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About this quote

What does it mean?
The author aimed to elevate psychology by treating it with the rigor and methods of natural sciences.
In plain terms
Psychology should be studied like physics or biology.
What can you take from it?
Apply scientific methods to understand the mind.

Where it applies

  • academic study
  • clinical practice
  • research design

Putting it to work

  • use empirical methods
  • standardize psychological study

Questions to consider

  • Can psychology be fully scientific?
  • What methods work best?

Another view

Human behavior may not always fit strict scientific models.

More from William James

  1. The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.

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  2. I have often thought that the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him…

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  3. Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdain - under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.

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