{"id":22598,"date":"2025-01-22T15:14:47","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T14:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kennethsorensen.dk\/?p=22598"},"modified":"2026-05-05T16:53:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T15:53:00","slug":"the-errors-of-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethsorensen.dk\/en\/the-errors-of-scientists\/","title":{"rendered":"The Errors of Scientists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Assagioli at twenty-five \u2014 a psychologist’s taxonomy of the errors of scientists, from experimental tautologies to the magic word that explains too much<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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By Roberto Assagioli<\/strong>
Published in Psyche \u2013 Journal of Psychological Studies<\/em>, Year II, No. 4, July\u2013August 1913
Assagioli Archives, Florence, Docs. #23323 and #22324
Original title: Gli Errori Degli Scienziati<\/em> [i]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>
Translated and edited with notes by Jan Kuniholm [ii]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editorial Note<\/strong>
The abstract and contextual subtitle in this online edition have been added by the editor, Kenneth Sorensen, to support readability, navigation, and archival consistency. The translation is based on the published 1913 essay (Doc. #22324); a later partial revised manuscript (Doc. #23323) exists in the archive but is incomplete. The original wording has not been altered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Abstract<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In this essay, written when he was twenty-five and published in the journal Psyche<\/em> in 1913, Roberto Assagioli sets out a psychologist’s taxonomy of the errors that scientists fall into. He moves through errors of observation and experiment, including the experimental tautologies in which preconception shapes evidence; errors of induction, analogy, and over-extended scientific imagination; the indiscriminate use of causality and the post hoc fallacy; the verbal fallacies of ambiguous terms and pseudo-explanations such as the magic word “suggestion” that supposedly accounts for everything from hypnotism to thinking horses; the genetic fallacy of reducing higher forms to lower ones; the affective sources of error in misoneism, neophilia, and desire; and the professional errors that arise from each discipline’s particular cast of mind. He closes with a balanced double conclusion: scientists’ errors do not warrant a blanket scepticism toward science, but they do call scientists to remember that they too are people, and to keep close watch on the many roads by which error enters their work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Anyone who thinks about the history of science cannot fail to be struck by the large number of errors that have been made by scientists. And not only in the distant past, when science was in its infancy, when instruments of precision were lacking and the scientific method had not yet been well formulated and defined; but also recently, even in our own day.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study of such errors is of great and wide interest, especially to psychologists. It provides numerous data on the nature and procedures of scientific activity. It throws much light on the formation of beliefs and convictions, on the disturbing influence of attitudes and affective states over knowledge, on the psychology of mentalities, etc. It can then prove most useful to the progress of science, both by helping to uncover errors that were previously missed, and by warning against possible future errors.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A full treatment of this subject would require a large volume; but while waiting for some well-meaning scholar to prepare it, I do not think it useless \u2014 also as an inducement to that work \u2014 to recall some of the most important species of scientific errors and to cite a few examples.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philosophers and scientists have often written about error, but in general they have tried more to establish what it is and what relationship it has to truth; that is, they have studied it mainly from the epistemological point of view. There is indeed no shortage of analyzes and classifications of errors, but these mostly concern only errors of logic.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n