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1 9 T H C E N T U RY , I N S T R U M E N T S
AND EXPERIMENTS ASSUMED A
N E W A N D I M P O RTA N T R O L E I N
BO T H P H Y S I O LO GY A N D
P S YC H O LO GY. C O M PA R E T H E
SUCCESS OF THE
I N S T R U M E N TA L A P P R OAC H I N
T H E S E T W O L A BO RAT O RY
DISCIPLINES.
INTRODUCTION
The nineteenth century was the scene of vast political and cultural upheaval
throughout Europe and America, as well as, in differing ways, much of the
rest of the world.1 In Europe especially turmoil following the defeat of
Napoleon led to shifts in the organisation of power in the region, and the
growing consolidation of power into newly coalesced nation-states like Italy
and Germany.2 A considerable component of the consolidation of these states
was the relatively new political force of Nationalism. Nationalism would come
to influence the majority of European nations over the course of the
nineteenth century, and would indeed spread to the United States of America
and beyond.3 This new sense of national identity and, crucially, national
competition, led to new attitudes and cultural desires, especially in the
second half of the nineteenth century.
10 Smith, (1997), pp. 501-2; and also Benschop and Draaisma, (2000), pp.
13, 20-1.
11 Smith, (1997), pp. 501-6; and also Schraven, (2004), pp. 23; and also
Schmidgen, H., Of frogs and men: the origins of psychophysiological time
experiments, 1850-1865, Endeavour, 26:4, (2002), pp 142-148 [henceforth
Schmidgen, (2002)]; and also Benschop and Draaisma, (2000), pp. 2, 11, 20.
12 Lawrence, (1985), pp. 503-4; and also Frank, R., The telltale heart:
physiological instruments, graphic methods, and clinical hopes, 1854-1914,
in Coleman, W., and Holmes, F., The Investigative Enterprise: Experimental
Physiology in Nineteenth-Century Medicine, (Berkely, 1988), pp. 211-290
[henceforth Frank, (1988)].
13 Foucault, M., The Birth of the Clinic, (London, 2003); and also Lawrence,
(1985), pp. 503-5.
14 Borrell, (1987), pp. 53-4; and also de Chadarevian, S., Graphical method
and discipline: self-recording instruments in 19 th century physiology, Studies
in History and Philosophy of Science, 24:2, (1993), pp. 267-91 [henceforth de
Chadarevian, (1993)]; and also Lawrence, (1985), pp. 505-6; and also Reiser,
S. J., Medicine and the Reign of Technology, (Cambridge, 1978)[henceforth
Reiser, (1978)].
into the second half of the nineteenth century from very different
backgrounds.
There are also questions to be raised about the title of this paper. What,
exactly, is meant by the Instrumental Approach? Furthermore, what is meant
by Success? The instrumental approach, in brief, entails a whole raft of
methodologies and practices increasingly popular in mid nineteenth-century
chemistry and physics. The approach bears a focus on the use of instruments
to enhance or supplant the human senses. It also encourages the generation
of numeric and graphical data through investigation of phenomena using
instruments, and the precision, impartiality, empiricism, and repeatability
their permanence can allow.15
Success, in the contexts being examined here, could be considered in two
ways: the success of the instrumental approach as the widespread adoption
of that approach, or as the production by that approach of substantial
meaningful data. Disciplinary success against academic success. Both of
these forms of success shall be considered when examining the instrumental
approach in both psychology and physiology.
world within physiology, and can therefore be seen as a success, but if one
views physiology as a subset of the broader medical community, then it can
seen to be, generally, resisted and held back, in the nineteenth century at
least it could be called a failure. However, should one consider success as a
measure of the value of the data it produces, then the instrumental approach
is clearly a success, as it produced a wide range of physiological data and
discoveries about the human body and disease, despite an early lack of
international standardisation and variable manufacturing techniques. 42
Overall however, considering that physiology was actively working to
differentiate itself as an independent experimental discipline at the time, and
the instrumental approach was both widely adopted and fruitful, it can be
argued that it was a considerable success in the discipline at the time and
beyond.43
CONCLUSIONS
Physology and Psychology were considerably different disciplines in the
nineteenth century. Physiology was well established, psychology wasnt.
However over the second half of the nineteenth century they both began to
move down similar paths. They both increasingly pursued the precise
gathering of data, the empirical production of knowledge and the comparison
and sharing of information to produce conclusions about common elements
shared by all people. The tools for these pursuits were, principally
instruments. In psychology and physiology the use of instruments was widely
and rapidly adopted for a variety of uses. However, physiologys parent
discipline, medicine, was considerably more conservative, and closely tied to
physiology than psychologys parent discipline, philosophy. This hindered the
spread of instrumentation into further medical practice for some time, and
the results of physiological studies were often dismissed by the broader
medical corpus. In this way, the instrumental approach could perhaps be
seen as unsuccessful in physiology. However, it was broadly adopted within
42 de Chadarevian, (1993), pp. 287-91.
43 Borrell, (1987), pp. 53-4; and also Frank, (1988) pp. 250.
physiology itself, and produced a large amount of viable studies and data
over time. Considering the growth of physiology into the twentieth century,
and the cumulative adoption of instruments in clinical medicine over time, it
can be argued that the instrumental approach was, eventually, highly
successful in physiology and clinical medicine as a whole.
Psychologys story is a little different. Whilst the instrumental approach was
widely adopted with relatively little hindrance throughout much of the
burgeoning psychological community, it produced little meaningful results of
psychological studies. In areas where it touched on physiology, like Helmholz
work with the propagation of nerve impulses, progress was made, but in
determining the make-up of the human mind and the nature of
consciousness, instrumentation yielded little result. Instrumentation did help
psychology establish itself as a science in the nineteenth century, which
helped its ascendency in the early-to-mid-twentieth century, but when it
arrived it was very much without instruments. Overall perhaps it could be
argued that the instrumental approach in psychology was also successful. In
the long run the discipline benefitted from it, and whilst it did not yield the
results that were hoped for, its broad adoption helped form a disciplinary
identity and helped guide psychological investigation in the coming decades.
The instrumental method helped secure psychologys future, and can be
seen to have been successful, in an altogether different way to that of
physiology.
BIBLIOGRAPHY