Hermann Ebbinghaus once said, “Psychology has a long past, yet its
real history is short” (Goodwin, 2008, p 28). Ebbinghaus was referring to the
fact that the questions in psychology have been around as long as humans.
Philosophers have been studying these questions just as long. Rene Descartes,
John Locke, George Berkley, David Hume, David Hartley, and John Stuart Mill
were early philosophers that attempted to study these questions of basic human
nature. Philosophers were the earliest scientists that formed the discipline of
psychology. Later in the nineteenth century, scientists such as Francois
Magendie, Hermann von Helmholtz, Franz Josef Gall and Pierre Flourens furthered
psychology as science with their research on the brain and its functions.
Early Philosophers and the Beginnings of
Psychology
Rene Descartes was a scientist and philosopher and considered the
father of modern psychology. Descartes was a realist and believed that the way
to truth was through human reasoning (Goodwin, 2008). In 1637, Descartes wrote Discourse on Method, which explained his
four basic rules to learn the truth of some things. Descartes was the best
known dualist. In being a dualist, he believed that the mind and body were
completely separate. He believed that the body was a “machine” and was combined
with a mind that could reason. Descartes was also regarded as a machinist,
meaning that he believed the body does operate as a complex machine (Goodwin,
2008). Descartes was considered an interactionist. Descartes believed that the
mind can has an influence on the body and the body can have an influence on the
mind. Descartes created a model of
nervous system activity in an effort to explain the interaction between mind
and body (Goodwin, 2008). Descartes was also the first person to explain the
reflex as a mind – body interaction. Descartes contributed many views to the
early formation of psychology.
John Locke was important to psychology because of concepts he
expressed in two books. An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding explained how humans learn and understand. Some Thoughts Concerning Education
explains how this thinking can be applied to teaching a child. Locke was a
pioneer for epistemology, or the study of human knowledge and how it’s
acquired. Locke rejected the belief of innate ideas and instead believed that
our knowledge came from our experiences in the world. Locke was a major pioneer
in the field of education by using the concepts he learned about thinking and
knowledge.
George Berkley rejected Locke’s ideas. Instead, Berkley believed in
subjective idealism. Subjective idealism contends that minds and mental
contents exist. Subjective idealism rejects the theories of both dualism and
materialism. Where materialism states that physical things exist, subjective
idealism states that physical things do not exist; only mental. Berkley was a pioneer of the analysis of
visual perception.
Major Philosophers' Contributions to
Psychology
David Hume believed that we can never be certain what causes an
event, only that certain events occur together on a regular basis (Goodwin,
2008). Hume did not deny the existence of reality; he just believed one could
not be certain of them. Hume tried to discover the mind’s basic elements. He
concluded there were two basic elements: impressions and ideas. Impressions are
the basic sensations one has. These sensations are raw data from experience
(Goodwin, 2008). Ideas are not as vivid as sensations and are just faint copies
of our impressions. Hume believed that one’s understanding is based upon his or
her experiences. Hume also developed the rules of association: resemblance,
contiguity and cause/effect.
David Hartley was a contemporary of Hume; however, was not
influenced by Hume (Goodwin, 2008). Hartley proclaimed himself as a dualist,
even by including “Man consists of two parts, body and mind” (Hartley, 1749, p.
i) in the opening of his book. Hartley took the psychophysical parallelism
approach to the mind – body issue. This meant that he believed that
psychological and physical events were separate but often were in parallel to
one another. Hartley was considered the founder of associationism. He theorized
that association was contiguity and repetition (Goodwin, 2008). Hartley also
developed a model of nervous system action. His model was based upon the
Newtonian concept of vibrations.
John Stuart Mill strayed away from the previous view of the
mechanical mind. Instead he saw the mind as more holistic. Mill viewed complex
ideas as greater than their individual simple ideas (Goodwin, 2008). Mill was
on the nurture side of the long standing nature – nurture debate. In 1842, Mill
argued for psychology to be named as one of the known sciences (Cahan &
White, 1992). Because of Mill’s argument, the final list included psychology.
Nineteenth
Century Developments in the Science of Psychology
In the nineteenth century, scientific psychology evolved. Included
in this evolvement were the philosophical questions of earlier researchers and
research on the nervous system. Francois Magendie was famous for his research
on the roots of the spinal cord. Through experiments, he concluded that the
posterior roots controlled a being’s sensation and the anterior roots
controlled the motor responses. This revelation furthered the study of the
reflex. Hermann von Helmholtz was eulogized as being the builder of the “bridge
between physiology and psychology…” (Goodwin, 2008, p 69). Helmholtz was the
authority on visual and auditory systems during the nineteenth century. Franz
Josef Gall was credited with developing the contralateral function. This
function means that each side of the brain controls the opposite side of the
body. Gall was also the founder of phrenology, which was rejected by the scientific
community and labeled as a pseudoscience until the middle of the nineteenth
century. Gall was the first to argue that the brain contained both the
intellectual and emotional components of a person’s mind. Pierre Flourens set
out to disprove phrenology. He used a procedure called ablation to conduct his
experiments. Flourens discovered the relationship between the cerebral cortex
and bodily function.
Conclusion
Psychology can trace its roots back to
early philosophy. Through research and experiments, philosophers and scientists
advanced what many believed to be an act of paranormal to an official science.
These philosophers related how a person comes to think by using their brains.
The scientists showed how the brain works and functions to produce these
thoughts. Together, these early pioneers of science created what is known as
modern day psychology.
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