Hans Eysenck - Views and Their Reception

Views and Their Reception

Examples of publications in which Eysenck's views have roused controversy include (chronologically):

  • A paper in the 1950s concluding that available data "fail to support the hypothesis that psychotherapy facilitates recovery from neurotic disorder".
  • A chapter in Uses and Abuses of Psychology (1953) entitled "What is wrong with psychoanalysis".
  • Race, Intelligence and Education (1971) (in the US: The IQ Argument).
  • Sex, Violence and the Media (1978).
  • Astrology — Science or Superstition? (1982).
  • Smoking, Personality and Stress (1991).

Eysenck’s attitude was summarised in his autobiography Rebel with a Cause (Transaction Publishers, 1997, ISBN 1-56000-938-1): "I always felt that a scientist owes the world only one thing, and that is the truth as he sees it. If the truth contradicts deeply held beliefs, that is too bad. Tact and diplomacy are fine in international relations, in politics, perhaps even in business; in science only one thing matters, and that is the facts." He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.

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Famous quotes containing the words views and/or reception:

    It is surely a matter of common observation that a man who knows no one thing intimately has no views worth hearing on things in general. The farmer philosophizes in terms of crops, soils, markets, and implements, the mechanic generalizes his experiences of wood and iron, the seaman reaches similar conclusions by his own special road; and if the scholar keeps pace with these it must be by an equally virile productivity.
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    But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.
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