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The sciences were once the children of philosophy, but then they got evidence and ran away from home. How this happened has been often described, by the scientists with a pride that sometimes encourages them to philosophize independently. Philosophers have been inspired with a more obscure emotion, in which pride is mingled with envy and the memory of the time when they were as important as the nuclear physicists are today. For while philosophers may command the instrument of logic, logic is uncertain when applied to the usual world, and, apart from pure logic, it seems that the more generally accepted a proof, the less likely it is to be acknowledged as philosophical.
Psychology is the latest of the sciences to gain its independence. The separation divides what was once regarded as inseparable. Even now, as the philosopher may trespass into psychology, the hardier psychologist ventures within the preserves of contemporary epistemology. Without presuming to judge it, one might instance the work of Jean Piaget. According to him, child psychology casts light on the relation of mathematical to physical truth, and on the roles of extralogical intuition and pure logic in the conception of the idea of number. Genetic psychology, he says, has access to the most primitive concepts and can give important epistemological information, in part by explaining how sensations and movements grow into thought. He tries, that is, to “reconcile” logistics with psychology. (1)
However Piaget's claims may be judged, it is obvious that many philosophers want to keep psychology at a distance. They launch the term “psychologism” at the louring enemy and expect him to flee. The term, the opposite of