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Edwin Diller Starbuck was born Edwin Eli Starbuck on February 20, 1866, in Bridgeport, Indiana (now part of Indianapolis), the United States, the youngest of seven boys and two girls of Samuel Starbuck and Luzena (Jessup) Starbuck. His family was of Nordic stock. In 1660 his father's family had immigrated to Nantucket, where they engaged in whaling.
Edwin Starbuck was educated at Union High School in Westfield, Indiana; Indiana University (Bachelor of Arts, 1890); Harvard University (Masters of Arts, 1895); and Clark University (Doctor of Philosophy, 1897).
Before becoming a Harvard graduate student in 1893, Edwin Starbuck was already committed to this program.
Edwin Starbuck was an assistant professor of education at Stanford University (1897-1903), professor of education at Earlham College (1904-1906), and professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa (1906-1930) and the University of Southern California (1930-1943).
Starbuck's work was distinctive. It was based on the most thorough and painstaking collection of empirical data, and he made it clear that a new science was being launched. By 1921, however, his approach had achieved wide recognition, and Starbuck's career began its most productive period. In that year, the Character Education Institution of Washington, in a national competition awarded a $20, 000 prize to the nine-member committee, of which Starbuck was chairman, that developed the "Iowa Plan" for character education. Lecture invitations followed and in 1923 the Institute of Character Research was established at Iowa. Edwin Starbuck headed it and took it with him to the University of Southern California in 1930; he retired thirteen years later and died in 1947.
Edwin Diller Starbuck was the author of the first book to be formally entitled The Psychology of Religion (1899), the only pioneer applying to religious experience the methods and perspectives of the new science of psychology.
Edwin Diller Starbuck chaired an Iowa state committee that won a nationwide contest for the best plan in character education for public schools. As a result of that "Iowa Plan, " Edwin Diller Starbuck established a Research Station and later the Institute in Character Education at the State University of Iowa, the first and only one of its kind officially connected with a state university.
Edwin Diller Starbuck edited a significant series, University of Iowa Studies in Character (1927-1931), and with his staff tirelessly conducted research to systematically evaluate and select the "best" character-building literature to supplement public school curricula.
Starbuck's Quaker heritage endowed him with permanent respect for religious experience but left him relatively unencumbered by dogmas to defend or to renounce. Quakerism also gave him much training in and respect for spiritual introspection - the method he later relied on for his empirical data.
Edwin Starbuck tried to persuade Unitarians to adopt such an approach, during a two-year leave (1912-1914) as a consultant to that denomination, but he regarded this venture as unsuccessful.
His psychological study was clearly intended to preserve the intelligibility of religion, rather than to attack its credibility, as was the case with other contemporary psychologists of religion, most notably James Leuba.
Edwin Starbuck chose to devote most of his career to the application of his science, to encourage religious health. In the context of his humanistic, behavioristic, and nondoctrinal orientation, this outlook almost of necessity meant paying attention to character education. He argued vigorously against trying to develop character by indoctrination.
Quotations:
"The psychology of religion is a purely inductive study into the phenomena of religion as shown in individual experience. The end in view is not to classify and define the phenomena of religion, but to see into the laws and processes at work in the spiritual life. The fundamental assumption is that religion is a real fact of human experience and develops according to the law".
"Psychology is to religion what the science of medicine is to health."
On August 5, 1896, Edwin Starbuck married Anna M. Diller, whose name he took as his middle name. They had eight children, six of whom survived infancy.
