The Principles of Psychology: Volume 2 by William James

The Principles of Psychology: Volume 2 Reviews

• 
  Sam

  Wow, this was a hard slog. I'm reading this because it's on Will Durant's 100 Books for a Superior Education. It's a psychology textbook in two volumes from the 1890's. It was interesting to read something so contemporary to Darwin's Origin of Species, and hear this nineteenth-century voice coming out so strongly in support of evolution, debunking Lamarckianism at every chance. The sections where James is debunking another popular theory are probably the best for a modern reader interested in the science and thinking of the day.
  
  I know that this is the first systematic treatment of psychology in all of literary history, but that being said, not much of either of these volumes covers what we would consider psychology today. All of Volume 1 and most of Volume 2 is dealing more with neural physiology, finally getting into how people think and a bit on disorders in chapter 24 (chapter 12 of the 2nd volume).
  
  Also, it's pretty challenging for a 21st century reader to wade through so much "middle-aged-white-man-ism" (even speaking as a middle-aged white man). James does such a fine job of debunking the faulty assumptions of his profession that it's hard to hear him talk about women and "the savage races" as biologically determined inferiors. His jabs at "Catholic mummery" made me giggle a bit.
  
  I have to say, I would really only recommend this book (and its companion volume) to readers as a historical curiosity.
• 
  Matt

  ”Life is one long struggle between conclusions based on abstract ways of conceiving cases, and opposite conclusions prompted by our instinctive perception of them as individual facts. The logical stickler for justice always seems pedantic and mechanical to the man who goes by tact and the particular instance, and who usually makes a poor show at argument. Sometimes the abstract conceiver’s way is better, sometimes that of the man of instinct.” Pg. 674.

  
  James concludes the second volume of his mammoth The Principles of Psychology comfortable in his own curiosity. After spending hundreds of pages detailing his observations and thoughts on how the brain perceives and reasons and emotes, he leaves with more questions than answers. He is suspect of his own conclusions. Despite the apparent objectivity of his recorded observations, he is the first to wonder how his own process creates a perceived reality.
  

  The popular notion that ‘Science’ is forced on the mind ab extra, and that our interests have nothing to do with its constructions, is utterly absurd. The craving to believe that the things of the world belong to kinds which are related by inward rationality together, is the parent of Science as well as sentimental philosophy; and the original investigator always preserves a healthy sense of how plastic the materials are in his hands. Pg.667

  
  After over a decade, as I near the conclusion in reading all the titles found in the Encyclopedia Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World, I clearly see why William James is listed as the penultimate volume (in the first edition). He is the embodiment of 19th century Classical education. He pulls from philosophy with as much ease as biology. He is empirical but refuses to be bound by empiricism. He observes the world without being deluded into thinking the world has any obligation to fit within his observations. His observations serve as foundations for his theories on brain functioning, instinct, and Darwinian natural selection. But, despite all his learning, and clear intellectual rigor, James is comfortably mystified by Consciousness and the order of things. For James, we are all pawns for our own psychology. It’s probably best if I let the last lines of this review be the last lines from his book:

  Our interests, our tendencies of attention, our motor impulses, the aesthetic, moral, and theoretic combinations we delight in, the extent of our power of apprehending schemes of relation, just like the elementary relations themselves, time, space, difference and similarity, and the elementary kinds of feeling, have all grown up in ways of which at present we can give no account. Even in the clearest parts of Psychology our insight is insignificant enough. And the more sincerely one seeks to trace the actual course of psychogenesis, the steps by which as a race we may have come by the peculiar mental attributes which we possess, the more clearly one perceives “the slowly gathering twilight close in utter night.”

  
  
  
• 
  Melsene G

  This volume was worse than Vol 1, which was not easy to get through. Again, unless you're a PhD candidate in psychology, don't waste your time. This volume was almost 700 pages, tons of tiny footnotes and outdated information. We've come a long way in 100+ years in science and obviously, so much of the info is pedantic and out of touch.
  
  I could start off by saying that this book should be banned as the author is sexist in his views. I know times were different then, but he has a really low opinion of females and it's disgusting. Moreover, he's way behind the times when it comes to neuroscience.
  
  I read to learn and educate myself and since I'm in healthcare, I read all sorts of science related books. This one does not even come close to getting on my book recommendation list. I'll stick to current authors and I suggest you do the same. I'd rate it a one star but because this guy is the founder of the movement, I'll be kind. Glad I can move on to something else.
• 
  Nuri

  I'd been willing to revisit the second volume, particularly the discussion on will, and its relation to attention, and I was once more stunned by James' accuracy and prescience.
  
  Very often, James' writing is in alignment (and dialogue) with the prevailing approaches in recent neuroscience/neurophilosophy books. No small feat, as the authorities of James' time knew a lot less about brain physiology than a 1st year med student does today)
  
  It's worth acquiescing in James' authorial voice, lofty or no, as his most resonant passages are concentrated toward the end.