Abstract

This chapter considers the development of experimental psychology as a distinct discipline from philosophy, a result that arrived more slowly in Britain than in Germany or the United States. The chapter first considers more closely the question of what it means to chart the ‘emergence’ of psychology as a separate discipline. It finds that the usual criteria applied by historians of psychologh, that a discipline arises through institutional structures such as professorships (a specialist career path), journals, and professional socieites, does not fit the British scene. It then surveys some actors’ taxonomies of psychological trends or schools in Britain, looking back from the first quarter of the twentieth century. Finally, it examines connections between philosophy and psychology in the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century, involving the problem of the external world and the use of psychology in epistemology.