Samenvatting van het boek van C. James Goodwin, “A history of modern psychology”, 5th edition, ISBN 3759. Voor de cursus psychologie als wetenschap aan de Universiteit van Utrecht.
Samenvatting psychologie als wetenschap
C. James Goodwin, “A history of modern psychology”, 5th edition,
ISBN 9781118833759
Hoofdstuk 1
Why study history? Helps avoid mistakes of past. Provides guide for future. Forces an attitude
adjustment, keeping us humble: 1: remember we don’t know a lot. 2: keeps from arrogance.
APS vs APA: scientists and practitioners. APA 1904. Frustration with APAAPS.
Why psychology’s history?
- Psychology is in its infancy
- The field is still grappling with many of the same topics that occupied it a century ago.
Provides
- Provides unity for a diverse field
- Makes one a more critical thinker.
Key issues in psychology’s history
Furumoto: old and new history.
Old: emphasizes the accomplishments of ‘great’ psychologists and celebrates ‘classic studies’. Origin
myths: stories overemphasizing the importance of particular events in psychology’s history.
Old vs new approaches can be characterized in 3 contrasts:
Old New
Presentist Historicist
Internal External
Personalistic Naturalistic
Presentism: to interpret and assess the past only in terms of present understanding.
Historicism: tries to understand the same event in terms of the knowledge and values in existence at
the time of the event. Tries to place historical events within the overall context of their times.
Although the past can help us understand the present, our knowledge about the present should not
be used to judge the past.
Internal history (histories of ideas): what is written occurs entirely within (internal to) the discipline
of psychology. Provides detailed descriptions of the evolution of theory and research, but ignores
those influences outside psychology that also influence the discipline.
External history: considers those outside influences.
Personalistic history: important events in history result from the heroic or evil actions of individuals,
and without those individuals, history would be vastly different. Preferred method of writing:
biography. Eponyms: historical periods are identified with reference to the individuals whose actions
are believed to be critical in shaping events (bvb Darwinian biology).
CLOSE UP EDWIN G BORING PAG 10. (naturalistic, yet eponyms serve as retrieval cues, human need).
Naturalistic history: emphasizing the forces of history that influence individuals. Determinist
approach. Leo Tolstoy: history is moved by forces beyond the control of individuals.
Hegel: zeitgeist: overall intellectual and cultural climate of a particular historical era.
Boring: 2 kinds of historical events to support zeitgeist concept:
- Multiple: 2(+) individuals independently make the same discovery at about the same time.
- A discovery or a theory that is said to be ahead of its time.
Historiography: to write history. Referring to theoretical issues and to the methods that historians
use when doing the historical research that eventually leads to written histories.
Distinction by keith Jenkins: past vs history. Past is gone, history is the manner in which traces of the
past are selected, interpreted and written into coherent narrative by professional historians.
History writers rely on secondary source: document that has been published and is typically an
analysis or summary of some historical event. Written some time after.
, Maartje van Loef
UU
History researchers rely on primary sources: found in archives: an area within a uni library that holds
unpublished info. Materials written or created at or near the time of some historical event. AHAP.
Problems with the writing of history:
- Data selection problems: historians must make judgments about the adequacy and relevance
of data at hand and they must select a sample while discarding the remainder.
- Analysis/interpretation problems: interpretation of data is influenced by the individual
characteristics of the historian and by the features of the historical context in which the
historian is writing.
Hoofdstuk 2
René Descartes (1596-1650): end of renaissance.
Copernicus: 1540’s: challenged the traditional geocentric view of the universe (earth = centre),
suggested heliocentric theory (sun = centre). Later supported by galilei.
Bacon (1561-1626): inductive approach to scientific inquiry: observe nature instead of following
conclusions derived from a deductive analysis of Aristotle and other authorities.
Descartes: scholastic tradition education: combining received wisdom of church with the careful use
of reason. Rationalist: truth could emerge from the careful use of reason. Truth is only which could
not be doubted.
Cartesian system:
1. Accept nothing as true unless it presented itself so clearly that there was no reason to doubt
it.
2. Analysis: breaking problems into subproblems
3. Simplest of subproblems to the more complex ones
4. Reviewed his conclusions to be certain of omitting nothing.
Ability to reason is inborn and certain types of knowledge too. (wax example). = nativist.
Innate idea: born with the capacity.
Derived idea: concepts as result of experience.
Dualist: clear separation between mind and body. Body takes up space and moves, mind doesn’t.
Cartesian dichotomy: divides humans and animals: animals are simple machines, not capable of
reasoning.
Mechanist: body operates like a complicated machine.
Interactionist: mind could have a direct influence on the body and body on mind.
Tried to explain reflex: automatic stimulus response reaction.
Animal spirits: driving forces behind movement. What determined which muscles moved:
- Mind in brain by activating the nerves controlling certain muscles.
- Certain muscles can move automatically in response to sensory stimuli (reflex).
Pineal gland: interaction between body and mind. Single unit, because the mind is unitary as well.
Against Descartes: empiricism (british): our knowledge of the world is constructed from our
experiences in it. Closely woven with associationism.
John locke (1632-1704): origin of british empiricism. Epistemology: the study of the human
knowledge and its acquisition. No innate ideas, just innate faculties, such as the ability to think.
Birth: mind is white paper (referring to artistotles tabula rasa). Ideas that result from experience and
compose the mind have 2 sources:
- Sensation: all info taken in by our senses from the environment
- Reflection: mental activities involved in processing info from both senses and memory.
Simple ideas: resulted from experiencing basic sensory qualities such as yellow.
Complex ideas: includes several other ideas, which can be a combi of simple and other ideas.
Atomism: the idea that complexity in nature can be understood by reducing objects to their most
basic elements.
Association: glue that held together one’s experiences in life.
Primary qualities of matter: exist as inherent property of an object. (shape)
Secondary qualities of matter: not inherent attributes of objects, depend on perception. (smell,
colour).
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