ational psychology from 1901 to 1904 and as professor of psychology from 1904 until his retirement in 1940. From 1922 to 1940 he also was director of the psychology division of the Institute of Educational Research at Teachers College. He is particularly known for his construction of various intelligence and aptitude tests and for his repudiation of the belief that such primarily intellectual subjects as languages and mathematics discipline the mind. Because of his opposition to that belief, he greatly encouraged the inclusion of various informational subjects, such as the physical and social sciences, in elementary and secondary school curricula. The functionalism school of psychological thinking stressed the study of the mind as a functioning and useful part of the organism. The functionalist attitude was a natural outcome of the widespread interest in Darwinism and in the doctrine of the "survival of the fittest." Functionalism emphasized such techniques as human intelligence tests and controlled experiments designed to test the ability of animals to learn and solve problems. This type of investigation represented a clear break with the introspective methods favored by other 19th-century psychologists. Logical Positivism began in Vienna in the 1920’s and was named by Herbert Feigl. Positivism is a belief that, based on experience and empirical knowledge of natural phenomena, metaphysics and theology are regarded as inadequate and imperfect systems of knowledge. The two primary components of positivism, the philosophy and the polity (or program of individual and social conduct), were later welded by Comte into a whole under the conception of a religion, in which humanity was the object of worship. A number of Comte's disciples refused, however, to accept this religious development of his philosophy, because it seemed to contradict the original positivist philosophy. Many of Comte's doctrines were later adapted and developed by...
