Edwin Bissell Holt (; August 21, 1873 – January 25, 1946) was a professor of philosophy and psychology at
Harvard from 1901–1918. From 1926–1936 he was a visiting professor of psychology at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
.
Biography
Holt was born in
Winchester, Massachusetts
Winchester is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, located 8.2 miles (13.2 km) north of downtown Boston as part of the Greater Boston metropolitan area. It is also one of the wealthiest municipalities in Massachusetts. The population ...
. He graduated from Harvard in 1896 and received his Ph.D., also from Harvard, in 1901. His mentors at Harvard were
William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
,
Hugo Münsterberg, and
Josiah Royce
Josiah Royce (; November 20, 1855 – September 14, 1916) was an American objective idealist philosopher and the founder of American idealism. His philosophical ideas included his version of personalism, defense of absolutism, idealism and his ...
.
Holt retired from teaching at Harvard in 1918. Kuklick (1977) has suggested that Holt's retirement from Harvard was due to various causes. First, Holt shared William James' concerns and criticisms of academia, and resented the fact that academic life had by his time turned into a quest for personal glory and prestige, rather than an honest quest for knowledge. Second, members of his intellectual group of friends, which included
Robert Yerkes,
Herbert Langfeld, and
Ralph Barton Perry, left Cambridge or withdrew for familial reasons. Heft (2001) has also suggested that Holt's homosexuality might have generated some further conflicts in Cambridge in the early decades of the 20th century. Finally, Kuklick argued that Holt had assumed the care of his aging mother, which decreased his social interactions, and was likely the reason why Holt turned down an academic offer from the University of Manchester. Holt quit Harvard immediately after her death.
His doctoral dissertation was in the area of perception, under the direction of Münsterberg. Around 1910 he started with others the philosophical movement of
new realism
New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created.
New or NEW may refer to:
Music
* New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz
Albums and EPs
* ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013
* ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...
, as a response to Royce's criticisms of William James' views on realism. After attending
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts ...
's famous lecture in Clark University in 1909, Holt was highly impressed with psychoanalysis, which influenced his book ''The Freudian Wish''. His most famous work was published in 1931, ''Animal Drive and the Learning Process: An Essay Toward Radical Empiricism'', which presented his views on learning and development.
Holt's psychology was related to the behaviorism of
Watson, but his views about behavior were broader and more philosophically oriented than Watson's, including for instance notions such as goals, purposes, and plans, clearly observable in the actions of organisms (See discussions in Charles, 2011). For Holt, then, behavior is purposive and goal directed, a notion that influenced directly the theorizing of one of Holt's most famous students,
Edward C. Tolman
Edward Chace Tolman (April 14, 1886 – November 19, 1959) was an American psychologist and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Through Tolman's theories and works, he founded what is now a branch of psychology know ...
, who later emphasized many of Holt's points through his own work on purposive behavior.
After his retirement, Holt moved to
Tenants Harbor, Maine, with his long-time male companion, George X. Bernier. Holt came out of retirement and taught at Princeton for a decade between 1926 and 1936, before returning to Maine. Holt died in
Rockland, Maine
Rockland is a city in Knox County, Maine, in the United States. As of the United States Census, 2020, 2020 census, the town population was 6,936. It is the county seat of Knox County, Maine, Knox County. The city is a popular tourist destination ...
, in 1946, and is buried in
Winchester, Massachusetts
Winchester is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, located 8.2 miles (13.2 km) north of downtown Boston as part of the Greater Boston metropolitan area. It is also one of the wealthiest municipalities in Massachusetts. The population ...
.
Bibliography
*"The Place of Illusory Experience in a Realistic World." in ''The New Realism''. New York: Macmillan (1912).
*''The Concept of Consciousness''. New York: Macmillan (1914)
*''The Freudian Wish and Its Place in Ethics''. New York: Holt (1915)
*''Animal Drive and the Learning Process''. New York: Holt (1931).
References
*Carmichael, L. (1946). Edwin Bissell Holt: 1873-1946. ''American Journal of Psychology, 59'', 478-480.
*Charles, E. P. (2011). ''A New Look at New Realism: The Psychology and Philosophy of E. B. Holt''. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
*Edwin B. Holt: American psychologist and philosopher. (n.d.). In M. G. Abdullah, M. C. Anderson, M. J. Anderson, A. Augustyn, M. L. Barton, P. Bauer, & L. Berris (Eds.), Encyclopædia Britannica.
*Heft, H. (2001). ''Ecological psychology in context: James Gibson, Roger Baker, and the legacy of William James's radical empiricism''. NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
*Kuklick, B. (1977). ''The rise of American philosophy: Cambridge, Massachusetts 1860-1930''. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
*Langfeld, H. S. (1946). Edwin Bissell Holt 1873-1946. ''The Psychological Review, 53'', 251-258.
External links
*
Works by Holt on the Mead Project URL accessed August 21, 2006
Obituary ''American Journal of Psychology'', Vol. 59, No. 3 (Jul., 1946), pp. 478–480, URL accessed August 21, 2006
{{DEFAULTSORT:Holt, Edwin
1873 births
1946 deaths
20th-century American psychologists
Harvard University alumni
Harvard University faculty
Princeton University faculty
20th-century American philosophers
People from St. George, Maine