A Brief History of Psychology

1
A Brief History of Psychology
2
Once upon a time.

• Animals want predictability
• Humans have curiosity
• We have always wanted to understand human
  nature.

3
Beyond the mists of time.

• Spirits, animal guides, supernatural influences
• Priests, Kings, and Gods.

4
The advent of biology

• The ancient Greeks adopted a biological approach
  to medicine
• Hippocrates and the 4 humors
• Air, earth, fire, and water
• Black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm
• Galens dissections

5
The Mind/Body problem

• What is the nature of the mind?
• How does the mind influence the body?
• Aristotle and Rationalism
• Zenos paradox

6
Philosophical Roots

• Descartes and the refinement of Rationalism
• Reductivism
• Bacon, Locke, and Empiricism
• Associationism

7
Wilhelm Wundt

• The first to apply the scientific method to
  observations of human behavior.

8
John Watson and Behaviorism

• Watson was the first
• B.F. Skinner is the most well known
• Behaviorism believes that, since the mind cannot
  be observed, it cannot be scientifically
  analyzed.
• We can only theorize about the connections
  between stimulus and response.

9
The Cognitive Revolution

• Noam Chomsky
• Demonstrated that language cannot be learned
  based on behaviorist principles.
• Too much positive evidence.
• Not enough negative evidence.
• Theorized about the innateness of language

10
Peering inside the black box

• Neuroscience
• The invention of the computer and the development
  of Information Processing Theory
• PET, fMRI, and other brain scans.-