James Rowland Angell
Encyclopedia
James Rowland Angell was an American
psychologist
and educator. He served as the president of Yale University
between 1921 and 1937. His father, James Burrill Angell
(1829–1916), was president of the University of Vermont
from 1866 to 1871 and then the University of Michigan
from 1871 to 1909.
. He was the youngest of three children, with an older brother and sister. When Angell was two years old, his family moved to Ann Arbor so that his father could take up the presidency of the University of Michigan
. His maternal grandfather, Alexis Caswell
, was a professor of Mathematics
and Astronomy
at, and later president of, Brown University
. He was also a charter member of the National Academy of Sciences
. His brother Alexis Caswell Angell
became a professor of law of Michigan, and later a federal judge. His sister's husband, Andrew C. McLaughlin
, was head of the history department at Michigan. His cousin, Frank Angell
, founded psychology laboratories at Cornell and Stanford Universities.
Angell graduated from the University of Michigan
with his Bachelor's Degree in 1890. He worked closely with John Dewey
, earning a Master's degree under his supervision in 1891. At Michigan he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon
fraternity (Omicron chapter). He then went to Harvard University
where he received a second Master's Degree in 1892 in psychology
. He studied for a doctorate in philosophy in Berlin and Halle. His dissertation on the treatment of freedom in Kant was accepted, but required stylistic changes, which he never completed. Instead, he decided to take up a post at the University of Minnesota
He did, however, receive 23 honorary degrees during his lifetime. In 1895 he was offered position at the University of Chicago
by John Dewey
, who had moved from Michigan the year before. Almost immediately, he co-authored an article with his Chicago colleague Addison W. Moore that simultaneously settled a nasty dispute between Cornell psychologist Edward Bradford Titchener and Princeton
psychologist James Mark Baldwin
as well as laying the foundations for the school of Functionalism
. Later, while still at Chicago, Angell published the textbook Psychology; An Introductory Study of the Structure and Functions of Human Consciousness in 1904, which became the major statement of the functionalist approach
to psychology. Angell noted that the goal of psychology was to study how the mind helps the organism adjust to the environment and functionalism
was a method in which to study consciousness and how it improves the organism relationship with the environment. In 1905 (the year after Dewey left Chicago for Columbia University
), Angell became the head of the newly-created psychology department at Chicago. During this time he served as the 15th and youngest president of the American Psychological Association
. He also supervised the young John B. Watson
, who would later go on to found the behaviorist school of psychology. In 1908, Angell was raised to the level of Dean at Chicago, leaving the psychology department to another of his former students, Harvey Carr. During the last year of World War I
Angell worked for the military under the supervision of Northwestern University
psychologist Walter Dill Scott
. The following year (1918), he returned to Chicago to serve as Acting President. The school would not make him president on a permanent basis, however, because he was not Baptist. In 1919 he left Chicago to head the National Research Council
. In 1920, he headed the Carnegie Corporation of New York. In 1921 Angell took up the presidency of Yale University
, the first non-Yale graduate to do so since the early 18th century. He remained president of Yale University
his retirement in 1937, at which point he became educational counselor of the National Broadcasting Company
. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
in 1932.
In 1894, James married Marion Isabel Watrous from Des Moines, Iowa, a fellow graduate of the University of Michigan
. He had two children with her, one boy and one girl, but then she died in 1931. He subsequently married Katharine Cramer Woodman, who brought great joy to his life because of the interest she took in his students and problems. James Angell died on March 4, 1949 in New Haven, Connecticut.
and is closely identified with functional psychology
.
Angell laid out his three major points about functionalism during his presidential address for the American Psychological Association
.
1. Functional psychology is interested in mental operations by way of mental activity and its relation to the larger biological forces. Angell believes that functional psychologists must consider the evolution of the mental operations in humans as one particular way to deal with the conditions of our environment. Mental operations by themselves are of little interest. Functional psychology is not conscious elements .
2. Mental processes aid in the cooperation between the needs of the organism and its environment. Mental functions help the organism survive by aiding in the behavioral habits of the organism and unfamiliar situations.
3. Mind and body cannot be separated because functionalism is the study of mental operations and their relationship with behavior. The total relationship of the organism and the environment and the minds function/place in this union is at question.
By stating these points, Angell drew the difference between functionalism as a study to discover how mental processed operate, what they accomplish that has kept them around, and the conditions in which they occur or the how and why of consciousness and its predecessor, structuralism, which focused on individual mental elements or the what of consciousness.
model in studies and having a completely functionalist view did not sit well amongst some of his peers. There was also the dissecting of his works and the assumption that he contradicted himself in his view of what consciousness was and its function. Some think that he portrayed consciousness as more of a deux ex machina entity in its function due to his claim that the function of the conscious was to appear when the organism was in trouble and then disappear soon after the trouble had passes.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
psychologist
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
and educator. He served as the president of Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
between 1921 and 1937. His father, James Burrill Angell
James Burrill Angell
James Burrill Angell was an American educator, academic administrator, and diplomat. He is best known for being the longest-serving president of the University of Michigan . Under his leadership Michigan gained prominence as an elite public university...
(1829–1916), was president of the University of Vermont
University of Vermont
The University of Vermont comprises seven undergraduate schools, an honors college, a graduate college, and a college of medicine. The Honors College does not offer its own degrees; students in the Honors College concurrently enroll in one of the university's seven undergraduate colleges or...
from 1866 to 1871 and then the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
from 1871 to 1909.
Background
James Rowland Angell was born on May 8, 1869, in Burlington, Vermont. He was born into one of the stellar academic families in American history. His father, was the president of the University of VermontUniversity of Vermont
The University of Vermont comprises seven undergraduate schools, an honors college, a graduate college, and a college of medicine. The Honors College does not offer its own degrees; students in the Honors College concurrently enroll in one of the university's seven undergraduate colleges or...
. He was the youngest of three children, with an older brother and sister. When Angell was two years old, his family moved to Ann Arbor so that his father could take up the presidency of the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
. His maternal grandfather, Alexis Caswell
Alexis Caswell
Alexis Caswell was an American educator, born in Taunton, Massachusetts. He graduated Brown University in 1822, and entered the Baptist ministry....
, was a professor of Mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
and Astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
at, and later president of, Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
. He was also a charter member of the National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
. His brother Alexis Caswell Angell
Alexis Caswell Angell
Alexis Caswell Angell was a United States federal judge.Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Angell received an A.B. from the University of Michigan in 1878 and read law in 1879, also receiving an LL.B. from the University of Michigan in 1880...
became a professor of law of Michigan, and later a federal judge. His sister's husband, Andrew C. McLaughlin
Andrew C. McLaughlin
Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin was an American historian born to Scottish immigrant parents. He received his bachelor's and law degrees from the University of Michigan. By 1903 he was a respected historian and in 1914 he was named President of the American Historical Association...
, was head of the history department at Michigan. His cousin, Frank Angell
Frank Angell
Frank Angell was an early American psychologist. The nephew of University of Vermont and University of Michigan president, James Burrill Angell and cousin of University of Chicago psychologist and Yale University president James Rowland Angell, Frank Angell earn his PhD in the Leipzig laboratory of...
, founded psychology laboratories at Cornell and Stanford Universities.
Angell graduated from the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
with his Bachelor's Degree in 1890. He worked closely with John Dewey
John Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...
, earning a Master's degree under his supervision in 1891. At Michigan he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon
Delta Kappa Epsilon
Delta Kappa Epsilon is a fraternity founded at Yale College in 1844 by 15 men of the sophomore class who had not been invited to join the two existing societies...
fraternity (Omicron chapter). He then went to Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
where he received a second Master's Degree in 1892 in psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
. He studied for a doctorate in philosophy in Berlin and Halle. His dissertation on the treatment of freedom in Kant was accepted, but required stylistic changes, which he never completed. Instead, he decided to take up a post at the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
He did, however, receive 23 honorary degrees during his lifetime. In 1895 he was offered position at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
by John Dewey
John Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...
, who had moved from Michigan the year before. Almost immediately, he co-authored an article with his Chicago colleague Addison W. Moore that simultaneously settled a nasty dispute between Cornell psychologist Edward Bradford Titchener and Princeton
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
psychologist James Mark Baldwin
James Mark Baldwin
James Mark Baldwin was an American philosopher and psychologist who was educated at Princeton under the supervision of Scottish philosopher James McCosh and who was one of the founders of the Department of Psychology at the university...
as well as laying the foundations for the school of Functionalism
Functionalism
Functionalism may refer to:* Functionalism , or structural functionalism, a theoretical tradition within sociology and anthropology* Functionalism * Functionalism...
. Later, while still at Chicago, Angell published the textbook Psychology; An Introductory Study of the Structure and Functions of Human Consciousness in 1904, which became the major statement of the functionalist approach
Functionalism
Functionalism may refer to:* Functionalism , or structural functionalism, a theoretical tradition within sociology and anthropology* Functionalism * Functionalism...
to psychology. Angell noted that the goal of psychology was to study how the mind helps the organism adjust to the environment and functionalism
Functionalism
Functionalism may refer to:* Functionalism , or structural functionalism, a theoretical tradition within sociology and anthropology* Functionalism * Functionalism...
was a method in which to study consciousness and how it improves the organism relationship with the environment. In 1905 (the year after Dewey left Chicago for Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
), Angell became the head of the newly-created psychology department at Chicago. During this time he served as the 15th and youngest president of the American Psychological Association
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...
. He also supervised the young John B. Watson
John B. Watson
John Broadus Watson was an American psychologist who established the psychological school of behaviorism. Watson promoted a change in psychology through his address Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it which was given at Columbia University in 1913...
, who would later go on to found the behaviorist school of psychology. In 1908, Angell was raised to the level of Dean at Chicago, leaving the psychology department to another of his former students, Harvey Carr. During the last year of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
Angell worked for the military under the supervision of Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
psychologist Walter Dill Scott
Walter Dill Scott
Walter Dill Scott was one of the first applied psychologists. He applied psychology to various business practices such as personnel selection and advertising.-Life:...
. The following year (1918), he returned to Chicago to serve as Acting President. The school would not make him president on a permanent basis, however, because he was not Baptist. In 1919 he left Chicago to head the National Research Council
United States National Research Council
The National Research Council of the USA is the working arm of the United States National Academies, carrying out most of the studies done in their names.The National Academies include:* National Academy of Sciences...
. In 1920, he headed the Carnegie Corporation of New York. In 1921 Angell took up the presidency of Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, the first non-Yale graduate to do so since the early 18th century. He remained president of Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
his retirement in 1937, at which point he became educational counselor of the National Broadcasting Company
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
in 1932.
In 1894, James married Marion Isabel Watrous from Des Moines, Iowa, a fellow graduate of the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
. He had two children with her, one boy and one girl, but then she died in 1931. He subsequently married Katharine Cramer Woodman, who brought great joy to his life because of the interest she took in his students and problems. James Angell died on March 4, 1949 in New Haven, Connecticut.
Functional psychology
He was greatly influenced by the thought of John DeweyJohn Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...
and is closely identified with functional psychology
Functional psychology
Functional psychology or functionalism refers to a general psychological philosophy that considers mental life and behavior in terms of active adaptation to the person's environment. As such, it provides the general basis for developing psychological theories not readily testable by controlled...
.
Angell laid out his three major points about functionalism during his presidential address for the American Psychological Association
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...
.
1. Functional psychology is interested in mental operations by way of mental activity and its relation to the larger biological forces. Angell believes that functional psychologists must consider the evolution of the mental operations in humans as one particular way to deal with the conditions of our environment. Mental operations by themselves are of little interest. Functional psychology is not conscious elements .
2. Mental processes aid in the cooperation between the needs of the organism and its environment. Mental functions help the organism survive by aiding in the behavioral habits of the organism and unfamiliar situations.
3. Mind and body cannot be separated because functionalism is the study of mental operations and their relationship with behavior. The total relationship of the organism and the environment and the minds function/place in this union is at question.
By stating these points, Angell drew the difference between functionalism as a study to discover how mental processed operate, what they accomplish that has kept them around, and the conditions in which they occur or the how and why of consciousness and its predecessor, structuralism, which focused on individual mental elements or the what of consciousness.
Criticisms
James Angell did have some criticism come his way for his views. The backlash from some about his implication of leaving out the structuralismStructuralism
Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...
model in studies and having a completely functionalist view did not sit well amongst some of his peers. There was also the dissecting of his works and the assumption that he contradicted himself in his view of what consciousness was and its function. Some think that he portrayed consciousness as more of a deux ex machina entity in its function due to his claim that the function of the conscious was to appear when the organism was in trouble and then disappear soon after the trouble had passes.
Published books and articles
- Psychology: An Introductory Study of the Structure and Function of Human Consciousness
- Chapters from Modern Psychology
- "The Influence of Darwin on Psychology" (part of a larger collection, Darwinism: Critical Reviews from Dublin Review, Edinburgh Review, Quarterly Review)
- "The Evolution of Intelligence" (part of a larger collection, The Evolution of Man: A Series of Lectures Delivered before the Yale Chapter of the Sigma XI during the Academic Year 1921-1922)