Functionalism

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

Functionalism emerges in the 19th century from studies in biology and physiology where function is placed above anatomy in importance. The discovery that biological functions cross multiple organs meant that knowledge of organ structure alone was insufficient for knowledge of how the body functions. Furthermore, early proponents of functionalism, such as James Rowland Angell, attributed the view to Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin. A number of historians of psychology have claimed priority for functionalism in psychology by noting that functionalism became a unique school of psychology in the late 19th century. This was due largely to John Dewey's well-known 1896 publication promoting functionalism as a solution to a debate concerning the interpretation of reaction time research in the 1890s. He argued that it made more sense for the psychologist to orient his or her attention to acts or functions, rather than stimulus and response, where the latter could only be teleologically associated with sensation or movement. Furthermore, individual functions were coordinated within the sequence of acts by both attention and sensitivity to the environment and by virtue of [Page 410]the forward momentum of continuous activity. Dewey's functionalism was taken up as an important and novel position in psychology, but only in name. His psychology was never adopted, save in a piecemeal fashion by his followers, and would soon be overshadowed by behaviorism. Functionalism, in the hands of Angell and others, became established as the psychology that concerned itself with mental activity and biological processes.

In sociology, Émile Durkheim expounded a version of functionalism at about the same time. His version was substantially different from Dewey's, however, since it was concerned with the contribution a “social fact” makes to the needs of society. Sociologists continue to use various forms of functional and functionalism. In biology, too, the notion of a function has received widespread attention in recent decades and is used to describe the “functions” of organisms or their subsystems. Other disciplines have also made use of the terms, borrowing in various ways from biology or other social sciences.

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