Please read chapter 2. After reading the chapter, please respond to the following questions:
What were three (3) things from the chapter that you found interesting? Why were they interesting to you? What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? Why?
What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
How, in what ways, does this chapter relate to the previous chapter?
What topic would you like to learn more about? Why ?
What ideas did you have while reading the chapter?
Chapter 2
The first thing I found interesting was that although psychology is relatively knew the idea of what psychology is has kind of always been around. They talked about how Hermann Ebbinghaus wrote in his textbook that psychology has a “long past, short history”. When you really think about it he was completely right. Although it may have been called many different things or thought about in many different ways; it’s in our nature to wonder what causes our behaviors as humans. I tied it back to last week as well, because it again talked about how psychology is a branch of philosophy and philosophy is very, very old.
The second thing I found really interesting was about John Locke. I’ve heard about Locke in other history classes and honestly don’t remember much about him from those other classes. I did, however, in this chapter find it really interesting on how he kind of came up with the idea of a social contract between the government and the people. He had a very interesting life and contributed to many different areas, but in psychology he plays a important key on human knowledge.
The third thing I found interesting was David Hume. I haven’t really heard of him before, besides in this class, as far as I can remember. I think it was interesting how he was able to come up with three laws of association. These three were resemblance, contiguity, and cause/effect. Today these three things make complete sense! And I can’t imagine not knowing how we were able to recall certain things. Like with resemblance how one object may remind you of another, contiguity when you experienced something together, and cause/effect how if one event happens and then another happens we make a connection between the two in our minds. I just think it’s cool how he was able to come up with that.
The thing I found least interesting is Descartes ideas. I just got a little confused reading his things and found myself zoning out because I didn’t really want to read that section any more. Eventually I just skipped one page because I just kept stopping and thinking anyway and I was never going to get anything done if I didn’t. I’m glad I did because when I got passed him it was a pretty smooth read for the most part. I mean what’s with the whole animal spirits and thinking animals are just machines and what not.
I think just taking a little bit from every person who contributed will be the most beneficial in understanding the history of psychology. I don’t think one persons contribution was more significant than another so if I just take a little bit of everyone’s it’ll be more beneficial than memorizing everything about one guy and not really understand when everyone else had to say.
Well it’s a history class so you just kind of keep building, it explained a little more about where parts of psychology have started from. I’d like to learn more about Humme and Locke and if they had any other contributions to the field, they’re just interesting.
When I think about what ideas I had while reading I just know that I kept thinking how weird it would have been for the people back in those times. From one perspective you have these layman people who have been living the same way and believing in the same things for so many years and then you have these men who are trying to present something new to you or change your mind about something that you’ve thought was right you’re entire life! I just think it would have been really hard to be in that position. Then again you have these great people who were well above their time and came across a great resistance I’m sure. It just seems like it was probably really hard for everyone all around.
The first thing that I found interesting from the chapter was the section towards the beginning about Descartes on the Reflex and Mind-Body Interaction. This explained some of the things that Descartes wrote about in a publication he wrote called The Passions of the Soul. This publication was said to establish him as a pioneer psychologist and physiologist. In this publication he attempted to explain what we now call reflex. His idea on the Mind-Body interaction was explained in a way that muscles in turn depend on the nerves which resemble little tubes, inside these tubes that proceed all from the brain, contains a subtle air or wind which is called animal spirits. These “animal spirits” was a notion created by Descartes that references an idea about the ancient Greeks derived from the “heat” of the blood and were the driving forces behind all of our movements. He also believed that these spirits were tiny particles in constant motion that were found in our brain, nerves, and muscles. Muscle movement resulted from the action of animal spirits in the brain activating the nerves controlling certain muscles rather than others. He then had two additional ideas. The first being that the mind can initiate the movement of these animal spirits in the brain by activating the nerves that control certain movements. Second, that certain muscles can move automatically in response to the results of certain sensory events, in other words, reflexes. In addition to the idea of reflexes, Descartes also had ideas about how the brain came to the deliberate decisions to and the mind, by itself, to initiate these actions. Descartes concluded that this interaction occurred in a part of the brain called the pineal gland, selected because he believed it was a strategically located in a place where the flow of animal spirits could be controlled. The pineal gland was also a brain structure that was not duplicated on both the left and right side of the brain. He then reasoned this decision by saying that it must exert its effect through a structure that was also a single unit. Sensations produced a stretching of small filaments that open pores in the brain, thereby moving these animal spirits and opening up the nerves into the muscles, which were then controlled by these spirits. The book explains that for psychology’s purpose, Descartes predictions that were totally wrong, made an effort to explain the mind-body problem. Because of this thought, he created the concept of reflex action.
My second favorite part about this chapter was the section about Locke and his ideas about human understanding. He originated the idea about epistemology which was the study of human knowledge and its acquisition. He derived these ideas from discussions from friends at Oxford. These friends included such people as Robert Boyle, Sir Isaac Newton, Galileo, and Harvey. Twenty years after the originating discussions, it was published as “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”. Locke considered and rejected the existence of innate ideas. He had an idea that we have innate “faculties” such as the ability to think, but he did not accept Descartes’ contention that ideas derived from reason and could be considered innate ideas. He argued that there is no need to propose innate ideas, because it can be shown that ideas originate from other sources, requiring only the use of our basic mental abilities. Most ideas would initially come from the thought process that we had experienced these things before and therefore have prior knowledge about these things, rather than having to think about certain things, we can only think about the things that we already know something about.
The third and final section I liked about this chapter was the section on John Stuart Mill and his logic on the basic principle of psychology. In 1843, Mill published “A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation”. In this publication, it included some of his beliefs about association and mental chemistry. The logic also outlined a series of methods for applying inductive logic while trying to determine causality in science. He called them the methods of Agreement, Difference, and Concomitant Variation. The Method of Agreement is one that looks for a common element in several instances of an event. The Method of Difference looks for evidence that the absence of an effect is always accompanied by the absence of a proposed cause. The Joint Method is the methods of agreement and difference have the potential for identifying cause, within the limits of induction. Finally, Concomitant Variation is the approach where one looks to see if changes in “X” are associated with predictable changes in “Y”.
These sections were all interesting to me because them come from really early and absurd ideas. The thing that draws me into these sections and why I find them interesting is because of how strange and weird they are. But from these weird and strange ideas, come some mildly valid and concrete ideas that the original thinkers may have come up with or that other people that were interested in their works come up with. Regardless of how strange the ideas are, you have to begin somewhere and then other thinkers can branch off your ideas and so on, hopefully then coming to a final and concrete idea that is valid and true today.
The section that I did not enjoy was the section in the beginning about Decartes and the beginning of modern philosophy. I just felt it was too much history for me and didn’t feel as though it was something that should have been included in a text about the history of psychology. I found it dry and bombarding with way too much useless information. I think that the parts that I read and enjoyed were the parts that are useful in understanding the history of psychology. The biggest point I got out of it was what I mentioned before about the idea that regardless of how strange the idea is, it paves the way to developing the ideas that are still concrete today. Without a strange beginning, we cannot come to a correct and definitive end. I think the ideas about understanding ideas and the people behind them enforce the ideas made in the previous chapter about why it is important to study the history of psychology. By understanding psychology and the people that made an impact, we can gain a larger understanding of the discipline as a whole. I think the topic of Descartes and his “animal spirits/mind-body understanding” theory is interesting and I would like to know more about that. I think my initial ideas about the thought as to why they were telling us the origins of philosophy in a history of Psychology textbook was a bit strange and did not make sense to me.
I posted this once before about 4 hours ago, but for some reason it isn't showing up so here it is again.
Chapter 2
The first thing I found interesting was that although psychology is relatively knew the idea of what psychology is has kind of always been around. They talked about how Hermann Ebbinghaus wrote in his textbook that psychology has a “long past, short history”. When you really think about it he was completely right. Although it may have been called many different things or thought about in many different ways; it’s in our nature to wonder what causes our behaviors as humans. I tied it back to last week as well, because it again talked about how psychology is a branch of philosophy and philosophy is very, very old.
The second thing I found really interesting was about John Locke. I’ve heard about Locke in other history classes and honestly don’t remember much about him from those other classes. I did, however, in this chapter find it really interesting on how he kind of came up with the idea of a social contract between the government and the people. He had a very interesting life and contributed to many different areas, but in psychology he plays a important key on human knowledge.
The third thing I found interesting was David Hume. I haven’t really heard of him before, besides in this class, as far as I can remember. I think it was interesting how he was able to come up with three laws of association. These three were resemblance, contiguity, and cause/effect. Today these three things make complete sense! And I can’t imagine not knowing how we were able to recall certain things. Like with resemblance how one object may remind you of another, contiguity when you experienced something together, and cause/effect how if one event happens and then another happens we make a connection between the two in our minds. I just think it’s cool how he was able to come up with that.
The thing I found least interesting is Descartes ideas. I just got a little confused reading his things and found myself zoning out because I didn’t really want to read that section any more. Eventually I just skipped one page because I just kept stopping and thinking anyway and I was never going to get anything done if I didn’t. I’m glad I did because when I got passed him it was a pretty smooth read for the most part. I mean what’s with the whole animal spirits and thinking animals are just machines and what not.
I think just taking a little bit from every person who contributed will be the most beneficial in understanding the history of psychology. I don’t think one persons contribution was more significant than another so if I just take a little bit of everyone’s it’ll be more beneficial than memorizing everything about one guy and not really understand when everyone else had to say.
Well it’s a history class so you just kind of keep building, it explained a little more about where parts of psychology have started from. I’d like to learn more about Humme and Locke and if they had any other contributions to the field, they’re just interesting.
When I think about what ideas I had while reading I just know that I kept thinking how weird it would have been for the people back in those times. From one perspective you have these layman people who have been living the same way and believing in the same things for so many years and then you have these men who are trying to present something new to you or change your mind about something that you’ve thought was right you’re entire life! I just think it would have been really hard to be in that position. Then again you have these great people who were well above their time and came across a great resistance I’m sure. It just seems like it was probably really hard for everyone all around.
The first topic in this chapter that I found interesting was on page 35 where it talked about the animal spirits. The ancient Greeks thought that animal spirits were “derived from the “heat” of the blood and were the driving forces behind all movement.” Rene Descartes thought that these animal spirits were “tiny particles in constant motion, and were found in the brain, the nerves, and the muscles.” He also believed that muscle movement came from the action of animal spirits in the brain. Descartes believed that “the mind can initiate the movement of animal spirits in the brain by activating the nerves controlling certain muscles rather than others.” (pg.35). And also that certain muscles can automatically move due to sensory events. I don’t really know why I found this interesting, I guess I just like hearing about beliefs about the way certain things were believed to work or operate. And that the ancient Greeks thought there were “animal spirits” in the blood that were controlling our reflexes and movements.
The second thing I found interesting was where it talked about David Hume and the three laws of association. The three laws are resemblance, contiguity, and cause/effect. We use these all the time and sometimes we might not even notice it. For example, when we think of something that happened and it leads us to thinking of another incident that is resemblance.
The third topic I found interesting was on page 42, where it talked about Locke arguing against the use of punishment. I found this interesting because this topic is very controversial. Some people believe that by punishment usage it will teach their child to learn what they are supposed to do or what is supposed to be done, on the other hand, Locke believed that “a child who is beaten for not doing lessons soon comes to dislike learning.” Punishment could lower bad behavior in a child, but continued harsh punishments could give the child fear and low self-esteem. And like Locke said about not liking learning, if a child is beaten for not doing good enough he or she might not like learning because of it or could give up in fear of being hurt again.
The section I found least interesting was the section of The Beginnings of Modern Philosophy and Science. I found my-self spacing out I guess in this section where it was talking about ancient texts and technology and science, it felt too much of history for me, but once I got past it I found the rest of the chapter very interesting about old beliefs and the section about Locke.
I think that the most helpful would be pieces of each philosopher that we are learning about, because they are like building block to helping us understand how things were and we can compare them to how ways are today.
I think this chapter relates to the first chapter because it still goes on to tell about psychology being a branch of philosophy and physiology.
One thing I would like to learn more about would be other beliefs that the ancient Greeks had, because I found the animal spirits in the blood belief interesting.
I am starting to see why we are talking about the history of philosophy in psychology, because they are building on to one another and philosophy is a part of psychology because of all the theories we are learning about.
The first thing that I had found interesting in this chapter, is how the author continues to emphasize how these contributors to psychology are a product of their time tying into what he had said in the first chapter. He elaborates from chapter one to say that these people shouldn’t be criticized by people comparing what we know now to what their ideas and questions were and how they went about analyzing them. It’s interesting for me because of the importance of this point, and as the book also says that were “grappling… with the issues of their day” (Goodwin, pg 59), and times have changed dramatically since their existence so the issues and concerns of their day reflect what their questions and ideas were. For example, a number of these contributors weren’t able to voice their beliefs or findings due to the strictness of the catholic church, an issue that we needn’t not fear now. Also, John Locke’s contribution of the social contract stemmed from the inequality of their government in their time. Again, this isn’t an issue in our time and I with the author that it is unfair to criticize these men for their fundamental practices and beliefs in psychology. I also believe that this is important to the further study of psychology, because who’s to say in 200 years that people will look on what psychologists are doing now and do the same criticizing that we are today?
Another thing that I had found interesting is that people had contributed to psychology’s history without really intending to and how psychology ties into many other subjects, such as John Mill who primarily saw himself as a political and economic philosopher but whose “politics derived from and contributed to his psychology” (Goodwin, pg 52). Even though he had interest and passion in a different subject, he still incorporated psychology and psychological thinking to illustrate his political points. For example, he carried empiricist beliefs and believed that knowledge came from experience, therefore he supported a universal education because he believed that under the right circumstances everybody had the potential to be knowledgeable.
Lastly, I found interesting how God was a factor in a number of these psychology contributors ideas, relating to my first point illustrated how these men are a product of their time. In these men’s time, religion was a prominent factor for their way of life. Even though God’s influence was viewed in different lights, he was still incorporated into the mental processes that were in question. Such as Berkely’s view of reality and perception, and how God is the “permanent perceiver.”
One topic that I would like to learn more about from this chapter, is the subject of holism. It was one that I didn’t quite catch a grasp of. I understood when the book used a pyramid illustration, but I was confused as to putting it into context of other psychological instances.
An idea that came into my head after ready the close-up section about James Mill, is if everybody had the extent of education that he had starting at a very young age, would everybody be as brilliant of thinkers as Mills? Because according to Mill under the right circumstances everybody has the ability to be knowledgeable, but my question is to the extent of what he was?
I liked the quote found on page 32, “it has been studied for many centuries by the most outstanding minds without having produced anything to which is not to dispute”. This quote is talking about philosophy. I find this quote interesting because I interpret it as saying that there has not been one thing that is found to be certain. Everything is questioned and questioned and the people who study philosophy are not willing to make easy conclusions to things. I find this interesting.
I think it is interesting that Descartes studied the reflex and mind body interaction in general. I never thought about psychology intermixing with the medical field. Psychology is so more wide spread than I thought it was.
I liked Locke’s quote, found on page 39, about knowledge and experience. I found this quote interesting because of the way he compared knowledge and experience to a white piece of paper and putting paint on it. This put a visual in my mind and made it easier for me to understand, which I liked.
The only thing I found somewhat non interesting in this chapter was the section on Empiricism applied to vision only for the reason that I have to desire to understand vision or anything associated with it.
This chapter relates to the previous chapter because in this chapter it goes into detail about the specific philosophers and what exactly they contributed to the history of psychology which is what is talked about in chapter one.
I would like to learn more about Locke’s views on education. I would like to learn more about this because I am an education major and I think Locke’s views are very similar to the views we have today on education and how more specifically to best educate the youth today.
I honestly don’t believe I can name just one thing that is more important to the history of psychology than another in this chapter. I believe all the knowledge about these psychologists is important and knowing who they are is important. Without them the field of psychology would not be what it is today and I don’t believe anyone of them is better than the other because each of them contributed in a different way.
My ideas during this reading kept going back to just exactly how they started to study all of this new and different information. I will admit that I’m not a person to question a lot of things; I just accept them for how they are. However, all of these psychologists question and study and come up with theories about tons of different things. Is that something they were born with? The desire to find things out for themselves and unlike me, not accept things for how they are.
This chapter had two major players, René Descartes and John Locke. Descartes’ most fascinating aspects were the ways he saw the mind and human body, and how modern they were, and his employment of rationalism. Descartes saw a clear distinction between the mind (also known as the soul) and the rest of the body, and saw that each part had its own distinct roles. In addition, he had a mechanist belief, that the body operates in a mechanical way. While Descartes saw the distinction as black and white, he also believed that there was an interaction from mind to body, and the other way around. For instance, the book uses the example of an injury and an exercise plan. If someone pulls a hamstring, they have to redesign an exercise plan to not cause more damage to the hamstring. But if we choose to become healthier, we make a conscious decision to exercise more and eat healthier foods.
John Locke, like some modern psychologists, played around with the thought that some ideas were innate, inborn, or universal. He thought that even the most basic of concepts were learned by experience. For example, a small child may learn things through experience before they can verbalize it. What I thought was impressive, was the way he support the innate ideas. In every culture, there is some form of deity that forms the society’s views of everything from every day life to death. The whole concept of innate ideas is difficult to wrap your mind around because you can’t empirically support or disprove it.
Locke also had a basic, but wide, view on education that seems to reflect some importance in today’s society. First, he focused on the training in medicine. This meant that everyone needs to have some background in living a healthy lifestyle but not to be overly obsessive about being healthy. In a way it contrasts the anti-bacterial debate in a historical sense. Second, he saw childhood as a malleable time, where training and behavior can be the easiest to ingrain. However, thought that even bad behavior didn’t deserve punishment, the use of rewards should be used. These rewards should be made concrete, like the reward of learning something new or the sense of pride in a job well done.
Immanuel Kant’s section in this chapter was a little dry, in the sense that it was just a lot of opinion and favored some ideas over others.
John Locke’s theories were wide ranging and very abstract, but also serve as a great foundation for concepts like whether innate ideas are real or everything is just based on experiences. He also created a basic, logical, and effective model of education, which builds upon his idea of innate thoughts or learning. It’s helpful to have some connection from subject to subject. I feel that the innate ideas, whether you believe they exist or not, is a tangled concept. Especially when you begin to dive into historical psychology, which is also why it is so important to learn the concepts now and continue to learn more as we continue the class.
Chapter 2- Edition 3
1. The first thing that I found to be interesting in this chapter is that Rene Descartes was only 13 years old when he attended College. I thought that was very fascinating because many children in that time era may have worked for their families. Descartes even had special privileges over the other students due to being a star pupil. However, even though Descartes went to college and graduated at 18, he took years to develop an idea of rationalism which I find to be very interesting. The education and cleverness of Descartes is truly amazing, because he did not just listen to the Jesuits, which taught him. He wanted to explore and find out “meaning” and purpose to his knowledge.
2. The second thing that I found interesting the many scientific definitions that Descartes discovered. I liked this part of the chapter because I remember learning these terms in high school science classes, but never knew where they originated from. One of the terms was called derived ideas: which is our concept results from our experiences in the world. Another term that was best known of Descartes was dualist: which is arguing for a clear separation between the mind (soul) and the body. I thought the dualist terminology was different because my father is a Rabbi, and I have heard him use this term many times in his teachings/books. The final term that I was shocked to discover by Descartes was the pineal gland; which Descartes analyzed how the mind and body interacted to control the animal spirits. I did believe this idea was a “little out there” but it was interesting to understand why he believed this way.
3. The final thing I enjoyed about this chapter was learning more in depth about John Locke’s liberal political philosophies. I remember coming across about Locke, but I did not know that he elaborated the Hobbesian idea of a social contract between government and people. Locke, influenced our government because Jefferson modeled the Declaration of Independence after this concept. Also, I never thought that Locke would contribute to the history of psychology; however, his two books explain how humans come to understand our world.
* The least interesting part of the chapter was learning about Immanuel Kant. I did not like this part of the chapter because Kant did not believe psychology could ever become a science like the physical sciences. I did not like his logic/reasoning behind it.
* The most useful information in understanding the history of psychology is; philosophical, mathematical, and political people have influenced psychology.
Chapter 2 relates to Chapter 1- in making the readers understand that psychology is a fairly new science and that discoveries are still being made from people’s ideas/experiments from the past.
I would like to learn more about Descartes and possibly read “Discourse on Method” about rationalism. I really enjoyed reading his view on believing, “the way to truth is through the human capacity to reason.”
* One idea- I was wondering if many religious people in the 1600’s (Christians, Catholics, or even Judaism) understood/accepted the ideas of Descartes rationalist views, or did they abolish the ideas.
This first topic that I found to be interesting was the section on “A Long Past”. For me this section put the historical context of psychology into perspective. More specifically, Hermann Ebbinghaus’s quote, “Psychology has a long past, yet its history is short” tries to emphasize that idea the people have been thinking about human nature for a long time in a philosophical way, but did not begin to study it scientifically until much later in history. When the study of psychology began about 130 years ago, at the end of the 19th century, it separated from the study of philosophy and became known as “New Psychology”.
Another topic that I enjoyed reading about was the studies of John Locke. I have heard of him in other classes, but never to the extent to which this book went into detail. One of the things I liked most was that way that the book presented what was going on during the time of John Locke’s life. With this information in mind you could really take into the consideration how he must have been feeling and how out of place he probably felt living in a time with so many changes and dictation, with very little real answers. My favorite discussion was that of the idea of a social contract between a government and its people. This said that it was the government’s job to govern wisely and protect the interest of its people, and it was the people’s job to participate and support the government. If either failed to do so there would be consequences.
The third topic I found interesting was the ideas and life of John Stuart Mill. At an early age he was trained to a logical thinking machine and in doing so, he found himself in a depression by the time he was 20. After some time and meeting a women and falling in love with her he came out of his depression, because he realized that there was more to life that rational thought. Then after some time he and a married women by the name of Harriet Taylor had an affair with Mill and after her husband died she married Mill. Together they worked intellectually on politics, more specifically feminist ideas. When Harriet died her daughter helped Mill and too became an activist for women’s rights, especially women’s suffrage. In Mill’s work he viewed everyone as a blank slate and as having the ability to learn and he used this in an attempt to drive the womens movement.
In the reading of this chapter there was a part that bore me to the point that I found it hard to concentrate and honestly to stay awake. This was the part about the Cartesian System. This included more material on the innate knowledge idea, some very superficial knowledge of dualism and dichotomy. For me the information seemed irrelevant to the point that is trying to be made in the text and quite honestly doesn’t have that much important. Maybe if the information was presented differently I would think otherwise, but for me this section left something to be desired.
All in all this chapter built on the ideas that were founded in the first. This chapter went into more detail about the beginnings of psychology as early scientists and rational thinkers tried to answer the questions about the human body and human nature. As I read this chapter I found it really interesting to read the theories that people had as they tried to come closer to understanding the truth. Today, things like “animal spirits” and “miniature vibrations” may seem ridiculous, but for the time these people were living in these ideas were radical and innovative. I would like to learn more about these interesting theories as well as John Locke’s views on education, which seem similar to today’s views, which are way outside of the context of the time he was living in.
The first thing that stuck out at me was the section on Hermann Ebbinghaus. One thing he’s known by is his quote, “long past, short history” in a book he wrote in 1908. He was making the point that questions about human nature and behavior aren’t new. For one to adequately understand the history of psychology, they must know at least some information in the history of philosophy. I can’t agree more with that quote. I’m sure there were a lot of different people to raise questions and look into some of these things. It’s just people were looking into it in a philosophical manner until about 130 years ago when the study branched out and was called “New Psychology”. This is why Ebbinghaus believes the history of psychology has been brief.
The second thing that really interested me was reading about Rene Descartes. When I saw that he was in his third year of college at the age of 13, I just got dialed in and wanted to learn more about him. He left the college when he was 18, and he discovered philosophy. He once said, “It has been studied for many centuries by the most outstanding minds without having produced anything which is not in dispute.” He then began to thoroughly look into philosophy, along with physics, optics, geometry, and physiology. All of his studies led him to define many different terms that are still used today. I was very surprised to learn of the different kinds of definitions he had come up with. It’s obvious that he played an important part in the history of psychology and philosophy.
The third thing I found to be interesting was the material on John Locke and his take on education. He was concerned on how people should raise and educate children. He was a strong believer in physical health. He believed one had to have a sound body, so they could have a sound mind. He believed in tough love for there to be good outcomes. He suggested children sleep in hard beds to toughen them up. He also believed that children should begin to be taught at a very young age to develop good habits. If they’re not learning a lot at a young age, then they have a good chance to develop bad habits and be far behind when they start school. Locke did not like the use of punishment, especially for older children. He believed a child who was beaten for not doing lessons would soon come to dislike learning all together. Also, he feared it would break the mind of the children and lead them to a low self esteem. Locke didn’t believe in giving a child sweets for good performance. He thought the child would only be interested in sweets, rather than learning. Locke suggested to reward children for something good, but to also punish them for something bad. It’s easy to see that a lot of Locke’s views on education have been used in some way or form. He’s obviously been so important in the history of psychology, but it was very interesting to see what he also provided into the education systems.
There really wasn’t anything that I didn’t find interesting in this chapter, but I guess if I had to choose one thing, it’d have to be the material on Immanuel Kant. Everything else in the chapter was thoroughly explained, so I just thought this section was a little brief. I didn’t feel I really learned anything while I was reading the section. Maybe it was because it was the last section, and I found myself getting tired of reading, but I just thought there could have been more information presented to help me better understand Kant’s role in the history of psychology.
I think reading about all of the different individuals will be most useful for me. Learning where certain ideas and theories came from is very helpful in understanding the history of psychology. The people we’re learning about in this chapter are very important, because most of the work they did was used to branch off of in the future. This helps to thoroughly cover the certain area of study and provide the best information for people like us learning about it. This chapter relates to the previous chapter by actually getting into the individuals and the specifics. Chapter one was just an introduction, so it just kind of gave an overview of different things. This chapter took that information and focused on the different individuals who came up with some of the information presented in chapter one.
I would like to learn more about Rene Descartes. Anyone who is in their third year of college at the age of 13 is very intriguing. To go along with that, he was huge in the history of psychology. He defined a number of different things that are still used today, and I would be very interested in learning more about him. There were a couple of different ideas that kept going through my head while reading this chapter. The first thing was wondering just how smart Rene Descartes was. He was in college when he was 13, so it comes as no surprise that he ended up being a very important figure in the history of psychology. Another idea I had was just thinking how important John Locke is to the history of psychology and the study of psychology as a whole. He did so many things that were very important in the psychology field.
One thing I found to be very interesting was the section on Descartes on the reflex and mind-body interaction. Descartes made an attempt to explain the reflexes of the body. This was really interesting because he had such a different outlook on it than traditional approaches did at the time. The interesting part was when he started discussing the animal spirits which were traced back to the ancient Greeks. He goes on to propose the “heat “from the blood were the forces behind all movements. I found this interesting because certain parts had minor truths to it while others have been disproven. I found it unique to read because back then was such a different time and their thoughts were so different that what you hear and see today. This made me think of the saying mind over body and showed that there were certain things that can still be applied today. Also, he discussed the second part of this process. Muscles move automatically in response to certain sensory events. Reflexes are still used for certain things today. During doctor visits for sports physicals they still sometimes test your reflexes.
Another topic I found interesting was the section on john Locke. Locke studied human knowledge and its acquisition which was called epistemology. It seems that he is very important in the process of understanding human memory and how we acquire it. He wrote two books that played a big role in this, An essay concerning human understanding and Some thoughts concerning education. John Locke, like some modern psychologists, thought that some ideas were innate, inborn, or universal. He believed that all of our knowledge about the world comes from our experiences. He used the white sheet example on our mind from birth. This really helped me to shed some light on the concept he was trying to get across. In a way it makes sense that from birth things are learned from experiences sometimes even before you can verbalize it or understand it. As I read more I thought that there could be more sources than the two he gave which were sensation and reflection.
Another topic I found interesting was how the church had such a pull on most of the research and if they didn’t back it they would put it on a banned reading list. Several psychologists such as Descartes and his book The World. He realized that the church condemned Galileo’s work so instead of publishing he stayed in the good graces of the church until his death. I found this interesting because these psychologists, scientists, and philosophers had all these ideas and theories but didn’t want to expose them because of rejection from the church. After seeing numerous examples in the chapter of this it made me think what information if any was never published due to the fear of rejection. Reading this also made me think about how times from the 1600 to now have changed drastically. A lot of the theories and concepts then were based on religious beliefs and scientific questioning was frowned upon. Even though he feared rejection he still was grateful for the Jesuits for teaching him to be precise and logical in his thinking. This kind of drew more questions in my mind because it seems that at times the Jesuits weren’t the most logical and precise in their thinking yet he was grateful for that very thing. It was very interesting to read about and to see the struggles of these psychologists/scientists while trying to advance their fields.
The part of the chapter I found least interesting was the part on Immanuel Kant. I didn’t really agree with his stance on how experience itself was possible. He argued that it required some prior knowledge helps shape the experiences we have. He felt that our understanding of concepts was based on our brain thinking in terms of cause and effect. He also didn’t believe that psychology could ever become a physical science. I think that mental phenomena can be observed directly and without the use of mathematics. It really was hard to read because I didn’t agree with what he was proposing. I found a lot of his thoughts invalid and quite vague.
I think the most useful pieces of information in this chapter were the different psychologists, scientists, philosophers and their backgrounds. This is going to be a building block for the chapters ahead. I think these important people help build up to what we will learn the rest of the semester. These people were very important during their time. Today some of these people still have breakthrough discoveries that are still in use today. It helped me refresh my memory on some of these people from previous psych classes as well.
I would like to learn more about each of the people mentioned in the chapter. It would be interesting to expand on their ideas and then link it with what we know today. During each section it would be nice to get expanded information on their findings, what they went through and breakthroughs they had while researching. I think that this interests me so much because they played such an important role in the science and history of psychology. I remember the names of most of these psychologists and a brief idea of what they did in their field but a review wouldn’t hurt at all.
This chapter related to chapter one by linking the basic foundation and history of psych to the people that started it. The chapter goes more in depth on the actual history and the people involved in the expansion of the field. It gives more information on the researchers and what they discover compared to chapter one. It also points out that psychology is a fairly new science and information is still being discovered and proposed.
One idea I kept thinking about was how driven these individuals were to keep going forward when certain things like the Catholic Church didn’t want them to. Even today its hard to go against the grain when so many people are telling you not to. For that time frame it really made me realize how passionate they were to make the push to gain new knowledge. They didn’t want to accept what was told to them but rather that wanted to test it and expand on it.
While reading chapter I found Descartes’ ideas about reflex and mind-body interaction very interesting to read about. It is hard to think that Descartes was describing reflexes as early in time as 1649. He did not invent or use the term “reflex,” Thomas Willis is the physiologist responsible for that. Reflexes are the automatic response we have. The example described in the book is in Figure 2.1. It shows how we react to fire. We automatically pull away from the heat. Our body naturally knows this is not a desirable; it is an involuntary reaction. Descartes believes we do this because of animal spirits. These spirits are within us in tiny particles that are found in our brains, nerves, and muscles. Descartes describes how our brain tells your nerves what to do and then our muscles retract. This caught my attention because it is something we all experience at some time in our lives, so it is easy to relate to.
John Locke’s ideas were very easy for me to follow and understand. Primary and secondary qualities were fun to read about because their ways I describe things, but I have never really looked at them as two different ways to describe something, usually when I’m told to describe something I think of shape and color in the same way, not as two separate ways to describe something. Primary qualities are shape, motion, extension, while secondary qualities are color, taste, warmth, and smell. Locke focuses on these things because he believes there are only two ways form an idea about something: sensation or reflection.
I very enlightening to find out John Stuart Mill was a feminist. He lived back in the 1860’s and he believed in equally rights for women, including voting. He let his wife and step-daughter help him with his research and political work. I was surprised when I read this because I am sure he didn’t know very many men who felt the same way. In fact, I would assume most people would think what he was saying was foolish. I personally found this interesting because I am a woman. I never realized that some people had those feminist beliefs as far back as the 1800s.
I did not find Mill’s logic very interesting, mostly because I have taken research methods and have heard all of it before. I also thought while I was reading it that the way the book just uses X and Y makes it very confusing to follow.
I think learning about some of the history behind the geocentric view and the heliocentric theory is useful in understanding the history of psychology. It seems like it was a big starting point to psychology separating from philosophy. There starts to be a separation of church and state because a lot of people like Descartes got in trouble with the Catholic Church.
This chapter relates to the last chapter because chapter 1 was an introduction to psychology and why learning its history is important to know. Chapter 2 is the part of the book where we actually start learning the history and the name of a few well-known psychologists. We need to apply what chapter 1 said about applying the history to its present values and knowledge at the time a section talks about.
I would like to learn more about Descartes because I found him interesting to read about. He didn’t publish his work, so you know it wasn’t just for attention or news. He really believed what he wrote and was a very well-educated man.
An idea I had while reading this chapter was that I wanted to know more about how the Catholic Church treated people who had books they didn’t approve of. Were they banned from the church? Were other Catholics not allowed to speak to them? I also wondered how long it took them to write a book back in the 1800s.
Chapter 2
I really enjoyed this chapter because it moved past the introduction stage and jumped into the history of psychology. It was hard to narrow it down to three things I found interesting because I could easily say I found the entire chapter interesting, for the most part. I really admire Descartes and have always been interested in his ideology. I think this is because of the time period, the end of the Renaissance when the Church was the main authority and no one had ever questioned it. I go back and forth on the topic because part of me believes believing is not always seeing, but another part of me is stubborn to accept truth unless there is hard evidence. I enjoyed how the book calls Descartes a rationalist, meaning that true knowledge came from the systematic use of reasoning abilities. The book also referred to him as a dualist and an interactionist which caught my interest because I had never heard of these terms before. This meant that Descartes believed that the mind and body were distinct essences, but that they had direct influence on each other. This is a very interesting concept to me, the mind is technically located in our bodies, but it is also so much of an importance on its own that you cannot refer to it and the body as one. They are rather partners that work together to make us behave the way we do. The second thing that I found interesting was Locke’s belief that parents should take an active role in their children’s education. He thought that children should be encouraged with praise and not actual rewards. I found this interesting because I would like to believe that the person we are today is somewhat affected by how we were raised. Being a psychology minor, I enjoy learning about all the different behaviors and personalities of human beings and why we are that way to begin with. It is interesting to find any trends or past experiences that may lead to a cause for why a person behaves the way they do. The third thing I found interesting was Immanuel Kant and his theory that experience itself was not possible without a basis of prior knowledge to provide the framework for our experiences. I find myself agreeing with him that experience is important for developing an understanding of the world and that experience is based on something not just a blank slate. I do not, however, necessarily agree with his belief that psychology could not achieve the status of a science. Even though much of psychology is theoretical and not always black and white, I still strongly believe it is a science and is a part of our brain that is not just an idea. Psychology is important to me because it constantly brings new ways of thinking about humans and how we act everyday in the environment.
One thing that I did not find as interesting was George Berkeley and visual perception. As much as a I agree with psychology being a science and I enjoy the subject a lot, I usually refer to science as my least favorite subject (i.e. chemistry/biology). For some strange reason I struggled with these subjects in school, so therefore didn’t have too much interest. Psychology was a class that I did do well in and was actually one of my favorite classes in high school. I think it is the theoretical and philosophical side of psychology that interests me the most; I like being skeptical and looking at all possible answers to certain questions.
Something that I read that I think will be the most useful for me understanding the history of psychology was Gottfried Leibniz and his monadology that provided a basis for the concepts of the unconscious and sensory thresholds. Much of our psychology lies in the unconscious part of our brain which makes it a subject that does not always have known answers. This explains the number of theories that have been apparent throughout the history of psychology.
Chapter 2 relates to chapter 1 because the first chapter explains the history of psychology through the researcher where as chapter 2 gives examples of those researchers such as Descartes and describes the people who are known for the first groundbreaking theories in psychology.
I would love to learn more about Descartes since I find his ideas interesting. I think I would enjoy reading further into his belief of rationalism and I would maybe be able to relate more to his theories as I learned more. This was an idea I had while reading since I found myself relating to this historian of psychology the most. I can sometimes connect to the feeling of questioning authority, so it would have been so interesting to be around at the time with religion was first beginning to be questioned. The thought had never crossed anyone’s minds because it couldn’t; such ideas were not taken lightly back then. I think that allowed for the true study of psychology to begin.
I thought it was interesting that Rene Descartes is seen as the father of modern psychology. He was around from 1596 to 1650. After being formally educated he was not satisfied and wanted to find out more for himself. During his time a lot of progress was being made in science such as the telescope and microscope. Descartes was one of the first to become more of a scientist than a philosopher. Descartes was a rationalist. So he would only accept what could not be doubted. Because of this belief he did not trust the senses because they could be fooled. But he could rely on the fact that he knew he was the one who continued to doubt. This led him to believe that the way to find truth was with our capacity as humans to reason.
I also found it interesting that in Descartes’ Discourse on Method that he came up with this new way to find out if something were true. It seemed to me this method was not so special but then I kept reading and the book read my mind. It reminded me to keep in mind not to be too presentist because back in his time Descartes’ thinking was very revolutionary.
The third thing I found interesting was the part on Immanuel Kant. He was a German philosopher. I was surprised that he was very “provincial” and did not travel like John Stuart Mill. He is important to the field of psychology because he wrote three books in his later life on reason and judgment. He agreed with empiricists but also went further and was interested in the process. It was also interesting to read that Kant thought psychology could never become a real science like the physical sciences because it could not be directly observed.
What I found to be the least interesting was maybe the subject of this chapter. I do not want to sound stupid, lazy or impatient but I took philosophy and have learned about these things. I was not excited to have to review it because it takes a lot of thought and I don’t like the subject. All of this talk of if x then y is too close to math and makes me sleepy.
I think the most useful of this chapter was the roots of psychology before it was known as psychology. It is useful to know how it sprouted and grew into what it is today. Going back to the first chapter knowing history is important and this is the foundation.
This chapter relates to the previous chapter in a few ways. I feel like all chapters will build on each other. What is learned in the last chapter will help to understand future chapters.
The topic I will choose to learn about more might be the details of how Kant’s books relate to psychology in more depth and how they have influenced psychology. I think he would be my favorite philosopher if I had to choose.
I had several ideas while reading this chapter. I realized that I had never thought about how closely related philosophy and psychology are. I thought this was another dense chapter. I thought how western focused this chapter was and wondered if any Asian philosophers could be added.
I found the section devoted to Descartes extremely interesting. Descartes was a great philosopher who lived towards the end of the Renaissance period. Descartes thought very logically and had great reasoning abilities, which made him a rationalist. Descartes was also a very skeptical person who questioned the work of other philosophers. I found extreme interest in Descartes’ theory for how we come up with ideas. Our Innate ideas are ideas that we use our native reasoning to come to. For example, we would come up with an innate idea because of our biological make up. Derived Ideas’ on the other hand, are ideas that we come up with based on our experiences in life. I think it’s also interesting that he was one of the first people to try to explain what we know now as “reflexes”. Basically, he attempted to explain the interaction between our mind and our bodies. The last thing that I found interesting, (also incorrect I believe) is what Descartes thought of as animal spirits. Animal spirits are “tiny particles in constant motion and were found in the brain, the nerves, and the muscles”. Although I don’t think he was completely correct on his attempt to explain reflexes, he was still the first of his time to make an attempt to do so.
Another part of the chapter that I found interesting is quite a small part, but it really made me think. On page 29, there is a quote by Ebbinghaus that says “long past, short history.” The “long past” portion of this quote refers to the idea that people from the beginning of time had questions about some of the psychological research we do today. The “short history” portion of this quote refers to the fact that psychology is a very new field compared to other fields. Although it was only a small portion of the chapter, it made me think of how many fields we don’t have around yet, but yet still have questions related to it and don’t even know.
The third part that I found interesting was Locke’s view on Education. I understand the views that Locke holds on education, and I simply found them to be very interesting. I liked his view of punishment in an academic setting the most. He said that punishment in an academic setting can be a very negative thing because it makes the children hate learning. He says that “although it may stop unruly behavior, it may do more to break the mind”. He also believed that given children concrete rewards can also have a negative effect as well. This reminds me of an example of when we used to get a free pizza from Pizza Hut as children for reading a certain number of books. For awhile after, I was not interested in reading books because they stopped giving me free Pizzas.
There weren’t many parts that really stuck out that I seriously disliked, but if I had to pick, I would say that the part of George Berkeley’s analysis of visual perception based on empiricist arguments. It wasn’t that I disliked it, I just did not find it very interesting mainly because it was a bit dry.
The main ideas that I had while reading this chapter were how much Philosophy really played into the origins of psychology. Without the philosophy behind it, there may not have been any interest in creating psychology. Overall, the chapter was okay, but I think I enjoyed the first chapter a little more. This one was a bit dry and right to the point, while the last chapter was a little more fun to read. Not at all terrible though, I’ve read dryer text.
The first section that I found interesting was, “Descartes and the Rationalist Argument.” This section caught my eye because in the first couple sentences it explains that Descartes had been in college for 3 years by the time he was 13. That is very intriguing, we here of kids today who are done with college by 18 and in the book, “The Outliers,” there are a couple examples of children who do amazing things and finish school before they finish their teens, but to start college at the age of 10 is impressive.
The second part I found very interesting was Descartes ideas on reflex and the mind and body. Even though he was wrong on most of his predictions, for the technology of the time he was very close to the truth. Just the fact that he thought that humans had nerves that sent messages from parts of the body to the brain was ahead of his time. Even though he was lacking in understanding how the spine plays a special role in sending messages to the brain and aiding in reflexes to extremities Descartes was able to fairly accurately grasp what was going on neuromuscular in the human body.
The final person I found very interesting was Immanuel Kent. Using space and time as grounds to prove cause and effect is brilliant. In many ways I feel that he is right and humans do make decisions based on cause and effect circumstances and everything that we predict will happen is based on previous time and space encounters. Also Kent argued that psychology could not be a science because it is not observable. I agree that the actual thoughts cannot be seen, but the behavior because of certain stimulus can. Why does it matter if two people are exposed to the same stimulus, think different thoughts, but behave in the same way. Human behavior is observable and predictable and apart of psychology as a science.
The section I found least interesting was on David Hartley. I did still find this section interesting however, just less interesting then the rest. I was actually very entertained by the entire chapter, but I got a little lost on Hartley’s “psychophysical parallelism.” I felt like I had a good grasp on the idea that the more we see things together the more we will remember all the aspects even if we only see a piece of the puzzle, but I did not understand how that was different physically and mentally. Perhaps I should research more about the topic, but unfortunately I found something I am more interested in researching.
The area I would like to research more into is George Berkeley’s “subjective idealism.” I would like to learn more about the laws of subjective idealism. I gathered from the text that the main idea was that nothing could be made certain visually because vision relied on other senses as well as experience. This being said everyone has different experiences and perceives things differently so nothing is certain. It is almost like the idea behind “The Matrix” that what you see is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain so who is to say what is real. I wonder if “The Matrix” got their idea from the concept of “subjective idealism?” I am going to research more into this idea.
I felt that one section related to being both the most useful for understanding psychologies history and the closest in relation to chapter 1. That section was the final part of the chapter: “In Perspective: Philosophical Foundations.” I felt that this section was the most useful in understanding psychologies history because it reminds us to remember that the people that we read about were pushing the limits of their day. It is easy for us to look back now and say they should have seen the next step, but for their time period they were at the cutting edge of psychology and couldn’t even fathom all the theories we hold today. This is also the reason I feel that this section was most like the previous chapter. The first chapter was always reminding us to critically think of the history of psychology as if we were in the time that these first theories were being made. I think that the final section in chapter 2 was put in to remind us of the principles that chapter 1 had tried to teach us.
While reading the chapter I couldn’t help but think about how everything was dictated by the church. Many scientists like Galileo and Descartes delayed to release their work until after their deaths because of fear of the repercussions from the church. This being said we do owe the church a lot for unifying a massive population of people for a common goal. You can argue whether that goal is right or wrong, true or false, but the fact remains that the unity and organization brought on by the church is largely responsible for giving many people, of Galileo and Descartes age, the luxury of being able to research these psychological and philosophical problems instead of hunting and gathering and fighting to survive.
After reading chapter 2, the first thing I found interesting was the discussion of John Locke and his rejection of innate ideas. He states that ideas are not innate, rather we learn from experiences. The text gave an example that, if a two year talks about God, it’s not that the idea of God was implanted in its brain; it’s that the two year old was exposed to the concept of God through overhearing conversation of adults.
A second thing from the chapter that I found interesting was John Locke’s ideas on education, especially when he argues against punishment. He talks about how, if you beat a child for not doing a school lesson, soon the child comes to dislike learning. He goes on to say that even though punishment might reduce unwanted behavior, severe and repeated punishment carries the danger as Locke said of “breaking the mind, and then, in place of a disorderly young fellow, you have a low-spirited moped creature.”
I found this interesting after taking a class on behaviorism where we learned about the effects of punishment. After that class I thought that positive reinforcement works a lot better than punishment. After reading this chapter and Locke’s thoughts it reinforces that idea. I would like to learn more and better understand what he meant when says “breaking the mind’.
The third thing from chapter 2 that I found interesting was David Hume’s three laws of association. Resemblance, some objects remind us of others because they look alike. Contiguity, experiencing things together so when you think of thing it reminds you of the other (an example of this is if your first time eating lobster in red lobster then you associate lobster with red lobster), and cause and effect where one thing follows another.
The part I found least interesting was the part about Immanuel Kant. I found this a repeat of other points in the chapter. I did find his point about psychology not being a “true” science like the physical sciences interesting, just not as interesting as the rest of the chapter
What I read in the chapter that I think will be most useful to me in understanding the history of psychology is how psychology derives from philosophy and how it talks about people that contributed to the history of psychology.
This chapter relates to the previous chapter in that it continues to extend the concept about history and how one thing builds off the last.
The topic would I would like to learn more about is John Locke. I found him very interesting in terms of his ideas about education and about how we develop our knowledge and selves through our contact with the world; that is, through experience.
While reading the chapter I found the parts about John Locke the most interesting part of this chapter. Reading about his theory that knowledge of the world is based on experiences. I found this interesting. He seemed like someone who would approve of the behaviorist approach to psychology.
In this chapter I found it very interesting that although the history of Psychology is rather young, it does have some ancient roots in Philosophy. The ties that were made between the two when medicine was still very simplistic and not much was known about the human body. Some of the findings are really incredible when you realize that they had so little in the way of technology to test their ideas.
I also found Descartes theories about reflex and how the brain controlled emotions to be really interesting. Although he missed the mark in many ways he knew there were physical causes for various emotions.
Although I found how John Stewart Mill was raised a little disturbing, I found his Joint Methods to be really interesting. The book called this similar to the scientific experimental method.
I was really not a fan of Kant’s ideas that Psychology was not capable of truly being a science. I think that thought really undermines all that the brain does in the human body.
I would be interested in learning more about Mill’s ideas on Method.
The first section of the chapter discussed Rene Descartes. This entire section was interesting to read and digest but the passage about his four rules to truth was especially attention-grabbing. He was basically stating that before accepting something as truth we have to examine it, break it down, reason it out and come to our own conclusions about it. After the book explains the rules, it very plainly states that we shouldn't be surprised at Descartes conclusions. I agree that the four rules aren't extraordinary or genius. But this is yet another example of presentist thinking. At the time, these ideas were revolutionary! The church had such an influence on the public that they would accept just about anything the church published as truth. The church was such a big influence that Descartes held back some of his writings and ideas for fear of persecution or exile.
The next idea that was interesting to ponder was the distinction between primary and secondary qualities proposed by John Locke. According to Locke, Primary qualities of an object are those that are inherent or innate; properties that just exist they aren't determined by perception. An example would be that water is a liquid. It has an inherent readiness to flow and has no fixed shape. A secondary quality would be one that is determined using perception for example we can say that ice cream tastes like chocolate or vanilla. We use our tasting sensation to describe a quality of something. This distinction is important to consider if one believes that human perception can lead to discovering truths about existing bodies. But maybe everything that we sense is just BS and we are living in the matrix.
The paragraphs on John Stuart Mill's ideas were also entertaining. It explained a couple of Mill's methods for attempting to determine causality in science which we still struggle to do even today. The methods propose many of the problems with research that still exist. "All participants exhibit X therefore Y" But we will never be able to complete a study of every person on the planet so just because every single person in this sample exhibits both X and Y it does not mean X causes Y. This is kind of representative of the issue with human science in general. It seems to be all speculative and based on assumptions. No definite causal conclusion can be made because we can't possibly study every single individual person in the world. There may be a person out there that defies every study ever done!
I don't think anything was really UNINTERESTING to me. I skimmed the parts about empiricism and British association because they sounded boring and because I didn't feel like reading all that but I'm sure they could have been interesting.
A good refreshment on early philosophical ideas and the breakaway from the church is always helpful in trying to understand science including psychology. If we don't understand why we should come to rational conclusions on our own why wouldn't we just accept intelligent-sounding ideas offered by individuals in power?
This chapter presented several ideas that we would dismiss as trivial or obvious but a closer examination combined with an application of historicist thinking can help us to understand just how ballsy these guys were for even thinking the way they did. The application of historicist thinking is what I learned how to do from the last chapter.
I always like to read about early thinking especially in the language they used. It was a much more precise and articulate time when Descartes and Locke were writing about their thought struggles.
I always like to take the role of skeptic so I thought about psychology as a science in general. I thought about how closely related history is to now. People have the same questions but new answers come out every year. I thought about the motives of church officials. I thought about Descartes just moving out to France just roaming around and learning about stuff. That takes a great deal guts, independence, confidence, and passion.
Three things that I found interesting in Chapter 2 were how psychology and philosophy are related, Descartes’ reasoning, and animal spirits. In this chapter, the psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus emphasized how philosophy is crucial in understanding the history of psychology. He points out how the history of psychology cannot be fully understood without knowing about the history of philosophy, because many important issues in psychology today have been addressed by philosophers of the past. This chapter tells of the importance of Descartes and shed light on his thoughts. One of Descartes’ methods was that the way to truth was through the human capacity to reason. I find this interesting, because I feel that it helped to shape people’s thinking. Without reasoning, it would be difficult go through day to day life. For example, even when I’m tired, I can reason with myself to still get out of bed to go to class , because I know that skipping class will hurt my grade. Another one of Descartes’ theories that I found to be unique and interesting was his theory of animal spirits. He believed that tiny spirits in constant motion were found in the brain, muscles, and nerves. Muscles moved resulted from these spirits controlling the brain and then signaling different nerves. This is important, because it sets a base for thinking of how the brain works, which is important in the field of psychology. One thing that I felt that was slightly different was the section over primary and secondary qualities. I found it to be confusing, because Locke was saying that a secondary quality isn’t produced by an object, it is just how you experience the object individually. It is just a strange thing to think that other people’s “green” may be my “purple”.
I feel that a lot of these topics will be useful in understanding the history of psychology, because it presents many new terms and ideas that I have never even heard of. All of these new terms lay the foundation of psychology, making the field what it is today. For example, Locke’s views on education greatly influenced the branch of psychology called behaviorism.
I think that chapter 2 related to chapter 1, because chapter 1 was intruding reasons to study the history of psychology, while chapter 2 presents us with the beginnings of this history.
One topic that I would like to learn about in more detail is Locke’s empiricist thinking. I am a nanny, and use behavioral psychology on a daily basis. Whether it’s getting a child to share a toy, to do homework, or even to just put their socks on, I think that Locke’s views and advice can help make my job go a lot smoother.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading this chapter and it made me wonder what other theories and ideas from the past that people had, but never caught on. I think it would be interesting to see all of the other philosophical ideas of the past that have influences psychology in some way.
The first thing that I found interesting from chapter 2 was about the early beginnings of psychology and philosophy in itself. It first talked about many great innovators such as Galileo with challenging the Catholic Church in his theory on the Copernican theory that the universe did not revolve around the earth and Leonardo Davinci who was not only a master painter, but inventor of many new things. Rene Descartes was the main subject they talked about though since he had the first real idea of psychology. Descartes made the notion that our body reacts to stimuli in everything that we do and started the first idea of behaviorism and tried to make a notion at physiology as well, but it was later proven wrong. He believed also that are body and mind are infused together to cause action which was a major breakthrough. He also gave the first real groundwork on how to have a complete scientific thought which was revolutionary in his time.
I also really liked what John Locke explained in his work about ideas and behaviorism. Locke was a British empiricist that had the idea that everyone started out as a blank white sheet of paper and they learned everything as a baby on. He also had a great idea called senses and reflections. He believed everything that people perceive things wither it is felt, seen, or heard even tasted is called a sense and thinking about them is how you reflect them. He also had an early start on behaviorism which reminded me a lot of the class behavior modifications that I have taken earlier in my own schooling which was very interesting. Locke talked about how it is ineffective to beat children in order for them to obey and it is much more effective to reward them.
The third part I really enjoyed was about how John Mill Jr. was brought up and contributed to psychology. Mill was brought up not like normal children at all and learned new languages at a young age and was doing complex math as well. He had the mind of a college student very young and it helped him to be very successful. It is very cool to see how an upbringing so different can make a man as successful not only in politics and business as Mill was, but also in psychology. Mill helped a lot with research methods in the fact on how genes affect human’s behavior and laid the groundwork for research methods today. He helped a young lady Helen Taylor to build her own ideas towards women’s rights and the treatment of women.
I think the most useful part of this chapter has to be the little bits and pieces that may seem boring, but are really the ground work of what psychology is today. The science was derived obviously from philosophers who had great ideas on how we operate and each contribution I can connect to what I have been learning in different classes. I really liked the part about Locke and his work with behaviorism which seemed very advanced for his time period. This chapter really got me thinking on what parts of psychology I think are interested in and how I can relate them to future classes.
In the beginning, Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Gutenberg were mentioned and I liked how I recognized their names. It caught my interest and made me want to read more because I want to be able to recognize names in Psychology like I do for famous artists and inventors. I wasn’t sure how they were going to tie it in to history of psychology, but I kept on reading.
I liked Descartes section about relating psychology and physiology in regards to reflexes. He mentions how muscles depend on nerves which lead to the brain. Animal spirits, located in the brain, muscles and nerves, were always in motion. It separated how the mind can control the body, but sometimes the body will respond without having invaded the mind first.
The section about empiricism struck me because how the British thought knowledge came from experience is a lot how I think of it too. I think we learn from experience and associate experiences with others to understand the events taken place. John Locke’s main statement is that all of our knowledge about the world derives from our experiences and most of me agrees with him. The part of me that doesn’t is what if we never experience an event, but study others’ past experiences? Does that count? Though it didn’t happen to us, we don’t have any knowledge of it whatsoever?
I think that this chapter was most useful in that obviously not all researchers are alike. It’s interesting to see how they can branch off from one another like how Locke agreed and disagreed with Descartes and Hume related to Locke on the whole experience is key to knowledge part of the history of psychology. No one is necessarily right or wrong about their research, but each of them explain how they came about their findings thinking that they were right and someone else was wrong.
Chapter one was more of an explanation of why we study the history of psychology. It gave us a reason and defined that history is important to know the present. Chapter two connected with chapter one by branching off with prime examples on where researchers started and how they came about in the course of psychology’s history.
I liked reading about the British tradition of associationism through Hume and empiricism through Locke. I liked reading about Hume’s elements of impressions and ideas and how ideas are a lot like impressions, but not as clear.
Hume’s cause and effect got me thinking about nothing directly comes from something else in regards to events without regularity. We have expectations for events in the future because of the experience we had with them in the past. For instance, if I take a certain path to school in the morning and it takes me 5 minutes to get to there, I will assume it will always take me 5 minutes because it has over and over again in the past. It’s not always guaranteed that I will get to school in 5 minutes on that path because other things like traffic or car issues can affect the time it takes to get there on any given day.
As I established in last week’s post over the readings, I love quotes and the analysis of quotes. Further, the quote I found interesting in this week’s (Chapter 2) reading expanded on a conversation that I had had with one of my friends, co-workers, and a philosophy major. She stated that before science and before history even, there was philosophy. This made me think about the history of psychology and what we are really studying in this class. Which came first, science of psychology? It seems to strike me as a chicken and an egg sort of question. Thus, the quote by Hermann Ebbinghaus proved most interesting, “long past, short history”. He is most right. Before forming actual experiments (by today’s standards) humans looked at the behaviors and basic human nature of others. You didn’t have to do a complete experiment to “study” psychology or analyze human behavior. Therefore, psychology/the study of psychology is far from new! If I were to guess in this chicken and egg question, I would say that philosophy and psychology came first…then science came later. When Psychology became an actual, physical science, that is when its history began. That is when psychologist began to establish places on timelines. Ebbinghaus himself has a place in the short history of psychology as the inventor of the “nonsense syllable” yet he does not come anywhere close to the past time when psychology began.
I was drawn to my next point of interest by the picture in the book that illustrates Descartes Reflex and Mind-Body Interaction. It has a little man kneeling by a fire and it shows how there is a tube that is connected all the way from this man’s foot to his brain. It’s interesting to think that someone originally had to come up with the idea of a “reflex”. I mean, if I were to look at something that we just naturally do and imagine it without a name or purpose, I would be dumbfounded. How interesting is it that someone had to study and come up with a name for something that we instinctually do to protect ourselves? It seems like that is the point that separates us from animals, the fact that we are able to conceptualize and study our instinctual actions. Yet, Descartes calls our reflexes our “animal spirits”. Even though he looked at the idea of “animal spirits” slightly different as he referenced the Greeks, it’s still interesting to look at how this idea snowballed to a more scientific study of our actual nerves and movements that are part of our reflexes. It almost seemed like Descartes looked at this notion of “reflex” in a chicken and egg type way at first as well. He proposed that it is the mind that initiates our movements in regard to our reflexes/animal spirits and that our nerves react. He also proposed the inverse idea, that our nerves can give automatic sensory responses that arrive later at the brain. It’s further interesting to look at how, whether correct or not, one psychologists questions and reasoning, can lead to another’s discovery of something else, like “reflexes”.
One last point of interest that I had came from a quote that beautifully states the way I feel about philosophy and psychology and how I could not argue the two to be separate. At least no more distant than cousins! “It has been studied for many centuries by the most outstanding minds without having produced anything to which is not to dispute”. This is so true. What psychological finding was ever completely supported without being or continuing to be disputed. Further, that quote seems to ask the question “how different are psychology and philosophy really?” “I think, therefore I am”. Is that philosophy as it questions our existence or what “life” is, or is it psychology for addressing our thoughts? How interesting is it to debate the connection of the two confounds? To me, it is the most interesting thing in the book thus far! Why not question life so deeply?
One thing that I did not find interesting, as always, was John Locke. Everyone seems to think he’s interesting and I noticed that a few people even put him as one of their three interesting things. However, I have never found him all that great. It’s actually totally weird and hypocritical that I don’t like him because I follow his teachings without even realizing it sometimes. I’m also a huge advocate for physical health before everything else. I focus a lot of my interest on behaviorism and I fully recognize the importance of starting early with education. Truth be told, my personal beliefs reflect that I should seemingly worship Locke. Yet, I still find him annoying. Perhaps it’s because I agree with him so he doesn’t challenge me and therefore, I’m not interested. Also, I do believe in the effectiveness of punishment. I think that he was a little to protective and “weak” in terms of teaching using a balance of punishment and reinforcement. In summary, I think I found Locke least interesting in this chapter because he is old news and he and I share very similar beliefs. I’m not as interested in someone who I’m not challenged by.
It’s quite obvious that this week’s material built and expanded on last week’s material as we are in a history class! You can’t really move forward without the past. Also, even the philosophical quotes seem to build on each other. The first reading had a quote that I liked by Boring that said, “The past is not a crystal ball. It has more whence than whither to it. The seat on the train of progress all face backwards: you can see the past but only guess about the future”. This week looks to Ebbinghaus who states, “long past, short history”. The both reflect on the idea that history is extremely rich in that it expands farther than we can possibly know in both directions. Both chapters relate as they seem to talk about philosophy and how it relates to psychology as much as history… Based on the content of these two chapters, it seems that it would not be unreasonable to call our class the philosophy of psychology. It’s all philosophical, it’s just organized chronologically.
The most helpful pieces of information from this chapter will be to know about the different philosophers and what they contributed as well as when they contributed it to the field of psychology. That is after all the purpose of this class-to understand and put together the puzzle of learning and discovery in psychology. It appears that the majority of it is actually incredibly connected to philosophy and the two subjects share a history (or perhaps more correctly stated, a “past”).
I think it is more than clear and goes without saying that the ideas I’ve had while reading this chapter were all philosophically based. I have new ideas about looking at psychology from a philosophical view. I also elicit the most interest in the quotes that summarize the sections, perhaps much more so than the actual chronological and historical organization. The ideas that I had while reading this section were branches of the idea that perhaps psychology should be categorized under philosophy and not science…however, it is definitely a science-especially in the form of neuroscience. Perhaps the study of psychology could be divided between the two fields. For the clear reasons listed above, I would like to learn more about the relationship between psychology and philosophy and perhaps even history. It seems much more grey than I was originally led to believe.
While reading chapter two, I found many things interesting. Starting off, I didn’t realize how much the church had an influence on education and beliefs back in the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. I found it fascinating that many prominent thinkers kept their ideas a secret until they died to escape prosecution by the church. For example, it started with the Copernican theory that the earth was not the center of the universe, but that the earth in fact revolved around the sun. This gave birth to the heliocentric theory, replacing the geocentric view of the universe. This was a problem because it challenged Gods’ creation of his people and the earth. Galileo Galilei then took it further and supported Nicolas Copernicus’ theory with empirical (observational) evidence. Galileo subsequently got charged with heresy and his writings/evidence were placed on the Catholic churches “Index of Prohibited Books”.
Descartes was very educated, even from a young age. Around the end of the renaissance, Descartes really started making his impact on society. Even in the course of Descartes education, the church was still controlling how people were “supposed” to think. Basically, he refuted this privately and went to do his own research and educational thoughts by himself. After he died, his writings were published and the church found them very disturbing, once again to place them into the Index of Prohibited books. They found it threatening that Descartes was giving way to rational thought, to support things with evidence. This would of course challenge things that were supposedly happening for religious reasons.
John Locke also had an interesting belief. His belief focused on experience. I found this rather interesting because to a certain degree I find it very true. I mean, don’t you think for most jobs, people could be trained in them with no educational background of that area and do just fine after awhile of doing that job? Most likely. I think so anyway. Some things I believe are innate abilities but for the most part, I think a lot of our learning as children comes from watching others. We copy what we see.
I found the section on George Berkeley rather dull. Berkeley was trying to refute the experiences theory of Locke by saying that senses were required for experiences. Well, of course this is true to an extent. I find it irrelevant because of course someone who has sensory deficiencies isn’t going to be able to experience the world as someone else would. So, subsequently, their learning experiences are going to be impaired.
Chapter two relates to the history and systems of psychology by showing the fundamental beginnings of psychology and its closely related field, philosophy. To start advancing a field, one has to start at the very beginning.
I would like to learn more about the relationship between psychology and philosophy as these are two fields of interest to me.
One thing I found interesting in chapter two was Desecrates Disclosure on Method. He described four basic rules he used to find truth of some matter. These rules were consisted of – first: he would accept nothing as truth unless “it presented itself so clearly and distinctly to my mind that there was no reason to doubt it”, second: he would take problems and analyze them – reducing them to their fundamental elements, third: he would systematically work from the simplest of these elements to the more complex, and fourth: he would carefully review his conclusions to be certain of omitting nothing. Although these four rules seem ordinary today, they were revolutionary during the time Desecrates came presented them. He was no longer going to think in the same terms as authorities (i.e. Catholic Church), but rather for himself, but coming to his own conclusions based off his own logical analysis. These same thoughts play a role in psychology today, it is important to be skeptical in the field of psychology and to test things that you are skeptical of yourself.
Another thing I found interesting was John Locke’s belief that the mind at birth is an empty sheet of white paper, ready to be written upon by the experiences of one’s lifetime. Locke rejected Desecrates concept of innate ideas and believed that ideas come solely from experience. He believed that every idea we have originated from two processes know as sensation and reflection. Sensation refers to all of the information taken in by our senses from the environment and reflection refers to the mental activities involved in passing information from both the senses and memory. Although there are flaws with Locke’s theory, it was still intriguing to read about his ideas and beliefs.
Reading about John Stuart Mill was also interesting. I have learned about Mill in previous courses, but I wouldn’t consider myself to be extremely familiar with him. It was interesting to read and learn about his childhood and how sheltered he was from the outside world. He never spent a day in a classroom with other students, but was far more advanced in his studies than those of his peers. He was taught by his father and spent the better part of his days reading advanced literature, writing, mathematics, and reporting his learning’s to his father. As Mill’s grew older so did his logic. Some of his methods of scientific investigation still remain popular in modern research methods texts. All in all, John Stuart Mill was a key transaction figure in the shift from philosophy to psychology.
One thing within this chapter that I found to be less interesting was the section about George Berkeley. This is because I have taken a biological psychology course and learned a lot about vision within that course. I realized Berkeley’s work with visual perception is important to psychology and lead others to explore it more, but I found myself getting bored and just skimming the section rather than reading it.
After reading this chapter one useful aspect in understanding the history of psychology is being aware of how much of an influence philosophy had in creating psychology. It is also important to note the role that Church as well as the Government played in some of the earlier beliefs held by early psychologists.
This chapter relates to the previous one because it goes into detail about the different theories of the individuals who played a role in shifting psychology into an actual science and what each of them contributed to the history of psychology. Each of them has given us a reason to study the history of psychology, which is a topic covered in chapter one.
I found myself wanting to learn more about Desecrates in terms of reflex and mind-body interaction. The thought of “animal spirits” being released within our bodies to trigger a reflex is obviously farfetched and flawed, but intriguing nonetheless.
While reading this chapter I found myself wondering how the Catholic Church was able to regulate people from reading restricted texts and how many churchgoers were secretly reading them. I also wondered what guidelines did the church to deem certain books unworthy of being read by its followers.
Descartes’ view on animal spirits was interesting to me. The way he explained that these spirits were particles in motion in your brain, was interesting. He thinks that the mind can control the body to move certain muscles based on animal spirits. This just seems like such an abstract idea that is intriguing to me and that people actually believed it. He also came to the conclusion that the pineal gland was where the spirits of the animal glands were controlled. He thought that this is where the mind and body influence each other. I also thought the empiricist argument was interesting. I remember learning about it in my philosophy course, and reading about it got me thinking more about it and remembering the concept. Empiricist is the idea that our knowledge of the world is built from our experiences within it. The last part was about how people respond to empiricism, specifically the rationalists. Leibniz said that our experiences are actually coming from our ideas and abilities. The least interesting thing I found was the part about Nicolas Copernicus. I didn’t understand what his part of the geocentric and heliocentric theories had to do with the rest of the chapter. It seemed like just thrown into the first part of the text. I think understanding that psychology has a lot to do with philosophy. In previous classes, I have talked about philosophy, but I never knew about the small details that these added into psychology. This related to the last chapter in that it consisted of theories and ideas that build off of one another and proving other ideas wrong to come up with another conclusion. I mean philosophy wasn’t my favorite course to take, but it still has some interesting topics that probably are worth talking about in psychology. I thought about what other philosophers would be in the category of psychological theories and ideas. Part of me wonders what the psychologists think when their ideas are being shut down. I realize that you have to know that as a psychologist, in order for your ideas to be worth wile, they need to be tested, but I wonder if that bothered or worried these psychologists given that at that time, psychology was a new science.
The first thing I found very interesting in Chapter 2 was the discussion of Hermann Ebbinghaus. He was so intelligent and it is astounding to know that past historians and psychologists had such extraordinary knowledge. When Ebbinghaus pointed out the need to recognize philosophy within psychology to understand the deep roots, I couldn’t have agreed more. The same questions are still being talked about today and understanding of each angle of thought and research will help to produce the best answer. The second thing I found interesting is Descartes childhood/young adulthood. He was so brilliant at such a young age and just ventured out on his own when he wasn’t satisfied with his education. My favorite thing about Descartes is how he is a rationalist and rejected all evidence of the senses. That thought process is so compelling that it really had me thinking. The third topic I found interesting was the part on John Locke. How he believed we are all born with a blank slate for a brain can be very debated on. His outlook on how to treat children is extremely controversial; learning rules by punishment is very severe and strict. My least favorite topic was David Hartley and his physiological associations because it didn’t capture my attention that much and I didn’t care for his studies.
I believe knowing the history and names of the past philosophers and their studies, will be the most important in understanding the history of psychology because we will have more insight and point of views to grasp the full meaning of psychology.
This chapter relates to the previous chapter in that it reinforces the fact that psychology is still a young science and many questions are still unanswered today.
I would like to learn more about Descartes and his rationalist argument. I say this because it is such extreme thinking that it takes really hard thinking to fully understand what he was doing.
An idea I had during the chapter was wondering how people back in those times reacted when they heard the ideas of these philosophers and psychologists.
One of the first things I found interesting in this chapter, although we discussed it in class, was about Nicolas Copernicus when he discovered that everything does not revolve around the earth, also known as the heliocentric theory. The fact that the church and everyone ostracized him so terribly that he actually took back his claims is crazy. I understand that religion is very important to people, but how can you not at least look at the science behind the claims? I think that the Cartesian dichotomy is interesting. The idea that animals are only of body and no mind is hard to consider. I would have to assume that chimps were not studied in labs at this time and so it would be difficult to understand what we know today. I have to admit I am a complete animal lover so it is difficult for me to see things this way! On that note, I would have to add that a third interesting thing I found in this chapter, also from Descartes, is that the tiny tubes that proceed from the brain (the nerves) carry a wind with them which he referred to as animal spirits. I feel like it would be a little difficult to be a scientist and also a very religious man in his time. I don’t think that many people still carry the notion that animal spirits are going through our nerves. However, the idea of discovering our reflexive movement is very interesting, even though he did not actually use the term “reflex”.
What I found to be the least interesting in this chapter was Mill’s logic. All of the “X but not Y” talk really just confuses me. I tried re-reading it to understand it better but it just didn’t take to my brain. I think often it is difficult for me to relate to very early psychologists because philosophy played such a large role in their studies as well. I just never had a liking for philosophy so that was all lost on me. He has a lot of methods, as did a lot of researchers, but I can’t follow all of the X and Y theories.
I think one of the most important things to take from this chapter was the thinking of Descartes and that the mind and the body could be distinctly separate, but that they also had direct influence on each other. For example, something that we consider so simple and obvious, such as our reaction to touching a hot flame, is something that researchers at one point had to observe and discover the reasons behind.
I feel like this chapter builds on with chapter one because we get to see and learn about a lot of specific people and their contributions and ideas for psychology. Names like John Locke and Descartes and Immanuel Kant are ones that most of us knew already, but may not have fully understood the contributions they had to what we know and understand today.
I think that the subject I would not necessarily like to learn more about, but probably should since I don’t understand it is Mill’s logic. If I can sit down and substitute X and Y for real life variables I think it would be a lot easier for me to understand some of his ideas. Some of the ideas I had while reading this chapter were 1) where are all the women? I feel like if there would have been more female psychologists there would be so much more that we would have known. I understand it wasn’t the time. 2) It is difficult for me to understand how these men were able to somehow separate religion and science. It is something we struggle with in our time and it just seems like it would be impossible to study something without the bias that God is somehow involved.
The first thing that I found interesting from this chapter was the law of association called cause and effect. This law states that if one event follows another with some regularity, we will develop an association between the two. This interested me because I came to realize just the amount of impact these laws had on future psychological research and treatment. The cause and effect law alone seems to have a slight correlation to aversive therapy and aversive therapy may have been based off of this law. Further more it helps us in a psychoanalytic sense when generalizing someone's past. For (hypothetical) example, if they had a terrible childhood they are more likely to suffer from depression when they are older. Although there are many factors to be considered the cause and effect law allows us to observe and make those connections between events.
The second interesting thing was actually in the following paragraph of the book where the author discusses that Hume didn't believe we could ever be certain about the causes of events. There is always something that we wouldn't have thought to be a factor possibly effecting the outcome of a situation. Rather, says the author, all we can know is taht events occur together with some predictable regularity. Although this statement kind of puts a damper on the reliability of psychological research I find it extremely interesting just for the fact that there can be so many different components to a persons life that we can never be certain of anything. This goes for any scientific research, you can never have 100% proof of anything because there is always that possibility of future information that will prove the current theory or hypothesis wrong.
The final thing I found interesting in this chapter was that it was a little redundant and although these ideas came at different times and from different authors they have kind of the same feeling and outline to them. My final example being Mill's Method of Agreement. In the paragraph describing this method it tells us that if we take a sample to test for depression which we believe is caused by gene X and everyone with depression in the sample has gene X then it must be assumed that gene X causes depression. It then mentions that this cannot be assumed because there are (as mentioned earlier) infinate number of different factors when considering a cause of an event. This being said even though the gene X "agrees" with depression it doesn't mean that it is the cause. I really liked the last sentence of the paragraph which states "The method of agreement can both support some hypothesis and call it into question, but it cannot establish cause by itself."
One this I didn't find intersting about this chapter was when the chapter was discussing Descartes and his idea of animal spirits. Although this is admittable a completely presentism perspective, reading about Descartes just made me discredit a lot of the things that he had said. I know in his time period he was revolutionary in the field but he seemed to be making up things as he went along and randomly assigning names and associations between parts of the brain and activity of the body (particularly when he decided that reflexes came from the pineal gland in the brain).
I think reading about how the different ideas of associatism related back to empiricsm of the time will help me better understand the history of psychology. Although some of the ideas were very similar to each other they all created revolutionary progress within their time and knowing them all, like mentioned above, will help improve my knowledge of the foundation of a lot of modern psychological theories and accepted models.
I think this chapter builds on the previous chapter. Instead of talking about how we are going to learn about psychology in this book (as was discussed in the first chapter) this chapter has started in on the history of psychology and is starting to tell us the names and dates of what happened at the beginning of modern psychology. I did take note while reading that they aren't taking a presentism approach and that is appreciated, they are instead looking at the accomplishments mentioned as if they were being made in their time and context.
I would really like to learn more about how Locke's theory on God influenced his credibility and popularity of the time. What did people think of this radical notion that God was only formed so that man could cope with the fact that everyone dies? Although I somewhat agree with Locke on this perspective I know from previous history classes that many other people in his time wouldn't and I expect there to be a significant backlash on Locke for sharing these ideals with the public. I like this because I think that proposing that the thought God is natural and inevitable part of being human is a concept many people are afraid to share.
I had a couple ideas on how the book goes very fast through a period of time and I didn't appreciate that they only mention certain people and their back stories but leaving out how their research and theories impacted the culture and lives of everyday people of their time. Another idea that came to me was, although I could be wrong, that life was simpler in many aspects in that time period and that may have contributed to the ease of finding the "cause" of a certain event. It is just a personal opinion that today when looking at a cause of say a mental illness, there are many other social and environmental factors to consider when finding the cause. This could be incorrect and I am open to the idea that there are not fewer but just different factors and components to peoples' lives.
One thing that interested me from the chapter was Descartes and the rationalist argument. I found this to be interesting because of all of the groundbreaking discoveries being made in Descartes’ time. There was the invention of the telescope (arguably) by Hans Lipperhey, the microscope by Antoni can Leeuwenhoek, and the discovery of the heart as a blood-recirculating pump by William Harvey. Descartes’ scholastic education at the College de la Fléche equipped him with the tools of reason to advance his role as a philosopher and ultimately a scientist by taking on a rationalist approach to logic and reason. He even lays out his four basic guidelines to uncovering truth of some matter in his book, Discourse on Method. These rules for a matter to be considered truth include being clear and concise as to leave no reason for doubt, reducing problems to fundamental elements, working systematically from the simple to the complex, and reviewing conclusions to avoid omission of any details.
Another thing I found interesting from the chapter was dualism. This term appeared when describing Descartes as one of history’s best known dualist. I had never heard this term before. Dualism is the argument for a clear separation of mind (soul) and body. This perspective lent itself to a mechanist approach as well. That is, believing that the body operates like a machine that takes up space and moves through it. Dualists believe this principle accompanied with the idea that the mind lacks extension and movement. Therefore, the mind has the job of reason.
A third topic of interest from the chapter was the other label given to Descartes that I hadn’t previously studied. He was an interactionist. Descartes believed that the mind could have a direct influence on the body and vice versa. Using his interactionist approach, he developed the concept of a reflex, or an automatic stimulus-response reaction. Descartes now had a physiological model to display his position on mind-body interaction.
The thing I found to be least interesting in the chapter was the introductory section. It sets up the chapter by referencing Hermann Ebbinghaus and his idea of psychology’s long past. This quote as an introduction to the chapter didn’t work well with me. It made me feel like I was barley learning enough information and only scratching the surface of psychology’s history. After reading about the different philosophers strewn about this chapter, I ended up feeling pretty satisfied with the author’s explanation of psychology’s philosophical foundations. I just thought that the way the chapter was set up was unnecessary and ultimately uninteresting.
The thing I read that will be most useful to understanding the history of psychology is what I’ve been writing about the most in this assignment: The work of Descartes. His education began at the end of the Renaissance era when science and technology were experiencing great advances. I found it helpful to examine him and other philosophers to find out which questions psychologists ask that have already been a matter of discussion by philosophers for centuries.
This chapter relates to the previous chapter by introducing the philosophical context of psychology’s history. Some people might expect psychology’s history to begin with the origins of psychology as its own discipline. But, ignoring the philosophical influence on psychology is ignoring its very roots. The second chapter picks up where the first chapter left off. The first chapter ends by explaining how this text isn’t the only historical perspective that should be studied. The second chapter admits to a single chapter being insufficient for the storied history of psychology from a philosophical foundation. Both chapters encourage further study on psychology’s history.
I would like to learn more about the topic of philosophy in the 1900s. The most recent philosopher cited in this chapter was John Stewart Mill who died in 1873. I’m just curious to know the current ideas in philosophy. This chapter left me wanting more. The brief biographies were interesting. But, I felt like I could spend hours researching each philosopher if I had the time.
An idea I had while reading this chapter was that Descartes was thinking of the interaction between mind and body as two separate mechanisms that influence each other. This is similar to how most scientists view the nature-nurture debate today. It is not one of the other that influences most traits. Rather, traits are often influenced by interactions between genetics and the environment.
Another idea I had while reading this chapter was that in any history class in which I learned about John Locke, I also learned about Thomas Hobbes. However, his name was nowhere to be found in the text. His ideas strongly rivaled Locke’s and I expected them to be outlined in this chapter. His social contract theory was not discussed at all. That also got me to think that maybe Hobbes’ work was more suited for a history of sociology class rather than one of the history of psychology.
After reading this chapter, one thing I found interesting was the section about Descartes. I found his ideas to be very intriguing. He was not like many of the other philosophers of his time, and I also like the fact that he was very skeptical towards others ideas. His work was very new and full of out-of-this-world ideas, but that is what makes him so interesting. Another thing I found interesting in this chapter is John Locke and his thoughts about innate ideas. He did not believe that ideas are innate, but instead we learn from experiences. I find this to be a very controversial topic, and topics that have good arguments always catch my interest. A third thing I found interesting from this chapter was the section about empiricism. The British believed knowledge came from experience. I completely agree with this, and I associated it with John Locke’s ideas as well. I feel that unless we experience something ourselves, firsthand, then we don’t really have TRUE knowledge of what that experience is actually like. Topics like this really interest me, and I enjoyed reading about them.
I honestly do not think there was a part of this chapter that was not interesting to me. It was full of new and weird ideas, and all of these ideas were fun to read and learn about. It takes a lot for me to become bored when there are strange topics to be talked about!
I think by learning where all of these theories and ideas came from, we can better understand what the basis was for forming them. Every person in this chapter contributed to psychology in some way, and I believe that by understanding the roots of these ideas, we will greatly benefit when we try to understand the concepts today.
Chapter 2 is related to Chapter 1 because it builds off of it. The first chapter was basically an introduction, and chapter 2 gets more into the details of specific people and their ideas. Both of these chapters explain that psychology is a somewhat new science, and help the reader better understand the basis of it’s history.
I would like to learn more about John Locke’s ideas. His thoughts about innate ideas really intrigues me, although I’m not exactly sure why. I suppose it is because I like thinking about things that actually require you to think!
While reading this chapter, I noted that these people had to go through several struggles just to get themselves and their work noticed. For example, some had to fight with the Catholic Church about certain ideas. In that era, I find it even more difficult to rebel than it would have been to do today. These people are pioneers and I liked reading about all these strange ideas.
Reading chapter 2 I found a lot of things interesting, but the first topic was the discussion of how there are still many major philosophical issues and concepts that were very important and how they still are to this day. It also discusses how a “working knowledge and an understanding provides a foundation for comprehending modern psychology”, I felt like this was something that we went over in chapter 1, the study of the past will help our understanding of the present and future. The book gave an example for comprehending modern psychology, it was whether our knowledge of the world is derived primarily from our unique ability to reason or results from the effects of our sensory experiences (extent to which our heredity and our environment shape the way we are). This made to think about the big debate of nature versus nurture, does our genetics ultimately shape who we are or does our environment play an important role?!
Another topic I found to be interesting was John Locke and his views on education and how to raise a child. When looking at the 4 main points on his theories of education you can tell he was a strong willed man. I found this interesting because there really is no one way to raise a child and for someone to go into great depths on the best ways to actually surprised me. The one that stood out to me the most (of the four points) was that he argued against the use of punishment because the child will end up fearing learning. This surprised me because he sounds like a tough man, the type of person who would punish his children, but I do agree with what he is saying.
Lastly, I found interesting the fact that Rene Descartes was only 13 years old when he first attended college. I was shocked by this because back then most children didn’t have the time or money to even finish school, let alone go to college and at such a young age. The book even said that Descartes even had special privileges over the children because he was that smart and succeeded. I wasn’t surprised though that even though he did graduate at the age of 18 it took him many years to develop an idea, which was rationalism. His life span was very confusing but interesting to read about, you can tell by the reading that he was a spirited person and wanted to explore and find meaning to what he was researching and expand his knowledge.
Something I found not to be very interesting was the discussion of Immanual Kant. His position on how experience itself was possible, he said that it required some previous knowledge that would help shape the experiences people have. It was also stated that he felt our understanding of concepts were based on our brain thinking in terms of cause and effect. Something I really disagreed with was that he didn’t believe psychology could ever become physical science. I found myself disagreeing with most of his ideas and kept wondering why he would think like that, what he studied or endured to believe in such things.
I think that for pure knowledge of this chapter for understanding the history of psychology would be the different people mentioned and their main ideas. I feel as if a lot of these ideas will be further discussed and will be very important to know and understand the knowledge in the later chapter.
The topic I would like to learn more about would be George Berkeley’s work on vision and the study of perception. After reading a little on this topic I found it to be very interesting but also very confusing. The fact that everything is secondary quality and that the only thing that has reality for us is our own perception is something that just scares me in a way. If someone really thinks that could it really be true, just trippy stuff but fascinating.
The one idea that really stuck throughout the chapter was over Locke’s view on how to raise a child, the discussion of nature verses nurture. Was this idea ever taken seriously back when Locke was doing his studies, did this ever effect what he was thinking, why does he believe that the environment directly shapes the mind and behavior and that genetics don’t? Something that kept playing in my mind that I couldn’t put aside.