Psychology and the 20th-century Galileo cult: Kurt Lewin vs. Karl Bühler

Abstract

In his writings on the philosophy of science, the German-American psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) constantly claimed that his approach to psychology was characterised by the modern ‘Galilean’ mode of thought, as opposed to the medieval ‘Aristotelian’ mode of thought of the rest of the field. In this paper, we examine what Lewin meant by this opposition and how it fits into the disciplinary discourse of psychology and philosophy of science in the first half of the 20th century. We show that Lewin was one of the earliest figures to raise Galileo up to cult status as the pioneer of modern scientific thought: Lewin's invocation of Galileo predates that of Husserl and Koyré, who are often seen as the originators of the 20th-century image of Galileo. We also show that Lewin's opposition of ‘Galilean’ and ‘Aristotelian’ thought was a move in controversies of the time about the ‘crisis of psychology’, and that Lewin intended his opposition above all as an attack on his rival Karl Bühler (1879–1963).