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The History of the Department This summation of Wellesley's history—written by former Faculty member, Kenneth Winkler—is also available in pdf format. Philosophy at Wellesley: A Brief History1 Philosophy has been a part of the history of Wellesley College since its conception: in an Announcement published in December of 1874, a year before the College opened its doors to students, the Board of Trustees explained that a course embracing "Logic, Psychology, Ethics, and the History of Philosophy" would be part of the curriculum. The evidence suggests that philosophy was not actually taught in the earliest years, perhaps because the initial curricular plan made it available only to seniors.2 The calendar for 1878-89 was the first to list a teacher of philosophy. She was Anne Eugenia F. Morgan, professor of mental and moral philosophy, and she was apparently responsible for a junior year course (required of all students) in logic and rhetoric, and a senior year The course of study in "mental and moral philosophy" remained much the same for the three or four years after Morgan's arrival, but by 1890-91 both the curriculum and the teaching staff had grown. Besides Professor Morgan, the staff then included Mary S. Case, an associate professor of psychology and the history of philosophy who had joined the faculty as an instructor in Latin; Marian McGregor Noyes, an instructor in logic and psychology; Eliza Ritchie, an instructor in psychology; 3 and Mary Whiton Calkins, an instructor in psychology who had joined the faculty as a tutor in Greek. The enriched course of study (which went by the more streamlined named of "philosophy") included twelve courses: l. Principles of Christian Ethics The psychology laboratory founded by Calkins was one of the first in the United States. (For an 1894 description of the laboratory prepared for the Commissioner of Education, see Appendix II.) G. Stanley Hall opened the first American laboratory (on the model of Wundt's laboratory in Leipzig, founded in 1879) at Johns Hopkins University in 1883.4 By 1897 there were only fifteen laboratories nationwide. An exhibit by the laboratory was part of the College's gold-medal-winning contribution to the Paris Exposition of 1900. By that time Calkins had turned the laboratory over to Eleanor A. McC. Gamble, a 1889 graduate of the College who received her Ph.D. from Cornell in 1898. Gamble, who later became professor of psychology, was responsible for two volumes in the series Wellesley College Studies in Psychology. In 1892 Estelle May Hurll, a 1882 graduate of the College, completed the first master's thesis in philosophy. (Delia Maria Taylor had received a master's degree for work in "philosophy and German" in 1887, but it seems that she did not write a thesis.) Hurll's was the first of eighteen theses submitted to the department between 1892 and 1924; most—perhaps all—were written under the direction of Calkins. Most of the theses reflect a commitment to Calkins's personalistic metaphysics or an interest in its history: some defend personalism against its critics, others examine its consequences, and still others trace its origins in well-known German philosophers of the nineteenth century (Hegel, Schopenhauer) and obscure British philosophers of the eighteenth (John Norris, Arthur Collier). Hurll's thesis was on "The Fundamental Reality of the Aesthetic." She maintained that "the function of the fine arts is to embody spiritual life in aesthetic forms." "The range of ideals which each art can express," she argued, "is in inverse proportion to the grossness of the material employed. The grosser the art-material, the fewer are the themes which the art-form can express." The earthly material of architecture, she suggested, "appeals more aggressively to the senses" than that of any other art; it is therefore the lowest ranking. Sculpture is just above it, followed (in order of ascent) by painting, dance, and music. The highest ranking is poetry, which is plastic enough to embody any spiritual theme or ideal. A list of Wellesley's master's theses, with abbreviated titles, appears as Appendix I. By the turn of the century, course offerings in philosophy and psychology had changed only slightly, but in 1903-4 they were listed in a new order: one course in logic, followed by four courses in psychology and ten in philosophy (an introduction, four courses in aesthetics and ethics, four in the history of philosophy, and one in the philosophy of religion). In 1904-5 courses in philosophy and psychology appeared for the first time under separate sub-headings (with logic listed separately, though it eventually came to have a sub-heading of its own). Even then, though, the introductory course in experimental psychology included "a brief course introductory to philosophical study," including a reading of Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge. In 1906-7, Case and Calkins introduced an ambitious course that would remain in the catalogue for nearly thirty years: "Constructive Discussion of Philosophical Problems." "The aim of the course," they explained, "is to train the student in the analysis of philosophic problems, in the statement of questions in solvable form, and in the actual solution of elementary problems." This course was a sign that the curriculum was becoming more topical and contemporary. The course offerings in logic and philosophy for 1928-29, Calkins's last year as a member of the department, were typical of the two prior decades, and they remained much the same for several years after her retirement. In 1928-29 they were as follows: 208. Logic Enrollment figures are available for most of the courses. In 1928-29 there were 36 students in logic, 370 in introduction to philosophy, 13 in ethics, 28 in philosophy of religion, 15 in modern philosophy, 6 (most of them graduate students) in Hegel, 5 in modern realism, and only one in the special study of systems. There were, at the time, 1530 undergraduates at the College. Eleanor Gamble chaired the department after Calkin's retirement. In the 1910's and 1920's, Calkins had been the only member of the department to teach courses in both philosophy and psychology. Although Gamble did not teach philosophy, she was the primary instructor in logic, and when she herself retired in 1932-33, the only remaining justification for a joint department was (as Professor of Psychology Edna Heidbreder later put it) "tradition and affection." Procter made a passionate case for splitting the departments in his annual report as chair for 1935-36: The rapid development of technical complexity in Psychology makes it now impossible for one person to do justice to both subjects. Wellesley is one of the few places to hold to the older tradition that regarded Psychology as a branch of Philosophy. . . . [Psychology] is no more closely connected with Philosophy than any other science is. I am unable to defend the present union on any logical ground and it is inevitable that there will be increasing divergence in the interests of the two subjects. I can foresee the future possibility that so young and vigorous a science might be hampered by its association with Philosophy. Procter's arguments were repeated by Heidbreder when she became chair, and Academic Council voted to split the departments in 1939. Meanwhile, in 1933-34 the joint department shifted the logic course into the philosophy section, and hired Virginia Onderdonk '29, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, to teach it. In the same year, Mary Coolidge joined the department as an associate professor of philosophy.
The 1893 curriculum had been the first to require that students complete a concentration, either six year-long courses in each of two subjects, or three or four in one subject and three or two in any one of two "tributary subjects." The philosophy concentrator of the mid-1930's was required to take 12 or 15 hours in philosophy, and 9 or 6 hours in a "supplementary" subject. A certain number of hours had to be in Grade III courses. Three courses were required of all philosophy majors: Greek philosophy, modern philosophy, and (despite what Procter and Heidbreder had been arguing in their reports) introduction to psychology. (Psychology concentrators were themselves required to take at least one Grade I course in philosophy.) The calendar for 1940-41 was the first to list a separate department of philosophy. The staff numbered three: Procter and Coolidge, who were both full professors, and Onderdonk, by then an assistant professor. The courses were these: 102. Introduction to Philosophy Majors were required to take 214, either 107 or 307, and either of two introductory courses in the psychology department. In the 1940's and early 1950's the department tinkered with both the introductory curriculum and the requirements for the major. In 1943-44 102 and 107 were replaced with an introductory course in epistemology (103: Bases of Knowledge) and an introductory course in ethics (104: Theories of the Good Life). In 1946-47, the psychology requirement was eliminated, and majors were asked to take one course in Greek philosophy (either 107 or 307), one course in modern philosophy (214), and each of two new seminars on recent philosophy, one (321) in epistemology and the other (322) in metaphysics. Beginning in 1948-49, students intending to do graduate work were encouraged to study logic. In 1951-52 the new "systematic" introductory courses were replaced by historical courses: 101, Introduction to Classical Philosophy, and 102, Introduction to Modern Philosophy. Ellen Haring joined the department in 1945-46. By the time Ingrid Stadler arrived in 1957-58, Grade I offerings had again been revised: they now included a historical course (101, Introduction to Classical Philosophy), a topical course (104, Introduction to Moral Philosophy), and a course in recent philosophy (105, Trends in Recent Philosophy). The rest of the 1957-58 curriculum was as follows: 201: Further Studies in Plato and Aristotle
203: Aesthetics Majors were required to take 201 and 214, and two courses at Grade III. More Grade III courses were added in 1960-61, but 321 and 322 were then required. The new offerings in 1960-61 also included a course in Existentialism. Ruth Anna Putnam joined the department in 1963-64, and Ann Congleton came in 1964-65. Putnam began teaching Philosophy of Science, a revision of the old course in Inductive Logic (last offered in 1959-60). And in 1966-67, Congleton introduced Philosophy of Language. Both Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Language are still in the curriculum. In 1964-65, the department agreed on a new set of requirements: majors were required to complete two courses in classical philosophy (101 and 201), two new courses in modern philosophy (numbered 207 and 208), a Kant course (311), and either 216 (logic) or a new course (numbered 103) in Philosophical Analysis. 103 covered what Haring described as "rudimentary modern logic," and according to her annual report for 1964-65, the department was then on the verge of requiring 216 of all its majors. But in the end this further step was never taken. In 1969-70, Henry Shue joined the department. Although he was a specialist in political philosophy, and, in his first year, team-taught a seminar in political philosophy with political scientist Edward Stettner (cross-listed in philosophy and political science), his hiring did little to bring political philosophy into the philosophy curriculum, apparently because the political science department had already chosen to emphasize it. In the same year the major requirements were revised once again. Majors were required to demonstrate competence in two of three fields: logic, the history of philosophy, and value theory. They were also required to show command of the work of at least one major philosopher or one topic of current concern. These very liberal requirements lasted until 1980-81, when majors were required to take two courses in each of three areas (history of philosophy, metaphysics and epistemology, and value theory). Also required beginning in 1980-81 was 200, Modern Sources of Contemporary Philosophy, a course on Descartes, Hume, and Kant. 200 was introduced by Ann Congleton in 1973-74, as a one-semester successor to the year-long 214, Studies in the Development of Modern Philosophy. Virginia Onderdonk had introduced 214 in 1933-34. She taught it until 1964-65, when it was replaced (as part of a College-wide trend toward semester courses) by 207 and 208. Ifeanyi Menkiti joined the department in 1973-74. In that year he taught a course in African philosophy, the first non-western course offered in the department. (In her annual report for 1952-53, Mary Coolidge had expressed the department's desire to offer a course "in the philosophy of the far east," but this had never come to pass.) In the following year Menkiti introduced courses in both Medical Ethics and Philosophy of Law. A course in Feminist Theories, 249, was offered in 1973-74 by Carolyn Magid and in 1974-75 by Kathleen Cook, but feminism was not taught again in the department until 1981-82, when 227, then called Feminism, Anti-Feminism, and Philosophy, was introduced by Linda Gardiner Janik, who had joined the department in 1975-76. Janik also created a course on Knowledge and the Mind (numbered 215) in 1977-78. It was taught by Owen Flanagan in 1978-79, and renamed Philosophy of Mind in 1979-80. Like the new courses in Medical Ethics and Philosophy of Law, Philosophy of Mind reflected growing interest in the philosophical implications of developments outside of philosophy. Philosophy of Mind (along with advanced seminars based on it) later became an important part of the College's new program in Cognitive Science, a program bringing together some of the same concerns that once co-existed in the joint department of philosophy and psychology. Maud Chaplin and Kenneth Winkler joined the department in 1978-79. Chaplin was Dean of the College from 1979-86 (after a year as Acting Dean in 1978-79), and Acting President in the spring of 1981. In the very late 1970's or early 1980's the department inaugurated the "department seminar," in which members shared work in progress with their colleagues. The seminar is still in operation. Alison McIntyre arrived in 1988-89, Adrian Piper in 1990-91, and David Galloway in 1991-92. The innovations of recent years include a course consolidation in 1989-90 (in which, for example, separate courses in Political Philosophy and Social Philosophy were joined into one), the introduction of a five-course minor (also in 1989-90), and the expansion of the major from eight courses to nine (in 1993-94). The department also introduced a new introductory course (103, Self and World) and moved its introductory course on Plato and Aristotle (101) to Grade II, where it is now 201, Ancient Greek Philosophy. At the same time, Philosophy 200 was replaced by 221, Modern Philosophy. The department has maintained its 1980-81 division of courses into three areas: history of philosophy, metaphysics and epistemology, and value theory. Majors are required to take both 201 and 221 (two courses in the history of philosophy) and at least two courses in each of the other areas. They must also do Grade III work in at least two areas. In 1991-92, for the sake of both curricular enrichment and faculty development, the department instituted an exchange program with its counterpart at Brandeis University. In a typical year, one member of each department spends a term teaching at the other institution. Owen Flanagan, Kenneth Winkler, Ruth Anna Putnam, and Ifeanyi Menkiti have so far taught at Brandeis. And David Wong, Robert Greenberg, Andreas Teuber, and Jerry Samet of Brandeis have taught here. * * * This brief history of philosophy at Wellesley has been very selective, but I do not want to close without mentioning some of the distinguished philosophers who have taught or visited here. George Santayana, John Dewey, and Ralph Barton Perry are listed in some of the early catalogues as lecturers, and both Stephen C. Pepper and Jacob Löwenberg taught at Wellesley early in their careers. Well-known philosophers who have taught here since 1930 include John Goheen, Ralph Barton Perry, Richard Rorty, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Martha Nussbaum. The many philosophers who have lectured at the College include William James, Josiah Royce, Bertrand Russell, C. I. Lewis, Rudolf Carnap, and Alfred North Whitehead, whose book Modes of Thought was based on a series of six lectures given in honor of Mary Calkins. Wellesley's extraordinary collection of early modern philosophical texts is also worthy of mention. Some of the books, now on deposit in Special Collections and including early editions of works by Hobbes, Cudworth, Henry More, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Malebranche, Mary Astell, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, were given to the College by Calkins. Others were gifts from George Herbert Palmer or from the Harvard College Library, in return for books Palmer donated to Harvard. Palmer was a professor of philosophy at Harvard—the chair of the department in James's early years there—who was married to Alice Freeman, Wellesley's second president. Special Collections also houses autograph letters from William James, Josiah Royce, George Santayana, and G. E. Moore, among others, some of them philosophically substantive, and first editions of Emerson's Nature and Thoreau's Walden. A special treasure is James's copy of Charles Renouvier's Essais de critique générale, one of several books with James's signature passed on to Calkins by Ralph Barton Perry, who distributed James's library after his death. James's autograph is in volume 1. Volume 2 is marked "Cambridge, Mch 19. 70", and annotations in James's hand highlight the passages on freedom of the will that provoked what he called, in a diary entry for April 30, 1870, "a crisis in my life." Reflecting on those passages began to lift him out of the depression into which he had fallen the previous winter. "My first act of free will," he proclaimed in his diary, "shall be to believe in free will." He later wrote to Renouvier that "through [your] philosophy, I am beginning to experience a rebirth of the moral life." Kenneth P. Winkler Appendix I: Wellesley Master's Theses in Philosophy Margaret Charlotte Amig (Goucher, 1919), "Alexander's Doctrine of Space and Time," 1924. Edith Abbie Ayres (Wellesley, 1914), "Schopenhauer's Aesthetics," 1916. Ethel Bowman (Wellesley, 1900), "Arthur Collier," 1907. Inez Teress Cohen (Wellesley, 1921), "The System of Croce," 1927. Marjorie Cornelia Day (Wellesley, 1914), "Neo-Realism as a Doctrine of Mind," 1922. Jane Sprunt Hall (Wellesley, 1908), "Criticism of Idealism, Old and New," 1912. Genevieve Clark Hanna (Wellesley, 1903), "Hegel's Criticism of Spinoza," 1906. Estelle May Hurll (Wellesley, 1882), "The Fundamental Reality of the Aesthetic," 1892. Marguerite Witmer Kehr (University of Tennessee, 1911), "The Self in St. Augustine and in Descartes," 1914. Margaret Winifred Landes (Wellesley, 1911), "Richard Burthogge," 1914. Flora Isabel Mackinnon (Wellesley, 1907), "John Norris," 1909. Florence Moran Orndorff (Wellesley, 1920), "Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia as Critic of Descartes," 1922. Bertha Palmer (Wellesley, 1891), "Creative Criticism Ethically Considered," 1893. Edna Estella Pennell (Wooster University, 1897), "Schopenhauer's Criticism of Kant," 1901. Frances Hall Rousmaniere (Wellesley, 1900), "Sameness Involved in an Absolute Unity," 1904. Teresa Severin (Wellesley, 1909), "William Wollaston," 1912. Evelyn Metcalf Walmsley (Wellesley, 1908), "Henri Bergson," 1913. Florence Webster (Wellesley, 1912), "A Conception of Life," 1914. Many of Wellesley's M.A.'s went on to further study. Florence Orndorff received a Ph.D. from Berkeley, Florence Webster a Ph.D. from Columbia, and Frances Rousmaniere a Ph.D. from Radcliffe. Rousmaniere then taught for four years at Mt. Holyoke and Smith. Edith Ayres received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and Marguerite Kehr, whose thesis on "The Self in St. Augustine and in Descartes" was perhaps the most scholarly of the theses, received a Ph.D. from Cornell. Kehr later became Dean of Women at what is now Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania. Flora Mackinnon, author of a 1909 thesis on John Norris, received a Ph.D. from Toronto and returned to Wellesley to teach. Her Toronto dissertation, a critical anthology of writings by Henry More, was published by Oxford University Press in 1925 as an entry in its "Wellesley Semi-Centennial Series." It remains the best available selection from More's writings. Margaret Winifred Landes, whose 1914 thesis was on Richard Burthogge, did graduate work at Yale, and Bertha Palmer continued her studies at Radcliffe. Ethel Bowman, author of a 1907 thesis on Arthur Collier, did no further graduate work, but she became a professor of philosophy at Goucher College. Many of the theses led to publications. Ethel Bowman's thesis was the basis of an edition of Collier's Clavis Universalis published by Open Court in 1909. Margaret Landes's thesis was the basis of a selection from Burthogge's writings also published by Open Court. Mackinnon's thesis appeared in Philosophical Monographs in 1910, and a condensation of Kehr's thesis appeared in The Philosophical Review. Appendix II: A Description of Wellesley's Psychology Laboratory from 1894 The following description appeared in William O. Krohn's "Facilities in Experimental Psychology in the Colleges of the United States," in Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year 1890-91. WELLESLEY COLLEGE. The work in experimental psychology at Wellesley College was begun in the fall of 1891. It is, therefore, little more than a year old, and so far no special students have worked in the laboratory and the only original research undertaken is a statistical inquiry into cases of colored hearing and of forms for numbers, for months, and the like. The work has, therefore, been of a general character, and its most important result, pedagogically, the aid which it offers toward demonstrating the value of experimental methods in such a general course in psychology. The laboratory consists of one large room rather unfavorably situated with reference to quiet and to temperature. There is one small room adjoining, of which use is sometimes made, and the dark room of the department of physics is also placed at disposal. The apparatus includes a reaction-time instrument (with attachment for measuring reading time), a "joint-sensation " instrument, a copy of Hering's roof-glass instrument (made in the Wellesley carpenter-shop), for experiment in simultaneous contrast, a Wheatstone stereoscope, a Rothe color wheel, with disks (Maxwell, Talbot, and Fechner); apparatus for the Helmholtz and the Hering colored-shadow experiment, and for simple optical and entoptic experiments; a pressure balance, a graduated series of weights, and a home-made "Galton's bar," a set of well-made metal statives with clamps and attachments (from Petzoldt, Leipzig), dissecting instruments, and various small pieces of apparatus. The psychological laboratory is fortunate in being able to borrow from the biological and physical laboratories much of the necessary equipment such as models of brain spinal cord, eye, and ear; monochords, tuning-forks, and electric batteries. It is happy, also, in the cooperation of carpenters and machinists, under skilled direction. The library to which all the students have access, is fairly good in the line of experimental psychology and is constantly improving. It contains, among many other useful books, Wundt, James, Stumpf, Spencer, Bain, Sully, Ladd, the monographs of Ribot, Binet, Münsterberg, and Schneider; and among the periodical publications the American Journal of Psychology, the Philosophical Review, Mind, the Revue Philosophique, the Zeitschrift der Physiologie und Psychologie der Sinnesorganen, Wundt's Philosophische Studien, and the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. The following is a description of the method of the course in experimental psychology. This description refers explicitly to the work of the first year but there has been no important modification of the course, whose aim throughout, is to supplement, and in no way to supersede introspection; to lead students to observe in detail, and to verify the facts of their ordinary experience; to familiarize them with the results of modern investigation, with the usual experimental methods, and to introduce them to the important works of psychological literature. The first month is devoted to a study of cerebral physiology. The classwork includes recitations, informal lectures, and some written work on the part of the students. The study of the brain by textbooks, plates, and especially by models, precedes the dissection by each student of a sheep's brain. Even those students who most dreaded this dissecting are practically unanimous with regard to its value in clearing up the difficult points in cerebral anatomy. In the class-room during the week in which the dissection is carried on, the principal theories of cerebral localization are discussed. The next six weeks are spent in the experimental study of sensation. About seventy experiments are performed by the students on sensations of contact, pressure, temperature, hearing, and sight. These experiments almost without exception are selected from those suggested by Dr. E. C. Sanford in his laboratory course in psychology, but re-arranged with reference to the plan of the lectures and the class discussion. Papyrograph descriptions of the experiments are distributed to the students and commented upon in class before the experiments are undertaken. The instructor keeps daily laboratory hours in order to answer questions and offer assistance. Each student is responsible for a record of her own experiments. In class reports are made on the results of experiments, and recitations are conducted on the psychology of the different senses. The bearing of the experiments upon the different theories of perception is discussed. Special efforts are made to free the word "sensation" from the vague, dualistic meaning, which it often carries with it. Then follows a six weeks' study of space perception with experiments. These experiments, of which there are more than thirty, illustrate the methods of gaining or at least developing, the space-consciousness. The theories of monocular vision are carefully studied and are illustrated by diagrams and by "cyclopean eye" experiments. The study of the perception of depth includes and adaptation from Herings's experiment, in which the subject, looking through a tube, finds that he can correctly distinguish within very small distances, whether a shot is dropped before or behind a black string stretched before a white background. The fact and the laws of convergence are studied with the aid of a Wheatstone stereoscope. There follows a consideration of illusions of space; and of visual space, including the experiments suggested by Dr. James on so-called tympanum spatial sensations; and others with a telegraph snapper, on the location of sounds and the sense of direction. The study of the emotions and of the will is accompanied by no experimental work. In place of a final examination, a psychological essay is required. The subjects assigned are very general, and are intended as subjects for study rather than as definite essay headings. The immediate topic of the paper is decided upon after the study and not before it. Such subjects as association, attention, memory, imagination, the psychology of language, the psychology of childhood, the psychology of blindness, aphasia, animal psychology, are chosen. The study of the psychology of blindness is accompanied by visits to the Perkins Institute. Thus a student who writes on "The Imagination of the Blind," bases her conclusions upon a personal study of blind children. She questions the children, consults with their teachers and reads their compositions. Those who write on the psychology of childhood make personal observations on babies and little children. Hypnotism and dreams also receive a full share of attention. In connection with the work of the course a collection of statistics concerning colored hearing was undertaken the past year with interesting results. No new explanations of the phenomena were offered or discussed. Notes 1 Sources consulted in preparing this brief history include the calendars and catalogues of Wellesley College; the annual reports of the President; annual reports of the departments of philosophy and philosophy and psychology; the Wellesley News; other documents and books in Special Collections and the College Archives; and Wellesley College 1875-1975: A Century of Women. 2 Students in elective Greek and Latin, though, read a great deal of philosophy: Plato's Apology in their first year, the Republic in their third year, Lucretius, Cicero, and Aristotle in their fourth year. 3 Eliza Ritchie was one of the pioneer women graduates of Dalhousie University in Canada; she is described by Lucy Maud Montgomery, who studied English literature at Dalhousie in 1895-96, as "the most brilliant of Dalhousie's girl graduates." Montgomery relates that after graduating from Dalhousie in 1887, Ritchie "took her Ph.D. at Cornell University and is now [in 1896] associate professor of philosophy in Wellesley College." See "The Thirty Sweet Girl Graduates of Dalhousie University," originally published in The Halifax Herald for April 29, 1896, in Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, ed. Cecily Devereux (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2004), p. 375. In Francis W. P. Bolger's The Years Before Anne (Halifax: Nimbus, 1991), this piece is entitled "A Girl's Place at Dalhousie College." For the quoted passage see p. 164. 4 In The Metaphysical Club ([New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001], p. 260), Louis Menand credits William James with creating "the first psychology laboratory in the United States at Harvard in 1875"; that would make it the first psychology laboratory in the world, pre-dating even Wundt's. The website of the Johns Hopkins University Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences claims that the first psychology laboratory was founded there in 1883 . In line with Menand's report, the website of the Harvard University Department of Psychology counters that James founded a laboratory there in 1875-6, when he taught his first course in physiological psychology. Perhaps the disagreement turns on the meaning of "laboratory": is it a venue for pedagogy and "demonstration," or a workshop for original research? |
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course (also required of all students) in mental and moral philosophy. The calendar for 1883-84 was the first to list a "course of study" in philosophy: Bible study and ethics for first-year students, logic for juniors, and three terms of mental and moral philosophy for seniors. The syllabus for the senior year included psychology, history of philosophy, and ethics and moral philosophy (where the textbook was T. H. Green's Prolegomena to Ethics). Morgan's teaching in psychology was based on "the leading systems of the Scottish philosophers." Although the influence of the Scottish philosophers was then widespread, the best American writing in psychology (such as The Human Intellect, a 1868 textbook by Noah Porter, a philosopher who was president of Yale College and the first president of Wellesley's Board of Trustees) was also influenced by recent work in Germany. It was apparently not until the early 1890's, when Mary Whiton Calkins began teaching psychology at the College, that the work of late nineteenth-century German psychologists found a place in the curriculum. 
Calkins, who became professor of philosophy and psychology in 1898-99, as well as chair, was the most important figure in the early history of the department. Calkins was the first woman to complete the requirements for a Ph.D. at Harvard University; the Harvard philosophy department put her forward for a degree, but the university refused to award it because she was a woman. (Later, when Radcliffe College began offering Ph.D.'s to women, Calkins was invited to receive one. She declined.) Although Calkins became best-known as a philosopher, she was, during her early years at Wellesley, an accomplished experimental psychologist, and she continued to teach psychology until her retirement. The calendar for 1891-92 was the first to show her influence. Course 6 (on psychology and metaphysics) was then divided into two parts: part (a), taught by Calkins and offered in the first term, was a study of psychology "approached from the physiological standpoint," including a laboratory; part (b), offered in the second term, was a study of psychology "leading to a discussion of metaphysics." In 1892-93 part (a) became Experimental Psychology; the main text was William James's Psychology, Briefer Course, published in 1892. Although the teaching staffs in philosophy and psychology would remain joined until 1940, the history of course 6 makes it plain that Calkins and her colleagues differentiated between scientific psychology and metaphysics. This is not to say that they took them to be unrelated. For Calkins, at least, psychological categories were metaphysically fundamental. According to her version of monistic personalism, "ultimate reality is in its innermost nature a single individual or person, which differentiates itself into the manifold personalities and objects of the world as empirically observed." 
Onderdonk was to become the leading member of the department in mid-century. She chaired the department in 1951-2 and 1953-61, and served as Acting Dean of the Faculty in 1963-64 and Dean of the College in 1964-68. (She retired in 1972.) One of her many achievements was the modernization of Wellesley's offerings in logic. Gamble's primary text in logic had been Daniel Sommer Robinson's The Principles of Reasoning: An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method. As Robinson himself explained in the Preface to the second (1930) edition of his book, "for the most part ... I have ignored the new symbolic logic." "Owing to the technicality of symbolic logic," he wrote in a closing survey of "Recent Tendencies in Logical Theory," "I have not attempted to deal with it in this book, but it is undoubtedly one of the most significant additions that has ever been made to the body of logical science." It is a reasonable guess that Gamble made no attempt to deal with it either, and the same may even have been true of Onderdonk, when she first took over the course. (In 1933-34, Onderdonk assigned James Edwin Creighton's An Introductory Logic, a book very similar to Robinson's. In fact there was, at the time, no "modern" textbook that she could have assigned. The first English-language textbook of modern formal logic, John C. Cooley's A Primer of Formal Logic, was first released in mimeograph in 1939-40, when it was used for a Harvard course that Cooley taught with W. V. Quine. It appeared as a printed book in 1942. Alfred Tarski's Introduction to Logic and to the Methodology of Deductive Sciences, published in Polish in 1936 and in German translation in 1937, did not appear in English until 1941.) But in 1937-38, Onderdonk spent a year of leave studying philosophy and logic at Cambridge University. When she returned to the College in 1938-39, she not only incorporated some of what she had learned into the existing logic course, but introduced a second course in "Advanced Logic." The advanced course was devoted exclusively to recent developments in symbolic logic. Onderdonk used Cooley's mimeograph in her teaching before the book version appeared.