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Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #18477.
The Science of Human Nature is a concise introductory textbook in psychology, written by William Henry Pyle, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Missouri, and published in 1917. The work opens with a practical preface that frames the study of human behavior as essential knowledge for high‑school and teacher‑training students, then moves into a systematic definition of science itself before applying that framework to the study of the mind. The author emphasizes a “scientific” approach, identifying causes, relations, and predictable patterns, while repeatedly urging readers to verify facts through observation of themselves and others. The text is organized into ten chapters covering development, sensation, habit, memory, thinking, individual differences, and applied psychology, each designed to be tackled with classroom exercises and modest references to contemporary scholars such as Titchener and Münsterberg.
Pyle’s voice is that of an early‑20th‑century educator, earnest and didactic, blending clear exposition with frequent appeals to the reader’s own experience. The style is straightforward, with occasional rhetorical analogies (e.g., comparing a stone on a mountain to a case study in psychology) that illustrate abstract concepts in concrete terms. Readers who enjoy disciplined, lecture‑like works that combine theoretical overview with practical classroom guidance, particularly those interested in the historical foundations of educational psychology or in a period‑appropriate perspective on the science of the mind, will find this book both accessible and rewarding.
The opening · free to read
This book can be only a guide to you. You are to help your students study human nature. You must, to some extent, be a psychologist yourself before you can teach psychology. You must yourself be a close and scientific student of human nature. Develop in the students the spirit of inquiry and investigation. Teach them to look to their own minds and their neighbor's actions for verification of the statements of the text. Let the students solve by observation and experiment the questions and problems raised in the text and the exercises. The exercises should prove to be the most valuable part of the book. The first two chapters are the most difficult but ought to be read before the rest of the book is studied. If you think best, merely read these two chapters with the pupils, and after the book is finished come back to them for careful study.
In the references, I have given parallel readings, for the most part to Titchener, Pillsbury, and Münsterberg. I have purposely limited the references, partly because a library will not be available to many who may use the book, and partly because the young student is likely to be confused by much reading from different sources before he has worked out some sort of system and a point of view of his own. Only the most capable members of a high school class will be able to profit much from the references given.
You are beginning the study of human nature. You can not study human nature from a book, you must study yourself and your neighbors. This book may help you to know what to look for and to understand what you find, but it can do little more than this. It is true, this text gives you many facts learned by psychologists, but you must verify the statements, or at least see their significance to you, or they will be of no worth to you. However, the facts considered here, properly understood and assimilated, ought to prove of great value to you. But perhaps of greater value will be the psychological frame of mind or attitude which you should acquire. The psychological attitude is that of seeking to find and understand the causes of human action, and the causes, consequences, and significance of the processes of the human mind. If your first course in psychology teaches you to look for these things, gives you some skill in finding them and in using the knowledge after you have it, your study should be quite worth while.
W. H. PYLE.
There are at least two possible approaches to the study of psychology by teacher-training students in high schools and by beginning students in normal schools.
One of these is through methods of teaching and subject matter. The other aims to give the simple, concrete facts of psychology as the science of the mind. The former presupposes a close relationship between psychology and methods of teaching and assumes that psychology is studied chiefly as an aid to teaching. The latter is less complicated. The plan contemplates the teaching of the simple fundamentals at first and applying them incidentally as the occasion demands. This latter point of view is in the main the point of view taken in the text.
The author has taught the material of the text to high school students to the end that he might present the fundamental facts of psychology in simple form.
W. W. C.
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