SOURCE: “Edward L. Thorndike: Toward a Science of Psychology,” in Scientists of the Mind: Intellectual Founders of Modern Psychology, University of Illinois Press, 1986, pp. 89-105.

In the following essay, Karier explores the larger cultural and ethical implications of Thorndike's focus on the science of education.

In one of his rare ventures into fictional writing, Edward L. Thorndike, America's most influential educational psychologist, wrote a very revealing morality play, The Miracle. In it he assumed the character of Dr. Richard Cabot, who, discoursing with a traditional clergyman, said:

My God is all the good in all men. My God is the mother's courage in childbirth; the laborer doing an honest job; the citizen counting his own advantage less than the common weal; the little child, brave, just, and happy in his play; the father toiling to educate his children—all the good in all men. Your God is in...