Words matter. These are the best Edward Thorndike Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Psychology helps to measure the probability that an aim is attainable.
There is no reasoning, no process of inference or comparison; there is no thinking about things, no putting two and two together; there are no ideas – the animal does not think of the box or of the food or of the act he is to perform.
Nowhere more truly than in his mental capacities is man a part of nature.
The function of intellect is to provide a means of modifying our reactions to the circumstances of life, so that we may secure pleasure, the symptom of welfare.
Dogs get lost hundreds of times and no one ever notices it or sends an account of it to a scientific magazine.
The intellectual evolution of the race consists in an increase in the number, delicacy, complexity, permanence and speed of formation of such associations.
From the lowest animals of which we can affirm intelligence up to man this type of intellect is found.
For origin and development of human faculty we must look to these processes of association in lower animals.
The restriction of studies of human intellect and character to studies of conscious states was not without influence on a scientific studies of animal psychology.
On the whole, the psychological work of the last quarter of the nineteenth century emphasized the study of consciousness to the neglect of the total life of intellect and character.
So the animal finally performs in that situation only the fitting act.
This growth in the number, speed of formation, permanence, delicacy and complexity of associations possible for an animal reaches its acme in the case of man.
Human folk are as a matter of fact eager to find intelligence in animals.
Amongst the minds of animals that of man leads, not as a demigod from another planet, but as a king from the same race.
The real difference between a man’s scientific judgments about himself and the judgment of others about him is he has added sources of knowledge.
The dog, on the other hand, has few or no ideas because his brain acts in coarse fashion and because there are few connections with each single process.
Human education is concerned with certain changes in the intellects, characters and behavior of men, its problems being roughly included under these four topics: Aims, materials, means and methods.
It will, of course, be understood that directly or indirectly, soon or late, every advance in the sciences of human nature will contribute to our success in controlling human nature and changing it to the advantage of the common weal.
Psychology is the science of the intellects, characters and behavior of animals including man.
