Introductory Issues in the History of Psychology

Updated: 2007-01-17

• Persistent Questions in Psychology
  • What is the nature of human nature?
  • How are mind and body related?
  • Nativism vs. empiricism
  • Freedom vs. Determinism
  • The rationality of human behavior and thought
  • How are humans related to other animals?
  • What is the origin of human knowledge? (epistemology)
• Why Study the History of Psychology?
  • Growth of field
  • Fragmentation of field
  • Integration of multiple views in one field
  • Link with the past
  • Predict the future of psychology
  • No reason
• Views in the History of Science
  • Personalistic view--"great man (or woman)" approach
  • Naturalistic view--stresses the importance of historical time (zeitgeist)
  • Eponymic view--symbols of the time (i.e., "the atomic age", "the stone age")
• Schools of Thought
  • Not places but ways of thinking about a problem
  • No longer used in psychology
  • Why not?
  • The schools
    • Structuralism
    • Functionalism
    • Behaviorism
    • Gestalt
    • Psychoanalysis
    • Humanism
• Normal Science and Revolutionary Science
  • Kuhn and the Structure of Scientific Revolutions
  • Paradigms
    • overused word now
    • means a way of approaching a problem
  • Normal science
    • mopping up
    • filling out the paradigm
    • filling in the gaps
  • Revolutionary science
    • paradigm failure
    • search for new paradigms
    • paradigm conflict (old vs. new)
  • Thomas Kuhn
    • New page on Kuhn shown in class
• Modernism vs. Postmodernism
  • Modernism (Duchamps's "Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2," 1912)
    • View that an external reality exists "out there" and is the same for all observers
    • Definition of modernism
  • Postmodernism
    • View that observers create their own reality
    • Kardas on postmodernism
    • Definition of postmodernism
• Kardas on Pure Science vs. Applied Science
  • Pure Science
    • Done for its own sake
    • Done because individual scientist(s) want to
    • No predetermined goal
    • Examples: are everywhere
  • Applied Science
    • Done to solve a particular problem
    • Done because of perceived need
    • Predetermined goal
    • Examples: Manhattan Project, War on Cancer, AIDS research
• The Two Worlds (C.P. Snow) & Immanence, Totemism, and Transcendance (Walker Percy)
  • Are scientists and humanists irrevocably separated?
  • The apprenticeship of scientists
  • Read The Isolated Scientist
• Metaphors in Science
• Theorists and Experimentalists
  • Penzias & Wilson (1978 Nobel Prize)
  • Penzias & Wilson (PBS Online page)
• Science Education and Issues
  • Problems and Solutions
  • Big Science and Little Science
  • Science and Technology
• Karl Popper
• The Mind-Body Problem
  • Long-standing philosophical problem
    • How do you know the world was not created two hours ago and all of us given a stock of false memories?
    • Phillip K. Dick stories
      • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (a.k.a. Blade Runner) review1, photos
      • We Can Remember it for You Wholesale (a.k.a.Total Recall) review
  • No real answers, but solution colors your view of the world
  • Historical progression from Medieval through Descartes to Modern
• The Medieval Mind
  • Much different than ours today
  • Religion played MUCH larger role
  • Reality was bound up with superstitious and irrational beliefs
    • topping a building
    • carrying bride across threshold
  • Kardas on Mind-Body Problem
  • Kardas on the Medieval Mind
  • Kardas on Rene Descartes
• Solutions to the Mind-Body Problem
  • Monistic Solutions (either mind or body)
    • materialism--only body is real
    • idealism--only mind is real
  • Dualistic Solutions (both mind and body, in some fashion)
    • interactionism--Descartes solution, body and mind affect each other
    • epiphenomenalism--mind exists, but has no power, is created by body (brain)
    • double-aspectism--both exist, are inseperable, are like mirror-images
    • parallelism--both exist, do not affect each other, are on parallel tracks
    • occasionalism--both exist, but from time to time rules are broken (i.e., miracles)
    • pre-established harmony--both exist, do not interact, are like two clocks started at same time
  • Wikipedia on Dualism