THEORIES OF LEARNING: Page 43

A pioneer in psychological research, Johann Friedrich Herbart (1816) held that the mind is a blank on which experience writes, man learns by means of perception of the sense organs and by the process of association. Herbart attempted to explain psychic phenomena in terms of simple ideas and looked forward to a future system of psychodynamics determined by mathematical laws. Wilhelm Wundt, who founded the first psychological laboratory (1879), denied rationalism. He devised experimental methods for measuring reactions to physical and physiological changes, effects and stimulations. But he did not consider the physiological aspect to be all of psychology. He was concerned with introspection, with analysis of "internal experience." He was convinced that the combination of the will, and emotional states closely connected with it, was more important than sensations and ideas in the explanation of psychological experience. Another physiological-psychological approach was presented by Herbert Spencer (1855), who saw man as an organism adapting to its environment. He felt that sensations are man's natural guides and his most trustworthy ones—"when not rendered morbid by long-continued disobedience." This thought derived from his belief that man's senses were formed in accordance with the all-embracing law of evolution from a less perfect to a more perfect state. William James knew both Spencer and Wundt, but rejected their principles (1890). He theorized that all learning begins in experience, that knowledge comes through an act of consciousness motivated by necessity.