Edward L. Thorndike

1874-1949 · American · Learning Theory and Educational Psychology

Whatever exists at all exists in some amount.

Edward Lee Thorndike was the founder of the experimental psychology of learning and the leading figure of American educational psychology for half a century. Working first with animals — cats, dogs, and chicks in his puzzle boxes — he showed that learning is not a matter of reasoning or sudden insight but of trial, error, and the gradual stamping-in of connections between a situation and a response, and he made this the cornerstone of a general theory of how animals and men learn.

Topics Edward L. Thorndike addresses

• connectionism
• the law of effect
• the law of exercise
• trial-and-error learning
• the puzzle box
• stimulus-response bonds
• animal intelligence
• the learning curve
• educational psychology
• the transfer of training
• identical elements
• the doctrine of formal discipline
• the original nature of man
• mental and social measurement
• the measurement of intelligence
• whatever exists exists in some amount
• the law of readiness
• reinforcement and the after-effect
• hereditarian individual differences
• the psychology of arithmetic
• the Teacher's Word Book
• reward and punishment asymmetry
• the spread of effect
• the psychology of wants, interests, and attitudes

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