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CHAPTER 2 – PHILOSOPHICAL
& SCIENTIFIC ANTECEDENTS
OF PSYCHOLOGY
Dr. Nancy Alvarado
Images of the Dark Ages
Why Were the Dark Ages Dark?
The Roman Empire had preserved knowledge, but it
collapsed and was overrun by Barbarians.
Access to the accumulated knowledge was
preserved in Muslim libraries but these were
inaccessible because the West was mostly Christian.
The Medieval Church discouraged literacy, free
thought, and scientific inquiry beyond the revealed
wisdom of clerics & church scholars (St. Augustine).
With the Crusades, knowledge was rediscovered.
Muslim Libraries were Rediscovered
Launched by Pope Urban II at the Council
of Clermont in 1095, the First Crusade
was the most successful. Urban gave a
dramatic speech urging Christians to
swarm toward Jerusalem and make it safe
for Christian pilgrims by taking it away
from the Muslims.
Black sea
One View of the Dark Ages
Science in the Dark Ages
Hothersall – the historian Kemp asserts there was
innovation and science during the Dark Ages:
Stirrups used for the first time in war (600’s AD/CE).
A biography of Charlemagne was published (800’s).
Domesday Book (1086 survey done for King William I
of England) recorded 6000 watermills in Britain.
Windmill invented in 1180 (taxed by the Vatican).
It would be odd if there were no progress at all,
but this is not comparable to what was seen in
Greece & Rome nor was learning cumulative.
Medieval Period
Population increased putting pressure on peasants.
Landowners had the advantage, there was famine.
14 universities were established in 12th & 13th
centuries, including Oxford & Cambridge.
Civil war and wars between France, Italy & England
disrupted the 14th century.
Plague (Black Death, 1348-1350) killed 1/3 of the
population of Europe.
Gothic Architecture
Gothic Cathedrals are intricately designed architectural features, which date
back to 1144 and possibly even earlier. The architecture used to make these
magnificent buildings took a very long time and it involved many different
forms of talent, and skill as well as hard to find materials.
Scenes of the Plague Years
Plague-inspired art. Images of the grim reaper
originate from this time.
Psychology in the Middle Ages
Psychological questions belonged to religion.
In “Confessions,” St. Augustine (4th century) disclosed
psychological emotions, thoughts, motives, memories.
God was the ultimate truth.
Knowing God was the ultimate goal of the human mind.
Truth dwells within every person – turn inward.
St. Thomas Aquinas reinterpreted Aristotle and
established scholasticism – reason as a complement
to faith in the search for truth.
The Renaissance (Rebirth)
The invention of movable type made printing
inexpensive, permitting the spread of ideas across
Europe via books, including to scholars & others.
Prescientific psychology books appeared:
Psichiologia – Marcus Marulus (1520).
Psychologia hoc est, de hominis perfectione (Psychology
on the improvement of man) (1590) edited by Goeckel.
Psychologia – John Broughton (1703) in English.
No scientific study of human behavior was started.
Early Cosmology
Medieval conceptions of the firmament
include a solid orb containing the planets
with angels & heaven beyond it. Here, a
traveler sticks his head through it.
Renaissance Science
The view of man’s place in the universe changed.
Copernicus (1543) demoted humans from a central to a
peripheral position – his system was called antireligious.
Galileo (1610) confirmed his view that the Earth goes
around the sun, not vice versa, as did Bruno.
Galileo also developed a method of manipulating
variables while controlling other factors in expts.
Goaded by Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation,
the Catholic church was unreceptive to Galileo’s
new theory -- Bruno was burned at the stake.
The Reformation Split the Church
Protestants:
Lutherans
Anglicans
Puritans
Episcopalians
Presbyterians
Methodists
Baptists
etc.
Eastern
Orthodox
A Plea for Freedom of Inquiry
Galileo believed in the power of reason:
“…in questions of science, the authority of a thousand is
not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”
The next advances came from Protestant countries.
Isaac Newton revolutionized physics by developing
a new optics (theory of light) and laws of physics.
Vesalius developed an anatomy of the human body.
Harvey studied the movement of the heart and the
motion of blood using experimental methods.
Three Scientific Geniuses
Issac Newton
(1642-1727)
Andreas Vesalius
(1514-1564)
William Harvey
(1578-1657)
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
At age 23, a dream revealed a “Spirit of Truth,” a
vision of a new system of science and mathematics
so he renounced idleness to search for truth.
He first combined algebra & geometry into analytic
geometry, published 18 years later as “La Geometrie”.
He lived in 24 homes in 13 cities during 20 years in
Spain-occupied Holland, hiding out from the Inquisition.
Queen Christina of Sweden summoned him to tutor her
on “How to live happily and still not annoy God.”
He died of pneumonia 4 months later in her court.
Contributions to Philosophy
Descartes believed in applying logic rigorously to
discover truth.
Descartes was a devout Catholic but he sometimes
doubted the existence of God, so he was heretical.
Cogito ergo sum – I doubt, thus I think, therefore I exist.
He considered the mind different than the body.
Having different substance, different functions, bound
by different laws.
The body is nothing more than a complex self-
regulating machine functioning without the mind.
Ideas about the Body
Hollow tubes of minute threads contain subtle fluids
(animal spirits) distilled from the blood, flowing to
the senses for sensation and movement.
Reflexes operate as a hydraulic pathway between
body and brain, pores are synapses.
The body is infinitely more complex than a machine
designed by humans because invented by God.
Animals only have reflexes but humans can control
the opening of pores to control reflex actions.
The pineal gland is where mind and body meet.
Rene Descartes
Ideas about the Ideas & Passions
Two major classes of ideas exist in the mind:
Innate ideas – inborn, time, space, motion, God.
Derived ideas – arising from experience, based on
memories of past events (open pores stay open).
Passions arise from the body and cause actions.
6 primary passions (wonder, love, hate, desire, joy,
sadness) – other passions are mixtures of these.
Animals do not possess minds so cannot think, be
self-aware or have language – have no feelings.
Julien de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
La Mettrie published “L’homme Machine” (Man the
Machine) in 1748, arguing that people are solely
machines, explained through mechanistic principles.
People are motivated by hedonistic drives
(pleasure, pain) not reasoning.
Degrees of thought are present in animals not just
people – cognition is a continuum across organisms.
His prediction that apes can use language has been
confirmed by those studying chimpanzees.
Post-Renaissance Philosophy
Empiricism – emphasized the effects of experience
on a passive mind.
Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley.
Associationism – the active mind forms associations.
Hume, Hartley, James and John Stuart Mill
Nativism – the contents of the mind are influenced
by its inborn structure, not just experience.
Leibniz, Kant (German philosophers)
Timeline -- http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/1400-1800.html
17th Century British Empiricism
Empiricists (British):
Hobbes
Locke
Berkeley
Nativist counter-voice:
Leibniz (German)
Earlier Empiricists:
Aristotle
Earlier Nativists:
Socrates
Plato
Descartes (French)
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
Hobbes’s views of mind were based on his social
and political theories about people in groups.
He believed we are basically aggressive animals
banding together for protection from other people.
The only way a group’s integrity can be protected is
via a strong, centralized authority, such as a monarch.
This thinking influences current sociobiologists.
Barash (1977) says that because we cannot kill each
other without weapons, we have no biological inhibition
against aggression like animals do, leading to war, etc.
John Locke (1632-1704)
He was the first major British Empiricist, at Oxford.
Locke rejected Descartes & emphasized scientific
method & experimentation.
Locke’s Puritanism rejected Descartes’ Catholicism.
Political ideas – people have inalienable rights to
personal liberty, equality before the law, religious
equality – protected by checks & balances & overthrow
Philosophy of education – people are born good
and equal in potential, making education crucial.
Access to education should be available to all children.
Locke’s Views on Education
Locke denied existence of innate tendencies,
dispositions or fears in children.
The only things we innately fear are loss of pleasure
and pain. We avoid whatever has these consequences.
He proposed that children dislike reading because
of punishments associated with teaching them.
Locke advanced ideas about the acquisition and
treatment of fears similar to Watson, Mary Cover
Jones and Wolpe (systematic desensitization).
Locke’s “Essay Concerning Human
Understanding” (1690)
This work was the beginning of British Empiricism.
Locke sought a set of laws for the human mind, like
Newton’s principles of physics.
Locke’s system is atomistic and reductionistic.
Basic elements of mind are ideas.
Ideas come from experience (Locke rejected Descartes).
The “blank slate, page of paper, tablet” comes from
Aristotle, but characterized empiricism.
Ideas have two sources: sensation & reflection.
Locke & Ideas (Cont.)
Sensations can be illusory or misleading.
Ideas are either simple or complex. Simples ideas
form a complex idea in several ways:
By combining several simple ideas into a single one.
By seeing the relation between two simple ideas.
By separating simple ideas from other ideas that go
with them – the process of abstraction.
Locke’s idea about combination of ideas is
analogous to a chemical compound (from Boyle).
George Berkeley (1685-1753)
Wrote three essays that radically extended Locke’s
philosophy into subject idealism (immaterialism).
Berkeley argued that because all knowledge of the
world comes from experience, the very existence of
the external world depends on perception.
Matter exists because it is perceived – matter does not
exist without a mind.
The permanence of the world is thus proof of God’s
existence.
His book on vision was better regarded in his time.
Leibniz – A Nativist Counter-Voice
Leibniz (1646-1716) – Germany’s leading
mathematician, wrote to Locke on politics.
His “New Essays on Understanding” rebutted Locke.
He considered animals empirics but said humans
were only empirical in ¾ of their acts, not all.
Necessary and inborn truths are ¼ of the mind, the
“innate intellect.”
Intellect allows reason & science, gives us
knowledge of ourselves and God, is the essence of
the human spirit.
Leibniz’s Monadology
In “The Monadology,” Leibniz described a system of
monads.
Monads are an infinite number of elements composing
all being and activity, with no parts, not decomposable.
Monads are indestructible, uncreatable, immutable.
The physical and mental worlds are pluralisms of
independent monads that do not interact, in parallel
There is a continuum of consciousness-
unconsciousness with different levels of activity, with
a threshold for consciousness.
Two Empiricists and a Nativist
John Locke
(1632-1704)
George Berkeley
(1685-1753)
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
(1646-1716)
18 -19th Century British Associationism
Transitional
Associationists:
Hume
Hartley
19th Century
Associationists:
James Mill
John Stuart Mill
Bain
Nativist Counter-Voice:
Kant
David Hume (1711-1776)
Hume studied “pneumatic philosophy” (the name for
the science of mental life).
People are part of nature so should be studied
using the methods of studying nature.
He differentiated between impressions & ideas:
When impressions & ideas occur together they become
associated with each other.
3 kinds of associations: resemblance,
contiguity in time or space, cause-and-effect
relationship.
David Hartley (1705-1757)
Hartley said both mind and body are to be studied.
Localized mental faculties to the brain, citing the
effects of alcohol, poisons & opiates, blows to the
head, on thinking.
He described visual and auditory after-images as
vibrations of medullary particules in nerves in the
brain.
Vibrations & ideas become associated by occurring
simultaneously a sufficient number of times.
This is a kind of biological associationism.
Two Mills – Father and Son
James Mill (1773-1836) – wrote a History of British
India and an Essay on Government.
Believed his son’s mind was a blank slate and
dedicated himself to filling it with maximum knowledge
John Stuart Mill regarded himself as a “dry, hard,
logical machine” and became depressed in early 20s.
This led him to recognize the irrational as well as the
rational, see humans as more than unfeeling machines.
John Stuart Mill rejected his father’s views on
women’s capacities & rights, introduced suffrage bill
James Mill (1773-1836)
James Mill wrote “Analysis of the Phenomena of the
Human Mind.”
Mill added muscle (kinesthesis), tickling & itching,
digestive (alimentary) senses to Aristotle’s 5 senses.
Described stream of consciousness associations.
Some associations stronger than others.
Permanence, certainty & facility determine strength.
Proposed a model of concatenation (joining) of
ideas later refined by his son.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
Wrote “System of Logic” about metascience – the
study of scientific process and assumptions that
underlie all sciences, including psychology.
J.S. Mill argued that there can be a science of the
mind, but it must be inexact, not deterministic.
If laws of psychology govern behavior will people’s
action be predictable, what happen to responsibility
and free will?
Saw the need for Ethology – the study of the influence
of external circumstances on behavior (not animal).
Alexander Bain (1818-1903)
Bain wrote “The Senses and the Intellect,” “The
Emotions and the Will,” and “Mind and Body.”
The standard British psychology textbooks for 50 years.
Founded the journal “Mind,” establishing psychology as
a field distinct from philosophy.
Developed the concept of habit derived from
consequences of random actions, leading directly to
Thorndike’s behaviorism.
Stressed the importance of observation,
sympathetic to experimental method.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
The leading German epistemologist, Kant was a
subjectivist, nativist, rationalist successor to
Descartes and Leibniz.
Kant wrote “A Critique of Pure Reason” saying that
empiricists forgot to ask how experience is possible.
Certain intuitions or categories of understanding are
inborn and frame our experiences.
This knowledge is a priori, whereas experiential
knowledge is a posteriori (known afterward).
3 categories of mind: cognition, affection, conation.
Kant’s View of A Priori Knowledge
Concepts of space and time.
Other intuitions, including cause and effect,
reciprocity, reality, existence and necessity.
Higher faculties of reasoning are understanding,
judgment, reason.
True science must begin with concepts established a
priori by reason alone and deal with observable
objects that can be located in time and space.
Psychology lacks this so it cannot be a science.
