Raymond Cattell

Quotes

• “A taxonomy of abilities, like a taxonomy anywhere else in science, is apt to strike a certain type of impatient student as a gratuitous orgy of pedantry. Doubtless, compulsions to intellectual tidiness express themselves prematurely at times, and excessively at others, but a good descriptive taxonomy, as Darwin found in developing his theory, and as Newton found in the work of Kepler, is the mother of laws and theories.”
• “Of course, science lives by confusing theories, but what were accepted as 'theories' even by the many professional psychologists and psychiatrists were very poor limitations of what physical scientists call a theory.”
• “Psychology is a more tricky field, in which even outstanding authorities have been known to run in circles, 'describing things which everyone knows in language which no one understands'.”
• “(Personality is)... that which tells what a man will do when placed in a given situation.”
• “The first way in which one notices that a sentiment structure is different from an erg is that the emotional (ergic goal) qualities which enter it are very diverse, whereas in an erg they are all of one quality, e. g., gregariousness, sex... The sentiment brings together attitudes, in fact, with several different ergic roots, but only one source of learning.”
• “Overt anxiety... that part of anxiety of which the individual is aware and ready to speak.”

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Key facts

Born

( 1905-03-20 ) 20 March 1905, Hill Top, West Midlands, Birmingham , England

Died

2 February 1998 (1998-02-02) (aged 92), Honolulu , Hawaii, U.S.

Education

King's College London , ( BSc , PhD )

Known for

16 Personality Factors , fluid and crystallized intelligence , Culture Fair Intelligence Test

Fields

Psychology

Institutions

University of Illinois

Doctoral advisor

Francis Aveling , King's College London

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Image

Raymond Cattell.jpg

via Wikidata · CC0