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Show Disagreement Among Psychologists Cause of Chaos in Science of Thought By PROF. HOMER B. REED, University of Pittsburgh. There is chaos in the science of psychology. Psychologists have no - agreement among themselves about the fundamental laws that govern learning or the formation of human thought and habits. They disagree as to what these laws are, what the problems are -which they intend to solve, what their importance in the science is, and whether the laws governing the thought processes are the same as, or different dif-ferent from, those governing the formation of habits or conduct. Having discarded the old laws, each modern psychologist who undertakes un-dertakes to writs a textbook formulates his own laws, and for this reason there is chaos in the science. I would emphasize the need for the application of the principle of parsimony to the variety of laws found in textbooks. While the laws of contiguity and similarity do not stand for essential truths' about the connections con-nections between ideas they should, instead of being discarded, be reformulated re-formulated so as to make them agree with the facts of modern psy-. psy-. chology and of the "science of behavior." |