“Our Science Must Establish Itself”

Abstract

Often denied scientific status, Völkerpsychologie was set forth as a psychological program endeavoring to find insights into the structure and content of the ‘mind’ of social groups, especially ‘peoples’, which were regarded as the prototypical manifestation of those groups. This article examines how Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steinthal’s nineteenth-century Völkerpsychologie came to be regarded as having the status of a science, by analyzing its scientific program. I claim that these founders of Völkerpsychologie developed a moderate methodological materialism by embracing a historical turn in psychology, which—to a degree—enabled a synthesis of the methodologies of the social and the natural sciences. This approach is correlated with their modus operandi, collaboration through the medium of a journal.

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