Science Old and New: Psychology

Abstract

Thomas White’s mechanical explanations were applied not only in physics, but also in areas which we would now label as ‘psychology’ — in areas, that is, such as sensation, memory, and imagination. Debating with Joseph Glanvill on the nature of the soul and of sensation, he insists that such phenomena, no less than others, “are subject to the contemplation and scrutiny of Philosophy and accurate Mechanicks.”¹ There is, he argues, nothing mysterious about the relationships of body with soul, brain with memory, will with action. These apparent problem areas in psychology are all reducible to the explanatory terms successfully utilised in physics, so that there is no justification for his opponent’s resignation to their essential inexplicability as mysteries.