[Reaction time tests in Leipzig, Paris and Würzburg. The Franco-German history of a psychological experiment, 1890-1910].
This article diiscusses from a comparative perspective the complex history of the reaction experiment with the Hipp chronoscope, one of the central experiments of late 19th-century psychology. It focuses on Wilhelm Wundt's (1832-1920) Institute for Experimental Psychology in Leipzig and on the Paris Laboratory for Physiological Psychology at the Sorbonne, which was initially directed by Henry Beaunis (1830-1921), but soon came to be dominated by the research activities of Alfred Binet (1857-1911). When the Paris psychologists founded their Laboratory in 1889, they took the Leipzig Institute as their model. In the early 1890s they adopted the reaction time experiment that had been central to Wundt's psychology. Shortly after, they modified this experiment according to their own specific interests. For Binet, it no longer served as a method for identifying the elementary components of "general" consciousness (as in Wundt), but for classifying "individual" personalities. The methodological and technological changes that Binet introduced into the experimental practice of psychology had no immediate impact on the research work in Leipzig. However, they influenced the "Wurzburg School" of psychology under Wundt's former assistant, Oswald Külpe (1862-1915). This illustrates that the comparative history of transfers of "experimental systems" (Rheinberger) across national borders is not simply a history of mere transports. Rather, it is a history of transferences that sometimes includes surprising "re-transferences".
Carroy
Jacqueline
J
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales 54, boulevard Raspail F-75006, Paris. Jacqueline.Carroy@ehess.fr
Schmidgen
Henning
H
D005602:France; D005858:Germany; D049673:History, 20th Century; D011589:Psychology, Experimental / Q000266:history* / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012106:Research / Q000266:history* / Q000295:instrumentation; D012107:Research Design