Empirical Psychology

Empirical Psychology

 

psychology based on experience, as distinguished from rational psychology, which is based on speculation. Empirical psychology took shape within the mainstream of English empiricism in Great Britain during the 18th and 19th centuries (D. Hartley, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, A. Bain, and H. Spencer), as well as in France in the second half of the 19th century (H. Taine and T. Ribot). Despite the limitations of the empirical psychologists’ conception of consciousness (which in their view was what the subject matter of psychology amounted to), empirical psychology played an important role in experimental studies of psychic phenomena.