Biān 鞭 -azote o látigo

So, then: how did I get to History? It started in an unusual place: in my

introductory course to Developmental Psychology at the University of Toronto, in the Winter semester of 2002. The professor suggested as one of our essay options that we compare and contrast a contemporary study with an historical one.⁸

This is not, strictly speaking, History. In most cases, the results will be influenced too much by the contemporary view (“presentism”). So let’s instead be clear about the impact that this had: had it not been for the resulting experience, I would likely never have sought out any higher-level historical courses. Also, I did not choose immediately to write about Piaget. (This is not a love story.)

Piaget’s name was no more meaningful to me then than any of the other names mentioned in Marty Wall’s big Intro course at Convocation Hall. His was just one among many, and I wasn’t so clear about those either. (When I first chose the major, I remember vividly that an upperclassman teased me when I mispronounced Rorschach as sounding more like “Dvorak,” whose name is known either as a classical composer or the inventor of a high-performance computer keyboard, according to the audience.) Piaget’s name was also associated with some spooky language that seemed not to make sense in light of anything else I had learned to that point (e.g., assimilation, accommodation, etc.). Thus, instead, for no reason in particular that I recall—except perhaps because I wanted to

8 This puts it at the middle of my third year of undergraduate studies, not long after I had decided to leave Finance for Psychology. My justification for the change was that, if I was going to understand the crash of the dot-com stock market bubble (in which I had participated and about which I felt quite strongly), then I would need to understand something about human behavior and decision-making. This was reinforced later that year by the awarding of a Nobel Prize in Economics to Daniel Kahneman, a former UBC psychologist who had moved to Princeton in the mid-1980s.

begin at the beginning, and had read about him in Richard Dawkins’ and Daniel

Dennett’s popular writings about evolution—I chose to focus on Charles Darwin’s (1877) biography of his infant son, William Erasmus Darwin (1839-1914), as mediated through his notebooks of observations and several intervening decades.

Given what I knew then about the elder Darwin (viz. that he had “discovered”

evolution), it was surprising to me that he had written something that was both

psychological and developmental. William (“Doddy”) was also conceived at around the same time as his father’s ideas about Natural Selection, and so the son seemed to me to be the lesser of the two contributions. Still, though, Charles was both a famous naturalist and a new father. His observations of his son’s development would therefore be

interesting regardless of the issue’s ultimate historical importance.⁹ And it would meet the requirements of the paper. Thus, it was decided: Darwin.

The library’s then-new website showed that the university owned only one copy of the biography. This was held in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, which is located at the base of the neck of the famously turkey-shaped Robarts Library. So that’s where I went.¹⁰

After the porter relieved me of my knapsack, a librarian sat me down in the reading room. It was dimly lit, with booked-lined walls that reached far overhead; more a

9 I became more positive about children once my nephew was born.

10 Of course, I now know that this is an article and not—as the library website still says today—a book. I also now know that the piece had been reprinted several times (e.g., Darwin, 1877/1971,

1877/2010). At that time, however, I knew nothing. More important, however, is that the larger lesson also didn’t come from the words themselves; rather, it came from the interactions inspired by the material object that provided form to the content. Put differently: the more important meaning, for me, was not found in the text. It arose from the context.

cavern—or a small cathedral, for the worship of knowledge—than my mental image of a library. (There were no flickering fluorescents overhead, nor any chewing gum long ago ground black underfoot.) The books themselves were unexpected too: ancient tomes of various sizes, some of which were so large that they needed to sit flat on special

oversized shelves the size of dinner tables. Then the librarian brought me the biography, although I should probably say, “The Darwin.”

I expected a photocopy, not an historical artifact. I wasn’t there to “do History.” I was just there to pick up an old pre-scientific document so I could critique it; to tear it up (figuratively). I’m certain that I even asked her to make me a copy, rather than risking damage from my handling the original.

“No,” she said, to her credit. “You have to do this properly.”

The pages were almost too delicate to touch: they were brittle to the point of being crispy. They were also translucent in places, presumably where others had touched them with oily fingers. But I was committed to leaving The Darwin in as good shape as I had received it. So, as the librarian watched from a nearby alcove, I decided that I should use a piece of acid-free paper—if such a thing existed—to turn each page as gently as possible without leaving a mark.

When I asked at the desk, she had some prepared for me. It seems to me now that she had probably been waiting with it, ready to swoop in if required, but wanted first to see what I would do before intervening. I returned to my carrel with the papers; a pilgrim with a passport.

While I sat there, in my first encounter with History (and wondering what to do

next), I noticed a distinctive smell. It was quite pleasant, and tasted in the air almost like vanilla. This was completely unlike the off-putting chemical smell of the glue in the new journals made available for review in Robarts’ and Gerstein’s Current Periodicals rooms.

Electronic journals had also been introduced, of course, but the coverage was spotty and the websites poorly-constructed. As a result, it often seemed simpler in those early days to go browse in person. Besides, nobody had wifi yet, and very few of the university’s rooms had Ethernet sockets to plug-into. I also usually didn’t know what I was looking-for, so thumbing through the volumes was often the way to go: scholarship by accidental discovery. But not with The Darwin.

When I finally figured out how to turn the pages without bending or even

touching them, and started reading, I was surprised by what was written. Darwin’s report wasn’t at all like the other texts that I had read for that class, or any other. But there were similarities.

He engaged with an earlier published study. He spoke of behaviors that he had observed at different ages. And he concluded from his observations that the earliest of these behaviors must have been the result of inherited reflexes. He was also very careful in attributing to his son the adult labels for emotions and cognitions, when it was not at all clear that those were what his son was experiencing.

This was not a foreign thing, as I expected from the way in which I had come by it. It just seemed overly informal. It was a baby-biography, rather than a scientific study of child development. But it also seemed more cautious, in some respects, than many

more-modern texts that I had read.¹¹ For this reason, and also because it was not possible to dismiss Darwin as “ignorant” for failing to follow contemporary practices (Dawkins and Dennett had presented him as biology’s Greatest Genius), I was forced to consider a different perspective: according to whose standards should this text be judged?

This was almost certainly not what my professor intended. And, in fact, I do not remember what I wrote in my essay. (Nor do I remember the grade it received.)¹² These don’t matter, though, for I had been gifted a much more important lesson: a practical introduction to historical investigation, guided by a trusting and forgiving librarian and inspired by a proper scientist of developmental psychology. I was thus launched, but not in the usual way.

History was not for me a way to escape scientific psychology. History was rather a means of engaging with the discipline’s lost and forgotten territories; a way to look for treasures that might have been overlooked by the discipline’s map-makers (see e.g., Keegan & Gruber, 1985; Lorch & Hellal, 2010). History was a way forward, even as it looked back.