Edwin Diller Starbuck

From Philosopedia.org

Starbuck, Edwin Diller (b. 20 February 1866 - d. ? )

Starbuck was born in Guilford Township, Indiana. He was raised in the Quaker tradition, though by early adulthood he had developed a highly critical view of traditional Christian dogma. Investigating Christian belief, however, was more for Starbuck than a personal endeavor.

After receiving an A.B. degree in 1890 from Indiana University, Starbuck enrolled at Harvard to study religion, philosophy and psychology. While at Harvard, Starbuck engaged in independent research in what is now called the psychology of religion. Having developed various questionnaires "measuring" individual religious experience, Starbuck, largely outside of formal instruction, linked religious experience and psychology, a hitherto unknown field of study. In Dean Everett's class in Systematic Theology (which he remembered in his essay "Religion's Use of Me"), he met Anna Maria Diller, a fellow student, whom he married in 1896.

• [p. 226] During the winter of 1894-5, about the middle of the second year of the study, some clear and significant consistencies began to appear, particularly in the conversion study: the piling up of age-frequencies near pubescence; likenesses of the phenomena of conversion and those attending the breaking of habits; the signs of the dissociation of personality and its recentering, not unlike the split-personality experiences described by James, Prince, and Janet; and so on through a considerable list. Dean Everett was sufficiently interested to request a report before his class in the philosophy of religion made up of about sixty graduate students which included' women as well as men, since Radcliffe students were that year for the first time admitted to graduate courses at Harvard. The presentation was simple and factual and unargumentative. The discussion was then thrown open to the class. That occasion was a sort of christening ceremony for the babe newly born into the family of academic subjects. Some quite hot water was poured into the baptismal font. The first douse of it came from Edward Borncamp, who rose, his face white with emotion. His first sentence, fervid with the warmth of deep conviction, was, "It's all a lie!" Laughter broke out there in that dignified classroom. There was also a pouring of friendly waters into the font, and words of commendation for this new babe. Of course, the attempted damnation of the infant by the first speaker was because its swaddling clothes were only the filthy rags of earthly psychology, [p.227] ill-becoming the sacredness of religion. The charming Dean, high priest on that occasion, had words of encouragement for the father of the child, and for the offspring itself. There in that class sat Anna Diller, profound student, musician-artist. She warmed towards it and took it to her bosom as she was later to take the whole oncoming Starbuck brood.

Starbuck's early work at Harvard elicited a mixed response, with some claiming that psychology and religion "have nothing to do with one each other." Importantly, one of Starbuck's chief supporters was William James, who incorporated Starbuck's findings in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). After receiving his A.M. from Harvard in 1895, Starbuck enrolled in Ph.D. studies at Clark University. After receiving his Ph.D. two years later, Starbuck published his The Psychology of Religion, the first text in the new field.

Starbuck spent much of his life teaching, holding positions at Stanford University (Assistant Professor of Education, 1897-1903), Earlham College (Professor of Education, 1904-1906), the State University of Iowa (Professor of Philosophy, 1906-1930), and the University of California (Professor of Philosophy and Psychology). Between his time at Stanford and Earlham, Starbuck studied in Germany under Ernst Meumann, a leading scholar in the new field of educational psychology. After his time in Germany, Starbuck concentrated on "character education," including work with the American Unitarian Association on religious education curricula.

(ANB; Starbuck, Edwin, "Religion's Use of Me" in Religion in Transition, edited by Vergilius Ferm (New York: Macmillan. 1937, esp. p. 222-227); Booth, Howard J., Edwin Diller Starbuck: Pioneer in the Psychology of Religion (Washington, D.C. : University Press of America, 1981).