A. Alexander Beaujean

Charles Spearman is somewhat of an enigmatic figure in psychology’s history. While most historians of psychology agree that he made notable contributions, there is no consensus about the research agenda from which his contributions originated. Since typical methods for studying a researcher’s agenda provide relatively limited information in the case of Spearman, we approached the problem differently. Under the reasoned assumption that the student research projects he guided would manifest his agenda, we examined the content of those projects. What emerged from our inquiry is a research agenda that appears broader and more complex than what is often presented in modern history of psychology texts. We discuss some implications of our findings as well as some possible future directions for historical inquiry into Spearman.

The problem driving this debate issue is old, going back to at least to the 17th century. Yet, psychologists are no closer to solving the problem now than they were centuries ago. In this article I argue that the reason for the lack of definitive solution is that disputants share assumptions that make the problem unsolvable. More specifically, the problem is based on the assumptions that (a) the knowledge field of psychology is coherent and (b) natural scientists employ a common inquiry approach. Both are troublesome. As such, instead of asking questions such as “Should psychologists follow the natural sciences?” it would be much more meaningful to ask questions such as “What does it look like for psychologists in this subfield to follow a scientific approach?”