Discuss how Watson’s subject matter and methodology continued the atomistic, mechanistic, empiricistic tradition.
Watson was enduring in the mechanistic and atomistic attitude developed by the empiricists of Britain and ratified by the psychologists of structure. He calculated to study behavior of human in the similar way the scientists were examining the universe, by collapsing it into component particles, into its elements and particles.
This exclusionary target on detached methods, with the eradication of introspection, implied a difference in the nature and the portrayal of the subject which is human in the psychology labs.
For behaviorism, the subjects turned little important. They did not observe, rather these were observed by the analysts. With such a difference in target, the subjects of lab who were known as “observers” came to be termed as “subjects”.
The prime matter of subject for Watson’s psychology of behavior was the components of behavior, which is, the movements of muscles of body and secretions from glands. As the behavioral science, psychology dealt with the acts which could be demonstrated detachedly, with no use of mentalistic or subjective terminology.
Therefore, subjects which were human were relegated in their status. They did not actively look for their own properties and behaviors. They hardly behaved- and anybody could behave: pigeons, children, white lab mice, infants, or people with mental or emotional disorders.