3 - The pursuit of a neutral science

Summary

Prologue

Since Lashley's death in 1958, historians of psychology have done little to modify his own assessment of the history of psychology and his role in it. They imply that in so highly technical a field as neuropsychology, the aim of which is to describe the neural basis of consciousness, there is room only for the most disinterested of truth-seekers. That is certainly what Lashley considered himself, and historians have not challenged his portrayal. Lashley has become a symbol to psychologists of a perfectly neutral scientist. He was, according to himself and others, led to his conclusions purely by induction from his experimental results; free of preconceptions, he never hesitated to tear down any theory, including his own. Indeed, after his brief early endorsement of behaviorism, he never became an ardent follower of any psychological movement, preferring to point out their weaknesses and their conflicts with what he considered the facts. From the mid-1920s onward, Lashley rejected a collection of theories, and by the 1950s he was rejecting the notion that any theory could ever explain the complexities of psychology.

Lashley's opposition to theory has become legendary among psychologists. He himself stressed it in his papers and addresses – writing, for example, that “[a]lways the question, How? punctures the bubble of theory, and the answer is to be sought in analysis and ever more analysis.”