History of Modern Psychology PDF

History of Modern Psychology  Although philosophers grapple with a wide range of problems, those especially relevant for psychology concern (a) whether mental and physical events are essentially the same or different...

History of Modern Psychology  Although philosophers grapple with a wide range of problems, those especially relevant for psychology concern (a) whether mental and physical events are essentially the same or different and, if the latter, how the two kinds of events relate to each other; Philosophic (b) whether our knowledge of the world is derived primarily from our ability to reason al or results from the cumulative effects of our life experiences; Questions (c) the extent to which our heredity and our environment shape the way we are; (d) whether the things we think, feel, and do result from our own free choices or are the result of deterministic laws of nature; and (e) whether or not complex phenomena can be best understood by analyzing them into their component parts.  Ebbinghaus was reminding readers that basic questions about human nature and the causes of human behavior are not new—they have been asked in some form or other since humans first started asking questions. “long past, More specifically, Ebbinghaus was pointing out that psychologists must recognize that their field has deep roots in philosophy. All the important issues that concern modern short psychologists have been addressed by philosophers. close association between psychology and philosophy history” - Does this close connection mean that psychology is just another branch of philosophy? No. In the last half of the 19th century, a number of Ebbinghaus converging forces produced an attempt to study human behavior and mental processes through the application of scientific methods rather than through philosophical analysis. Thus, what came to be called the New Psychology began to emerge as a separate discipline about 140 years ago—which led Ebbinghaus, just over 100 years ago, to proclaim that psychology’s history as a new science had been relatively brief.  Historian Daniel Boorstin referred to the clock as the “mother of machines” Clocks in the seventeenth century were a technological sensation, as astonishing and Clock as the influential as computers would become in the twentieth century. Because of the regularity, predictability, and precision of clocks, scientists and “mother of philosophers began to think of them as models for the Perhaps the world itself was a vast clock made and set in motion by the Creator. machines” Scientists such as the British physicist Robert Boyle, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler, and the French philosopher René Descartes agreed with this idea, expressing the belief that the harmony and order of the universe could be explained in terms of the clock’s regularity—which is built into the machine by the clockmaker just as the regularity of the universe was thought to be built into it by God. This idea also became a model in the physical universe. God as cosmic clockmaker Thus, the idea of a clockwork universe transformed nearly every aspect of human experience. Determinism and Reductionism The clock metaphor for the universe encompasses the idea of Determinism, the belief that every act is determined or caused by past events. In other words, we can predict the changes that will occur in the operation of the clock—as well as in the universe-- because we understand the order and regularity with which its parts function. It was not difficult to gain insight into the structure and workings of a clock. Anyone could easily disassemble a clock and see exactly how its springs and gears operated. This led scientists to popularize the notion of reductionism. The workings of machines such as clocks could be understood by reducing them to their basic components. Reductionism: The doctrine that explains phenomena on one level (such as complex ideas) in terms of phenomena on another level (such as simple ideas). An Era of Automata As the technology was refined, more sophisticated mechanical contraptions, built to imitate human movement and action, were offered for popular entertainment. These devices were called automata, and they were capable of performing marvelous and amusing feats with precision and regularity. https://youtu.be/C7oSFNKIlaM?si=JXhH9mwyghFAknh0 https://youtu.be/buRMXn6iedE?si=SxgVZMNkgbKPNAPo Descartes and other philosophers also adopted automata as models for human beings. Descartes wrote that this idea would not “appear at all strange to those who are acquainted with the different automata, or moving machines, fabricated by human industry … such persons will look upon this body as a machine made by the hands of God, which is incomparably better arranged and adequate to movements more admirable than in any machine of human invention” Thus, clocks and automata paved the way for the ideas that human functioning and behavior were governed by mechanical laws and that the experimental and quantitative methods so successful in uncovering the secrets of the physical universe could be applied to human nature.  Charles Babbage (1791–1871) was unusually intelligent and gifted in mathematics, which he studied on his own as an adolescent. The His lifelong quest was to develop a calculating machine that could perform mathematical operations faster than humans and Calculating then print the results. In pursuing this goal, Babbage formulated the basic principles that drive modern computers. Charles Babbage, who typified the nineteenth-century notion Engine of humans operating as machines, clearly was far ahead of his times. His calculating machine, a forerunner of the modern computer, marked the first successful attempt to duplicate human cognitive processes and develop a form of artificial intelligence. In the seventeenth century, a new force became important: empiricism, the pursuit of knowledge through observation and experimentation. the golden age of the seventeenth century became illuminated by discoveries and insights that reflected the changing nature of scientific inquiry.  Among the many scholars whose creativity marked that period, the French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes contributed directly to the history of modern psychology. Descartes’s most important work for the development of modern psychology was his attempt to resolve the mind-body problem, an issue that had been controversial for centuries. René Descartes The basic, deceptively simple question was this: Are mind and body—the mental world (1596–1650) and the material world—distinct from each other? For thousands of years, scholars had taken a dualistic position, arguing that the mind (the soul or spirit) and the body had different natures. If the mind and body are of different natures, what is their relationship? How do they interact? Are they independent, or does one influence the other?  René Descartes (1596–1650) Before Descartes, the accepted theory was that the interaction between mind and body flowed essentially in one direction. The mind could exert an enormous influence on the body, but the body had little effect on the mind. One view is that the body and mind are related in the same way that a puppet and its puppeteer are joined. The mind is like the puppeteer, pulling the strings of the body. Descartes accepted this position; in his view, mind and body were indeed of different essences. But he deviated from tradition by redefining the relationship. In Descartes’s theory of mind-body interaction, the mind influences the body but the body exerts a greater influence on the mind than previously supposed. The relationship is not in one direction only, but rather is a mutual interaction. This idea, considered radical in the seventeenth century, has important implications for psychology  Scientists accepted mind and body as two separate entities. Matter, the body’s material substance, can be said to have extension (in that it takes up space) and to operate according to mechanical principles. René Descartes The mind, however, is free; it is unextended and lacks physical substance. (1596–1650) Descartes’s revolutionary idea is that mind and body, although distinct, are capable of interacting within the human organism. The mind can influence the body, and the body can influence the mind  Descartes argued that because the body is composed of physical matter, it must possess those characteristics common to all matter; that is, extension in space and the capacity for movement. If the body is matter, then the laws of physics and mechanics that account for movement and action in the physical world must apply to the body as well. Therefore, the body is like a machine whose operation can be explained by the mechanical laws that govern the movement of all objects in space. Descartes explained the physiological functioning of the body in terms of physics He compared the body’s nerves to the pipes through which the water passed, and the body’s muscles and tendons to engines and springs. The movements of the automata were not caused by voluntary action on their part but by external forces such as the water pressure.  The involuntary nature of this movement was Dr. Prashasti Jain reflected in Descartes’s observation that bodily movements frequently occur without a person’s conscious intention. From this line of reasoning he arrived at the idea of the undulatio reflexa, a movement not supervised or determined by a conscious will to move. For this conception, Descartes is often called the author of the reflex action theory. This theory is a precursor of modern behavioral stimulus- response (S-R) psychology, in which an external object (a stimulus) brings about an involuntary response, such as the jerk of your leg when the doctor taps your knee with a hammer. Reflexive behaviour involves no thought or cognitive process; it appears to be completely mechanical or automatic.  Descartes’s work also supported the growing trend in science toward the notion that human behaviour is predictable. The mechanical body operates in ways that can be expected or anticipated, as long as the inputs are known. Descartes found confirmation in contemporary physiology for his mechanical interpretation of the workings of the human body. In 1628, the English physician William Harvey uncovered the basic facts about blood circulation within the body. Other physiologists were studying the digestive processes. Scientists had determined that the muscles of the body worked in opposing pairs, and that sensation and movement depended somehow on the nerves.  According to Descartes, the mind is nonmaterial—it lacks physical substance—but it is capable of thought and other cognitive processes. Consequently, the mind provides human beings with information about the external world. In other words, while the mind has none of the properties of matter, it does have the capacity to think, and it is this characteristic that sets the mind apart from the material or physical world. Because the mind thinks, perceives, and wills, it must somehow influence and be influenced by the body. For example, when the mind decides to move from one place to another, this decision is carried out by the body’s muscles, tendons, and nerves. Similarly, when the body is stimulated—for example, by light or heat—it is the mind that recognizes and interprets these sensory data and determines the appropriate response. Before Descartes could complete his theory about the interaction of mind and body, he needed to locate the actual physical part of the body where the mind and the body mutually interacted. He conceived of the mind as unitary, which meant that it must interact with the body only at a single point. He also believed that the interaction occurred somewhere within the brain because research had shown that sensations travel to the brain and movement originates within the brain. It was obvious to Descartes that the brain had to be the focal point for the mind’s functions. The only structure of the brain that is single and unitary (that is, not divided and duplicated in each hemisphere) is the pineal body or conarium, and Descartes chose this as the logical site of the interaction.  Descartes used mechanistic terms to describe how the mind-body interaction occurs. He suggested that the movement of animal spirits in the nerve tubes makes an impression on the conarium and from this impression the mind produces a sensation. In other words, a quantity of physical motion (the flow of animal spirits) produces a mental quality (a sensation). The reverse can also occur: The mind can make an impression on the conarium (in some way Descartes never made clear), and by inclining to one direction or another, the impression can influence the flow of animal spirits to the muscles, resulting in a physical or bodily movement.  For Descartes, then, the way to truth was through the unique human capacity to reason. In his Discourse on Method, he described four basic rules he used to arrive at the truth of some matter. First, he accepted nothing as true unless “it presented itself so clearly and distinctly to my mind that there was Descartes on no reason to doubt it” (Descartes, 1637/1960, p. 15). Second, he used a strategy of analysis, breaking problems Rationalism into subproblems. Third, he worked from the simplest of these subproblems to the more complex ones, and Fourth, he carefully reviewed his conclusions to be certain of omitting nothing. Now to our modern way of thinking, these rules of method do not appear to be extraordinary. Descartes seems to be saying not much more than to think clearly, logically, and without bias; analyze problems carefully; work systematically from the simple to the complex; and check your work  An implication of Cartesian rationalism was that the ability to reason is inborn and that certain types of knowledge do not rely directly on sense experience, but result from our native ability to reason. For example, although we come to know the properties of wax (e.g., heat melts it) on the basis of Descartes on our experience with it, there are certain things about wax that we know to be true simply as a result of a logical analysis, using our native reasoning powers. Rationalism Thus Descartes would say that we can conclude, without doubt, that wax has the property of “extension”—it exists in space and, even though it may change form (e.g., through melting), it can never disappear. Because we can use our reason to arrive at our knowledge of the concept of extension. This led to the development of doctrine of ideas.  The Doctrine of Ideas The mind produces two kinds of ideas: derived and innate. Derived ideas arise from the direct application of an external stimulus, such as the sound of a bell or the sight of a tree. Thus, derived ideas (the idea of the bell or the tree) are products of the experiences of the senses. Innate ideas are not produced by objects in the external world impinging on the senses but develop instead out of the mind or consciousness. Although the potential existence of innate ideas is independent of sensory experiences, they may be realized in the presence of appropriate experiences. Among the innate ideas Descartes identified are God, the self, perfection, and infinity. The concept of innate ideas led to the nativistic theory of perception (the idea that our ability to perceive is innate rather than learned) and also influenced the Gestalt school of psychology, which, in turn, influenced the more contemporary cognitive movement in psychology.  The mechanistic conception of the body Important The theory of reflex action Contributi The mind-body interaction ons of Rene The localization of mental Descartes functions in the brain The doctrine of innate ideas