James Mark Baldwin

James Mark Baldwin in 1917

James Mark Baldwin(January 12, 1861,Columbia, South Carolina– November 8, 1934,Paris)was anAmericanphilosopherandpsychologistwho was educated atPrincetonunder the supervision of Scottish philosopherJames McCoshand who was one of the founders of theDepartment of Psychologyat Princeton and theUniversity of Toronto.He made important contributions to earlypsychology,psychiatry,and to the theory ofevolution.

Biography

Early life

Baldwin was born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina. His father, who was from Connecticut, was anabolitionistand was known to purchase slaves in order to free them. During theCivil Warhis father moved north, but the family remained in their home until the time ofSherman's March.Upon their return after the war, Baldwin's father was part of theReconstruction Eragovernment. Baldwin was sent north to receive his secondary education in New Jersey. As a result, he chose to attend the College of New Jersey (nowPrinceton University).

Baldwin started in theology under the tutelage of the college's president,James McCosh,but soon switched to philosophy, completing a B.A. in 1884. He was awarded the Green Fellowship in Mental Science (named after his future father-in-law, the head of thePrinceton Theological Seminary) and used it to study in Germany withWilhelm Wundtat Leipzig and withFriedrich Paulsenat Berlin during the following year.

In 1886 he became Instructor in French and German at thePrinceton Theological Seminary.He translatedThéodule-Armand Ribot'sGerman Psychology of Todayand wrote his first paper "The Postulates of a Physiological Psychology". Ribot's work traced the origins of psychology fromImmanuel KantthroughJohann Friedrich Herbart,Gustav Theodor Fechner,Hermann LotzetoWundt.

In 1887, while working as a professor of philosophy atLake Forest College,he married Helen Hayes Green, the daughter of the president of the seminary,William Henry Green.At Lake Forest, he published the first part of hisHandbook of Psychology (Senses and Intellect)in which he directed attention to the new experimental psychology ofErnst Heinrich Weber,FechnerandWundt.He also completed his master's degree from Princeton.In 1889, he completed his doctoral degree, also from Princeton.

In 1890 he went to theUniversity of Torontoas the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics. His creation of a laboratory of experimental psychology at Toronto (which he claimed was the first in theBritish Empire) coincided with the birth of his daughters Helen (1889) and Elizabeth (1891) which inspired the quantitative and experimental research oninfant developmentthat was to make such a vivid impression onJean PiagetandLawrence Kohlbergthrough Baldwin'sMental Development in the Child and the Race: Methods and Processes(1894) dedicated to the subject. A second part ofHandbook of Psychology (Feeling and Will)appeared in 1891.

During this creative phase Baldwin traveled to France (1892) to visit the important psychologistsJean-Martin Charcot(at theSalpêtrière),Hippolyte Bernheim(at Nancy), andPierre Janet.

Mid-career

In 1893 he was called back to his alma mater,Princeton University,where he was offered the Stuart Chair in Psychology and the opportunity to establish a new psychology laboratory. He would stay at Princeton until 1903 working out the highlights of his career reflected inSocial and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development: A Study in Social Psychology(1897) where he took his previousMental Developmentto the critical stage in which it survived in the work ofLev Vygotsky,through Vygotsky in the crucial work ofAlexander Luria,and in the synthesis of both byAleksey Leontyev.He also edited the English editions ofKarl Groos'sPlay of Animals(1898) andPlay of Men(1901).

It was during this time that Baldwin wrote "A New Factor in Evolution" (June 1896/The American Naturalist) which later became known as the "Baldwin Effect".But other important contributors should not be overlooked.Conwy Lloyd Morganwas perhaps closest to understanding the so-called "Baldwin Effect". In hisHabit and Instinct(1896) he phrased a comparable version of the theory, as he did in an address to a session of theNew York Academy of Sciences(February 1896) in the presence of Baldwin. (1896/ "Of modification and variation".Science4(99) (November 20):733-739). As didHenry Fairfield Osborn(1896/ "A mode of evolution requiring neither natural selection nor the inheritance of acquired characteristics".Transactions of the New York Academy of Science15:141-148). The "Baldwin Effect", building in part on the principle of "organic selection" proposed by Baldwin in "Mental Development" did only receive its name fromGeorge Gaylord Simpsonin 1953. (in:Evolution7:110-117) (see: David J. Depew in "Evolution and Learning" M.I.T. 2003)

Baldwin complemented his psychological work with philosophy, in particularepistemologyhis contribution to which he presented in the presidential address to the American Psychological Association in 1897. By then the work on theDictionary of Philosophy and Psychology(1902) had been announced and a period of intense philosophical correspondence ensued with the contributors to the project:William James,John Dewey,Charles Sanders Peirce,Josiah Royce,George Edward Moore,Bernard Bosanquet,James McKeen Cattell,Edward B. Titchener,Hugo Münsterberg,Christine Ladd-Franklin,Adolf Meyer,George Stout,Franklin Henry Giddings,Edward Bagnall Poultonand others.

In 1897, Baldwin was also elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society.

In 1899 Baldwin went to Oxford to supervise the completion of theDictionary... (1902). He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Science atOxford University.(In the light of the foregoing, the deafening silence with which J. M. Baldwin was later treated in Oxford publications on the mind may well come to be regarded as one of the significant omissions in the history of ideas for the 20th century. Compare for exampleRichard Gregory:The Oxford Companion to the Mind,first edition, 1987.)

Later life

In 1903, partly as a result of a dispute with Princeton presidentWoodrow Wilsonand in part due to an offer involving more pay and less teaching, he moved to a professorship of philosophy and psychology atJohns Hopkins University.Here, he re-opened the experimental laboratory that had been founded byG. Stanley Hallin 1884 (but had closed with Hall's departure to take over the presidency ofClark Universityin 1888).

In Baltimore Baldwin started to work onThoughts and Things: A Study of the Development and Meaning of Thought, Or Genetic Logic(1906), a densely integrative rendering of his ideas culminating inGenetic Theory of Reality: Being the Outcome of Genetic Logic as Issuing in the Aesthetic Theory of Reality called Pancalism(1915). This book introduced the concept that knowledge grows through childhood in a series of distinct stages that involve interaction between innate abilities and environmental feedback, a proposal that was taken back by Piaget. He further stated that the initial physical development gives way to language and cognitive abilities such that the child emerges as a result of social and physical growth.

In Baltimore also Baldwin was arrested in a raid on a "colored" brothel (1908), a scandal that put an end to his American career. Forced to leave Johns Hopkins, he looked for residence in Paris. He was to reside in France till his death in 1934.

His first years (1908–1912) in France were interrupted by long stays inMexicowhere he advised on university matters and lectured at the School of Higher Studies at the National University inMexico City.HisDarwin and the Humanities(1909) andIndividual and Society(1911) date from this period. In 1912 he took permanent residence in Paris.

Baldwin's residence in France resulted in his pointing out the urgency of American non-neutral support for his new hosts on the French battlefields ofWorld War I.He publishedAmerican Neutrality, Its Cause and Cure(1916) for the purpose, and when in 1916 he survived a German torpedo attack on theSussexin theEnglish Channel– on the return trip from a visit toWilliam Oslerat Oxford – his open telegram to the president of the United States on the affair became frontpage news (New York Times). With the entry of America in the war (1917) he helped to organize the Paris branch of the American Navy League, acting as its Chairman till 1922. In 1926 his memoirsBetween Two Wars (1861-1921)were published. He died in Paris on November 8, 1934.

Ideas

Baldwin was prominent among early experimental psychologists and was voted by his peers as the fifth most important psychologist in America in a 1903 survey conducted byJames McKeen Cattell,but it was his contributions todevelopmental psychologythat were the most important. His stepwise theory of cognitive development was a major influence on the later, and much more widely known, developmental theory ofJean Piaget.His ideas on the relationship of Ego and Alter were developed byPierre Janet;while his stress on how "My sense of self grows by imitation of you...an imitative creation"contributed to themirror stageofJacques Lacan.

His contributions to the young discipline's early journals and institutions were highly significant as well. Baldwin was a co-founder (withJames McKeen Cattell) ofPsychological Review(which was founded explicitly to compete withG. Stanley Hall'sAmerican Journal of Psychology),Psychological MonographsandPsychological Index.He was also the founding editor ofPsychological Bulletin.

In 1892 he was vice-president of theInternational Congress of Psychologyheld inLondon,and in 1897–1898 president of theAmerican Psychological Association;he received a gold medal from theRoyal Academy of Arts and Sciences of Denmark(1897), and was honorary president of theInternational Congress of Criminal Anthropologyheld inGenevain 1896.

Organic selection

The idea of organic selection came from the interpretation of the observable data in Baldwin's experimental study of infant reaching and its role inmental development.Every practice of the infant's movement intended to advance the integration ofbehaviorfavorable to development in the experimental framework appeared to be selected from an excess of movement in the trial of imitation.

In further stages of development – the ones most critical to an understanding of the evolution of mind – this was graphically illustrated in the child's efforts to draw and learning to write. (Mental Development in the Child and the Race)

In later editions ofMental DevelopmentBaldwin changed the term "organicselection "into"functionalselection ".

So, from the outset the idea was well linked to thephilosophy of mindBaldwin was emancipating from the models inspired by divine pre-establishment. (Spinoza) (Wozniak, 2001)

It is the communication of this insight into the practice-related nature of dynamogenic development, above all its integration as a creative factor in the fabric of society, that helped the students of Baldwin to understand what was left ofLamarck'ssignature. Singularly illustrated byGregory BatesoninMind and Nature(1979) and reintegrated in contemporary studies byTerrence Deacon(The Symbolic Species:Theco-evolutionoflanguageand thehuman brain,1997) and other scholars ofbiosemiotics.

In thehuman speciesthe faculty of niche building is favored by a practical intelligence able to design the circumstances that will put its vital acquirements out of harm's way in terms of (linearly predicted)natural selection.It is precisely in the fields of study relating to massiveselection pressuresagainst which other species seem to be without defenses – biological development in the face of novelpandemics(AIDS,mad cow disease) – that the arguments relative to the naturalheredityof intelligent acquirements have resurfaced in a way most challenging to science.

Baldwin effect

Main article:Baldwin effect

Baldwin's most important theoretical legacy is the concept of theBaldwin effector "Baldwinian evolution". Baldwin proposed, against theneo-Lamarckiansof his day (most notablyEdward Drinker Cope), that there is a mechanism wherebyepigeneticfactors come to shape the congenital endowment as much as – or more than –natural selectionpressures. In particular, human behavioral decisions made and sustained across generations as a set ofculturalpractices ought to be considered among the factors shaping the human genome.

For example, theincest taboo,if powerfully enforced, removes the naturalselection pressureagainst the possession of incest-favoring instincts. After a few generations without this natural selection pressure, unless such genetic material were profoundly fixed, it would tend to diversify and lose its function. Humans would no longer be innately averse to incest, but would rely on their capacity to internalize such rules from cultural practices.

The opposite case can also be true: cultural practice mightselectively breedhumans to meet the fitness conditions of new environments, cultural and physical, which earlier hominids could not have survived. Baldwinian evolution might strengthen or weaken a genetic trait.

Influence

Baldwin's contribution to this field places him at the heart of contemporary controversies in the fields ofevolutionary psychologyand widersociobiology.Few people did more than Robert Wozniak, Professor of Psychology atBryn Mawr College,for the rediscovery of the significance of James Mark Baldwin in thehistory of ideas.

Work

Apart from articles in thePsychological Review,Baldwin wrote:

• Handbook of Psychology(1890), translation of Ribot'sGerman Psychology of To-day(1886);
• Elements of Psychology(1893);
• Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development(1898);
• Story of the Mind(1898);
• Mental Development in the Child and the Race(1896);
• Thought and Things(LondonandNew York,1906).

He also largely contributed to theDictionary of Philosophy and Psychology(1901–1905), of which he waseditorin-chief.

To viewvolumes of Baldwin'sDictionary of Philosophy and Psychologyat online archives:

	Online browse	Link by	Save	Vol. I (A-Laws)	Vol. II (Le-Z)	Vol. III (bibliog.)
						part I	part II
Internet Archive	Flipbook, DjVu, DjVu's plaintext	Book	pdf, DjVu, & .txt file	All 3 volumes(but some hard to read)
Google Book Search Beta (editions may not yet be fully accessible outside USA.)	Images & plaintext	Page	pdf & .txt file	Vol. I	Vol. II	Vol. III, part I	Vol. III, part II	All results (not distinctly labeled)
The Virtual Laboratory	Images	Page, Entry	pdf (desired pages)	All 3 volumes Browse A-Z by headwords in Vols. I & II
Classics in the History of Psychology	html	Letter/ Entry	html	A-O from Vols. I & II, transcribing

See also

• George Herbert Mead
• Life history theory
• Orthogenesis
• Epigenetics
• Pangenesis
• Weismann Barrier
• Evolutionary developmental biology

References

• Robert H. WozniakArchived2006-08-15 at theWayback Machine:Development and Synthesis: An introduction to the Life and Work of James Mark BaldwinBryn Mawr College, 2001 in: History of American Thought – Thoemmes Continuum/The History of Ideas 14 September 2004
• Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsiderededited by Bruce H. Weber and David J. Depew: Cambridge, Massachusetts 2003 – The MIT Press
• Gregory Bateson:Mind and Nature: A Necessary UnityNew York, 1979 – E.P.Dutton
• Terrence Deacon:The Symbolic Species: Theco-evolutionoflanguageand thehuman brainUSA, 1997 – W.W. Norton / Great Britain, 1997 – Allan Lane The Penguin Press.
• Edward J. Steele, Robyn A. Lindley, Robert V. Blanden: "Lamarck's Signature: How Retrogenes Are Changing Darwin's Natural Selection Paradigm"Sydney, 1998 – Allan & Unwin Pty Ltd. In: Frontiers of Science – Series EditorPaul Davies.
• Hothersall, David (2004).History of Psychology(4th ed.). New York, NY; McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

External links

• Autobiographical notes
• Mead Project: Basic Baldwin
• "Mental Development in the Child and the Race", J.M.Baldwin
• J.M.Baldwin in texts atClassics in the History of Psychology
• Johnson, Rossiter,ed. (1906). "Baldwin, James Mark".The Biographical Dictionary of America.Vol. 1. Boston: American Biographical Society. p. 196.
• Edited programMP3and full interviewMP3of Robert Wozniak in conversation with Christopher Green, as they discuss the life and work of Baldwin, fromThis Week in the History of Psychology
• DocumentaryfilmonYouTubedescribing the public controversy that swirled around the hiring of a new professor of philosophy at theUniversity of Torontoin 1889. The debate was focused on the prospect of an American, Baldwin, being hired over a Canadian competitor,James Gibson Hume,who later headed the Toronto philosophy department for 30 years.
• Works by James Mark BaldwinatProject Gutenberg
• Works by or about James Mark Baldwinat theInternet Archive
• James Mark BaldwinatFind a Grave