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Summary Exam 1 Fundamentals of Psychology UvA Year 2
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W1.1CHAPTER 1 (BRYSBAERT & RASTLE) – THE WIDER PICTURE
INVENTION OF WRITING
Preliterate civilisations: Civilisation before writing was invented – Three important
characteristics of knowledge in these kinds of cultures (Lindberg)
1. Knowledge is confined to ‘know-how’ without a theoretical understanding of the
underlying principles
2. Fluidity of knowledge – Knowledge of the actual history of the tribe is limited to two
generations and the function of the oral tradition mainly is the transmission of
practical skills
3. Animism: The belief that objects and nature are inhabited by spirits with human-like
characteristics, which cause events to happen → Tyler: Primitives look at the world
like children and endow all things with a nature analogous to their own
Lindberg: Scientific thinking cannot occur without written records, because it is only when
information is written down that patterns start to emerge and incompatibilities in stories
become visible
The presence of written records marks the distinction between prehistory and history
Protowriting: The use of symbols to represent entities without linguistic information linking
them
The first written languages:
- China (around 6000 BCE)
- Egypt (around 3200 BCE)
- Sumer (also around 3200 BCE)
- America (300 BCE)
Three kinds of writing systems:
1. Pictograms: Pictures that resemble the persons, animals and objects they represent
2. Phonograms: Signs to represent sounds of the spoken language
3. Logographs: A sign representing a spoken word, which no longer has a physical
resemblance to the word’s meaning
The importance of writing → Written records provide external memory about knowledge
available at a certain point in time, which allows an accumulation of knowledge → Socrates:
The availability of books makes students lazy and discourages them from exercising memory
Scriptio continua: Continuous script; writing without spaces between the words – Saenger:
Spacing made silent reading possible
Orthography: A set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling,
capitalisation, word boundaries, emphasis and punctuation
Scholastic method: Study method in which students unquestioningly memorise and recite
texts that are thought to convey unchanging truths
,INVENTION OF NUMBERS
The earliest archaeological evidence of counting dates back to 35,000-20,000 BCE and has
been found in Africa
Subitising: The ability to look at a small number of objects and instantly recognise how many
objects there are without needing to count
Tally mark: A form of the unary numeral system used for counting
All Indo-European languages share the same roots for the numbers one to ten, but the number
names of the teens are very irregular
Place coding system: System in which the meaning of a sign not only depends on its form but
also on its position in a string (E.g.: the number ‘thirty-two’ consists of a symbol of 2 in the
units position and a symbol of 3 in the tens position)
Schlimm & Neth: Calculations with Roman numbers are no more difficult to perform than
those with Arabic numerals once one is familiar with the operations
THE FERTILE CRESCENT
Fertile Crescent: A region in the Middle East with a high level of civilisation around 3000
BC, which included the Ancient Mesopotamian and the Ancient Egyptian civilisations
- Ancient Mesopotamia
- Mathematical knowledge
- Astronomy – Calendar and determining the times for planting and harvesting
- Ancient Egypt:
- Geometrical knowledge
- Devising of a calendar consisting of 12 months of 30 days and an extra 5 days
at the end of the year
ANCIENT GREECE
Philosophy: Critical reflection on the universe and human functioning
Hippocrates: Father of (modern) medicine
Heraclitus: Argued that everything was constantly changing and that even if one does the
same thing twice, it was different because the conditions were no longer exactly the same
Plato:
- The first thinker to call philosophy a distinct approach with its own method
- Two worlds:
- Intelligible world: Made up of anything derived from reason alone; the world
of unchanging reality
- Sensible world: The imperfect and changing world that surrounds us
Allegory of the cave: Symbolic representation of the two worlds, where prisoners in a
cave, facing a wall, see only shadows of objects cast by a fire behind them – Only the
philosopher can escape the cave through reason, and enter the intelligible world
, - Dualism: The theory that the mental and the physical are, in some sense, distinct
- The soul is the entity defining the person – Immortal, made up of the leftovers
of the cosmos-soul
1. Reason: Part of the soul that allows humans to get access to the realm
A neck separates the two of the ideal forms – Guides a person to a virtuous life in search of
to avoid temper from abstract, non-worldly perfection – Situated in the brain
polluting the divine soul 2. Temper: Part of the soul that deals with sensation and emotions –
Mortal – Situated in the heart
3. Appetite: Part of the soul that deals with lower passions (such as lust
and greed) – Situated in the liver
- Rationalism: A philosophical approach that states that reason is the primary sources of
knowledge – Claims that truths can be known independently of sensory experience
and that innate ideas are crucial for understanding the world
Aristotle:
- Divided knowledge into three kinds:
1. Productive knowledge: Concerned with making things
2. Practical knowledge: Concerned with how men ought to act in various
circumstances
3. Theoretical knowledge: Concerned with the pursuit of truth → Consisted of a
series of axioms, acquired through observation and intuition, from which the
remaining knowledge was derived by means of logic
- Sub-lunar region: Space from the Earth up to the Moon – Less orderly;
everything there is a mixture of four elements (air, earth, fire and
water) – All objects have a propensity to travel in a straight line to their
natural place
- For earth and water the natural place is the centre of the Earth –
Explains why soil, water and solid objects fall to the ground
- For air and fire the natural place is the Moon’s orbit – Explains
why air and fire go upwards
- Super-lunar region: Space from the Moon to the end of the universe –
Filled with aether, a divine and incorruptible element – Contains
immaculate stars moving in perfect harmony
- Horror vacui: Disbelief in the possibility of a vacuum – Nature abhors a
vacuum; every space in the cosmos is filled with some form of matter
- Syllogism: A deductive argument consisting of three propositions: a major premise, a
minor premise and a conclusion
- Teleology: The explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve rather
than of the cause by which they arise – Final causes – Animistic elements
- All beings have a soul/psyche (i.e. the principle of life):
1. Vegetative soul: Plants have the capacity for growth, reproduction and
nourishment
2. Animal soul: Lower animals have the power for locomotion, sensation,
memory and imagination
3. Rational soul: Human beings have all of the above and intellectual thought,
which allows them to reason consciously and to lead virtuous lives
, The development of four prestigious schools:
1. Academia – Founded by Plato
2. Lyceum – Founded by Aristotle
3. Stoa: Based on self-control, fortitude and detachment from distracting emotions
4. Garden of Epicurus: Based on a virtuous and temperate life with the enjoyment of
simple pleasures obtained by knowledge and friendship
Hellenistic culture: The fusion of the ancient Greek world with that of Western Asia,
Northeastern Africa and Southwestern Asia through the big expansion under Alexander the
Great
- Euclid: Contributed to geometry, which resulted in the organisation of all available
evidence within a coherent framework, known as Euclidian geometry
- Herophilos & Erasistratos: Physicians who extended Aristotle’s work on the human
anatomy based on dissections
- Archimedes: Contributed to geometry physics
- Ptolemy: Contributed to astronomy
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
The Romans had much admiration for and interest in the Greek culture, so the expansion of
the Roman empire did not lead to the collapse of Greek culture – Greek methods and learning
were transferred to Rome
↓ However:
The Romans were more interested in practical questions than the philosophical debates that
preoccupied the Greeks → Roman legacy is much more dominated by technological
inventions and improvements than profound philosophical writings
Towards the end of the second century, political stability in the Roman Empire began to fade
away → Division between an East and a West Empire
- West Roman Empire – Rome as the capital city
- Sharp decline in scientific endeavour because of political upheaval and
economic downfall
- Language barrier emerged between the Romans and Greek science, as
individuals were more inclined to learn Latin than Greek – Myers-Scotton:
The motivation to learn a second language decreases as a function of economic
dominance
- Only the works that were thought to be of interest to the Romans made it into
Latin and were preserved – Catholic education was not the sort to foster critical
thinking – Plato’s works were widely available because they coincided with
the views of the Christians
- West Roman Empire eventually fell in the 5th century to German tribes
- East Roman Empire – Constantinople as the capital city → Byzantine Empire
- Dominance of the Greek language and culture
- Lasted till 1453 when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks
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