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Psychology as a formal discipline has a long history, dating back to the Ancient Greeks. The discipline has a fond relationship with philosophy, and was in fact curved out from mainstream philosophical thoughts that had been expressed by ancient philosophers thousands of years ago.
Many civilizations throughout the course of history have offered speculative ideas about the nature of thought, soul, and spirit, a focal point that is mainly perceived as the precursor to the field and discipline of psychology (Baldwin, 2009). In Ancient Egypt, for example, the Edwin Smith Papyrus holds ancient description of the human brain, including some speculations about its core functions (Mandler, 2007). It is the purpose of this paper to critically evaluate the historical developments of psychology
According to Baldwin (2009), “…a history of psychology is nothing more or less than a history of different ways in which man have looked upon the mind” (p. 1). Thales, Plato, Pythagoras, and Aristotle are ancient Greek philosophers whose philosophical thoughts and orientations greatly assisted and influenced the development of modern psychology (Benjamin, 2006).
In the book De Amina, Aristotle vividly wrote philosophical concepts about the psyche and what it really means for the body and spirit to be alive. In the same book, the philosopher discusses critical issues of perception, behavior, intellect, aspiration, and imagination.
These issues, though discussed philosophically, came to form the basis of 19th century psychology. According to Mandler (2007), Aristotle and Plato were indeed the founding fathers of empiricism and psychodynamics respectively. The two concepts continue to influence the field of psychology to date.
Scholars, however, have noted that the early development of psychology as a discipline was not well documented as was the case with other disciplines such as philosophy and the sciences (Baldwin, 2009).
According to Klemm (2008), “…scattered reflections on psychological questions indeed abound throughout the entire history of science but the continuity of psychological investigation has often being interrupted, while a really fruitful development of psychology belongs to very recent times” (p. 1) .
This scenario led to the overwhelmingly popular assertion by contemporary psychologist Herman Ebbinghaus that psychology has a very long past that is unfortunately enshrined in a brief history.
Some contemporary western philosophers such as Rene Descartes, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill were also instrumental in the formation of psychology as a distinct field of study. Descartes lived during the renaissance era, and can pass as a primary contributor to the formation of psychology mainly due to his works on rationalism, nativism, dualism and mechanistic interactionism (Mandler, 2007). As a philosopher, he argued that truth could only be found from careful use of reason, thereby rebuffing the evidence of the senses.
Consequently, the way to know the truth, according to the philosopher, was through the human capability to reason. One implication of his Cartesian rationalism was that the capacity of humans to reason is characteristically inborn, not mentioning the fact that specific types of knowledge do not actually rely on the experience of the senses; rather, such knowledge result from an individual’s native or inborn capacity to reason (Mandler, 2007).
Descartes was also instrumental in differentiating between inborn ideas and derived ideas. As already mentioned, innate ideas are derived through the employment of individual reasoning capacity while derived ideas are attributed to our experiences in the universe (Mandler, 2007). According to the author, the philosopher’s “…innate versus derived ideas foreshadows one of psychology’s recurring issues, the relationship between nature and nurture” (p. 27).
Also, the philosopher can be called a dualist since he advocated for a definite separation between the mind and the body, arguing that the body have the properties of extension and movement while the mind didn’t. He believed the body functioned like a complicated machine and that the mind was capable of influencing the body. His insinuations, though in philosophical science, provided fodder for the development of modern psychological thought in the 19th century.
John Locke was a rationalist philosopher who contributed considerable knowledge on human understanding. He trashed the notion of the existence of inborn ideas in humans, and did not completely advocate for nurture influences on the nature-nurture issue (Benjamin, 2006).
One of Locke’s major contribution in psychological thought is the assertion that human, though endowed with inborn faculties such as the capacity to think, do not entirely derive ideas from reason as notions could originate from many other sources that only requires basic mental faculties.
Locke also entirely rejected the principle that some notions seem to come so early in life, and hence must be inborn. Instead, Locke argued that even before the young children are able to use language successfully, they are already benefiting from the external experiences around them (Baldwin, 2009). His philosophical thoughts contributed immensely to the formation of psychology as a discipline.
George Berkeley was yet another empiricist philosopher whose contributions hugely assisted the formation of psychology as a formal discipline. Specifically, Berkeley’s seminal studies on sensory processes have been instrumental in giving the field of psychology a formidable backbone (Baldwin, 2009).
The philosopher’s outstanding work on vision was the foremost systematic pointer of how empiricist reasoning could be applied to the broad study of perception. In particular, Berkeley attempted to demonstrate that individual perceptions of distance, geographical locations, and size of objects are decisions that depend completely on experience. Other notable philosophers include David Hume (impressions and ideas), David Hartley (psychophysical parallelism), and John Stuart Mill.
The development of the science of psychology has undergone immeasurable changes ever since psychology was finally recognized as a discipline in the 19th century. According to Mandler (2007), religion and philosophy set the firm foundation for the evolution of psychology in the 19th century.
Prior to this convergence, various philosophers, including Emanuel Kant, had expressed outright skepticism that the discipline of psychology would never become a true natural science. But this and other assertions were definitely proved wrong by the works of several scholars and psychologists, whose scientific contributions to modern thought gave psychology a solid background.
According to Green (2001), “…the origins of the science of psychology are grounded in Wundt’s theory of memory and the recognition of the importance of experimental design, Fechner’s introduction to psychophysics, Ebbinghau’s laboratory for the study of memory, and Gaulton’s introduction to statistics and measurement of mental abilities” (para. 4). It can be safely argued that all the sub-fields of psychology evolved from these fundamental facets of the discipline
Reference List
Baldwin, J.M. (2009). History of Psychology – a sketch and an interpretation. READ BOOKS. ISBN: 1444683225
Benjamin, L.T. (2006). A history of psychology in letters, 2nd Ed. Main Street, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing
Green, C.D., Shore, M., & Teo, T. (2001). The transformation of psychology: influences of 19th-century philosophy, technology, and natural science. American Journal of Psychiatry. Web.
Klemm, O. (2008). The history of psychology. BiblioBazaar, LLC. ISBN: 0554813009
Mandler, G. (2007). A history of modern experimental psychology. Cambridge: The MIT Press
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