Abstract

Historians of psychology have described how the ‘introspection’ of early Wundtian psychology largely came to be ruled out of experimental psychology settings by the mid-20th century. In this paper I take a fresh look at the years before this process was complete – from the vantage point of early ethnographic and psychological field expeditions. Beginning with the psychological research conducted during and after the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to theTorres Straits Islands(CAETS) in 1898,Iwill discuss the importance of the CAETS in the history of anthropology and psychology and explore some possible ways of approaching experimental cognitive psychology ethnographically. I describe the experience of Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Cambridge experimental psychology lab founded after the CAETS by C.S. Myers, focusing on its implications for Wittgenstein’s later thought and for contemporary ‘affect theory’.