Edwin Holt

Born August 21, 1873
Winchester, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died January 25, 1946 (aged 72)
Rockland, Maine, U.S.
Alma mater Harvard University
Known for New realism
Scientific career
Fields Philosophy and psychology
Institutions Harvard University
Princeton University
Thesis The motor element in vision (1901)
Doctoral advisor Hugo Münsterberg
Other academic advisors William James
Josiah Royce
Doctoral students Harold H. Schlosberg
Edward C. Tolman
James J. Gibson

Edwin Bissell Holt (/hoʊlt/; August 21, 1873 – January 25, 1946) was an American professor of philosophy and psychology at Harvard from 1901–1918. From 1926–1936, he was a visiting professor of psychology at Princeton University.

Holt was born in Winchester, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard in 1896 and received his Ph.D., also from Harvard, in 1901. His mentors at Harvard were William James, Hugo Münsterberg, and Josiah Royce.

Holt retired from teaching at Harvard in 1918. Kuklick (1977) has suggested that Holt's retirement from Harvard was due to various causes. First, Holt shared William James' concerns and criticisms of academia, and resented the fact that academic life had by his time turned into a quest for personal glory and prestige, rather than an honest quest for knowledge. Second, members of his intellectual group of friends, which included Robert Yerkes, Herbert Langfeld, and Ralph Barton Perry, left Cambridge or withdrew for familial reasons. Heft (2001) has also suggested that Holt's homosexuality might have generated some further conflicts in Cambridge in the early decades of the 20th century. Finally, Kuklick argued that Holt had assumed the care of his aging mother, which decreased his social interactions, and was likely the reason why Holt turned down an academic offer from the University of Manchester. Holt quit Harvard immediately after her death.