Marginalization
of Morgan's Canon and Emergent Evolution (1894-1951)
Paul
F. Ballantyne, Ph.D. pballan@comnet.ca
There
has been renewed interest (since Costall, 1993) in the story of how Lloyd Morgan's
(1894) methodological canon (regarding the proper interpretation of evidence about
the animal mind) "backfired" in early 20th century animal psychology.
A variety of opinions and related commentary on that topic, for instance, can
be found at: Thomas,
2001. C. Lloyd Morgan (1852–1936),
however, in a long series of interrelated works --including: An Introduction
to Comparative Psychology (2nd
Rev. ed., 1903); Emergent Evolution (1923
& 31); Life, Mind, and Spirit
(1926); Mind at the Crossways (1929);
The
Animal Mind (1930); Animal Conduct (1930); and Emergence of Novelty
(1933)-- managed to sketch out an emergent evolutionary approach to comparative
psychology in the wider sense of that term. This wider project of Morgan's has
received inadequate historical treatment because it is so poorly understood even
by historians of psychology.
The
present paper argues that not only American 'behaviorist' trends; but also the
British 'Hormic Psychology' of McDougall; and then North American operationist
trends in general-experimental psychology constituted successive disciplinary
counter-forces to both Morgan's Canon and his views on emergent evolution. These
were the varied disciplinary trends which combined forces to marginalize (i.e.,
treat as insignificant) Morgan's wider project of comparative psychology.
Morgan's
comparative methodology and empirical methods
The
manifest historical significance of Morgan's An Introduction to Comparative
Psychology (1894) is that it helped establish animal research as a subdiscipline
of early 20th century general-experimental psychology (Wozniak,
1993).
The less obvious significance, however, is that in contradiction to both Darwin
(1871; 1872) and Romanes (1882), Morgan doubted that psychological processes could
be followed uninterruptedly throughout the animal series. That is, although comparative
animal psychology had been brought into being by the continuity
view of mental evolution (see also Tolman,
1987a), Morgan (1894) held that the discipline should also be prepared to
recognize various discontinuities in cross-species mental abilities. His disciplinary
aim from the beginning, at least in part, was to expose the inherent logical paradox
of holding to the strict mental continuity view:
"Those
evolutionists who accept this [continuity] assumption as valid are logically bound
to believe either (1) that all forms of animal life from the amoeba upwards have
all the faculties of man, only reduced in degree and range... or (2) that in the
higher forms of life the introduction of the higher faculties has been effected
by some means other than that of natural evolution [i.e., divine providence]"
(Morgan, 1894; p. 58).
With
regard to empirical methods, Morgan's classic (1894, 1903) texts made use of introspective,
anecdotal, observational, and experimental forms of evidence but carefully argued
(as did James) that the proper starting point of all psychological inquiry is
introspection of the individual adult human mind. Morgan did recognize, however,
that when studying 'other minds than our own' (including animal minds), this introspective
sort of evidence needs to be augmented by both naturalistic observation and experimental
methods.
Morgan's
belief in the primacy of introspection is reflected in the order of the chapters
of his 1894 text.The chapter on Memory, for instance, is followed by a
second chapter on Memory in Animals. Similarly, the chapter on Perception of Relations
is followed by one called Do animals perceive relations?; and the chapter on Conceptual
Thought is followed by Do Animals Reason?; etc. In other words, Morgan's chosen
methodological starting point is with human experience, and this is to be followed
in turn with careful analysis of animal evidence (anecdotal and otherwise). This
was a reversal of the order used by both Darwin and Romanes, and, on its own indicates
Morgan's digression from the pure continuity view of mental evolution. Furthermore,
as we will see, this early implied difference in methodology (i.e., the proper
starting place for psychological analysis) becomes wholly explicit by the time
of Morgan's Animal Mind (1930).
Morgan's
Methodological Canon
In
1894, this difference was initially manifested in Morgan's famous, but much misunderstood
methodological canon. Ostensibly, to remedy the dangerous methodological problem
of crude anthropomorphism (i.e., the uncritical attribution of human abilities
to animals) Morgan made the following statement:
"In
no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher
psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of
one which stands lower in the psychological scale" (Morgan, 1894, p. 53).
Morgan's
"canon," as this statement came to be known, assumed that both higher
and lower forms of mental abilities exist and that the terms used to describe
these are not interchangeable. It should also be noted that although Morgan's
canon was directed principally against anthropomorphic excess, it applies equally
well against the reductionist excesses of figures such as E.L. Thorndike, Jacques
Loeb, or John B. Watson. As it happened, the anti-reductionist implication of
the canon was not well received or followed at that time. Thorndike (1898) for
instance, whose "animal intelligence" research utilized various experimental
puzzle box situations, wholeheartedly ignored the anti-reductive aspect of Morgan's
canon by interpreting the results as if these creatures were nothing more than
mechanical automata. Thorndike's denigrative position regarding animal intellect
(see Thorndike,
1911) eventually provoked the following whimsical retort from popular culture:
When Morgan realized the canon was being misused as a rhetorical device to advocate
such reductionism (rather than as a general methodological caution), he introduced
the following qualification into the second edition of his An Introduction
to Comparative Psychology (1903):
"To
this, however, it should be added, lest the range of the principle be misunderstood,
that the canon by no means excludes the interpretation of a particular activity
in terms of the higher processes, if we already have independent evidence of the
occurrence of these higher processes in the animal under observation" (Morgan,
1903,
p. 59).
As
early as 1909, Morgan was also pleading with British psychologists (who were in
the grips of the Eugenics movement), to adopt a 'natural history of experience'
in the "wider" sense of
Lewes, Robertson, and Baldwin. All three of those figures had argued for a
nonreductive view of human psychological abilities (Blitz, 1992).
While
the so-called historiographical "rehabilitation of the canon" has been
underway for some time now, Morgan's emergent evolutionist position (which was
the highest expression of his attempt to place the study of mind back into such
a "wider" natural history) is seldom mentioned in more than passing
terms even within contemporary history of psychology textbooks.
Skinner's cooption of Morgan's canon
Part
of the reason for the contemporary underestimation of Morgan wider project may
be due to the residual disciplinary echoes of the once pervasive influence of
B.F. Skinner. In the introductory chapter of his much read Behavior of Organisms
(1938), Skinner claimed that (subsequent to Darwin) the antimentalism of the behaviorist
camp came about by two steps: (1) Morgan's law of parsimony which "dispensed
with" the need to refer to mental abilities in animals; and (2) Watson's
efforts to "reestablish Darwin's desired continuity without hypothesizing
mind anywhere" (Skinner, 1938, p. 4).
While
it is hardly now necessary to mention that Skinner's first claim is a complete
misrepresentation, it is also instructive to note that Watson (unlike Skinner)
never appealed to the authority of Morgan as an origin of his own antimentalist
position. In fact, Watson takes a rather different tact in both his Psychology
(1919) and Behaviorism (1924). He passingly refers to Morgan's disciplinary
role in establishing the possibility of animal experiments and ignores the rest
(Watson, 1924a, p. 218).
Contrary
to what Skinner would have us believe Morgan, by appealing to simplicity in the
explanation of animal behavior, was simultaneously invoking a specific nonreductive
theory of mental evolution. As Costall points out:
"His point
was that there were good evolutionary reasons for expecting to find different
grades of mentality across different species, and the [emergent] theory of mental
evolution depended on evidence of such differences" (Costall, 1993, p. 117).
Morgan's various clarifications
Given
that his early methodological canon was both ignored and misused, it is not surprising
that Morgan eventually turned toward explicitly outlining the philosophical and
methodological basis for postulating both lower and higher forms of psychological
processes. That is, by the time of his Emergent Evolution (1923), Morgan's
language on the issue of evolutionary continuity and discontinuity was becoming
wholly explicit:
"Emergent
evolution.... does not interpret the higher in terms of the lower only; for that
would imply denial of the emergence of those new modes of natural relatedness
which characterize the higher and make it what it is. Nor does it interpret the
lower in terms of the higher" (Morgan, 1923, pp. 297-298).
In
particular, his Animal Conduct (1930) was designed specifically to be as
clear as possible to the reader on these points. Here, Morgan explicitly distinguishes
between three "grades" or "levels of mentality" which he labeled:
'percipient, perceptive, and reflective.'
"Now
my belief is that some animals are percipient only; some are not percipient only
but are perceptive also; and some, perhaps only a few, are not perceptive and
percipient only but incipiently reflective also" (Morgan, 1930, p. 42).
Morgan
also makes a point ofdistancing his own position from that of the behaviorist:
"It
is, I presume, sufficiently clear that, in the interpretation I offer, mental
relations are taken into account as in some valid sense effective in rendering
the behavior such as we observe it to be. Here many thinkers do not agree. An
influential school of 'behaviorists' roundly deny that mental relations, if such
there be, are in any sense or in any manner effective... My message is that one
may speak of mental relations as effective no less 'scientifically' than... physical
relations..." (Morgan, 1930, p. 72).
In
order to address the numerous queries he had received regarding how his emergent
evolutionary position might be brought into relation with the empirical aspects
of general psychology, Morgan also wrote one further text:The Emergence of
Novelty (1933). This book is made up of a series of penetrating question-and-answer
formats arranged in chapters called: Mechanism and Organism; Emergence of Mind;
Learning, Meaning, and Memory; Association and Conditioning;The Genesis of Thought;
and The Emergence of Value.
One
example is rather indicative of Morgan's extremely realistic demeanor regarding
the likely reception of this work by the larger psychological community. In addressing
a query regarding whether or not the term biological 'significance' should be
used when discussing animals whereas the term 'meaning' should be used when discussing
human beings, Morgan sides definitively with those who answer in the affirmative.
But he also added that: "like many another suggestion it has fallen pretty
flat" (Morgan, 1933, p. 98).
On
the Chilly General Psychological Reception
It
is likely that part of the reason that Morgan's wider project was not taken seriously
in North American psychological circles was his emphatic extension of emergence
to the realm of the spiritual. His (1923) work, in particular, suggested that
since material processes are dynamic they must be inherently active, and that
activeness has to 'come from somewhere.' Thus, appears, he argues, the need for
a deity which is "supplemental" to natural processes; as "an immanent
Activity, the ultimate Source of those phenomena which are interpreted under evolutionary
naturalism" (Morgan, 1923, p. 309). His own extension of this position first
appeared in Life, Mind, and Spirit (1926) which places Morgan at least
one foot in the metaphysical tradition of the 19th century 'spiritual evolutionists'
such as Alfred Wallace, St. George Mivart, and the roughly contemporaneous spiritual
aestheticist Samuel Alexander --whom Morgan clearly credits as a fundamental source
(see also R. Richards, 1987; Blitz, 1992).
The
invited lectures at St. Andrews College, upon which the (1923 and 1926) texts
were based, may have been received quite well in Britain but the contemporary
American psychology scene (whether in its academic, animal, or applied manifestations)
was quite different. In America, there had already been a long struggle in psychology
to remain a distinctly secular endeavor. This had begun with William James at
Harvard when he established psychology in America as a secular teaching profession
by intentionally and publicly displacing the theologically-minded philosopher
Francis Bowen --whose moral philosophy approach had considered psychological themes
merely as a means to promote thought on moral and ethical issues (Feinstein, 1984;
Watson & Evans, 1991, Chapt 17: American Psychology Before James). At its
base the functional psychology tradition (while open to exploring the social usefulness
of religious and ethical themes), was not disposed to accept any sort of theism
into their distinctly naturalistic ontology. Hence, potential American allies
like James, Dewey, J.R. Angell, and H. Carr were lost to Morgan.
McDougall's
critique
This
issue of deity was also repugnant to at least one potential British general psychological
ally. William McDougall, in Modern Materialism and Emergent Evolution (1929),
for example, attacks Morgan for including a de-anthropmorphized deity in his account
of mental evolution at the expense of an adequate treatment of contemporary biological
debate:
"If
we turn to Lloyd Morgan's Emergent Evolution, we find no mention of Darwin or
of Lamarck, of variation, mutation, or selection. He frankly asks: What makes
emergents emerge? And his answer is: The directive activity of God" (McDougall,
1929, p. 152).
Despite
the differences on this point, however, the similarity between McDougall's hormic
psychology and emergent evolution are overwhelming. Both positions recognize final
causality in the physical and chemical realms, and also some form of teleology
(goal-directedness) in the biological, psychological, and social realms.
"The emergent
theory.... asserts, the causal efficacy of psychic events and... fulfills all
the requirements of the psychologist who cannot blind himself to the reality of
goal-seeking Behavior and purposive activity... And it is a theory now in excellent
standing, sponsored by such outstanding thinkers as S. Alexander, L. T. Hobhouse,
Lloyd Morgan, H. S. Jennings, R. B. Perry, W. M. Wheeler" (McDougall, 1930,
p. 7).
Despite
this endorsement, McDougall seems to have had considerable difficulty understanding
the dialectical logical core
of emergent evolutionary naturalism. In particular, the fact that emergent evolution
recognizes both a continuity and discontinuity between: (1) organic and inorganic
evolution; (2) the mental and nonmental; and (3) animal and human mentality, seems
inimical to McDougall's use of exclusionary (either/or) logical categories. For
McDougall (who classes all "neo-Darwinian" positions as mechanistic)
emergent evolution harbors a "crypto-mechanism" and is "the result
of an attempt to find some middle path between mechanism and teleology" (1929,
p. 156). Having made this spurious either/or judgment, McDougall asks (rather
flippantly) "whether this hybrid concept is not destined, like many hybrids,
to be sterile... (1929, p. 156).
In
his contribution to the high-profile Murchison text Psychologies of 1930,
McDougall reiterates his main accusation that emergentism harbors a crypto-mechanism.
That is, it suggests "that a conjunction of purely mechanistic events can
result in the emergence of teleological events" (McDougall, 1930, p. 15).
In failing to do justice to the transformative role of the biological, social,
and societal levels (as outlined by Morgan), McDougall seriously misrepresents
the emergent evolutionary account to a potentially receptive North American audience.
What a shame!
McDougall's
own peculiar position (that 'no emergence occurs in physical or chemical nature,
but only in biological and psychological existence'), and his equally obstinate
advocacy of Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics, certainly made
his own brand of psychology no more palatable to the American general psychological
mainstream of the 1930s. Environmentalism, was at that time, becoming all the
rage.
Such
an audience did not listen to McDougall's more prescient warning that the psychophysical
parallelism of the behaviorist school is "leading psychology... into a blind
alley" (1930, p. 8), and they likely paid even less attention to the seemingly
petty metaphysical squabbles between "hormic" and "emergentist"
views of mental evolution.
In
order to do justice to Morgan's disciplinary intent and awareness of his audience,
however, two points must be mentioned. First of all, the role of the supplemental
de-anthropomorphized deity was merely one of a prime-mover (i.e., an initial cause
which provided the dynamic activeness of physical matter). McDougall therefore,
while technically correct that a crypto-mechanism was one aspect at work in Morgan's
ontology, overstated the case. Secondly, on the more positive side, Morgan (1923)
explicitly attempted to allay the anti-metaphysical fears of the wider psychological
community by suggesting that a theoretical shift toward emergent naturalism, would
avoid both reductive and theological discourse because "the advent of novelty
of any kind is loyally... accepted wherever it is found without invoking any extra-natural
Power..." (Morgan, 1923, p. 2). In short, Morgan's disciplinary intent was
to present a more sophisticated evolutionary methodology upon which future scientific
analysis (and specifically psychological analysis) could be based.
Consistency
vs. the intellectual double-life
Aside
from the above theological or logical/categorical concerns, one of the most important
reasons for the lack of American general psychological reception to the emergent
evolutionary approach may be that Morgan did not live the sort of intellectual
double-life characteristic of morre popular North American figures such as R.
S. Woodworth, H. Carr, or the early Gordon Allport. These younger figures knew
how to utilize the 'numbers game' for their own rhetorical or institutional purposes.
Morgan on the other hand, being of an older philosophical generation either did
not, or like James and Dewey would not partake in such a discursive device.
The
case of Robert Woodworth should suffice to provide the relevant contrast. Woodworth,
when theorizing about the historical course of psychology could be quite functional
and dynamic, but when carrying out experiments, or discussing the same, he was
the progenitor of much narrow thinking regarding experimental methodology (see
Winston, 1990, 1996).
Psychological experiments, in particular, were portrayed as ahistorical devices
by which the "controversies between the schools can be (happily) left aside..."
(Woodworth, 1938; p. 3).
The
historiographical object lesson regarding Morgan's emergent evolutionary account
of comparative psychology might be that: "a system of psychology (no matter
how logically flawless) which is not explicitly extended and elaborated into a
practical program of empirical research is doomed to the disciplinary fate of
extinction (and subsequent rediscovery) the moment the main protagonist of that
system passes away (i.e., Morgan 1852-1936)." At the very least, this is
precisely the fate which befell Morgan's "emergent evolutionary" approach
to psychology per se.
The
dawn of operationism
Back
in 1933, the era of faith in schools or systems of psychology was already drawing
to an end. In North America, more eclectic, or outright operationist research
was just coming into style (see Boring, 1930, 1933; Griffith, 1932; Boring et.
al., 1945). The two major historically oriented training vehicles for depression
era psychologists provide evidence of this shift in emphasis. Woodworth's Contemporary
Schools of Psychology (1931) advocates a
'middle of the road' psychology and Heidbreder's Seven Psychologies
(1933) suggests (along Logical Positivist lines) that psychology has enough theory
and must collect more data if it is ever to become a real science.
Under
the influence of the Logical positivist ideal of 'value neutral' science, interest
in tackling the larger problems of psychological methodology were constantly pushed
to the background while the sorting out of smaller-scale empirically defined questions
(i.e., operationism) were moved to the foreground.
"For psychology
is a science that has not yet made its great discovery. It has found nothing that
does for it what the atomic theory has done for chemistry, the principle of organic
evolution for biology, the laws of motion for physics. Nothing that gives it a
unifying principle has yet been discovered or recognized.... It has had flashes
of perception, it holds a handful of clues, but it has not yet achieved a synthesis
or an insight that is compelling as well as plausible. And no one does psychology
a good turn by pretending that the situation is otherwise" (Heidbreder, 1933,
p. 426).
This
antisystematic climate is precisely what forced Woodworth to be entirely apologetic
about any 'systematic bias' in his Experimental Psychology (1938):
"It
would be quite inappropriate to make a general experimental psychology the vehicle
for expounding a system. It may be true, as has been said, that the present author
represents the functional school of psychology, in the broadest sense of the word.
Psychology does seem to be a study of the functioning of the organism in its environment.
This seems so much a matter of course to me that probably it underlies the discussion
of many topics. I would warn the reader especially against a probable theoretical
bias in the chapters on Conditioned Response, Maze Learning, Perception of Color,
and Problem Solving. Study of these topics has served to clarify my own systematic
view, but any explicit presentation of this view must wait for another occasion"
(Woodworth, 1938, p. v).
This
theoretically neutered textbook --along with its successor edited by S.S. Stevens,
1951-- would, through various editions, remain a major training vehicle for experimentally
oriented psychologists right up into the mid-1970s.Within this extended
antisystematic intellectual environment, the theme of 'exactly how a general emergent
evolutionary understanding of mental evolution might be brought into line with
the wealth of confusing (and seemingly contradictory) empirical evidence' was
first pushed aside and subsequently buried by successive layers of theoretically
noncommittal experimental psychology for more than sixty years.
Given
our present historiograhical perspective on this matter, however, it should be
stated outright that general-experimental psychology and the emergent evolution
methodology are by no means necessarily orthogonal endeavors. After all, it was
always Morgan's belief (along with his mentor Huxley) that "evolution is
a generalized account of what actually happens [throughout the realm of scientific
subject matter] and not an explanation thereof" (1933, p. 10). In other words,
within psychology, the particular view of mental evolution one holds necessarily
guides both the collection and interpretation of empirical evidence; it does not
however, replace the need to collect data. While two notable contributors to the
Handbook of Experimental Psychology (1951) recognized this commensurability
between emergent evolutionary theory and empirical practice (see Carmichael; Nissen
in that volume), they were far from representative of the views of that or subsequent
periods.
Despite
the initial North American resistance toward the insights of emergent evolutionary
analysis, many of the theoretical positions Morgan put forward are commensurable
with the those of James, Dewey,
Vygotsky, Leontiev, Werner,
Bruner, J.J. Gibson, and others. This might be part of the reason why the theme
of how some of the theoretical tools Morgan used were (and still might be) incorporated
into psychological research practice is now becoming the matter of lively interest
(at least among historians of science).
Concluding
Remarks
While
it was Romanes (1888) who first began to refer to "qualitative" and
"quantitative" change in mental evolutionary stages, it was Morgan's
Emergent Evolution (1923/31)
that provided the first inklings of an important methodological argument --that
once culture appeared, evolution itself was transformed into a qualitatively different
kind of process (i.e., as distinct from merely biological or social evolutionary
processes). Although the doctrine of emergent evolution as put forward by C. L.
Morgan (1923; 1926, 1929, 1933) was accompanied by a "supplementary"
postulation of a de-anthropomorphized deity (as the source of energetic movement
of matter), Alex Novikoff (1945) later put forward a secular "Integrative
Levels" form of the doctrine.
Emergent
naturalism in either form maintains that transmutations (and transformations)
of matter must be in some sense discontinuous with what existed before (i.e.,
such transmutations are more than simple reshuffling of fundamental units). The
development of matter is seen as "continuous because it is never-ending,
and as discontinuous because it passes through a series of different levels of
organization--physical, chemical, biological, [psychological] and sociological"
(Novikoff, 1945, p. 209). As matter evolved, new properties arose with each new
qualitative leap. The higher levels, although dependent upon the prior ones, are
not entirely explicable on their terms, since they contain properties not before
seen in the lower levels. The fact that novel qualities arise at each new level
necessitates the production or presence of new laws, which, in conjunction with
the old laws, govern those novel qualities.
Within
psychology, emergent evolutionary analysis is the primary means by which the phylogenetic,
ontogenetic, and social-historical aspects of general psychological subject matter
can be both distinguished and studied in their concrete empirical relations. The
long-standing individualistic organismic focus of contemporary general psychology
has to be replaced with the more inclusive distinction between the biological,
social, and societal aspects of our subject matter. This one conceptual shift
will allow general psychology to go beyond the standard dissatisfying descriptive
account of modified organismic functions (via individual adjustments, adaptation,
or interactions) and to move toward a more satisfying explanatory account of collective
transformation of organismic functions into distinctly human faculties (via the
active appropriation of culture). Elsewhere (see Ballantyne,
1995; Ballantyne, 2002) I have
elaborated at length on how such a "transformative" (emergent evolutionary)
methodology can used to resolve theoretical debates between competing empirically-based
research projects in specific areas of psychological subject matter (such as personality
and ability testing) and thereby open up new vistas for empirical research and
practice.
Morgan,
C.L. (1926). Life, Mind, and Spirit. London: Williams & Norgate.
Morgan,
C.L. (1929). Mind at the Crossways. London: Williams & Norgate.
Morgan,
C.L. (1933). The Emergence of Novelty. New York: Williams & Norgate.
Nissen,
H. (1951). Pylogenetic Comparison. In S.S. Stevens (Ed.). Handbook of Experimental
Psychology (347-386). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Novikoff,
A. (1945). The concept of integrative levels and biology. Science. Vol.
101, pp. 209-215.
Owens,
D. & Wagner, M. (1993). Progress in Psychology: The Legacy of Functional
Psychology. Westport: Praeger.
Romanes,
G. (1882). Animal Intelligence. New York: Appleton.
Romanes,
G. (1884). Mental Evolution in Animals. New York: Appleton.
Romanes,
G. (1888). Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty. London:
Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co.
Skinner,
B.F. (1938). The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis. London:
Appleton-Century.
Thorndike,
E. (1898). Animal Intelligence: An experimental study of the associative processes
in animals. (monograph supplement no. 8). Psyc. Rev. 5, 68-72.
Watson,
R.I. & Evans, R.B. (1991). The Great Psychologists: A history of psychological
thought. (5th ed.). [Expanded and improved in most respects]. New York:
Harper Collins.
Winston,
A.S. (1990). Robert Sessions Woodworth and the "Columbia Bible": How
the psychological experiment was redefined. American Journal of Psychology,
103, 391-401.
There
has been renewed interest (since Costall, 1993) in the story of how Lloyd Morgan's
(1894) methodological canon (regarding the proper interpretation of evidence about
the animal mind) "backfired" in early 20th century animal psychology.
A variety of opinions and related commentary on that topic, for instance, can
be found at: Thomas,
2001. C. Lloyd Morgan (1852–1936),
however, in a long series of interrelated works --including: An Introduction
to Comparative Psychology (2nd
Rev. ed., 1903); Emergent Evolution (1923
& 31); Life, Mind, and Spirit
(1926); Mind at the Crossways (1929);
The
Animal Mind (1930); Animal Conduct (1930); and Emergence of Novelty
(1933)-- managed to sketch out an emergent evolutionary approach to comparative
psychology in the wider sense of that term. This wider project of Morgan's has
received inadequate historical treatment because it is so poorly understood even
by historians of psychology. 
Despite
this endorsement, McDougall seems to have had considerable difficulty understanding
the 
Given
our present historiograhical perspective on this matter, however, it should be
stated outright that general-experimental psychology and the emergent evolution
methodology are by no means necessarily orthogonal endeavors. After all, it was
always Morgan's belief (along with his mentor Huxley) that "evolution is
a generalized account of what actually happens [throughout the realm of scientific
subject matter] and not an explanation thereof" (1933, p. 10). In other words,
within psychology, the particular view of mental evolution one holds necessarily
guides both the collection and interpretation of empirical evidence; it does not
however, replace the need to collect data. While two notable contributors to the
Handbook of Experimental Psychology (1951) recognized this commensurability
between emergent evolutionary theory and empirical practice (see Carmichael; Nissen
in that volume), they were far from representative of the views of that or subsequent
periods.