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The Unbuilt Bench: Experimental Psychology on the Verge of Science

byDavid Peterson

David Peterson offers a critical history of experimental psychology and the tools it has used to claim scientific authority. He examines how laboratories, measurements, statistical conventions, and theories of mind developed together, while the field repeatedly struggled to build a stable foundation for cumulative knowledge. By tracing methodological disputes and unrealized ambitions, Peterson shows why psychology's recurring crises are not merely recent failures but part of a longer institutional story. The book asks what a more durable science of human behavior would require—and what psychology can learn from the experimental systems it never fully built.

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Publication date

2025

Format

Print edition

Pages

328

ISBN

9780231217323