ALFRED BINET AND EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY AT THE SORBONNE LABORATORY

Between 1892 and 1904, Alfred Binet (1857-1911) produced, in the psychology laboratory of the Sorbonne, a whole set of original works that still remains little known today. He integrated the laboratory, directed by the psychophysiologist Henry Beaunis (1830-1921), in 1891. We describe the circumstances that led Binet to take the direction of this laboratory in 1895 and present scientific investigations that were conducted there by Binet and his collaborators. For Binet, the laboratory was not narrowly limited to a set of rooms where experiments were conducted by means of sophisticated devices (experimental psychology), it was also a working area, regularly organized, where all the psychological documents were classified, whatever their origin (descriptive psychology). We show that Binet was a pioneer who is still little recognized in various areas of experimental psychology. Binet suffered, at the time, from the indifference of his contemporaries, but he especially regretted not being able to attract students to his laboratory due to the absence of diploma-offering programs.