounts not only for trial-and-error behavior but even for associative memory.
56. Popper, Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie, 25. In a footnote he refers to Selz's three books on the Cognitive Psychology.
57. I b i d.
58. Selz, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums, 570. Also quoted in chapter four.
59. Popper, Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ekenntnistheorie, 25-26.
60. Popper, Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ekenntnistheorie, 26.