Introduction to Psychology & History of Pscyhology (595102B5)
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Introduction to Psychology & History of Psychology - Summary - Chapter 1 through 8
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Introduction to Psychology & History of Pscyhology (595102B5)
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Tilburg University (UVT)
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Pioneers of Psychology
Hereby a document containing a detailed summary of the book Pioneers of Psychology, used in the course by Florian at Tilburg University. It contains only chapter 1 through 8, however, it is very detailed and useful.
Introduction to Psychology and History of Psychology (Book notes)
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Introduction to Psychology & The History of
Psychology Summary
Chapter 1
‘Foundational Ideas from Antiquity’
Plato A Greek philosopher and founder of the Academy who promoted rationalism,
idealism, and nativism; distinguished between empirical, sensory appearance of things and
the abstract, ideal forms that underlie them.
- The Academy was created by Plato
The school established by Plato where scholars congregated to discuss and teach
such subjects as philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy.
- Sophists thought Plato everything he deeded to know
A name applied to influential private teachers in ancient Athens who specialized in
rhetoric, the art of persuasion, and enabling students to excel in public arguments
an debate; oppose by Socrates and Plato
Plato explored:
- The question of what is innate in the human psyche
- Is there a relationship between innate features and the sensory experiences imposed
on the psyche from the external world?
- Appearances = Plato’s concept of an immediate, conscious experience of something;
less fundamental than an ideal form.
- Ideal form = Plato’s concept of an abstract but ultimate and permanent reality
underlying the imperfect appearance of something as immediately experienced.
This is idealism = In philosophy, the notion that something more fundamental, permanent,
and ultimate lies behind every day sensory experiences.
Allegory of the cave = Plato’s metaphor of prisoners confined in a cave with their backs to
the opening so they can only see the shadows of objects and events occurring outside;
shadows are to actual events as appearances are to ideal forms.
- An enlightened prisoners is like a philosopher, whose search for true knowledge is often
painful and disturbing, and whose insights are likely to be dismissed or suppressed by
the ordinary population.
The human psyche/soul has 3 separate basic components that govern the appetites (need for
physical gratification); courage, desire and reason. (2 horses metaphor).
Each person’s psyche innately possesses these three components in different proportions,
giving rise to three general types or classes within a society; ordinary masses, guards and
leaders.
- Plato saw these relative proportions of those three functions as largely innate and fixed
within every individual (nature)
Socrates A Greek philosopher and teacher of Plato who emphasized the nativist view that
genuine knowledge resides within the individual and needs to be brought out by skillful
questioning.
Socrates used written dialogues to help his pupils discover their innate capacities for finding
the truth, these became the basis to approaches of mental philosophy:
- Nativism = The notion that properties exist innately within a mind or individual
- Rationalism = The philosophical position holding that questions about nature,
knowledge and truth, can be answered primarily by reason and logic
Socrates helped his students bring out the knowledge and wisdom that already resided within
their psyches (midwife metaphor)
- The human psyche/soul is immortal and becomes repeatedly reincarnated in new
bodies following the deaths of older ones. In the process of rebirth, each psyche’s
accumulated knowledge is forgotten but under certain conditions can be partially
‘recalled’. The path to wisdom is to ‘know tyself’ and interpret those experiences in
light of one’s own innate rational faculties.
,Aristotle A Greek philosopher who promoted the empiricist view that knowledge derives
from experience and observations of the external world, which are organized into categories
in the mind; wrote the first systematic and highly influential treatises on the functions of the
psyche; a great polymath and compiler of knowledge in many fields
- Empiricism = A philosophical position emphasizing the importance of experience and
observation of the objective, external world in the acquisition of knowledge.
- Psyche = The distinctive characteristic of all living organisms, from the Greek for
‘breath’; translated as Latin ‘anima’ and English ‘soul’; described as having hierarchical
purposes by Plato and Aristotle; root word for psychology.
- Lyceum = The school established by Aristotle in Athens, where scholars worked
collaboratively on a broad range of subjects, often holding discussions while walking
and therefore called peripatetics.
The two steps to acquire knowledge according to Aristotle were: careful land extensive
observations, followed by their systematic classification into meaningful groups or categories.
- Taxonomy = Pioneered by Aristotle and Theophrastus, the arrangement of biological
organisms into hierarchical groups and subgroups, such as the modern categories of
kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. Provided a starting point
for an enduring biological practice.
The mind is not passive, but it functioned primarily as the organizer than the origin of ideas or
knowledge. Aristotle argued that living organisms possess psyches with varying degrees of
complexity depending upon their relative positions on the scale of nature = Aristotle’s
notion that living organisms have a hierarchical order of complexity, from the simplest plants
at the bottom to rational human beings at the top.
1) Vegetative soul = In Aristotle’s conception of the psyche or soul, the two lowest
functions, nutrition and reproduction, are possessed even by simple plants and are
referred to collectively as the vegetative soul.
2) Sensitive soul = In Aristotle’s conception of the psyche or soul, animals and humans
possess the functions of locomotion, sensation, memory and imagination, referred to
collectively as the sensitive soul.
The simplest animals have additional abilities such as the function of locomotion
and sensation (movement and reaction). Higher animals show the function of
motion. Even higher animals can anticipate the future by imagination.
3) Rational soul = The highest component of Aristotle’s conception of the psyche or soul,
unique to humans and providing the capacities for reason and self-awareness.
Aristotle compared the tissues of the sensory organs to the surface of a wax tablet, capable of
receiving impressions or imprints from the stimuli from the outside world. A stimuli leaves an
imprint that replicates its essential features. These imprints are preserved an become the
basis of memories.
The human psyche has an innate set of categories =Aristotle’s term for innate organizing
principles in the human psyche (rational soul) by which sensory experiences are classified
according to substance, quantity, quality, location, time, relation, and activity. Categories
enable subject-predicate statements that make logical analysis possible. Experiences
organized according to these categories enable one to make meaningful statements.
Aristotelian Logic = The systematic and logical analysis of associations among meaningful
subject-predicate statements, related in an extended series of Aristotle’s writings knows as
the Organon
Plato and Aristotle regarded the human psyche as a reservoir of innate ideas and forms which
may be brought out by empirical experiences.
- Aristotle: emphasized empirical experiences as the necessary ‘raw materials’ the
psyche subsequently processes by means of its inborn categories, thereby creating the
abstract concepts and ‘ideal’ general laws the Platonist thought were innate. He also
thought that living organisms reproduce, move or think because they have a psyche
with the appropriate functions.
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle laid the essentials for psychology They defined psyche and
debated about the specific relationship between the mind and the empirical stimuli that
influence the world.
The first recognized philosophers observed the natural world and attempted to understand it
in terms of underlying fundamental principles.
, - Tales Widely regarded as the earliest presocratic Greek philosopher; emphasized
water as the most basic element in the universe.
- Pythagoras A legendary presocratic Greek philosopher and mathematician who
emphasized the mystical-seeming correspondence between mathematics and worldly
experiences; the Pythagorean school influenced Socrates and Plato.
- Heraclitus A presocratic Greek philosopher who emphasized the ambiguous
relationship between stability and change; asserted ‘You can never step into the same
river twice’. Also promoted the idea of unity of opposites.
- Zeno A presocratic Greek philosopher famous for describing paradoxes deriving
from the concept of infinity.
- Protagoras A Greek philosopher who argued for concentration on strictly human
issues and problem; asserted ‘Man is the measure of all things. ‘
- Hippocrates A Greek philosopher whose school of followers, the Hippocratics,
collectively produced the naturalistic humoral theory in a body of writings known as
the Hippocratic Corpus.
Hippocratic Corpus = The collected medical writings of Hippocrates and his
followers promoting the naturalistic humoral theory to explain health and illness.
Humoral theory = A theory proposed by Hippocratics to explain health and illness
by the balance or imbalance within the body of the four humors.
Humors = The four liquid substances - blood, yellow, bile, black bile and phlegm -
proposed by Hippocratics in the humoral theory to underlie states of health and
illness, as well as basic types of temperament.
- People are healthy when the four humors exist within reasonable balance within
themselves. Sharp differences lead to differences in temperament or character.
- The Hippocratics established a basic platform for responsible, observationally based
medical practice (Hippocratic Oath)
Xenophon A student of Socrates who provided one of the first-hand accounts of is teacher,
and went to become a famous historian.
Theophrastus A younger colleague and friend of Aristotle; his work on plant classification
complemented Aristotle’s on animals.
Democritus A Greek philosopher and contemporary of Socrates who promoted the atomic
theory, the notion that the material universe is composed of tiny indivisible atoms interacting
in space; popularly known as the laughing philosopher.
- He came up with the atomic theory = The idea, promoted by Democritus and later by
Epicurus and Lucretius, that the material universe is composed of tiny indivisible atoms
interacting in otherwise empty space.
- His atomic theory was widely attacked because he stipulated that the movements of
atoms were random, and that all physical phenomena were accidents created
mechanistically. By doing so he contradicted the predominant Greek assumption about
the nature of causality = (Aristotle) The ancient Greek idea that all caused events
have a purpose; Aristotle held that a caused event requires four components: material
cause, formal cause, efficient cause and final cause.
Material cause = The substance out of which something is made
Formal cause = The conceptual model or plan behind a caused event
Efficient cause = The actions or events that bring a caused event into being
Final cause = The purpose for which an object or event is caused
Epicurus A Greek philosopher who accepted the atomic theory of Democritus and
founded the Garden school, where he promoted a lifestyle marked by a moderate and socially
conscious hedonism A self-sufficient life, free from pain and fear, in the company of friends.
The Epicureans consistently maintained that the human psyche, along with the body and all
other objects in the universe, are nothing but collections of material atoms.
Lucretius A Roman writer who celebrated the atomic theory and Epicureanism in the
extended poem De Rerum Natura (On the nature of things) Lucretius’ long poem
expounding the atomic theory and Epicurean philosophy; its rediscovery in the 1400s re
introduced atomic theory into Europe.
The centuries after the fall of Rome are described as the Dark age of Western Europe,
because the writings of both the atomist and all the classical Greek philosophers were
condemned as pagan blasphemy by early Christian scholars.
, Islamic empire = Following the Prophet Muhammed’s death in 632, territory that eventually
extended from India to Spain; produced many brilliant scholars who preserved and developed
classical writings when they were being destroyed and lost in Christian Europe.
- They mainly focused on Aristotle’s work. The Islamic empire were experts in many
disciplines.
Al-Kindi An Iraq-born Islamic philosopher who helped translate classical Greek writings into
Arabic, thus preserving them; introduced and promoted the revolutionary system of Indo-
Arabic numerals = Introduced by Al-Kindi, a system with symbols representing numerals 0
through 9, arranged in columns representing successive powers of 10; it enabled precise
arithmetic calculations impossible with the old system of Roman numerals, and led to number
theory and the invention of algebra.
Alhazen An Iraq-born Islamic scholar and scientist whose work on optics and visual
perception laid foundations still recognized today.
- He researched the debate about whether vision worked because of ‘probes’ emitted
from the eyes out to the sensed objects, or because of signals or rays originating in the
objects and impressing themselves on the eyes.
Camera obscura = A pinhole camera, or darkened box with a small opening on ones
die through which light can enter; resulting in a projected and inverted image on the
opposite side
- Alhazen recognized that something similar happens in the human eye, when light from
the outside world is refracted by the lens in front to result in inverted images on the
retina in the back.
Avicenna A Persian Islamic scholar who wrote Canon of Medicine, a definitive medial text
for many centuries, and also Book of the Cure (Book of Healing),a monumental exposition of
and commentary on Aristotle that profoundly influenced the scholastic philosophers in
medieval Europe.
- Canon of Medicine = Avicenna’s compendium of medical knowledge, accepted as
definitive for several centuries.
- The Book of the Cure/The Book of healing = Avicenna’s comprehensive exposition
of and extended commentary on Aristotle, with an influential discussion of the rational
soul. It was actually an encyclopedia.
Avicenna’s discussion of the soul included two features:
1) It elaborated on Aristotle’s hierarchy of functions. He differentiated between ‘exterior’
and ‘interior’ senses.
Exterior senses = constituted the basic capacities for receiving impressions via
the organs of vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell
Interior senses = involved doing something with those exterior senses.
2) He added to the receptive functions of the traditional sensitive soul an internally
originating motivating function that he referred to as ‘appetition’. The ‘estimations’
enable the soul to distinguish desirable or undesirable objects, the ‘appetites’ provide
the impulses and energy to approach the former and avoid the latter.
These ideas were similar to Plato’s postulation of the appetites as one of the three
components of the psyche.
Floating man thought experiment = Avicenna’s contention that a newly created but fully
formed man, floating in space with no exposure to sensory stimulation, would still have a
conscious awareness of his own rational soul; he suggested the image to support the notion of
mind and body as independent entities.
- For Avicenna, sell-awareness was an innate capacity of the human rational soul and
evidence for the soul’s or mind’s distinct existence independent of the body and its
physical sensations.
Due to the early Christian Europeans considering the pagan Greek and Roman manuscripts as
unholy and not correct, there was a lot of information lost. But due to traveling of traders
some information was recovered from the Islamic Empire. One of these traders that recovered
information was Leonardo Fibonacci An Italian trader and mathematician who
encountered the system of Indo-Arabic numerals in north Africa and introduced it in Europe.
The Islamic commentators had gone out of their way to show how the major ideas could be
harmonized with their own monotheistic faith. The scholastics came toa similar conclusion.
- Plato’s notion of a world of perfect and ideal forms, could be similar to heaven as the
goal for repentant sinners.
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