HISOTRY OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY
Humans have long been intrigued by their own behaviour, and attempts to understand human functioning can be traced to early Greek philosophers. But until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, this endeavour was pursued through speculation, intuition and generalizations made on the basis of an individual’s experience. A major breakthrough occurred when the tools of science (carefully controlled observation and experimentation) were applied to the study of humans, and psychology began to emerge as a distinct entity.
Physiological Concepts
The notion that the methods of science could be applied to mental phenomena emerged from sixteenth and seventeenth century European philosophy.
The Mind and Body Relationship:
The work of French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes (1596–1650) led to many of the later trends in psychology. Reflecting the spirit of his times, Descartes subscribed to the idea of mechanism – an image of the universe as a machine and physical entities as mechanical devices. Descartes applied this view to animals, including humans, setting humans apart from animals only by their possession of a ‘mind’.
Since Plato, most philosophers had viewed the body and the mind (or soul or spirit) as fundamentally different in nature. Descartes accepted this dualism. (dualism the view that the body and the mind (or soul or spirit) are undamentally different in nature) But prior to Descartes, the mind was believed to influence the body, rather than the other way around. Descartes developed what became known as Cartesian dualism, (cartesian dualism a framework offered by Descartes, which asserts a relationship of mutual interaction) which asserts a relationship of mutual interaction. Also, by limiting the mind to one function –thought – Descartes ascribed to the body attributes that had previously been associated with the mind (e.g. reproduction). He was the first to offer a strictly .physical–psychological dualism. The way was paved for a change from metaphysical analysis of the soul to observation of the mind and its operations.
As it became increasingly clear that sensations travel to the brain and that bodily movements originate in the brain, Descartes looked for a point of interaction between mind and body in the brain. He settled on the pineal gland, or conarium, at the top of the brain stem and described the interaction in mechanical terms. For example, the mind makes an impression on the conarium (in a manner never specified), which, by tilting in the right direction, causes animal spirits to flow to the appropriate muscles, producing movement. Descartes ultimately concluded that the interaction between the physical and non-material worlds (body and mind) was miraculous.
One of Descartes’ conclusions was that: ‘The existence of God is demonstrated, a posteriori, from this alone, that his idea is in us’ . This points to another important legacy of his philosophy, namely that some ideas (e.g. ideas of God) are innate. This notion influenced later psychological theories, especially in Gestalt psychology.
The Mind – A collective experience:
After Descartes, another French philosopher, Auguste Comte, developed a new philosophical idea that had a profound impact on psychology. Comte coined the term positivism (positivism a term coined by Comte to describe a way of thinking that recognizes only positive facts and observable phenomena, as practised in the physical sciences) to describe a way of thinking that recognized only positive facts and observable phenomena. He believed that social life is governed by laws and principles that we can discover through the methods used in the physical sciences. It was only a matter of time before the methods of science were applied to the study of mental phenomena conceived of in mechanistic terms.
A third important philosophical tradition, this time rooted in England, facilitated this application. Empiricism, as we noted earlier, sees sensory experience as the source of all knowledge and provided psychology with both method and theory. The method was observation and, to a lesser extent, experimentation.
The theory concerned the growth of the mind, which was seen to occur through the accumulation of sensory experience. John Locke (1632–1704), whose Essay on Human Understanding (1690) marked the formal beginning of British empiricism, rejected the notion of innate ideas, arguing that a new-born child has no knowledge whatsoever. He admitted that some ideas might appear to be innate (such as the idea of God) but argued that this was only because they are so constantly taught that no student could remember a time when he or she was not aware of it. Instead, Locke argued, each infant is born with a mind like a blank slate, a tabula rasa, (tabula rasa the empiricist Locke argued that each infant is born with a mind like a blank slate, a tabula rasa, upon which experience is written) upon which experience is written. For Locke, all knowledge is empirically derived, with complex ideas consisting of numerous interlinked simple ideas.
Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–76) developed this notion of the association of ideas, and made it more explicit. He outlined three laws of association, which he saw as the mental counterpart of the laws governing the physical universe:
1. resemblance or similarity 2. contiguity in time or place 3. causality ( linking effects to causes)
So materialism (the view that all things, including mental phenomena, can be described in physical terms ---- materialism the view that all things, including mental phenomena, can be described in physical terms and understood
in terms of matter and energy), positivism and especially empiricism were the three philosophical pillars on which modern psychology was built. But psychology has equally important roots in physiology. In fact it was four German physiologists who were primarily responsible for the emergence of the new science of psychology.
Physiological Concept:
Physiology shaped the form of early psychology and imbued it with the experimental method.
Measurement of Mental Process
It is began with Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–94), who investigated the speed of neural impulses. His work suggests that thought and movement do not occur instantaneously as previously believed, but that thought occurs first, followed by movement. This paved the way for others to investigate the psychological significance of time taken to react to a stimulus (reaction time or response latency) – an approach that remains important in modern psychology. Helmholtz made significant contributions to sensory psychology, especially audition and vision, but he saw psychology as closely related to metaphysics and never considered himself a psychologist.
Unlike Helmholtz, Ernst Weber (1795–1878) saw psychology as akin to a natural science and applied strict experimental methods. Weber found that the smallest difference between two stimuli that could be discriminated (the justnoticeable difference, or JND) (just noticeable difference (JND) the smallest difference between two stimuli that can be discriminated) depends not on the absolute difference, but on the relative difference between the stimuli. For example, he established that the JND between two weights is a constant fraction of 1/40 (40g is noticeably different from 41g, 80g is noticeably different from 82g etc.) and that the constant varies for different senses.
Weber achieved a major breakthrough by showing how to investigate the relation between stimulus (body) and sensation (mind). But like Helmholtz, his concern was with physiological processes, and he failed to appreciate the significance of his work for psychology. Gustav Fechner (1801–87) built on and went way beyond Weber’s work in attempting to document exactly ‘the functionally dependent relations . . . of the material and the mental, of the physical and psychological worlds’ (1966, p. 7). Developing a programme of research on what he called psychophysics, (psychophysics the systematic attempt to relate changes in the physical world to differences in our psychological perceptions) Fechner devised methods that, with minor modifications, are still in use today.
For example, the idea of average error assumes that we cannot obtain a ‘true’ measure of sensation. So when a person is asked to adjust a variable stimulus (such as light intensity) to match it to a constant, standard stimulus, average error is the average difference between the variable stimulus and the standard stimulus over a number of trials. This technique – useful in measuring reaction time – is basic to modern psychology.
The Origin of the first Psychological Text Book
Philosophy had paved the way for the application of scientific methods to the study of mental phenomena, it was through the work of physiologists like Helmholtz, Weber and Fechner that this potential was fully realized. Yet, despite their influence, none of these men has been credited with founding modern psychology. That honour has been bestowed on a fourth physiologist, Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), who published Principles of Physiological Psychology (1874) – widely considered the first psychology textbook. In the preface Wundt wrote, ‘The work I here present to the public is an attempt to mark a new domain of science.’ Unlike his predecessors, Wundt called himself a psychologist and took a number of actions to promote this new domain of science.
[Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) was a physiologist and psychophysicist who established the world’s first psychology laboratory and wrote the first psychology textbook, Principles of Physiological Psychology (1874). Wundt (along with Edward Titchener, who helped establish psychology in the USA) developed the first systematic position, or school of thought, in psychology – structuralism, so called because it focuses on the structure of the mind. Wundt put students through an arduous training in the method of introspection (looking inward) to single out those who could describe the elementary sensations of experience – colours, tones, tastes and so on. But by the early twentieth century, introspection had been labelled ‘superstitious’ by John Watson, the founder of behaviourism.]
Humans have long been intrigued by their own behaviour, and attempts to understand human functioning can be traced to early Greek philosophers. But until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, this endeavour was pursued through speculation, intuition and generalizations made on the basis of an individual’s experience. A major breakthrough occurred when the tools of science (carefully controlled observation and experimentation) were applied to the study of humans, and psychology began to emerge as a distinct entity.
Physiological Concepts
The notion that the methods of science could be applied to mental phenomena emerged from sixteenth and seventeenth century European philosophy.
The Mind and Body Relationship:
The work of French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes (1596–1650) led to many of the later trends in psychology. Reflecting the spirit of his times, Descartes subscribed to the idea of mechanism – an image of the universe as a machine and physical entities as mechanical devices. Descartes applied this view to animals, including humans, setting humans apart from animals only by their possession of a ‘mind’.
Since Plato, most philosophers had viewed the body and the mind (or soul or spirit) as fundamentally different in nature. Descartes accepted this dualism. (dualism the view that the body and the mind (or soul or spirit) are undamentally different in nature) But prior to Descartes, the mind was believed to influence the body, rather than the other way around. Descartes developed what became known as Cartesian dualism, (cartesian dualism a framework offered by Descartes, which asserts a relationship of mutual interaction) which asserts a relationship of mutual interaction. Also, by limiting the mind to one function –thought – Descartes ascribed to the body attributes that had previously been associated with the mind (e.g. reproduction). He was the first to offer a strictly .physical–psychological dualism. The way was paved for a change from metaphysical analysis of the soul to observation of the mind and its operations.
As it became increasingly clear that sensations travel to the brain and that bodily movements originate in the brain, Descartes looked for a point of interaction between mind and body in the brain. He settled on the pineal gland, or conarium, at the top of the brain stem and described the interaction in mechanical terms. For example, the mind makes an impression on the conarium (in a manner never specified), which, by tilting in the right direction, causes animal spirits to flow to the appropriate muscles, producing movement. Descartes ultimately concluded that the interaction between the physical and non-material worlds (body and mind) was miraculous.
One of Descartes’ conclusions was that: ‘The existence of God is demonstrated, a posteriori, from this alone, that his idea is in us’ . This points to another important legacy of his philosophy, namely that some ideas (e.g. ideas of God) are innate. This notion influenced later psychological theories, especially in Gestalt psychology.
The Mind – A collective experience:
After Descartes, another French philosopher, Auguste Comte, developed a new philosophical idea that had a profound impact on psychology. Comte coined the term positivism (positivism a term coined by Comte to describe a way of thinking that recognizes only positive facts and observable phenomena, as practised in the physical sciences) to describe a way of thinking that recognized only positive facts and observable phenomena. He believed that social life is governed by laws and principles that we can discover through the methods used in the physical sciences. It was only a matter of time before the methods of science were applied to the study of mental phenomena conceived of in mechanistic terms.
A third important philosophical tradition, this time rooted in England, facilitated this application. Empiricism, as we noted earlier, sees sensory experience as the source of all knowledge and provided psychology with both method and theory. The method was observation and, to a lesser extent, experimentation.
The theory concerned the growth of the mind, which was seen to occur through the accumulation of sensory experience. John Locke (1632–1704), whose Essay on Human Understanding (1690) marked the formal beginning of British empiricism, rejected the notion of innate ideas, arguing that a new-born child has no knowledge whatsoever. He admitted that some ideas might appear to be innate (such as the idea of God) but argued that this was only because they are so constantly taught that no student could remember a time when he or she was not aware of it. Instead, Locke argued, each infant is born with a mind like a blank slate, a tabula rasa, (tabula rasa the empiricist Locke argued that each infant is born with a mind like a blank slate, a tabula rasa, upon which experience is written) upon which experience is written. For Locke, all knowledge is empirically derived, with complex ideas consisting of numerous interlinked simple ideas.
Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–76) developed this notion of the association of ideas, and made it more explicit. He outlined three laws of association, which he saw as the mental counterpart of the laws governing the physical universe:
1. resemblance or similarity 2. contiguity in time or place 3. causality ( linking effects to causes)
So materialism (the view that all things, including mental phenomena, can be described in physical terms ---- materialism the view that all things, including mental phenomena, can be described in physical terms and understood
in terms of matter and energy), positivism and especially empiricism were the three philosophical pillars on which modern psychology was built. But psychology has equally important roots in physiology. In fact it was four German physiologists who were primarily responsible for the emergence of the new science of psychology.
Physiological Concept:
Physiology shaped the form of early psychology and imbued it with the experimental method.
Measurement of Mental Process
It is began with Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–94), who investigated the speed of neural impulses. His work suggests that thought and movement do not occur instantaneously as previously believed, but that thought occurs first, followed by movement. This paved the way for others to investigate the psychological significance of time taken to react to a stimulus (reaction time or response latency) – an approach that remains important in modern psychology. Helmholtz made significant contributions to sensory psychology, especially audition and vision, but he saw psychology as closely related to metaphysics and never considered himself a psychologist.
Unlike Helmholtz, Ernst Weber (1795–1878) saw psychology as akin to a natural science and applied strict experimental methods. Weber found that the smallest difference between two stimuli that could be discriminated (the justnoticeable difference, or JND) (just noticeable difference (JND) the smallest difference between two stimuli that can be discriminated) depends not on the absolute difference, but on the relative difference between the stimuli. For example, he established that the JND between two weights is a constant fraction of 1/40 (40g is noticeably different from 41g, 80g is noticeably different from 82g etc.) and that the constant varies for different senses.
Weber achieved a major breakthrough by showing how to investigate the relation between stimulus (body) and sensation (mind). But like Helmholtz, his concern was with physiological processes, and he failed to appreciate the significance of his work for psychology. Gustav Fechner (1801–87) built on and went way beyond Weber’s work in attempting to document exactly ‘the functionally dependent relations . . . of the material and the mental, of the physical and psychological worlds’ (1966, p. 7). Developing a programme of research on what he called psychophysics, (psychophysics the systematic attempt to relate changes in the physical world to differences in our psychological perceptions) Fechner devised methods that, with minor modifications, are still in use today.
For example, the idea of average error assumes that we cannot obtain a ‘true’ measure of sensation. So when a person is asked to adjust a variable stimulus (such as light intensity) to match it to a constant, standard stimulus, average error is the average difference between the variable stimulus and the standard stimulus over a number of trials. This technique – useful in measuring reaction time – is basic to modern psychology.
The Origin of the first Psychological Text Book
Philosophy had paved the way for the application of scientific methods to the study of mental phenomena, it was through the work of physiologists like Helmholtz, Weber and Fechner that this potential was fully realized. Yet, despite their influence, none of these men has been credited with founding modern psychology. That honour has been bestowed on a fourth physiologist, Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), who published Principles of Physiological Psychology (1874) – widely considered the first psychology textbook. In the preface Wundt wrote, ‘The work I here present to the public is an attempt to mark a new domain of science.’ Unlike his predecessors, Wundt called himself a psychologist and took a number of actions to promote this new domain of science.
[Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) was a physiologist and psychophysicist who established the world’s first psychology laboratory and wrote the first psychology textbook, Principles of Physiological Psychology (1874). Wundt (along with Edward Titchener, who helped establish psychology in the USA) developed the first systematic position, or school of thought, in psychology – structuralism, so called because it focuses on the structure of the mind. Wundt put students through an arduous training in the method of introspection (looking inward) to single out those who could describe the elementary sensations of experience – colours, tones, tastes and so on. But by the early twentieth century, introspection had been labelled ‘superstitious’ by John Watson, the founder of behaviourism.]
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