James Mark Baldwin
Encyclopedia
James Mark Baldwin was an American
philosopher
and psychologist
who was educated at Princeton
under the supervision of Scottish philosopher James McCosh
and who was one of the founders of the Department of Psychology
at the university. He made important contributions to early psychology
, psychiatry
, and to the theory of evolution
.
at Leipzig and with Friedrich Paulsen
at Berlin. (1884–1934).
In 1885 he became Instructor in French and German at the Princeton Theological Seminary
. He translated Théodule-Armand Ribot
's "German Psychology of Today" and wrote his first paper "The Postulates of a Physiological Psychology". Ribot's work traced the origins of psychology from Immanuel Kant
through Johann Friedrich Herbart
, Gustav Theodor Fechner, Hermann Lotze to Wundt.
In 1887,while working as a professor of philosophy at Lake Forest College
he married Helen Hayes Green, the daughter of the President of the Seminary. At Lake Forest he published the first part of his "Handbook of Psychology (Senses and Intellect)" in which he directed the attention to the new experimental psychology of Ernst Heinrich Weber
, Fechner and Wundt.
In 1889 he went to the University of Toronto
as the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics. His creation of a laboratory of experimental psychology at Toronto (which he claimed was the first in the British Empire
) coincided with the birth of his daughters Helen (1889) and Elizabeth (1891) which inspired the quantitative and experimental research on infant development that was to make such a vivid impression on Jean Piaget
and Lawrence Kohlberg
through Baldwin's "Mental Development in the Child and the Race. Methods and Processes" (1894) dedicated to the subject.
A second part of "Handbook of Psychology (Feeling and Will)" appeared in 1891.
During this creative phase Baldwin travelled to France (1892) to visit the important psychologists Charcot
(at the Salpêtrière
), Hippolyte Bernheim
(at Nancy), and Pierre Janet
.
, where he was offered the Stuart Chair in Psychology and the opportunity to establish a new psychology laboratory. He would stay at Princeton till 1903 working out the highlights of his career reflected in "Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development. A Study in Social Psychology." (1897) where he took his previous "Mental Development" to the critical stage in which it survived in the work of Lev Vygotsky
, through Vygotsky in the crucial work of Alexander Luria
, and in the synthesis of both by Aleksey Leontyev
. He also edited the English editions of Karl Groos
's Play of Animals (1898) and Play of Men (1901).
Baldwin complemented his psychological work with philosophy, in particular epistemology his contribution to which he presented in the presidential address to the American Psychological Association in 1897. By then the work on the "Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology" (1902) had been announced and a period of intense philosophical correspondence ensued with the contributors to the project: William James
, John Dewey
, Charles Sanders Peirce, Josiah Royce
, George Edward Moore
, Bernard Bosanquet
, James McKeen Cattell
, Edward B. Titchener
, Hugo Münsterberg
, Christine Ladd-Franklin
, Adolf Meyer
, George Stout
, Franklin Henry Giddings
, Edward Bagnall Poulton
and others.
An important contributor should not be overlooked. Conway Lloyd Morgan was perhaps closest to understanding the so called "Baldwin Effect
". In his "Habit and Instinct" (1896) he phrased a comparable version of the theory, as he did in an address to a session of the New York Academy of Sciences
(February 1896) in the presence of Baldwin. (1896/Of modification and variation. Science 4(99) (November 20):733-739). As did Henry Fairfield Osborn
(1896/A mode of evolution requiring neither natural selection nor the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Transactions of the New York Academy of Science 15:141-148). The "Baldwin Effect", building in part on the principle of "organic selection" proposed by Baldwin in "Mental Development" did only receive its name from George Gaylord Simpson
in 1953. (in: Evolution 7:110-117) (see:Daniel J. Depew in "Evolution and Learning" M.I.T.2003)
In 1899 Baldwin went to Oxford to supervise the completion of the "Dictionary..." (1902). He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Science at Oxford University. (In the light of the foregoing, the deafening silence with which J. M. Baldwin was later treated in Oxford publications on the Mind may well come to be regarded as one of the significant omissions in the history of ideas for the 20th century. Compare for example Richard Gregory
: "The Oxford Companion to the Mind", first edition, 1987)
, partly due to an offer involving more pay and less teaching, he moved to a professorship of philosophy and psychology at Johns Hopkins University
where he re-opened the experimental laboratory that had been founded by G. Stanley Hall
in 1884 (but had closed with Hall's departure to take over the presidency of Clark University
in 1888).
In Baltimore Baldwin started to work on "Thoughts and Things: A Study of the Development and Meaning of Thought. Or Genetic Logic" (1906) a densely integrative rendering of his ideas culminating in "Genetic Theory of Reality. Being the Outcome of Genetic Logic as Issuing in the Aesthetic Theory of Reality called Pancalism" (1915).
In Baltimore also Baldwin was arrested in a raid on a brothel (1908), a scandal that put an end to his American career. Forced to leave Johns Hopkins he looked for residence in Paris. He was to reside in France till his death in 1934.
His first years (1908–1912) in France were interrupted by long stays in Mexico
where he advised on university matters and lectured at the School of Higher Studies at the National University in Mexico City
. His " Darwin and the Humanities" (1909) and "Individual and Society" (1911) date from this period.
In 1912 he took permanent residence in Paris.
Baldwin's residence in France resulted in his pointing out the urgency of American non-neutral support for his new hosts on the French battlefields of World War I
. He published "American Neutrality, Its Cause and Cure" (1916) for the purpose, and when in 1916 he survived a German torpedo attack on the "Sussex" in the English channel
- on the return trip from a visit to William Osler
at Oxford- his open telegram to the President of the United States on the affair became frontpage news (New York Times). With the entry of America in the war (1917) he helped to organize the Paris branch of the American Navy League, acting as its Chairman till 1922. In 1926 his memoirs "Between Two Wars (1861-1921)" were published. He died in Paris on November 8, 1934.
), but it was his contributions to developmental psychology
that his contributions were the most important. His step-wise theory of cognitive development was a major influence on the later, and much more widely-known, developmental theory of Jean Piaget
.
His contributions to the young discipline's early journals and institutions were highly significant as well. Baldwin was a co-founder (with James McKeen Cattell
) of Psychological Review
(which was founded explicitly to compete with G. Stanley Hall
's American Journal of Psychology
), Psychological Monographs and Psychological Index. He was also the founding editor of Psychological Bulletin
.
In 1892 he was vice-president of the International Congress of Psychology held in London
, and in 1897–1898 president of the American Psychological Association
; he received a gold medal from the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences of Denmark (1897), and was honorary president of the International Congress of Criminal Anthropology held in Geneva
in 1896.
. Every practice of the infant's movement intended to advance the integration of behavior
favourable to development in the experimental framework appeared to be selected from an excess of movement in the trial of imitation.
In further stages of development - the ones most critical to an understanding of the evolution of mind- this was graphically (par excellence !) illustrated in the child's efforts to draw and learning to write. ("Mental Development in the Child and the Race").
In later editions of "Mental Development" Baldwin changed the term "organic selection" into "functional selection".
So, from the outset the idea was well linked to the philosophy of mind
Baldwin was emancipating from the models inspired by divine pre-establishment (Spinoza) (Wozniak, 2001)
It is the communication of this profound insight into the practice related nature of dynamogenic development, above all its integration as a creative factor in the fabric of society, that helped the students of Baldwin to understand what was left of Lamarck's
signature. Singularly illustrated by Gregory Bateson
in Mind and Nature (1979) and brilliantly reintegrated in contemporary studies by Terence Deacon The Symbol
ic Species: The co-evolution
of language
and the human brain
(1997).
In human species the faculty of niche building is favoured by a practical intelligence able to design the circumstances that will put its vital acquirements out of harms way in terms of (lineary predicted) natural selection
. It is precisely in the fields of study relating to massive selection pressures against which other species seem to be without defences -biological development in the face of novel pandemic
s (AIDS
, mad cow disease)- that the arguments relative to the natural heredity
of intelligent acquirements have resurfaced in a way most challenging to science.
or "Baldwinian evolution". Baldwin proposed, against the neo-Lamarckian
s of his day (most notably Edward Drinker Cope
), that there is a mechanism whereby epigenetic factors come to shape the congenital endowment as much as — or more than — natural selection
pressures. In particular, human behavioural decisions made and sustained across generations as a set of cultural
practices ought to be considered among the factors shaping the human genome.
For example, the incest taboo
, if powerfully enforced, removes the natural selection pressure
against the possession of incest-favoring instincts. After a few generations without this natural selection pressure, unless such genetic material were profoundly fixed, it would tend to diversify and lose its function. Humans would no longer be innately averse to incest, but would rely on their capacity to internalize such rules from cultural practices.
The opposite case can also be true: cultural practice might selectively breed
humans to meet the fitness conditions of new environments, cultural and physical, which earlier hominids could not have survived. Baldwinian evolution might strengthen or weaken a genetic trait.
and wider sociobiology
. Few people did more than Robert Wozniak, Professor of Psychology at Bryn Mawr College
for the rediscovery of the significance of James Mark Baldwin in the History of ideas
. In his book Integral Psychology
, Ken Wilber
refers to Baldwin as a forerunner of Wilber's theory of integral psychology.
, he wrote:
He also largely contributed to the Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (1901—1905), of which he was editor
in-chief.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
philosopher
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and psychologist
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
who was educated at Princeton
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
under the supervision of Scottish philosopher James McCosh
James McCosh
James McCosh was a prominent philosopher of the Scottish School of Common Sense. He was president of Princeton University 1868-1888.-Biography:...
and who was one of the founders of the Department of Psychology
Princeton University Department of Psychology
The Princeton University Department of Psychology, located in Green Hall, is an academic department of Princeton University on the corner of Washington St. and William St. in Princeton, New Jersey. For over a century, the department has been one of the most notable psychology departments in the...
at the university. He made important contributions to early psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, psychiatry
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
, and to the theory of evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
.
Early life
Using the opportunity offered by the Green Fellowship in Mental Science awarded to him at Princeton he went to study in Germany with Wilhelm WundtWilhelm Wundt
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt was a German physician, psychologist, physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the founding figures of modern psychology. He is widely regarded as the "father of experimental psychology"...
at Leipzig and with Friedrich Paulsen
Friedrich Paulsen
Friedrich Paulsen was a German philosopher and educator.-Biography:He was born at Langenhorn and educated at Erlangen, Bonn and Berlin, where he became extraordinary professor of philosophy and pedagogy in 1878...
at Berlin. (1884–1934).
In 1885 he became Instructor in French and German at the Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton Theological Seminary is a theological seminary of the Presbyterian Church located in the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey in the United States...
. He translated Théodule-Armand Ribot
Théodule-Armand Ribot
Théodule-Armand Ribot , French psychologist, was born at Guingamp, and was educated at the Lycée de St Brieuc.In 1856 he began to teach, and was admitted to the École Normale Supérieure in 1862...
's "German Psychology of Today" and wrote his first paper "The Postulates of a Physiological Psychology". Ribot's work traced the origins of psychology from Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
through Johann Friedrich Herbart
Johann Friedrich Herbart
Johann Friedrich Herbart was a German philosopher, psychologist, and founder of pedagogy as an academic discipline....
, Gustav Theodor Fechner, Hermann Lotze to Wundt.
In 1887,while working as a professor of philosophy at Lake Forest College
Lake Forest College
Lake Forest College, founded in 1857, is a private liberal arts college in Lake Forest, Illinois. The college has 1,500 students representing 47 states and 78 countries....
he married Helen Hayes Green, the daughter of the President of the Seminary. At Lake Forest he published the first part of his "Handbook of Psychology (Senses and Intellect)" in which he directed the attention to the new experimental psychology of Ernst Heinrich Weber
Ernst Heinrich Weber
Ernst Heinrich Weber was a German physician who is considered one of the founders of experimental psychology.Weber studied medicine at Wittenberg University...
, Fechner and Wundt.
In 1889 he went to the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
as the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics. His creation of a laboratory of experimental psychology at Toronto (which he claimed was the first in the British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
) coincided with the birth of his daughters Helen (1889) and Elizabeth (1891) which inspired the quantitative and experimental research on infant development that was to make such a vivid impression on Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget was a French-speaking Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher known for his epistemological studies with children. His theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology"....
and Lawrence Kohlberg
Lawrence Kohlberg
Lawrence Kohlberg was a Jewish American psychologist born in Bronxville, New York, who served as a professor at the University of Chicago, as well as Harvard University. Having specialized in research on moral education and reasoning, he is best known for his theory of stages of moral development...
through Baldwin's "Mental Development in the Child and the Race. Methods and Processes" (1894) dedicated to the subject.
A second part of "Handbook of Psychology (Feeling and Will)" appeared in 1891.
During this creative phase Baldwin travelled to France (1892) to visit the important psychologists Charcot
Jean-Martin Charcot
Jean-Martin Charcot was a French neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology. He is known as "the founder of modern neurology" and is "associated with at least 15 medical eponyms", including Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis...
(at the Salpêtrière
Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital
The Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital is a teaching hospital located in Paris, France. Part of the Assistance publique - Hôpitaux de Paris, it is one of Europe's largest hospitals...
), Hippolyte Bernheim
Hippolyte Bernheim
Hippolyte Bernheim was a French physician and neurologist, born at Mülhausen, Alsace. He received his education in his native town and at the University of Strasbourg, where he was graduated as doctor of medicine in 1867...
(at Nancy), and Pierre Janet
Pierre Janet
Pierre Marie Félix Janet was a pioneering French psychologist, philosopher and psychotherapist in the field of dissociation and traumatic memory....
.
Princeton
In 1893 he was called back to his alma mater, Princeton UniversityPrinceton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, where he was offered the Stuart Chair in Psychology and the opportunity to establish a new psychology laboratory. He would stay at Princeton till 1903 working out the highlights of his career reflected in "Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development. A Study in Social Psychology." (1897) where he took his previous "Mental Development" to the critical stage in which it survived in the work of Lev Vygotsky
Lev Vygotsky
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist, the founder of cultural-historical psychology, and the leader of the Vygotsky Circle.-Biography:...
, through Vygotsky in the crucial work of Alexander Luria
Alexander Luria
Alexander Romanovich Luria was a famous Soviet neuropsychologist and developmental psychologist. He was one of the founders of neuropsychology and the jointly led the Vygotsky Circle.- Biography :...
, and in the synthesis of both by Aleksey Leontyev
Aleksey Leontyev
Alexei Nikolaevich Leont'ev , Soviet developmental psychologist, the founder of activity theory.- Biography :A.N. Leont'ev worked with Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Luria from 1924 to 1930, collaborating on the development of a Marxist psychology as a response to behaviourism and the focus on the...
. He also edited the English editions of Karl Groos
Karl Groos
Karl Groos was a psychologist who proposed an evolutionary instrumentalist theory of play...
's Play of Animals (1898) and Play of Men (1901).
Baldwin complemented his psychological work with philosophy, in particular epistemology his contribution to which he presented in the presidential address to the American Psychological Association in 1897. By then the work on the "Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology" (1902) had been announced and a period of intense philosophical correspondence ensued with the contributors to the project: William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
, John Dewey
John Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...
, Charles Sanders Peirce, Josiah Royce
Josiah Royce
Josiah Royce was an American objective idealist philosopher.-Life:Royce, born in Grass Valley, California, grew up in pioneer California very soon after the California Gold Rush. He received the B.A...
, George Edward Moore
George Edward Moore
George Edward Moore OM, was an English philosopher. He was, with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Gottlob Frege, one of the founders of the analytic tradition in philosophy...
, Bernard Bosanquet
Bernard Bosanquet (philosopher)
Bernard Bosanquet was an English philosopher and political theorist, and an influential figure on matters of political and social policy in late 19th and early 20th century Britain...
, James McKeen Cattell
James McKeen Cattell
James McKeen Cattell , American psychologist, was the first professor of psychology in the United States at the University of Pennsylvania and long-time editor and publisher of scientific journals and publications, most notably the journal Science...
, Edward B. Titchener
Edward B. Titchener
Edward Bradford Titchener, D.Sc., Ph.D., LL.D., Litt.D. was a British psychologist who studied under Wilhelm Wundt for several years. Titchener is best known for creating his version of psychology that described the structure of the mind; structuralism...
, Hugo Münsterberg
Hugo Münsterberg
Hugo Münsterberg was a German-American psychologist. He was one of the pioneers in applied psychology, extending his research and theories to Industrial/Organizational , legal, medical, clinical, educational and business settings. Münsterberg encountered immense turmoil with the outbreak of the...
, Christine Ladd-Franklin
Christine Ladd-Franklin
Christine Ladd-Franklin was the first American woman psychologist, logician, and mathematician.-Early Life and Early Education:...
, Adolf Meyer
Adolf Meyer
Adolf Meyer may refer to:*Adolf Bernard Meyer , German anthropologist and ornithologist*Adolf Meyer , Swiss psychiatrist*Adolf Meyer , German architect-See also:...
, George Stout
George Stout
George Frederick Stout was a leading English philosopher and psychologist.Born in South Shields, he studied and later taught philosophy and psychology at Cambridge University....
, Franklin Henry Giddings
Franklin Henry Giddings
Franklin Henry Giddings, Ph.D., LL.D. was an American sociologist and economist, born at Sherman, Connecticut. He graduated from Union College . For ten years, he wrote items for the Springfield, Massachusetts Republican and the Daily Union...
, Edward Bagnall Poulton
Edward Bagnall Poulton
Sir Edward Bagnall Poulton, FRS was a British evolutionary biologist who was a lifelong advocate of natural selection...
and others.
An important contributor should not be overlooked. Conway Lloyd Morgan was perhaps closest to understanding the so called "Baldwin Effect
Baldwin effect
The Baldwin effect, also known as Baldwinian evolution or ontogenic evolution, is a theory of a possible evolutionary processes that was originally put forward in 1896 in a paper, "A New Factor in Evolution," by American psychologist James Mark Baldwin. The paper proposed a mechanism for specific...
". In his "Habit and Instinct" (1896) he phrased a comparable version of the theory, as he did in an address to a session of the New York Academy of Sciences
New York Academy of Sciences
The New York Academy of Sciences is the third oldest scientific society in the United States. An independent, non-profit organization with more than members in 140 countries, the Academy’s mission is to advance understanding of science and technology...
(February 1896) in the presence of Baldwin. (1896/Of modification and variation. Science 4(99) (November 20):733-739). As did Henry Fairfield Osborn
Henry Fairfield Osborn
Henry Fairfield Osborn, Sr. ForMemRS was an American geologist, paleontologist, and eugenicist.-Early life and career:...
(1896/A mode of evolution requiring neither natural selection nor the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Transactions of the New York Academy of Science 15:141-148). The "Baldwin Effect", building in part on the principle of "organic selection" proposed by Baldwin in "Mental Development" did only receive its name from George Gaylord Simpson
George Gaylord Simpson
George Gaylord Simpson was an American paleontologist. Simpson was perhaps the most influential paleontologist of the twentieth century, and a major participant in the modern evolutionary synthesis, contributing Tempo and mode in evolution , The meaning of evolution and The major features of...
in 1953. (in: Evolution 7:110-117) (see:Daniel J. Depew in "Evolution and Learning" M.I.T.2003)
In 1899 Baldwin went to Oxford to supervise the completion of the "Dictionary..." (1902). He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Science at Oxford University. (In the light of the foregoing, the deafening silence with which J. M. Baldwin was later treated in Oxford publications on the Mind may well come to be regarded as one of the significant omissions in the history of ideas for the 20th century. Compare for example Richard Gregory
Richard Gregory
Richard Langton Gregory, CBE, MA, D.Sc., FRSE, FRS was a British psychologist and Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Bristol.-Life and career:...
: "The Oxford Companion to the Mind", first edition, 1987)
Later life
In 1903, partly as a result of a dispute with Princeton president Woodrow WilsonWoodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
, partly due to an offer involving more pay and less teaching, he moved to a professorship of philosophy and psychology at Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...
where he re-opened the experimental laboratory that had been founded by G. Stanley Hall
G. Stanley Hall
Granville Stanley Hall was a pioneering American psychologist and educator. His interests focused on childhood development and evolutionary theory...
in 1884 (but had closed with Hall's departure to take over the presidency of Clark University
Clark University
Clark University is a private research university and liberal arts college in Worcester, Massachusetts.Founded in 1887, it is the oldest educational institution founded as an all-graduate university. Clark now also educates undergraduates...
in 1888).
In Baltimore Baldwin started to work on "Thoughts and Things: A Study of the Development and Meaning of Thought. Or Genetic Logic" (1906) a densely integrative rendering of his ideas culminating in "Genetic Theory of Reality. Being the Outcome of Genetic Logic as Issuing in the Aesthetic Theory of Reality called Pancalism" (1915).
In Baltimore also Baldwin was arrested in a raid on a brothel (1908), a scandal that put an end to his American career. Forced to leave Johns Hopkins he looked for residence in Paris. He was to reside in France till his death in 1934.
His first years (1908–1912) in France were interrupted by long stays in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
where he advised on university matters and lectured at the School of Higher Studies at the National University in Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
. His " Darwin and the Humanities" (1909) and "Individual and Society" (1911) date from this period.
In 1912 he took permanent residence in Paris.
Baldwin's residence in France resulted in his pointing out the urgency of American non-neutral support for his new hosts on the French battlefields of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. He published "American Neutrality, Its Cause and Cure" (1916) for the purpose, and when in 1916 he survived a German torpedo attack on the "Sussex" in the English channel
English Channel
The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...
- on the return trip from a visit to William Osler
William Osler
Sir William Osler, 1st Baronet was a physician. He was one of the "Big Four" founding professors at Johns Hopkins Hospital as the first Professor of Medicine and founder of the Medical Service there. Sir William Osler, 1st Baronet (July 12, 1849 – December 29, 1919) was a physician. He was...
at Oxford- his open telegram to the President of the United States on the affair became frontpage news (New York Times). With the entry of America in the war (1917) he helped to organize the Paris branch of the American Navy League, acting as its Chairman till 1922. In 1926 his memoirs "Between Two Wars (1861-1921)" were published. He died in Paris on November 8, 1934.
Ideas
James Mark Baldwin was prominent among early experimental psychologists (voted by his peers the fifth most important psychologist in America in a 1902 survey conducted by James McKeen CattellJames McKeen Cattell
James McKeen Cattell , American psychologist, was the first professor of psychology in the United States at the University of Pennsylvania and long-time editor and publisher of scientific journals and publications, most notably the journal Science...
), but it was his contributions to developmental psychology
Developmental psychology
Developmental psychology, also known as human development, is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to...
that his contributions were the most important. His step-wise theory of cognitive development was a major influence on the later, and much more widely-known, developmental theory of Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget was a French-speaking Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher known for his epistemological studies with children. His theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology"....
.
His contributions to the young discipline's early journals and institutions were highly significant as well. Baldwin was a co-founder (with James McKeen Cattell
James McKeen Cattell
James McKeen Cattell , American psychologist, was the first professor of psychology in the United States at the University of Pennsylvania and long-time editor and publisher of scientific journals and publications, most notably the journal Science...
) of Psychological Review
Psychological Review
Psychological Review is a scientific journal that publishes articles on psychological theory. It was founded by Princeton psychologist James Mark Baldwin and Columbia psychologist James McKeen Cattell in 1894 as a publication vehicle for psychologists not connected with the Clark laboratory of G....
(which was founded explicitly to compete with G. Stanley Hall
G. Stanley Hall
Granville Stanley Hall was a pioneering American psychologist and educator. His interests focused on childhood development and evolutionary theory...
's American Journal of Psychology
American Journal of Psychology
The American Journal of Psychology was the first English-language journal devoted primarily to experimental psychology . AJP was founded by the Johns Hopkins University psychologist Granville Stanley Hall in 1887...
), Psychological Monographs and Psychological Index. He was also the founding editor of Psychological Bulletin
Psychological Bulletin
Psychological Bulletin is a peer-reviewed academic journal specializing in literature reviews. It was founded by Johns Hopkins psychologist James Mark Baldwin in 1904 immediately after he had bought out James McKeen Cattell's share of Psychological Review, which the two had founded ten years...
.
In 1892 he was vice-president of the International Congress of Psychology held in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, and in 1897–1898 president of the American Psychological Association
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...
; he received a gold medal from the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences of Denmark (1897), and was honorary president of the International Congress of Criminal Anthropology held in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
in 1896.
Organic selection
The idea of organic selection came from the interpretation of the observable data in Baldwin's experimental study of infant reaching and its role in mental developmentDevelopmental disorder
Developmental disorders occur at some stage in a child's development, often retarding the development. These may include,psychological or physical disorders. The disorder is an impairment in the normal development of motor or cognitive skills that are developed before age 18 in which they are...
. Every practice of the infant's movement intended to advance the integration of behavior
Behavior
Behavior or behaviour refers to the actions and mannerisms made by organisms, systems, or artificial entities in conjunction with its environment, which includes the other systems or organisms around as well as the physical environment...
favourable to development in the experimental framework appeared to be selected from an excess of movement in the trial of imitation.
In further stages of development - the ones most critical to an understanding of the evolution of mind- this was graphically (par excellence !) illustrated in the child's efforts to draw and learning to write. ("Mental Development in the Child and the Race").
In later editions of "Mental Development" Baldwin changed the term "organic selection" into "functional selection".
So, from the outset the idea was well linked to the philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...
Baldwin was emancipating from the models inspired by divine pre-establishment (Spinoza) (Wozniak, 2001)
It is the communication of this profound insight into the practice related nature of dynamogenic development, above all its integration as a creative factor in the fabric of society, that helped the students of Baldwin to understand what was left of Lamarck's
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck , often known simply as Lamarck, was a French naturalist...
signature. Singularly illustrated by Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. He had a natural ability to recognize order and pattern in the universe...
in Mind and Nature (1979) and brilliantly reintegrated in contemporary studies by Terence Deacon The Symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
ic Species: The co-evolution
Co-evolution
In biology, coevolution is "the change of a biological object triggered by the change of a related object." Coevolution can occur at many biological levels: it can be as microscopic as correlated mutations between amino acids in a protein, or as macroscopic as covarying traits between different...
of language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
and the human brain
Human brain
The human brain has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals, but is over three times larger than the brain of a typical mammal with an equivalent body size. Estimates for the number of neurons in the human brain range from 80 to 120 billion...
(1997).
In human species the faculty of niche building is favoured by a practical intelligence able to design the circumstances that will put its vital acquirements out of harms way in terms of (lineary predicted) natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
. It is precisely in the fields of study relating to massive selection pressures against which other species seem to be without defences -biological development in the face of novel pandemic
Pandemic
A pandemic is an epidemic of infectious disease that is spreading through human populations across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic...
s (AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
, mad cow disease)- that the arguments relative to the natural heredity
Heredity
Heredity is the passing of traits to offspring . This is the process by which an offspring cell or organism acquires or becomes predisposed to the characteristics of its parent cell or organism. Through heredity, variations exhibited by individuals can accumulate and cause some species to evolve...
of intelligent acquirements have resurfaced in a way most challenging to science.
Baldwin effect
Baldwin's most important theoretical legacy is the concept of the Baldwin effectBaldwin effect
The Baldwin effect, also known as Baldwinian evolution or ontogenic evolution, is a theory of a possible evolutionary processes that was originally put forward in 1896 in a paper, "A New Factor in Evolution," by American psychologist James Mark Baldwin. The paper proposed a mechanism for specific...
or "Baldwinian evolution". Baldwin proposed, against the neo-Lamarckian
Lamarckism
Lamarckism is the idea that an organism can pass on characteristics that it acquired during its lifetime to its offspring . It is named after the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck , who incorporated the action of soft inheritance into his evolutionary theories...
s of his day (most notably Edward Drinker Cope
Edward Drinker Cope
Edward Drinker Cope was an American paleontologist and comparative anatomist, as well as a noted herpetologist and ichthyologist. Born to a wealthy Quaker family, Cope distinguished himself as a child prodigy interested in science; he published his first scientific paper at the age of nineteen...
), that there is a mechanism whereby epigenetic factors come to shape the congenital endowment as much as — or more than — natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
pressures. In particular, human behavioural decisions made and sustained across generations as a set of cultural
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
practices ought to be considered among the factors shaping the human genome.
For example, the incest taboo
Incest taboo
An Incest taboo is any cultural rule or norm that prohibits practices of sexual relations between relatives. All human cultures have norms regarding who is considered suitable and unsuitable sexual and/or marriage partners, and usually certain close relatives are excluded as possible partners...
, if powerfully enforced, removes the natural selection pressure
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
against the possession of incest-favoring instincts. After a few generations without this natural selection pressure, unless such genetic material were profoundly fixed, it would tend to diversify and lose its function. Humans would no longer be innately averse to incest, but would rely on their capacity to internalize such rules from cultural practices.
The opposite case can also be true: cultural practice might selectively breed
Artificial selection
Artificial selection describes intentional breeding for certain traits, or combination of traits. The term was utilized by Charles Darwin in contrast to natural selection, in which the differential reproduction of organisms with certain traits is attributed to improved survival or reproductive...
humans to meet the fitness conditions of new environments, cultural and physical, which earlier hominids could not have survived. Baldwinian evolution might strengthen or weaken a genetic trait.
Influence
Baldwin's contribution to this field places him at the heart of contemporary controversies in the fields of evolutionary psychologyEvolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...
and wider sociobiology
Sociobiology
Sociobiology is a field of scientific study which is based on the assumption that social behavior has resulted from evolution and attempts to explain and examine social behavior within that context. Often considered a branch of biology and sociology, it also draws from ethology, anthropology,...
. Few people did more than Robert Wozniak, Professor of Psychology at Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College is a women's liberal arts college located in Bryn Mawr, a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, ten miles west of Philadelphia. The name "Bryn Mawr" means "big hill" in Welsh....
for the rediscovery of the significance of James Mark Baldwin in the History of ideas
History of ideas
The history of ideas is a field of research in history that deals with the expression, preservation, and change of human ideas over time. The history of ideas is a sister-discipline to, or a particular approach within, intellectual history...
. In his book Integral Psychology
Integral psychology
Integral psychology is psychology that presents an all-encompassing holistic rather than an exclusivist or reductive approach. It includes both lower, ordinary, and spiritual or transcendent states of consciousness. Important writers in the field of integral psychology are Sri Aurobindo, Indra...
, Ken Wilber
Ken Wilber
Kenneth Earl Wilber II is an American author who has written about mysticism, philosophy, ecology, and developmental psychology. His work formulates what he calls Integral Theory. In 1998, he founded the Integral Institute, for teaching and applications of Integral theory.-Biography:Ken Wilber was...
refers to Baldwin as a forerunner of Wilber's theory of integral psychology.
See also
- George Herbert MeadGeorge Herbert MeadGeorge Herbert Mead was an American philosopher, sociologist and psychologist, primarily affiliated with the University of Chicago, where he was one of several distinguished pragmatists. He is regarded as one of the founders of social psychology and the American sociological tradition in general.-...
- Life history theoryLife history theoryLife history theory posits that the schedule and duration of key events in an organism's lifetime are shaped by natural selection to produce the largest possible number of surviving offspring...
- OrthogenesisOrthogenesisOrthogenesis, orthogenetic evolution, progressive evolution or autogenesis, is the hypothesis that life has an innate tendency to evolve in a unilinear fashion due to some internal or external "driving force". The hypothesis is based on essentialism and cosmic teleology and proposes an intrinsic...
- EpigeneticsEpigeneticsIn biology, and specifically genetics, epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence – hence the name epi- -genetics...
- PangenesisPangenesisPangenesis was Charles Darwin's hypothetical mechanism for heredity. He presented this 'provisional hypothesis' in his 1868 work The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication and felt that it brought 'together a multitude of facts which are at present left disconnected by any efficient...
- Weismann BarrierWeismann barrierThe Weismann barrier is the principle that hereditary information moves only from genes to body cells, and never in reverse. In more precise terminology hereditary information moves only from germline cells to somatic cells .This does not refer to the central dogma of molecular biology which...
- Evolutionary developmental biologyEvolutionary developmental biologyEvolutionary developmental biology is a field of biology that compares the developmental processes of different organisms to determine the ancestral relationship between them, and to discover how developmental processes evolved...
Written work
Apart from articles in the Psychological ReviewPsychological Review
Psychological Review is a scientific journal that publishes articles on psychological theory. It was founded by Princeton psychologist James Mark Baldwin and Columbia psychologist James McKeen Cattell in 1894 as a publication vehicle for psychologists not connected with the Clark laboratory of G....
, he wrote:
- Handbook of Psychology (1890), translation of Ribot’s, German Psychology of To-day (1886);
- Elements of Psychology (1893);
- Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development (1898);
- Story of the Mind (1898);
- Mental Development in the Child and the Race (1896);
- Thought and Things (LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and New YorkNew YorkNew York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, 1906).
He also largely contributed to the Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (1901—1905), of which he was editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
in-chief.
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External links
- Autobiographical notes
- Mead Project:Basic Baldwin
- "Mental Development in the Child and the Race", J.M.Baldwin
- J.M.Baldwin in texts at Classics in the History of Psychology
- Edited program MP3 and Full Interview MP3 of Robert Wozniak in conversation with Christopher Green, as they discuss the life and work of Baldwin, from This Week in the History of Psychology
- Documentary film describing the public controversy that swirled around the hiring of a new professor of philosophy at the University of TorontoUniversity of TorontoThe University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
in 1889. The debate was focused on the prospect of an American, Baldwin, being hired over a Canadian competitor, James Gibson Hume, who later headed the Toronto philosophy department for 30 years.