Alexander Bain (redirected from Bain's rule)

Bain, Alexander 

Born 1818, in Aberdeen; died there Sept. 18, 1903. British philosopher, psychologist, and educator. Professor of logic and English (1860-80) and later rector of the University of Aberdeen. Founder of the journal Mind (1876).

Bain was one of the most important representatives of associationism in 19th-century psychology. While considering phenomena of consciousness to be subordinate to purely psychological laws of association, Bain nevertheless attempted to link them with bodily processes. Thus he studied reflexes, habits, instincts, and motor activity of organisms. New forms of the last category, according to Bain, come into being as the result of the selection of useful movements based on the mechanism of trial and error. The doctrine concerning this mechanism subsequently acquired an enormous popularity in psychological investigations of behavior. Although he defended the indivisibility of the psychological and the physiological, Bain nevertheless denied the causal connection between them, and he continued to maintain the position of psychological parallelism. Bain’s works, especially The Senses and the Intellect (1855) and The Emotions and the Will (1859), played an important role in drawing the attention of psychologists to the experimental study of psychic processes. They also prepared the way for the transformation of psychology into an independent experimental science.

WORKS

Mental and Moral Science. London, 1868.
Logic, parts 1-2. London, 1870.
Mind and Body. London, 1873.

REFERENCES

Iaroshevskii, M. G. Istoriia psikhologii. Moscow, 1966. Chapter 9. Brett, G. S. History of Psychology. London, 1953.

M. G. IAROSHEVSKII