James Ward (psychologist)
Encyclopedia
James Ward was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 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 philosopher. He was born in Kingston upon Hull
Kingston upon Hull
Kingston upon Hull , usually referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It stands on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary, 25 miles inland from the North Sea. Hull has a resident population of...

, the eldest of nine children. His father was an unsuccessful merchant. Ward was educated at the Liverpool Institute and Mostyn House, but his formal schooling ended when his father became bankrupt.

Apprenticed to a Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

 architect for four years, Ward studied Greek and logic and was a Sunday School Teacher. In 1863 he entered Spring Hill College, near Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

, to train for the Congregationalist
Congregational church
Congregational churches are Protestant Christian churches practicing Congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs....

 ministry. An eccentric and impoverished student, he remained at Spring Hill until 1869, completing his theological studies as well as gaining a University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

 BA degree.

In 1869-70 Ward won a scholarship to Germany, where he attended the lectures of Isaac Dormer in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 before moving to Göttingen to study under Hermann Lotze. On his return to Britain Ward became minister at Emmanuel Congregational Church
Emmanuel United Reformed Church, Cambridge
Emmanuel United Reformed Church in Cambridge, England is located close to the centre of town, on Trumpington Street. A congregational church, it voted to join the new United Reformed Church in 1972.-History:...

 in Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

, where his theological liberalism unhappily antagonised his congregation. Sympathetic to Ward's predicament, Henry Sidgwick
Henry Sidgwick
Henry Sidgwick was an English utilitarian philosopher and economist. He was one of the founders and first president of the Society for Psychical Research, a member of the Metaphysical Society, and promoted the higher education of women...

 encouraged Ward to enter Cambridge University. Initially a non-collegiate student
Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
Fitzwilliam College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge in England.The college traces its origins back to 1869 and the foundation of the Non-Collegiate Students Board, a venture intended to offer students from less financially privileged backgrounds a chance to study...

, Ward won a scholarship to Trinity College
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

 in 1873, and achieved a first class in the moral sciences tripos in 1874. With a dissertation entitled 'The relation of physiology to psychology', Ward won a Trinity fellowship in 1875. Some of this work, An interpretation of Fechner's Law, was published in the first volume of the new journal Mind
Mind (journal)
Mind is a British journal, currently published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association, which deals with philosophy in the analytic tradition...

 (1876). For the rest of his life, the Dictionary of National Biography reports that he "held himself aloof from all institutional religion; but he did not tend towards secularism or even agnosticism; his early belief in spiritual values and his respect for all sincere religion never left him."

During 1876-7 he returned to Germany, studying in Carl Ludwig
Carl Ludwig
----Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig was a German physician and physiologist.In 1842 Ludwig became a professor of physiology and in 1846 of comparative anatomy...

's Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

 physiological institute. Back in Cambridge, Ward continued physiological research under Michael Foster
Michael Foster
Michael Foster may refer to:* Michael Foster , British physiologist and Member of Parliament * Michael Jabez Foster , British politician, former MP for Hastings and Rye...

, publishing a pair of physiological papers in 1879 and 1880.

However, from 1880 onwards Ward moved away from physiology to psychology. His article Psychology for the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica was enormously influential – criticising associationist psychology with an emphasis upon the mind's active attention to the world.

He was president of the Aristotelian Society
Aristotelian Society
The Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study of Philosophy was founded at a meeting on 19 April 1880, at 17 Bloomsbury Square which resolved "to constitute a society of about twenty and to include ladies; the society to meet fortnightly, on Mondays at 8 o'clock, at the rooms of the Spelling...

 from 1919 to 1920.

External links

  • "Psychology", from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th Edition, Volume XX (1886).
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