Waiting for Newton

Argues that Newton's influence on psychology has been broad and profound, if not always acknowledged. From the Enlightenment onward, most philosophers and psychologists have tried to be "Newtons of the Mind," trying to do psychology as Newton did physics, stressing mathematics and mechanism. No Newton has arrived in psychology, but we go on waiting nonetheless. But Newton's influence has been deeper than this, because he defined the modern style in science and ushered in a revolutionary concept of the universe and humans' relation to it. Newton's great influence has tended, especially in English-speaking psychology, to crowd out or depreciate other visions of psychology such as Wittgenstein and hermeneutics that do not conform to the Newtonian ideal of science. It is suggested that Newton, like Beckett's Godot, may never arrive.