Edwin B. Holt
| Edwin Holt | |
|---|---|
| Born |
August 21, 1873 Winchester, Massachusetts |
| Died | January 25, 1946 (aged 72) Rockland, Maine |
| Fields | philosophy and psychology |
| Institutions |
Harvard University Princeton University |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Doctoral advisor | Hugo Münsterberg |
| Doctoral students |
Harold H. Schlosberg Edward C. Tolman James J. Gibson |
| Known for | New Realism |
| Influences | William James |
| Influenced | Bruce Kuklick, Robert Yerkes, Floyd Henry Allport, Gordon Allport, Edward C. Tolman, James J. Gibson, Joseph Jastrow, B.F. Skinner, Samuel Alexander, John Anderson (philosopher), Nicholas S. Thompson, Eric Charles, Francois Tonneau, W.M. O'Neil, J.R. Maze |
Edwin Bissell Holt (/hoʊlt/; August 21, 1873 – January 25, 1946) was a professor of philosophy and psychology at Harvard from 1901–1918. From 1926–1936 he was a visiting professor of psychology at Princeton University.
Holt was born in Winchester, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard in 1896 and received his Ph.D., also from Harvard, in 1901. His mentors at Harvard were William James, Hugo Münsterberg, and Josiah Royce.
Holt retired from teaching at Harvard in 1918. Kuklick (1977) has suggested that Holt's retirement from Harvard was due to various causes. First, Holt shared William James' concerns and criticisms of academia, and resented the fact that academic life had by his time turned into a quest for personal glory and prestige, rather than an honest quest for knowledge. Second, members of his intellectual group of friends, which included Robert Yerkes, Herbert Langfeld, and Ralph Barton Perry, left Cambridge or withdrew for familial reasons. Heft (2001) has also suggested that Holt's homosexuality might have generated some further conflicts in Cambridge of the beginning of the century. Finally, Kuklick argued that Holt had assumed the care of his aging mother, which decreased his social interactions, and was likely the reason why Holt turned down an academic offer from the University of Manchester. Holt quit Harvard immediately after her death.
His doctoral dissertation was in the area of perception, under the direction of Münsterberg. Around 1910 he started with others the philosophical movement of new realism, as a response to Royce's criticisms of William James' views on realism. After attending Freud's famous lecture in Clark University in 1909, Holt was highly impressed with psychoanalysis, which influenced his book The Freudian Wish. His most famous work was published in 1931, Animal Drive and the Learning Process: An Essay Toward Radical Empiricism, which presented his views on learning and development.
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