Background
Edward was born on April 14, 1886 in West Newton, Massachussets. He was the son of James Pike Tolman, a successful industrialist, and Mary Chace.
(Collection of previously published papers by Tolman.)
Collection of previously published papers by Tolman.
https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Papers-Psychology-Edward-Tolman/dp/B0000CI065?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B0000CI065
Edward was born on April 14, 1886 in West Newton, Massachussets. He was the son of James Pike Tolman, a successful industrialist, and Mary Chace.
With a deep sense of New England propriety, his father felt that sons of a "lower-upper" family should not aspire to Harvard, and insisted that his two sons go to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology instead, of which he was a graduate and trustee.
Both initially went to MIT, where Edward received his B. S. in electrochemistry in 1911. He then braved Harvard for his M. A. (1912) and for his Ph. D. in psychology (1915) in the then joint department of philosophy and psychology. He was influenced at Harvard by the philosophers Josiah Royce and Ralph Barton Perry, the philosopher-psychologist Edwin B. Holt, and the experimental psychologists Hugo Münsterberg and Herbert S. Langfeld. From Robert M. Yerkes he learned the possibilities within the studies of animal behavior, and, after reaching California, he devoted most of his research career to that area, which had already been named comparative psychology.
His graduate study at Harvard included a summer in Germany, where he spent a month with Kurt Koffka and became receptive to gestalt concepts.
He received several honorary degrees.
Eight months before his death he was awarded an honorary LL. D. from the university to which he had given most of his life.
Tolman's first academic appointment was as instructor of psychology at Northwestern University (1915 - 1918). He spent the remainder of his professional career at the University of California at Berkeley, as instructor (1918 - 1920), assistant professor (1920 - 1923), associate professor (1923 - 1928), and professor of psychology (1928 - 1954).
Tolman's impact on psychology dates largely from his major book, Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men (1932), in which his summarizations of a brilliant set of experiments with the white rat--the book was dedicated to that useful animal--were fitted into a highly original theoretical scheme. It was "behavioristic" only in the sense that it was based on observations that could be open to others rather than depending upon introspection, or on what he characterized as trying to make science out of "raw feels. "
His behaviorism was at odds with the contemporary behaviorism of John B. Watson because it was molar (holistic) rather than molecular (reductionistic), and stressed the goal-directed or purposive nature of behavior as against a more mechanistic interpretation of stimulus-response sequences patterned upon reflex behavior. In rejecting introspection, early behaviorism had largely negated higher mental processes through an emphasis on peripheral activity, as in interpreting thought according to implicit movements of the speech apparatus. Tolman converted this to a truly cognitive psychology, with an emphasis upon knowing the environment instead of merely learning how to move about in it. He did this in part by developing the concept of intervening variables, which he introduced in his presidential address before the American Psychological Association in 1937. The basic idea is that behaviorism could be preserved by using only observable behavior to produce the data points derived from experiments, but then going on to infer intervening processes that gave order to these observations. For example, if the observed behavior demonstrated that the animal appeared to be following a map rather than merely repeating a learned movement sequence--taking a shortcut, for example, in familiar territory--then it may be inferred that the behavior is being directed by an intermediate or intervening process that contains maplike information, perhaps a "cognitive map. " Learning may consist in knowing what-leads-to-what instead of following a learned movement pattern.
These ideas were supported by a variety of experiments, of which those on latent learning, place learning, and vicarious trial-and-error (VTE) are representative. The latent learning experiments demonstrated that the rat might have learned more than what showed in his movements, and hence was latent instead of manifest. If permitted to explore a maze without food at the end, its movements were relatively random, and the rat wandered into blind alleys off the true path. Once fed at the end of the maze, however, the rat quickly adopted the true path and avoided the blinds, demonstrating that it knew what-led-to-what. The place-learning experiments showed that a rat fed at a particular place on a table in the midst of other tables and trestles could find its way to that place by an economical route if placed at a totally new starting point; hence it had learned spatial relationships instead of movement sequences.
The VTE experiments, later in the experimental program, showed vacillation at a choice point, as though the animal were trying out alternatives in abbreviated form, by "looking-back-and-forth" rather than by "running-back-and-forth. " This behavior was called vicarious because it replaced the more complete trial-and-error behavior that had been prominent in the prior accounts of learning by Edward L. Thorndike and others. Here, then, was vestigial behavior that lent support for the cognitive interpretation. By proposing cognitive explanations that were coherent with objective experimentation, Tolman provided the background for an upsurge of interest in cognitive psychology that became prominent in the United States in the two decades after his death.
His students, while remaining deeply loyal to him, show few signs of scientific discipleship; it was somehow his personal qualities that most affected them. These qualities were clearly shown in 1949 in a controversy at the University of California over a loyalty oath that seemed to him an infringement of academic freedom.
He resigned rather than sign it and led the movement against it, ultimately winning the fight and having his professorship restored in 1953. The following year he became professor emeritus.
Tolman died in Berkeley, Calif.
(Collection of previously published papers by Tolman.)
He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was president of the American Psychological Association in 1937.
He was a chairman of Lewin's Society for the Psychological Study of Social issues in 1940 and a member of the Society of Experimental Psychologists.
Tolman was a most humane and sensitive person whose influence is incompletely described by his scientific achievements.
Quotes from others about the person
President Clark Kerr's citation ended with these words: "A man of tolerance and humor, dedicated to rigorous methods of scientific psychology and at the same time hospitable to all imaginative and original ideas. A great teacher who inspired generations of students and colleagues to high creative effort. "
He married Kathleen Drew on August 30, 1915. They had three children, Deborah, Mary, and Edward James. Noted singer-songwriter, music producer Russ Tolman, is Tolman's grandson.