Margaret Floy Washburn

This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources. Find sources: "Margaret Floy Washburn" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Margaret Floy Washburn^[1] (July 25, 1871 – October 29, 1939), was a leading American

In the spring of 1903, she gladly returned to Vassar College as Associate Professor of Philosophy, where she remained the rest of her life. When she started working there, she became the head of the newly founded psychology department. She treated her students well and in turn they appreciated her as a professor. A large number of her students continued to advance in the field of psychology after graduation. Washburn published many of her students' studies during her career. The students would collect and work with the data while she wrote up and published the experiments. Between 1905 and 1938, she published 68 studies from the Vassar Undergraduate Laboratory. These studies were the largest series of studies from any American university at the time. At one point, her students gifted her with a large sum of money and they wanted her to use the money for leisure. Instead, she used the money as scholarship aids for students in the psychology department.^[4]

She owned two cats, the first of which was named Hiram. When students would visit , Washburn would show off Hiram's tricks, such as jumping over a pencil. When Hiram died, Washburn purchased a cat in a New York City pet shop. That cat was angry and territorial, so much so that Washburn closed off more than one room in her house for the cat's sole use.^[5]

In 1921, Washburn gave her APA presidential address in which she discussed the importance of introspection as a legitimate method of inquisition. She believed that the rising of behaviorism in psychology was overshadowing the legitimacy of mental processes like consciousness and introspection.

In 1937, a

Washburn was a major figure in psychology in the United States in the first decades of the 20th century, substantially adding to the development of psychology as a science and a scholarly profession. She translated Wilhelm Wundt's Ethical Systems into English.^[4] Washburn used her experimental studies in animal behavior and cognition to present her idea that mental (not just behavioral) events are legitimate and important psychological areas for study in her book, The Animal Mind (1908). This, of course, went against the established doctrine in academic psychology that the mental was not observable and therefore not appropriate for serious scientific investigation.

Besides her experimental work, she read widely and drew on French and German experiments of higher mental processes stating they were intertwined with tentative physical movements (period). She viewed

A noteworthy feature is the diversity of animal species considered. In an era when animal research was dominated by rats, Washburn references, "not fewer than 100 species, including ants, bees, caterpillars, cats, chickens, chubs, clams, cockroaches, cows, crabs, crayfish, dogs, dragonflies, earthworms, elephants, flies, frogs, goldfish, grasshoppers, guinea pigs, horseshoe crabs, jellyfish, lancelets, leeches, mice, minnows, monkeys, pigeons, pike, planarians, potato beetles, raccoons, salamanders, sea anemones, sea-urchins, shrimps, silkworms, snails, spiders, tortoises, wasps, water beetles, and (yes) rats."[9] Indeed, she devotes an entire chapter to the mind of the simplest animal, the amoeba.

Also noteworthy is her introductory chapters, which detailed methods of interpreting the results of animal research. Although she was cautious about attributing anthropomorphic meanings to animal behavior and realized that animal consciousness could never be directly measured, she opposed strict behaviorism's dismissal of consciousness and sought to comprehend as much as possible about animal mental phenomena. She suggested that animal psyches contained mental structures similar to that of humans and therefore suggested animal consciousness is not qualitatively different from human mental life. The greater the similarity in neuroanatomical structure and behavior between animals and humans, the more consciousness could be inferred. In her words:

"Our acquaintance with the mind of animals rests upon the same basis as our acquaintance with the mind of our fellow man: both are derived by inference from observed behavior. The actions of our fellow man resemble our own, and we therefore infer in them like subjective states to ours: the actions of animals resemble ours less completely, but the difference is one of degree, not of kind... We know not where consciousness begins in the animal world. We know where it surely resides—in ourselves; we know where it exists beyond a reasonable doubt—in those animals of structure resembling ours which rapidly adapt themselves to the lessons of experience. Beyond this point, for all we know, it may exist in simpler and simpler forms until we reach the very lowest of living beings."^[10]

The Animal Mind went through several additions, in 1917, 1926, and 1936 and remained the standard textbook of comparative psychology for nearly 25 years, although about 80% of the material from the first edition was retained in subsequent editions. Compared to later editions, earlier editions extensively covered anecdotal evidence. A chapter on emotions was added to the 4th edition.^[11]

Motor theory

Washburn's motor theory attempted to find common ground between the structuralist tradition of her mentor, Titchener, which focused exclusively on consciousness and the rising view of behaviorism, which dismissed consciousness in favor of visible actions. Washburn's motor theory argued that all thought can be traced back to bodily movements. According to her theory, consciousness arises when a motion or a tendency towards movement is partially inhibited by a tendency towards another movement. In the presence of an object, the senses create an impression of it, including vision, sight, feel etc. This is accompanied by an incipient sense of movement, either towards or from the object. Different objects evoke different senses of motor readiness. When the object is not present, memory re-evokes those sensations. Learning consists of an association of movements into a set of regular series and combinations. When two movements become closely linked in quick succession, the sense of movement from the first primes the next, beginning a series. Ideas are organized the same way. Thinking becomes a derivative of movements of the hands, eyes, vocal cords, and trunk muscles (remember the thinker's pose). In summary:

"While consciousness exists and is not a form of movement, it has as its indispensable basis certain motor processes, and… the only sense in which we can explain conscious processes is by studying the laws governing these underlying motor phenomena".^[12]

Washburn presented this theory in several of her major works, including her early papers and in chapters she contributed to several collections, including Feelings and Emotions: The Wittenberg Symposium and Psychologies of 1930.^[13] However, it was most clearly outlined in what she considered her greatest work, Movement and Mental Imagery: Outlines of a Motor Theory of the Complexer Mental Processes.^[14]

Notes