Jacques Loeb

“The Significance of Tropisms for Psychology”
This writing is from the Loeb’s book THE MECHANISTIC CONCEPTION OF LIFE. In this chapter Loeb discusses the experiments that he uses to make his case for Tropism. Tropism defined is “an involuntary forced movement.” (Schultz, 2008)
Loeb states that the mechanistic concept of life is not complete unless it includes a physic-chemical component to explain the psychic phenomena. In his experiments Loeb discusses “animal will” which he defines as “a limited group of animal reactions explained physic-chemically.” (Loeb, 1912) His desire was to find the chemical processes, and not “animal will,” were the cause of the animal’s spontaneous actions. Loeb wanted, in the end, to show that the animal’s actions had nothing to do with conscious decisions.
As for the previous studies done on animals, Loeb equates the outcomes to an uneducated person looking at the movements of the planets, and coming to the conclusion that the movement is caused by “will action” not gravitational forces. At this point Loeb offers 2 solutions to what he perceives as the problem. He offers a scientific solution that consists of one, finding the forces that determine movement, and two, discover the laws that cause the action. The second solution he offers is the Experimental method. This method entails using external forces to move the animal in a direction by the animal’s means of “locomotion,” or whatever physiological method they use to move on their own. If the animal does not move in the right direction, the experiment is not a success.
From this point forward Loeb goes into his theory of “animal will,” by way of A.P. deCandolle’s idea of heliotropic movement. Using lice, he recounts how placing those in a test tube with a light illuminating only one end, all of the lice moved in a relatively straight pattern to the end of the tube that was illuminated. This process was referred to as Positive Heliotropic, while animals that eventually went in the opposite direction of the light would be referred to as Negatively Heliotropic. By use of the term Tropic, Loeb described the chemical reaction within the optical or light sensing region of an organism that causes it to move toward or away from the light. Loeb also found that less heliotropic animals could be induced to act positively heliotropic by introducing things such as carbonic acid and temperature changes to the animal’s environment.
Loeb’s research also showed that repeated heliotropic exposures led to faster reaction times. This discovery might be considered learning.

My initial thoughts about this writing were along the lines of “wow, he discovered instinctive behavior!” Obviously this though was very tongue-in-cheek. I had to do quite a bit of extra reading outside of this one section to fully grasp the concepts mentioned. I would suggest this work could be related to behaviorism due to the way it was carried out, and what the results produced. But the troubling aspect for me is how mechanistic thinking spreads, like a disease, from this setting into all areas of thought.

The underlying theme I picked up on while reading this work, as well as many others, had to be the deterministic thought process exhibited. The problem, as I see it, with a vast majority of scientific work is how the people doing the work lean heavily on determinism. Loeb endorsed mechanistic thinking, and I believe that there is not one person who can live in accordance with deterministic and behavioristic beliefs that man is only a machine. I find interesting the words of Sartre, that no finite point has meaning unless it has an infinite reference point. As a Christian, I agree with him. I believe behaviorism teaches that behavior itself can be broken down, or reduced to the atoms that make up man. If you follow that reasoning, then we are left with man being no different from any other object made of atoms. (And, I believe, that is all inclusive of the material world) From the behaviorist point of view the environment determines human behavior, but the Bible is clear in that, although the environment can influence behavior, it can do so without necessarily determining it. In Proverbs chapters 1-9 we can definitely find that the environment has influence in our lives. However, the Bible is full of examples of how our behavior is shaped by the consequences of what we do. The interesting thing is that doing the right thing is not always rewarded, and doing the wrong thing is not always punished. So that leaves us with the logical conclusion that God, indeed, has placed within us free will. To that end, determinism is not a very good option to explain human behavior.

Loeb, J. (1912). The Mechanistic Conception of Life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.

Schultz, D. a. (2008). A History of Modern Psychology 9th Edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

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