This document contains a summary of the book Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology by Brysbaert & Rastle, the third edition. It is a summary of the chapters 1 till 6. This is the literature for the second year course Fundamentals of Psychology (7202A702XY) at the University of Amsterdam. ...
Summary Historical and Conceptual Issues in
Psychology (3e Edition - Marc Brysbaert &
Kathy Rastle)
2022/2023
Fundamentals of Psychology
This is a summary of the chapters of the book: Historical and Conceptual Issues in Psychology relevant for
the course Fundamentals of Psychology at the UvA. The key terms per chapter are noted in the texts the
following way: key terms, and are ordered at the end of the chapter with the explanation.
Content
Summary Historical and Conceptual Issues in Psychology (3e Edition - Marc Brysbaert & Kathy Rastle)......1
Chapter 1 The Wider Picture......................................................................................................................... 3
1.1 The invention of writing...................................................................................................................... 3
1.2 The discovery of numbers................................................................................................................... 3
1.3 The fertile crescent............................................................................................................................. 3
1.4 The Greeks.......................................................................................................................................... 3
1.5 Developments from the Roman Empire to the end of the Middle Ages..............................................4
1.6 Turning the tide in the West............................................................................................................... 4
1.7 Focus on: The limits of history writing................................................................................................. 5
Key terms Chapter 1................................................................................................................................. 5
Chapter 2 The Scientific Revolution of the Seventeenth Century and its Aftermatch....................................6
2.1 From a geocentric to a heliocentric model of the universe.................................................................6
2.2 Mechanisation of the world view........................................................................................................ 6
2.3 The formulation of the first laws of physics......................................................................................... 6
2.4 What set off the scientific revolution in the seventeenth-century Europe?........................................6
2.5 The new method of the natural philosopher....................................................................................... 7
2.6 Changes in society as a result of the scientific revolution....................................................................7
Key terms Chapter 2................................................................................................................................. 8
Chapter 3 Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Precursors to a Scientific Psychology.................................9
3.1 Individualisation in Western society.................................................................................................... 9
3.2 Philosophical studies of the mind........................................................................................................ 9
3.3 Textbooks of psychology................................................................................................................... 10
3.4 Scientific studies of ‘psychological’ functions.................................................................................... 10
3.5 Evolutionary theory........................................................................................................................... 10
3.6 The contribution of statistics............................................................................................................. 10
Key terms Chapter 3................................................................................................................................ 10
1
,Chapter 4 Establishing Psychology as an Independent Academic Discipline...............................................11
4.1 The foundation of the first laboratory of experimental psychology in Germany...............................11
4.2 Starting psychology in America: James and Titchener.......................................................................12
4.3 Psychology in France: Ribot, Charcot, Binet......................................................................................12
4.4 Freud and psychoanalysis.................................................................................................................. 13
4.5 Starting psychology in the UK: finding a place between clerics, philosophers and biologists............13
Key terms Chapter 4................................................................................................................................ 13
Chapter 5 Strengthening the Scientific Standing of Psychology..................................................................14
5.1 The perception of psychology in the USA at the beginning of the twentieth century........................14
5.2 Making a science of behaviour.......................................................................................................... 15
5.3 Adding cognitions to behaviour......................................................................................................... 16
Key terms Chapter 5................................................................................................................................ 17
Chapter 6 The Input from Brain Research................................................................................................... 18
6.1 Ideas in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece.......................................................................................18
6.2 Further insight into the anatomy and functioning of the nervous system in the Renaissance and the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries................................................................................................... 19
6.3 The breakthroughs of the nineteenth century..................................................................................19
6.4 The emergence of neuropsychology in the twentieth century..........................................................20
6.5 Brain imaging and the turn to neuroscience.....................................................................................20
6.6 Focus on: Can delusions be investigated with the cognitive neuropsychological approach?.............21
Key terms Chapter 6................................................................................................................................ 21
2
, Chapter 1 The Wider Picture
1.1 The invention of writing
The invention of writing was important for the development of science. Preliterate civilisations hold three
characteristics of knowledge:
1. Knowledge about practical skills, like gathering and hunting, are not based on an understanding
of those skills but on a rule of thumb of what to do when.
2. Knowledge is focussed on transmission of practical skills
3. Collection of myths and stories about the beginning of time in which animism is believed.
According to Tylor this way of thinking was the same as what children do. But Lindberg believed
that animistic thinking reinforced values of the community and brought order and unity.
Writing started separately in China (6000 BCE), Egypt (3200 BCE), Sumer (3200 BCE) and America (300
BCE) and it consisted of a combination between pictograms and phonograms. The use of simpler
phonograms led to the alphabetic system. Chinese writing system is closest to pictograms, but the signs
and the meaning do not overlap that much anymore, so it became more logographic. In the early days
words were not separated by space (scriptio continua), this caused to few people that could read to
always have to read out loud. Also students were taught to read the text as they were and not be critical
about it, this is called the scholastic method.
Writing is important for the accumulation of knowledge, because new thinkers can work further on past
discoveries. Socrates however thought that writing would harm the ability of memory.
1.2 The discovery of numbers
I, II, and III were easy to follow, but it became more challenging for perception when the numbers went
higher. One solution was grouping, five became IIII. It started with five because four was still easy to see
without counting the lines. It also was the same as the number of fingers on a hand.
Most groups chose a base number of ten for counting higher number. The Sumerians choose 60, this is
still used in the time units. In French you can see that 20 was used as base. The numbers eleven and
twelve show that these numbers were thought of before a concept of ten as base.
India developed a place coding system; this gave shorter outcomes than the romans. They made use of a
unit position, a tens position, a hundreds position, etc. They used a space between position to represent
the null.
1.3 The fertile crescent
Fertile Cresent was an area southeast of the Mediterranean Sea with a progressed civilisation. Ancient
Mesopotamian and Egypt were part of this region. Ancient Mesopotamian started discovering
mathematics and Egypt started discovering geometrics and the calendar.
1.4 The Greeks
Philosophy started in Greece around 6000 BCE and two key figures of that time were Plato and Aristotle.
- Plato (427 – 348 BCE) wrote everything down in a dialogue format, usually a
dialogue with Socrates. This is what came out of these dialogues. Plato
philosophised that there was a realm of eternal with ideal forms that do not
change, and a realm with changing material and imperfect forms or ideas. We
only view the shadows of the perfect forms on our life. He believed that the
soul and body were two different things. The soul is immortal and has
knowledge of the perfect world (intelligible world), this way he believed that
true knowledge was innate and obtained through reason and intelligence.
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