Scientific Psychology: Principles and Approaches: Edited by Benjamin B. Wolman and Ernest Nagel. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1965. 620 pp.

Under a title which might lead the reader to expect a survey of psychology as a science, or a widened grasp of scientific psychology, the authors have collected some thirty essays, each relevant in some way to their conviction that the continued healthy growth of the science of psychology requires a rapprochement with the philosophy of science. Through philosophical analysis of psychology's methods and theory formation, the logic of its operations, and the structure of its language they hope for the same salutary results gained by this approach to the physical sciences in decades past.

While psychology gained enormously when it broke away from speculative philosophy, the editors believe that present-day psychologists are deficient in their knowledge of the philosophy of science as it applies to psychology, in particular in the logic of theory construction. Similarly, even those philosophers who concern themselves with the philosophy of science have, in the main, dealt with issues raised by the development of the physical science. Few have confronted the knotty issues in the sciences concerned with human behavior. Hence the goal is to make psychologists more philosophically knowledgeable and to encourage philosophers to take into account more of the findings of psychology and the special characteristics of psychology as a science.

The essays are organized into three groups under the headings Principles, Systems, and Issues, but this organization seems post hoc. One feels that the editor strained to categorize the essays. There are gaps in the volume with respect to issues currently alive in psychology while the Systems section is heavily weighted toward learning theories and includes articles on Pavlov, Alfred Adler, and George H. Mead. Many of the articles seem to reflect the special concerns