James Mark Baldwin

James Mark Baldwin (1861-1934), a prominent and influential American psychologist and philosopher, made important contributions to experimental psychology, developmental psychology, and evolutionary psychology during his academic career that included faculty positions at Princeton, Johns Hopkins, the National University in Mexico City, the French Provincial Universities, and the Ecole des Hautes Sociales in Paris. In his autobiography, Baldwin arranges his published contributions in the following categories, a chronological survey of his work in psychology and philosophy:

• General Psychology
• Experimental Psychology
• Child Psychology and Racial Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Genetic Psychology and Evolution
• Genetic Logic
• Terminology

Bryn Mawr College Professor of Psychology, Robert H. Wozniak, writes of Baldwin with this encomium:

Between 1892 and 1909, Baldwin could lay claim to being one of the best known psychologists in America, with an international reputation second only to that of William James [(1842-1910)].

Professor Wozniak proffers that Baldwin’s writings provided a source for some of the most profound ideas advanced by the influential developmental psychologists, Jean Piaget (1896 –1980) and Lev S. Vygotsky (1896 –1937), and notes that, in turn, Baldwin was greatly influenced by the revolutionary ideas of the naturalist, Charles Darwin (1809-1882)—inspiring an image of something like a pyramid of giants with giants standing on their shoulders.