Origin of Psychology

10 Key excerpts on "Origin of Psychology"

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  A History of Modern Psychology

  • Duane Schultz(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  6 THE STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY Where Does the History of Psychology Begin? A second question to be answered in starting a course in the history of psychology is where to begin the coverage. We could, as do some history of psychology textbooks, begin with the Greek philosophers— Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, among others—five centuries before the birth of Christ. As was noted earlier, man has always inquired into his own nature, and we could spend the entire semester (or, just as easily, the academic year) probing these early philosophical inquiries into the nature of man. But to do so would, in our opinion, be of limited help in understanding the complex issues that define and divide psychology today. And that understanding is the ultimate purpose of this course. In light of this goal, then, the proper starting point for the history of psychology is that time, roughly a century ago, when psychology became a truly independent discipline with its own unique methods of inquiry and theoretical rationale. There is no denying that the prescientific scholars speculated on prob-lems concerning the nature of man. Certainly they did, but their influence understanding of the history of psychology can help one to integrate the many areas and subareas that compose modern psychology and to recognize the existence of interrelationships between the various facts and theories. A reaction often reported by students at the end of the course is an awareness of how all the different, seemingly unrelated, topics in psychology tie together. They are inextricably related to one another through the pattern of their historical development. Wertheimer's second reason, probably the best of all those cited, is sheer intellectual curiosity. The study of history, he suggested, really needs no defense or attempt at justification.

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  Psychology Science

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • College Publishing House

    (Publisher)

  However, it is not clear how these sources first came to be used during the Renaissance, and their influence on what would later emerge as the discipline of psychology is a topic of scholarly debate. Etymology and early usage of word The first use of the term psychology is often attributed to the German scholastic philosopher Rudolf Göckel (1547–1628, often known under the Latin form Rudolph Goclenius), who published the Psychologia hoc est de hominis perfectione, anima, ortu in Marburg in 1590. However, the term seems to have been used more than six decades earlier by the Croatian humanist Marko Marulić (14 50–1524) in the title of his Latin treatise, Psichiologia de ratione animae humanae. Although the treatise itself has not been preserved, its title appears in a list of Marulic's works compiled by his younger contemporary, Franjo Bozicevic-Natalis in his Vita Marci Maruli Spalatensis (Krstić, 1964). This, of course, may well not have been the very first usage, but it is the earliest documented use at present. The term did not come into popular usage until the German idealist philosopher, Christian Wolff (1679–1754) used it in his Psychologia empirica and Psychologia rationalis (1732–1734). This distinction between empirical and rational psychology was picked up in Denis Diderot's (1713– 1780) Encyclopédie (1751–1784) and was popularized in France by Maine de Biran (1766– 1824). In England, the term psychology overtook mental philosophy in the middle of the 19th century, especially in the work of William Hamilton (1788–1856). Enlightenment psychological thought Early psychology was regarded as the study of the soul (in the Christian sense of the term). The modern philosophical form of psychology was heavily influenced by the works of René Descartes (1596–1650), and the debates that he generated, of which the most relevant were the objections to his Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), published with the text.

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  A History of Psychology in Metascientific Perspective

  • K.B. Madsen(Author)
  • 1988(Publication Date)
  • North Holland

    (Publisher)

  C h a p t e r 3 THE PHILOSOPHICAL PREHISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY INTRODUCTION. ,Psychology has a short history but a long past. This pro- nouncement (by the German psychologist H. Ebbinghaus) refers to the fact that psychology has a history of one hundred years as an independent science but of a thousand years as a part of philosophy. In this book, we cannot of course examine its entire philosophical past, which extends right back to Aristotle in European, and to Buddha in Indian, philosophy; but we shall briefly survey the development of philosophy respecting two problems extremely relevant to psychology. To start with, we shall survey the development of philosophy as far as it relates to the psycho-physical problem, because this problem is closely con- nected with psychology's most fundamental ontological problem: what is the 'psyche', 'mind' or 'consciousness'? And how are psychological phenomena related to physical or somatic ones? In other words, what is the relation between 'consciousness' and 'brain'? This is a fundamental problem for psy- chology, because it concerns the definition of psychology's object of research. Thereafter we shall outline the development of the theory of knowledge, especially the historical development of epistemological theories about the fundamental question of the origin ofknowledge. This problem is relevant to psychology as well as to other sciences, because it is fundamental for the entire conception of science and thereby for the question as to which kind of science psychology ought to be.

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  Neural Geographies

  Feminism and the Microstructure of Cognition

  • Elizabeth A. Wilson(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  These traditional narratives of the birth of scientific psychology suggest that psychology has been grafted from the interplay of science (physiology) and interpretation (mental philosophy). This constitutive moment is considered to be a historical event, now past. However, if this interplay is considered instead to be the ongoing condition of psychology's coherence, then it becomes clear why the unequivocal realization of a scientific psychology has remained elusive in this century irrespective of its institutional and geographical location. In the first instance, I derive my account of this interplay from Boring's (1957) classic history of experimental psychology. While psychology is now diverse enough to accommodate many other histories, it is this account of the union of nineteenth-century physiology and philosophy that has come to be the history of scientific psychology in general. More specifically, it is to this history that contemporary cognitive psychology is indebted. Boring marks the emergence of an identifiable (experimental) psychology thus: “In this history of experimental psychology, we must, therefore, go back into philosophical psychology in order to see what it was that, married to physiology, gave birth to physiological, experimental psychology” (Boring 1957, 158). This marriage of a scientific methodology to the problems of mental philosophy was not an equitable or symmetrical union. Rather, it was more the overcoming of philosophy than an active engagement with it that motivated the emergence of scientific psychology (Canguilhem 1980)

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  History of Modern Psychology

  A Global Perspective

  • C. James Goodwin(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  The old history of psychology, according to Furumoto (1989), emphasizes the accomplishments of “great” psychologists and celebrates “classic studies” and “breakthrough discoveries.” Within psychology, the preservation and retelling of these “great events” helped psychology secure an identity as an established scientific discipline. The milestones, whether accurately described or not, are passed down from history text to history text. Furthermore, previous insights or achievements are valued only if they somehow “anticipated” or led to some modern idea or research outcome. Old research or theory that is of no current relevance is considered erroneous or quaint and is either discarded or seen as an example of “how far we’ve come.” Thus, from the standpoint of old history, the purpose of the KEY ISSUES IN PSYCHOLOGY’S HISTORY 7 history of psychology is to legitimize and even to glorify present-day psychology and to show how it has progressed from the murky depths of its unscientific past to its modern scientific eminence. One effect of the old history thinking about the past is the creation of so-called origin myths. These are stories overemphasizing the importance of particular events in psychology’s history. Their purpose is to highlight the contrast between what is said to be a prescientific approach to some psychological phenomenon and the emergence of a more scientific strategy. For example, modern social psychologists consider their field to be one in which scientific methods are used to establish certain laws about human social behavior. Fair enough. Holding this belief, of course, raises the question of when social psychology became “experimental” (i.e., real science, and therefore “worthy”). That is, when did it originate? The further back in history this origin can be placed, the greater the legitimacy of an experimental social psychology (“Oh yes, we have been around for a very long time, using science to explore social behavior.”).

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  What is Psychology?

  • Andrew Colman(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The date chosen by most historians for the birth of experimental psychology is 1879, the year in which Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) opened his laboratory in Leipzig. United States patriots sometimes make halfhearted attempts to dispute this, claiming that the first American psychologist, William James (1842–1910), opened a laboratory at Harvard University four years earlier. But the truth is that James was never very interested in experimental methods, and Wundt clearly has priority as the founder of experimental psychology because he alone was trying deliberately to create a new discipline. Within a decade experimental psychology was flourishing in several parts of Germany. Myths abound about the birth pangs of psychology, and it is worth pausing to consider exactly what happened, and what did not happen, in Germany in the 1880s. Attempts to understand mental experience and behaviour were nothing new. As we have seen, important contributions were made long before the time of Plato and Aristotle. Nor was the word psychology an invention of the nineteenth century. The Latin word psychologia emerged from obscure origins in Germany in the sixteenth century, but no one is certain who coined it or exactly when it was first used. The English word psychology first appeared in 1693 in Steven Blankaart’s The Physical Dictionary: Wherein the terms of Anatomy, the names and causes of Diseases, chyrugical Instruments and their Use; are accurately Describ’d. Blankaart refers to “Anthropologia, the Description of Man, or the Doctrin concerning him [which is divided] into Two Parts; viz. Anatomy, which treats of the Body, and Psychology, which treats of the Soul”. The word psychology was used sporadically throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but it was not until the 1830s that it began to be used frequently and came to be widely understood

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  Contemporary Psychology

  • Guido Villa(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  The Psychology of Peoples, which constitutes a very important. part of general Psychology, has a twofold origin: idealistic and Psychology positive. The former is connected with the philosophy of Hegel and with the development of juridical and historical studies in Germany; the latter derives its source, on the contrary, from Comte, and is a result of biological ideas applied to social questions.

  The last-named form of the Psychology of Peoples finds its principal representative in Herbert Spencer, who in his Social Statics (1850) had compared social evolution to organic evolution, and in his Principles of Psychology , published some years later, had maintained the impossibility of explaining the phenomena of consciousness by means of individual analysis alone.3

  Lubbock.—Waitz.—Bastian.—Müller.

  This branch of science received important contributions from the anthropological studies of Lubbock and Tylor on the origin of civilisation and primeval man,4 through which much light is thrown on the psychological conditions of primitive humanity. The researches on primitive civilisation found their complement in a comparison with the intellectual and moral condition of savages in the present time. Something in this line was done by Lubbock, in his work on Prehistoric Times; but the first to attempt a complete study of the life of savage peoples, based on copious ethnographical data, was Theodor Waitz. This German scientist, following the lead of Herbart, aimed at giving a scientific basis to Psychology, which he considered a fundamental part of philosophy, in opposition to Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling, who had assigned to it a purely secondary importance. Apart from various other works on general Psychology, his most important work deals with the Anthropology of Peoples in a State of Nature , which he did not live to finish.1 Another well-known writer on ethnographical and sociological subjects is Adolph Bastian;2 and, of course, Herbert Spencer’s sociological studies afford a notable contribution to ethnographical Psychology.3 Comparative mythology and the study of languages have also had their part in the general result, especially through the works of Max Müller, whose vast range of culture embraces both English and German science.4

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  Psychology Library Editions: History of Psychology

  8 Volume Set

  • Various(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  16 Until the 1950s psychologists just ignored these criticisms. However, psychology was becoming increasingly vulnerable to philosophical objections. The early generations of scientific psychologists usually had some training in philosophy. Philosophy and psychology were often taught together in universities, and there remained for some time a sprinkling of psychologists competent in both subjects. By the middle of the century this had become much rarer, and the majority of psychologists had become philosophically distinctly naive. At the same time their Philosophical critiques I 229 pretensions had increased. Not content with experimental work on topics such as perception, memory, learning and reaction times, they began to study experimentally such complex areas as thinking, motivation and personality, which Wundt had discreetly bypassed. It was not difficult for philosophers trained in logic and analysis to pick out confusions, in the way, for example, that Peters exposed the muddles underlying the much-used psychological concept of 'drive' . 17 These critiques were fortified by the revived philosophy of mind following the appearance of Ryle's The Concept of Mind in 1949 and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations in 1953. In 1957 publication commenced of a series of 'Studies in Philosophical Psychology' in Great Britain, 18 and in 1963 the American Psychological Association created a Division of Philosophical Psychology (Division 24). By the 1960s psychblogists could no longer ignore philosophical critiques: the philosophy of mind had by then become a thriving branch of philosophy. It was, of course, primarily the revolutionary new growths in philosophy during the present century that nourished this psychological offshoot. By the end of the previous century philosophy appeared to have lost its impetus, and to have lapsed into satisfaction with refurbishing old doctrines in the form of neo-idealism, neo-Kantianism and neo-materialism.

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  A Historiography of the Modern Social Sciences

  • Roger E. Backhouse, Philippe Fontaine(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  History of Psychology 167 The rest of the book exhibited a typical topical organization, proceeding chronologically from Descartes to Gestalt psychology, with both primary and secondary sources within each chapter. In 1988, the historian of psychology Laurel Furumoto (1989), who taught at Wellesley College, summarized the ongoing shift in perspec- tives and methods in an APA lecture, “The New History of Psychology.” Addressing teachers of psychology, she emphasized the move away from great men, great events, and great ideas toward a more nuanced, con- textual viewpoint that placed external factors in a dynamic relationship to disciplinary developments. Historians of psychology, she argued, were becoming more critical of sources and interpretations in an effort to avoid historical errors such as presentism. She also noted an increase in the use of archival materials. Furumoto’s lecture, after publication, became a touchstone as historians of psychology contemplated their professional progress. In a 1987 article titled “Of What Is History of Psychology a History?” the British historian of psychology Graham Richards wrestled with difficult epistemological questions raised by the many connotations of “psychology.” He suggested the use of an uppercase “P” to designate the discipline and the lowercase “p” to refer to the subject matter of psychology. “The status of past Psychological work has a character quite different form the status of past work in other disciplines, for it can always be reconstrued as subject matter data.” Richards (1987, pp. 210–11) argued this reflexive feature gives rise to “numerous ambiguities and paradoxes,” which historians of psychology needed to explore.

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  The First Century of Experimental Psychology

  • Elliot Hearst, Eliot Hearst, Elliot Hearst, Eliot Hearst(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Now, there were objections to the experimentalist approach to psychology. The new psychology was criticized as trivializing the human mind and its abilities; or, as reducing it to a mere reflection of the brain’s activities; or, as depersonalizing the human being. Similar criticisms are heard today and they were probably as unfair then as they are now. After all, what could an experimental psychology have been like at that time? Could it have studied the self, innateness, abilities? Could it have experimented on the will, imagination, or anything other than what it did? Could the explanations that emerged be more visionary than the experiments that were then possible? Such questions are not rhetorical; they deserve answers. I conclude this chapter by suggesting why psychology, as it became a science, initially followed such a narrow path.

  The list of significant persons in the history of psychology in Germany prior to its maturity—a list that includes many people already mentioned in this chapter—seems to divide in two and thereby suggests the answer to our questions. One part of the list contains the names of persons who earned the Ph.D. in philosophy or law, and the other part of the list contains the names of people earning the M. D. degree. The Ph.D. list consists of the following: Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhauer, von Hartmann, Fries, Herbart, and Beneke; the last three have been listed together, out of chronological sequence with the others, for obvious reasons. The list of M. D. degree holders is longer so we will include only those who are most directly concerned with the point we are making: Johannes Müller, E. H. Weber, Fechner, Helmholtz, Donders, Wundt, Hering, and C. Ludwig.

  The psychology that emerged in Germany was mainly an extension of the psychology that the medical-physiological group fostered (see also Thompson & Robinson, Chapter 10 , this volume). Trained in chemistry, physics, mathematics, and physiology, this group was the heir to an experimentalism that had grown gradually over several hundred years. The ideas they started with came from many sources; sometimes they believed things that were not the case; some were Kantians (Müller); some were mystics (Fechner) or vitalists (Weber); and they probably all had substantial religious convictions. But whatever their philosophical preferences, they all had the readiness to do something concrete about whatever they thought was, or might be, the case. For instance, Müller believed that the speed of the neural impulse was faster than the speed of light—that is, it was instantaneous—and so not measurable physiologically. Using a nerve-muscle preparation in frogs, Helmholtz devised a simple way to study the question and demonstrated that the neural impulse was actually a relatively slow phenomenon. Given this knowledge, it was then possible to connect it to Bessel’s personal equation and, later, reaction time data in a concrete and ultimately explanatory way—or at least Helmholtz and Donders believed that was so. We know that they were too optimistic and that even after more than 100 years there is still argument about their hypothesis; that, however, is just another way of saying that it is still a live topic (see Posner & Shulman, Chapter 9

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