Albert Michotte Scientific Collection

Housed within the Library of Psychological Sciences, Education and Motor Skills, the Albert Michotte Scientific Collection presents devices and apparatus used in psychological research at the Catholic University of Louvain since the beginning of the twentieth century.
Traditionally, experimental psychology studies the basic processes of adaptation, in particular sensory and perceptual processes, learning, attention, information processing, memory, goal pursuit, emotion, and so on.
From the earliest days of the discipline, researchers developed original devices to conduct specific, well-defined experiments. They also acquired, from other scientific fields, apparatus suitable for presenting particular types of “stimulus” material or for recording specific kinds of responses. Over time, these devices gradually ceased to be useful. The 1970s and 1980s saw the rise of microprocessors and then of personal computers. Since the 1990s, most scientific psychology research has been carried out using these computer-based tools alone. They combine the advantages of infinite flexibility with those of extreme precision. They make it possible to stage any situation and collect any response while generating, at the same time, databases that are immediately accessible to statistical tools. In the face of this evolution, characteristic of the postmodern period, the “modern” instruments of classical experimental psychology laboratories take on a special luster. They bear witness to the ingenuity of our predecessors. They show how the researcher’s idea guided them down to the smallest detail of the device’s design and how—with the help of highly skilled technicians—this resulted in an original instrument, often beautiful to behold, that would allow its designer to find the answer to the research question they faced.
In a museum that brings together such devices, one can observe at close quarters how, in this context, thought became object, and how the object in turn made it possible to generate data that would nourish knowledge and thought. The material element that has come down to us lay at the very heart of an interactive dynamic that ultimately transformed the way the researcher viewed the world they were questioning and nourished their concepts in that regard. These devices still resonate today with the thinking and the questions that shaped them. It is up to us to know how to contemplate them.
At the Catholic University of Louvain, an important part of the research activity revolved around questions relating to perception. The experimental psychology laboratory was founded there in 1894 by Armand Thiéry. The museum’s core collection was assembled during the long period when this experimental psychology laboratory was directed by Albert Michotte, who had previously studied under Wundt in Leipzig and Külpe in Würzburg between 1905 and 1908. Michotte remained active in the laboratory until shortly before his death in 1965. He became world-famous, in particular for his work on the perception of causality. Some of the many devices from his era remained in Leuven, where they are part of the heritage of KU Leuven, while another part was preserved by Gérard de Montpellier and later by myself, with the help of Richard Robert, a technician at the UCL Faculty of Psychology from 1969 to 2008. This second part was transferred to Louvain-la-Neuve in 1977 during the relocation of the French-speaking section of the former bilingual university. Until 1974, Gérard de Montpellier taught a course on Experimental Methodology at the University of Louvain in which the devices displayed in the museum were carefully described and examined.
Two other sources have contributed additional apparatus to this collection. On the one hand, the museum includes a number of devices from the laboratory of Arthur Fauville, whose work focused particularly on information theory and the study of language. The devices from this laboratory were preserved and handed down to the museum by Jean Costermans, who was the driving force behind the cognitive psychology movement developed at the University of Louvain. On the other hand, some devices in the museum’s collection come from the experimental and animal psychology laboratory led by Georges Thinès at the Château de Pellenberg near Leuven and later in various buildings on the Louvain-la-Neuve campus. These instruments reached the museum after being preserved by Marc Weyers.
For a long time, the museum’s various devices and apparatus remained inaccessible to the public for lack of a suitable space in which to display them. In recent years, interest shown by Anne Spoiden, librarian of the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences in Louvain-la-Neuve, in this historical material has made it possible to find for it a fitting display space in the reading rooms of our library (https://www.uclouvain.be/fr/bibliotheques/bpem). They may be visited during the library’s opening hours.
With the permanent display of the entire collection finally realized, it became essential to accompany it with detailed documentation, without which most of the devices would simply remain mysterious to readers and visitors. Thus was born the project of a virtual museum. It took shape in 2008 through the collaboration of various actors within the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences (Richard Robert, Anne Spoiden, Guy Lories, Raymond Bruyer, Michel Hupet, and Eric Baruffol) and especially thanks to the documentation work carried out as part of a second‑cycle placement by Céline Massy. The creation of the website was the work of Gregory Pierquin.

Bernard Rimé.

Our faculty has its roots directly in the history of psychology. At the dawn of this history, in 1905, Albert Michotte was sent by Mgr Mercier on a scientific visit to Wundt's psychology laboratory in Leipzig. This laboratory is now widely recognized as the birthplace of 20th-century psychology. The date of the laboratory's foundation, 1879, is generally cited as the date of birth of scientific psychology as it developed over the course of the 20th century.

Back in Louvain, Albert Michotte developed an outstanding scientific career in experimental psychology and became a leading international scientific figure. He was in close contact with the leading psychologists of his time, as his correspondence attests. He was at the forefront of all international scientific meetings. Even today, his work is regarded as a cornerstone of the scientific study of perception and, in particular, of the question of perceptual causality. His work continues to be cited in abundance as an essential reference. Few faculties are fortunate enough to have such prestigious sources. We have an important heritage that bears witness to these sources. The aim of this project is to showcase this historical heritage.