Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
HOPOS 2024 , Vienna, Avusturya, 9 - 12 Temmuz 2024, (Özet Bildiri)
My paper examines a little-known contribution to discussions on
behaviourism within the framework of logical empiricism in the 1930s.
It presents and comments an early work by Hans Reichenbach's student at
Istanbul University, Nezahat Nazmi [Tanç], better known under her
marital name Nezahat Arkun, and situates it in the context of the
development of scientific philosophy in interwar Turkey, including
Reichenbach's efforts to establish and develop scientific psychology at
Istanbul University. Nezahat Nazmi's graduation thesis on "logistic
behaviourism according to Carnap and Reichenbach" (Mantıkî
Behaviorism'in Carnap ve Reichenbach'a Göre Tefsiri) was completed in
1938 and published in the unique issue of the journal of the Istanbul
University Department of Philosophy, Felsefe Seminarı Dergisi (1939).
This thesis documents the reception of behaviourism in the movement of
logical empiricism, combined with Reichenbach's interest in Gestalt
psychology. This constellation is visible in the sources used in the
thesis, which discusses the works of Egon Brunswik, who established in
Ankara the very first psychological laboratory in Turkey in the early
1930s, and of Edward C. Tolman, who studied with Kurt Koffka in Giessen
and developed according to Reichenbach a "very convincing form of
behaviorism" (Experience and Prediction, 1938: 163).
Another aspect
taken into consideration in this paper is the development of scientific
psychology at Istanbul University, where Reichenbach was able to
establish two additional chairs for exiled professors before leaving for
the University of California in 1938. Ernst von Aster, who was in his
early career in München and in Giessen interested in experimental
psychology and psychoanalysis, was thus appointed in 1936 to the Chair
of History of Philosophy and the psychologist Wilhelm Peters was
appointed in 1937 to a new Chair of Experimental Psychology. This chair
and the related institute were initially meant to be directed by a
Gestalt psychologist such as Wolfgang Köhler or Adhémar Gelb. Peter's
assistant and translator, Mümtaz Turhan, had studied in Germany between
1928 and 1935 and written his doctorate thesis under the direction of
Max Wertheimer. As for Nezahat Arkun, she wrote her doctoral thesis on
"Statistical Study on Suicide in Istanbul" (1948), under the supervision
of Wilhelm Peters. She became in 1968 professor of psychology at the
Istanbul University Department of Psychology and mainly pursued studies
in social psychology, using statistical methods.