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Summary Pioneers of Psychology - History of Psychology
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Samenvatting Pioneers of PsychologyIntroduction: studying the history of psychology
The value of studying history
History provides perspective on diverse ideas and how they developed in context.
Ideas that we see as mistaken, can appear reasonable when presented in their original
context.
Helps us appreciate the ‘reflexive’ nature of the field
o Reflexivity = human ability to become aware and reflect upon one’s own activities.
The history of psychology has a history
Edwin G. Boring and Robert I. Watson as pioneers of the study of history of psychology.
Ways to study the past
Historiography = collective term for the theory, history, methods and assumptions of writing history.
Body of historical work.
Internalism = focusing on internal factors; development of ideas and their intellectual
contexts
Externalism = focusing on external factors; social and political factors that shaped ideas.
Great man approach = history told through contributions of eminent people who shaped the
field.
Zeitgeist approach = takes into account that ‘spirit of the time’ affects ideas and abilities of a
person.
Presentism = viewing subject from standpoint of the present.
Historicism = recreate the past as it was, without foreknowledge of how things later worked
out.
Sophisticated presentism = you can never escape the standpoint of the present when writing
history, not assuming that the present state is the right or best one.
New history of psychology / Critical history of psychology = more contextual and historicist, check
accuracy of sources. Often stories misleading (origin myth process).
Continuity-discontinuity debate = decisions about when the history of psychology started and what
to include in the history of psychology.
Deciding who to include
Including woman and black people.
Psychology vs. Psychologies
Indigenization = process whereby local/national context affects development of psychology.
Book focuses on Western (US & Europe) psychology.
Our historiographic approach
Personalistic-contextual ; understanding development of ideas through individuals in context.
, 1. Foundational ideas from antiquity
Sophists = Athenian teachers specialized in teaching rhetoric and public speaking, promoting political
and social views.
Plato chose Socrates as teacher. Socrates engaged in dialogues about not knowing.
Nativism = inborn knowledge and properties.
Rationalism = reason and ratio.
Plato founded the Academy (center for scholars). Aristotle joined the academy as a student and
became the first proponent of empiricism = knowledge comes from sensory experiences.
The Greek miracle and the presocratic philosophers
Democracy in Athens. The early Greeks talked about logos/reason and philosophia/love of wisdom.
Thales promoted the idea that water was the most important element of the cosmos.
The concept of Psyche
Psyche = originally meant ‘breath’. Changed into ‘soul’.
Phytagorean mathematics and philosophical paradoxed
Phytagoras attracted school of followers who emphasized mathematics of the world.
Heraclitus focused on the relationship between stability and change, promoted the idea of the unity
of opposites (road that goes up also goes down).
Zeno pondered the concept of infinity.
Protagoras focused on human experience and behavior, practical.
The Hippocratics
Hippocrates was a physician, his followers wrote medical writings the Hippocratic Corpus.
Humoral theory = explain health and illness through balance of four fluids called humors; blood,
yellow bile, black bile and phlegm.
The life and thought of Socrates
Besides Plato, Socrates’ most famous student was Xenophon who became one of the first great
historians.
Socrates focused on how much he did not know (know thyself) and was a founder of nativism.
Plato’s life and philosophy
Platonic Idealism
Difference between appearance and ideal forms (essence of things); idealism ; there exists
something fundamental behind everyday sensory experiences.
Allegory of the cave = allegory for appearance and ideal forms. Relation between conscious
experience and objective physical stimuli.
The Platonic legacy
Plato argued that the human psyche/soul has three components: appetites, courage and reason.
Humans differ in which component is dominant; inborn/nature.
,Aristotle and empiricism
Aristotle joined Plato’s academy. Later left and taught Alexander the Great.
Aristotle returned to Athens and founded his own school: the Lyceum.
Biological taxonomy
Knowledge acquisition had two steps: 1. Observation and 2. Classification.
Marked the beginning of the biological field of taxonomy = arrangement of organisms into
hierarchically ordered groups and subgroups.
On the psyche’
Aristotle argued that organisms have psyches with varying degrees of complexity depending on the
scale of nature ; hierarchical ordering with plants at bottom and humans at top.
Vegetative soul = surviving, nourishment and reproduction (plants)
Sensitive soul = reacting to environment; motion, sensation, memory and imagination
(animals)
Rational soul = reason (humans).
Aristotle argued that the human psyche has innate categories into which the memories and ideas of
experience are organized:
Substance ; what something is
Quantity ; how much
Quality; color, shape etc.
Location, time, relation (big/small, before after etc.)
Activity ; what it is doing.
Aristotle emphasized empirical experience.
An atomic footnote: Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius
Democritus formulated atomic theory ; there is a limit to the divisibility of material objects and they
are ultimately composed of tiny particles called atoms. No causality.
Aristotle argued for four causes of causality:
Material cause ; of which something is made
Formal cause; idea or plan behind a thing
Efficient cause; actions that bring the thing into being
Final cause; purpose for which the thing is caused.
Epicurus adopted the atomic theory; conduct life with tranquility in the pursuit of social responsible
happiness.
Lucretius wrote about atomic theory and Epicureanism
Three Islamic pioneers’
Islamic scholars preserved the classical Greek works during the Dark Age of Western Europe
(centuries after fall of Rome > Greek writings condemned and burned).
Al-Kindi and the Introduction of Indo-Arabic Numerals
Al-Kindi developed system; Indo-Arabic numerals ; numbers zero to 9. Also use of letters and start of
algebra.
, Alhazen and Modern Visual Science
Alhazen wrote about visual science and argued that signals/rays originating from objects impress
themselves on the eyes.
He used a camera obscura ; box with a small hole on one side through which light from the external
object enters.
Avicenna on Medicine and the Aristotelian Soul
Avicenna studied the work of Aristotle and produced over 250 works.
Canon of Medicine ; medicine should be evidence based
Book of cure/healing; encyclopedia as a cure for ignorance.
o Added an internal motivating function to the soul
Floating man thought experiment ; floating man with blocked senses would still have
innate self-awareness.
Europe’s intellectual reawakening
After hostilities of the crusades, Christian and Islamic scholars interacted.
Fibonacci was an Italian that wrote about the Indo-Arabic numerals and established number-based
mathematics.
Foundation of first universities in 1088. Thomas Aquinas integrated Aristotelian philosophy in
Christian doctrines.
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