Course Overview. Prologue: Exploring the Universe Within

Transcription

1 Unit 1: Course Overview, Prologue, Basic Issues, & Chapters 1-4 (Pre-scientific Psychology and the Physicalists) COLQ 2994 Honors Dr. Joseph A. Mayo Course Overview Opening quote: Psychology has had a long past but a short history. Unit 1: Single chronological story of prescientific psychology (ancient times through late-19 th century A.D.) Unit 2: Single chronological story of psychology s early scientific years (late-19 th century through mid-20 th century) Unit 3: Psychology s principal specialty areas (non-chronologically from mid-20 th century through present and speculated into future) Prologue: Exploring the Universe Within History s first recorded psychology experiment: Psamtik I, King of Egypt (7 th century B.C.) Messages from the gods : ancient Egyptians, Persians, & Hebrews Discovery of the mind : universe within (invisible world of the mind) ancient India (Buddha) ancient China (Confucius) ancient Greece philosophers (nous) 1

2 Basic Issues in Psychology s Historical Development 1. mind vs. body - dualism: * both mind & body exist and interact with one another (psychophysical interactionism) * mind and body as twin yet distinct aspects of the same underlying reality (psychophysical parallelism) - monism: * denying the existence of mind altogether 2. nature vs. nurture - nature = heredity & genetics (nativism) - nurture = learning & experiences (empiricism) 3. subjectivism vs. objectivism - subjectivism: * not easily quantified * private/inner experiences (introspection) * qualitative analysis - objectivism: * directly & precisely measurable (naturalistic tradition) 4. holism vs. elementalism - holism: * study of whole entity or organism (molar) - elementalism: * examining entity or organism in its component parts * molecular (reductionist) 5. free will vs. determinism - free will = freedom of choice (behavior not determined by past, present, or future events) - determinism = person not the master of his or her fate: * past determines thought and behavior (heredity or environment) * teleology (future direction or finality in the causal works and processes of nature) 2

3 6. utility vs. purity - utility: * psychology applied to real life * pragmatism or utilitarianism (practical) * applied research - purity: * psychology for psychology s own sake * pure psychology not contaminated with pragmatism * basic research ( ivory tower ) Chapter 1: The Conjecturers Birth of psychology in ancient Greece: Hellenic Period ( B.C.) Sophists ( teachers of wisdom ) naturalistic explanations psyche + logos = psychology Thales: solar eclipses Protagoras: perception = only source of knowledge (therefore, no absolute truth) Pythagoras: mathematics & world as spherical Democritus: atoms Hippocrates: * father of medicine * biochemical basis of illness - Socrates: midwife of thought (dialectic) - Plato: * idealism (deduction = general specific) * established the Academy * dualism * Eros (predating Freudian psychology) - Aristotle: * realism (observation & sensory experience) * induction = observed cases generalities * established the rival Lyceum * monism * psychology = natural science of behavior: ~ De Anima (systematic work) ~ Parva Naturalia (series of essays) 3

4 Chapter 2: The Scholars The missing years (the long sleep ): after Aristotle s death until 17 th century A.D.: * Theophrastus * 3 schools of thought (Democritus s epistemology): 1. Epicureans 2. Skeptics 3. Stoics * two divergent paths: - mind (philosophy & theology) - body (natural & physical sciences) The Roman borrowers (early centuries A.D.): Galen: * famous Greek physician and anatomist * sensory vs. motor nerves * effect of emotions on physical health Plotinus: * Egyptian scholar (revered Plato s work) * early Christian psychologist (dualist) The Patrists (philosophers-theologians): adapters (1 st 4 th centuries): * adapted psychology to support religious dogma * St. Augustine ( preserved psychology in orthodox Christian doctrine, 4 th 12 th centuries) conservers and reconcilers (Middle Ages, 11 th 14 th centuries): * Middle Eastern scholars conserved unadulterated Greek science & philosophy * St. Thomas Aquinas (13 th -century Dominican monk; injected soul into psyche ) 4

5 The darkness before the dawn: intellectual stagnation (religious persecution + Hundred Year s War and Black Death of 14 th century) Why Renaissance ( rebirth ) starting in 15 th century? * demise of feudal system * revival of city life * expansion of trade and industry * Protestant Reformation * invention of printing press (circa 1450 A. D.) 16 th & 17 th centuries: first significant scientific advancements in > 1,000 years term psychology first used in 1500s (Marko Marulic & Rudolf Goeckel) yet psychology s development still in the form of scholarly commentary Chapter 3: The Protopsychologists The height of the Renaissance (17 th & 18 th centuries): gathering real-world data developing distinctly new psychologies examining mind-body & nature-nurture The Rationalists (pure reasoning): Rene Descartes: * analytic geometry ( fly on wall ) * mechanistic psychology (mechanical-hydraulic theory): ~ animal spirits ~ reflexes * interactive dualism (pineal gland) The Empiricists (experiences): Thomas Hobbes: * sensory experience * first modern associationist John Locke: * objects, experiences, & the mind that receives them * tabula rasa ( blank slate ) George Berkeley: * children learn spatial judgments through repeated experiences (perception theory) David Hume: * only experiences existed * cause-effect = contiguity (correlation only) 5

6 The Associationists (outgrowth of empiricism; association of ideas): David Hartley: * 18 th -century scholarly British physician * pioneering physiological psychologist Scottish school : * Alexander Bain: ~ furthered physiological psychology in the 19 th century * Herbert Spencer: ~ evolutionary associationism The Nativists (inborn character of perception and knowledge): Immanuel Kant: * predated later instinct theories, animal ethology, & the study of depth perception in human infants * idealism (reliance on ideas) * mind as process, not neural activity (influenced later German psychology) * mental processes cannot be measured * psychology cannot be an experimental science Chapter 4: The Physicalists (the body route ) Contributions from the distant past: Hippocrates in ancient Greece (natural & biochemical causes) Galen in ancient Rome (sensory & motor nerves) Paracelsus (post-middle Ages, 16 th century): * magnetism * hypnotic states 6

7 18 th & 19 th century physicians, physiologists, & physicists (ancestors of modern neurophysiology): pseudo-scientists: * Franz Anton Mesmer: ~ animal magnetism ~ hypnosis (Mesmer s magnetic explanation) vs.: - Jean Martin Charcot (neurological explanation) - Sigmund Freud (psychological explanation) * Franz Joseph Gall: ~ first-rate anatomist ~ phrenology ( mental faculties ) Pioneering laboratory physiologists examining localization vs. generalization of brain functioning: - Paul Broca (language syntax) - Karl Wernicke (language semantics) - Gustav Fritsch & Edward Hitzig (motor control) - Pierre Flourens (no localized brain functions) Pioneers in studying sensation and perception: Johannes Muller: * first great modern physiologist * specific nerve energies Hermann von Helmholtz: * forerunner of modern sensory psychology * invented ophthalmoscope * speed of nerve impulses < speed of light Franciscus Cornelius Donders (1868): * first attempt to measure the speed of higher mental processes 7

8 Psychophysics (humble beginnings of experimental psychology in mid-to-late 1800s): Ernst Weber: * attributed psychological phenomena to mathematical laws (sensory thresholds & Weber s Law) Gustav Fechner: * coined the term psychophysics * mystic and dualist * groundbreaking quantitative and experimental methodology 8