730 High St, Easton, PA 18042, USA
Cattell entered Lafayette College in 1876 at the age of sixteen, and graduated in four years with the highest honors.
Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
Cattell left for University of Göttingen in October 1882, completing his Ph.D. in 1886.
730 High St, Easton, PA 18042, USA
Cattell entered Lafayette College in 1876 at the age of sixteen, and graduated in four years with the highest honors.
Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
Cattell left for University of Göttingen in October 1882, completing his Ph.D. in 1886.
(Classic article on the interpretation of intelligence tes...)
Classic article on the interpretation of intelligence tests, with special reference to the problem of ascertaining the extent to which the performance of an individual depends on heredity and environment.
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1923
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editor professor psychologist publisher scientist
Cattell was born on May 20, 1860, in Easton, Pennsylvania, the son of William Cassady Cattell, a Presbyterian minister, who became president of Lafayette College in Easton shortly after James' birth. Cattell grew up the eldest child of a wealthy and prominent family. William Cattell could easily provide for his children, as he had married Elizabeth "Lizzie" McKeen in 1859; together they shared Lizzie's substantial inheritance.
Cattell entered Lafayette College in 1876 at the age of sixteen, and graduated in four years with the highest honors. In 1883 the faculty at Lafayette awarded him an M.A., again with highest honors. Cattell did not find his calling until after he arrived in Germany for graduate studies, where he met Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig. He also studied under Hermann Lotze at the University of Göttingen, and an essay on Lotze won him a fellowship at Johns Hopkins University, where he left Germany to study in October 1882, completing his Ph.D. in 1886.
Cattell took up a lecturing post at the University of Cambridge in England, and became a 'Fellow Commoner' of St. John's College, Cambridge. He was the first person in the world to have the title “professor of psychology” (University of Pennsylvania, 1888). After being asked to leave Johns Hopkins University in 1883 (his colleagues regarded him as a nuisance), he went to Leipzig, where he studied with Wilhelm Wundt, whose first laboratory assistant he was. Part of the next two years was spent studying at Galton’s anthropometric laboratory in London.
In 1891 Cattell left Pennsylvania for Columbia University, where he remained until 1917, when his pacifist views resulted in his expulsion - one of the more spectacular academic freedom cases of the period. Cattell’s psychological work shows the influence of his two masters. Like Wundt he was interested in experimental studies of human behavior; like Galton he was interested in statistical studies, of scientists in Cattell’s case.
Cattell and his students greatly influenced American psychology in its bias toward experimentation and quantification. His principal importance, however, is as a great scientific publisher and editor and as a powerful force in the development of the scientific and intellectual community. From 1895 until his death Cattell owned and edited Science. He founded Psychological Review in 1894 and continued as coeditor until 1903. Cattell took over Popular Science Monthly in 1900, relinquishing his editorship in 1915; he was not able to arrest the periodical’s decline, however. To supplant Popular Science Monthly, in 1915 he founded Scientific Monthly, which he edited until his death. In the same year he founded another journal, School and Society, which remained under his aegis for the rest of his life.
With the initial support of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Cattell produced the first edition of American Men of Science in 1906 and edited all editions through the sixth (1938). Two editions of a related directory, Leaders in Education, appeared in 1932 and 1940. To handle all these publications he founded the Science Press of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1923. At a time when founding and maintaining scientific journals was quite risky, Cattel's successful entrepreneurship earned him much gratitude from the scientific community. Related to his editorial work was his role as a would-be reformer of the American intellectual scene. In both his writings and his conduct Cattell upheld the rights of professors against deans and university presidents; he was instrumental in the founding of the American Association of University Professors in 1915. Selecting the American Association for the Advancement of Science as his chosen instrument for the reorganization of the scientific community, Cattell made Science its official organ in 1900 and later arranged for title to the periodical to pass to the Association on his death, which occurred on January 20, 1944, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
In general Cattell was somewhat more cautious than Visher in using the starred scientists, but both display a fair degree of gullibility. His findings generated a good many myths that required correction in the development of national science policy after World War II - for example, small colleges are more productive of scientists than universities.
Cattell was a pioneer in American psychology who influenced the profession to use objective methods of study and to apply psychology to practical aspects of life. He probably did more than anyone else of his time to foster the development of the behavioral and biological sciences in the United States.
The main street in the College Hill Neighborhood of Easton, Pennsylvania, home to Lafayette College, is named after Cattell.
(Classic article on the interpretation of intelligence tes...)
1923Cattell was skeptical of paranormal claims and spiritualism. He had dismissed the medium Leonora Piper as a fraud and was involved in a debate over Piper with the psychologist William James in the Science journal.
Cattell married Josephine Owen, the daughter of an English merchant, in 1888. Their seven children got their pre-college educations at home with their parents as instructors. The whole family shared in Cattell's editorial work. One daughter, Psyche Cattell (b. 1893) followed in her father's footsteps, established a small child psychology practice in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and developed tests to assess the intelligence of infants.
