Hystory and Systems

Hystory and Systems Spring 2018

“Psychology has a long past but only a short history” ~Ebbinghaus Why Study the History of Psychology? History repeats itself: that’s just one of the things that’s wrong with history. (Clarence Darrow) 1857 - 1938

Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. (George Santayana ~ 20th Century Philosopher)

History by apprising of the past, will enable them to judge the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations (Thomas Jefferson ~ Third American President)

If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants (Issac Newton). The less we know of the past, the more unreliable our judgment of the present and future (Sigmund Freud).

Science progresses when the old guys die off and take their outmoded beliefs with them (Max Planck, 1858–1947 ~ father of the quantum theory).

The history of Psychology doesn’t build one piece of knowledge upon another. Instead it tends to act more like a pendulum. One generation of thought reacting (and perhaps overreacting) to the previous).

History must look at both successes and failures. ~Edward Boring Who is Edward Boring? (1920s to the 1960s.) - Mr. Psychology - Did work in sensation and Perception • best known as the foremost historian psychology • History of Experimental Psychology (1929/1950)

Great Man Person Theory History can be largely explained by the impact of "great men", or heroes! "The history of the world is but the biography of great (people) men“ ~ Thomas Carlyle

Zeitgeist – “spirit of the times”. Defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.

Great people are the products of their societies, and that their actions would be impossible without the social conditions built before their lifetime.

http://www.slideshare.net/jeelchristine/mesopotamian-arts

2000 BC Mesopotamia Mesilin king of Kish at the command of his deity Kadiconcerning the plantation of that field set up a stele in that place. . . . Ningirsu, the hero of Enlil, by his righteous command, upon Umma war made. At the command of Enlilhis great net ensnared

Dr. Julian Jaynes • The Origin of Consciousness in • the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976). • Analysis of early literature (e.g., Iliad, old Testament) • No words used to refer to consciousness nor to mental acts (e.g., thoughts)

Thoughts and feelings of the people are put directly into their minds by the “gods” or “muses”. Achilles called the men to gather, this having been put into his mind by the goddess of the white arms, Hera, who had pity on the Greeks when she saw them dying . . . and he said to them “I believe that backwards we must make our way home if we are to escape death through fighting and the plague”. (Iliad - 760–710 BC) Now the word of the lord came unto Jonah . . . Saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness has come up before me. (Jonah, 1:1-2)

Based on research showing the brain is right-left specialized, Jaynes hypothesized that in the evolutionary past the left brain must have been completely separated from the right brain. The effect, according to Jaynes, would have been that language generated in the left brain would have been interpreted by the right brain as coming from outside or somewhere else.

According to Jaynes many human behaviors are older than consciousness 400,000 years – fire 100,000 years tools 8,000 years farming 1,000 years anatomy and medicine 1800 BC

7th Century BC ~Egypt Psamtik I - language experiment Psamtik sought to discover the origin of language by conducting an experiment with two children. Allegedly he gave two newborn babies to a shepherd, with the instructions that no one should speak to them, but that the shepherd should feed and care for them while listening to determine their first words. The hypothesis was that the first word would be uttered in the root language of all people.

When one of the children cried "bekos" with outstretched arms the shepherd concluded that the word was Phrygian because that was the sound of Phrygian word for "bread." Thus, they concluded that the Phrygians were an older people than the Egyptians, and that Phrygian was the original language of men.

6th century BC The Discovery of the Mind Philosophy -from the Greek words philos and sophia meaning “love of wisdom”. Discussion and speculation about psychological issues. Nous – new world which refers to mind, knowlegde or thought.

Philosophical Roots Questions about the Nature of Human Beings? • Is there only one substance, or is the “mind” something different than matter? • Do we have souls? Do they exist after the body dies? • How are mind and body connected? Is the mind part of the soul, and if so can it exist apart from the body?

Is human nature the product of inborn tendencies or of experience and upbringing? • How do we know what we know? Are our ideas built into our minds, or do we develop them from our perceptions and experience? • How does perception work? Are our impressions of the world around us true representations of what is out there? How can we know whether they are or not? • Which is the right road to true knowledge – pure reason or data gathering by observation. • What are the principles of valid thinking? • What are the causes of invalid thinking? • Does the mind rule the emotions or visa versa?

Ancient Greece - Golden Age 480 - 399 BC In all history, nothing is so surprising or so difficult to account for as the sudden rise of civilization in Greece” Bertrand Russell

Literature, Art, Architecture • Written History • Mathematics and Science • Schools and formal education • Philosophy – attempts to understand the nature of the world and the human mind

Political Climate 150 city states Invented Democracy

Athens Total Population = 315,000 persons Slaves 115,000 persons Free Athenians 200,000 persons Only 43,000 (13% ~ men born of two Athenian parents) were given full civil rights (including the right to vote).

Few Greeks could read or write Time - The sundial dates back to the Egyptian Period, around 1500 B.C.

Explanations for the dramatic growth in learning and Culture • The Climate • Commerce and Conquest • Mix of cultural influences • Polytheism

People came from all over Greece and beyond to have their questions about the future answered by the Pythia, the priestess of Apollo. And her answers, usually cryptic, could determine the course of everything from when a farmer planted his seedlings, to when an empire declared war.

Pythea

Psychophilosophers 6th and 5th century BC Philosophers began proposing naturalistic explanations of human mental processes. Men of leisure, reasoning from self-evident truths, everyday observations and logic.

Metaphysics ~ The search for the first Material Principle “What is the world made of?" and "What is the ultimate substance of all reality?”

The original source of all existing things is that from which a thing first comes-into-being and into which it is finally destroyed. The substance persists but changes in its qualities, There must be some natural substance, either one or more than one (pluralist as opposed to monist), from which the other things come-into-being, while it is preserved.

Metaphysics. Something physical? (Matter or Energy) This is called materialism. Something more spiritual or mental, such as ideas or ideals? This is called idealism.

Ultimate nature was known in Greek as physis, (root of Physics and Physiology). Looking For Element and first principle of existing things. Most of the first philosophers thought that principles in the form of matter were the only principles of all things (Monist Materialists).

Thales of Miletus 585 B.C. (1st Philosopher ?) Used Mathematics and Astronomy to predicted a solar eclipse and farm yields.

What Motivates Human Behavior Thales – soul or mind produces physical force that is the source of human behavior.

Thales "For moist natural substance, since it is easily formed into each different thing, is accustomed to undergo very various changes; that part of it which is exhaled is made into air, and the finest part is kindled from air into aether, while when water is compacted and changes into slime it becomes earth. Therefore Thales declared that water, of the four elements, was the most active, as it were, as cause." Thales on metaphysics

Anaximander Father of Cosmology Predicted an Earthquake Sun rotates on an inclined axis. Life started in the sea. Believed in parallel worlds.

Anaximander a different substance (apeiron )that is limitless or indeterminate, from which there come into being all the heavens and the worlds within them. Things perish into those things out of which they have their being, according to necessity.

From the apeironopposing pairs emerge (e.g., the wet/dry and the hot/cold) and contend with one another, until one of the pair is annihilated, becoming the other. For example, day will be transformed into night or winter into summer. This is what Anaximander means when he says that things do injustices to one another. Ideas on death (payment for guilt – purified by a return to the indefinite).

Heraclitus – Fire "This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be, an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures." “Into the same rivers we step and do not step, we are and are not.” (Heraclitus)

Leucippus and Democritus These ancient atomists theorized that the two fundamental and oppositely characterized constituents of the natural world are indivisible bodies—atoms—and void. Void is described simply as nothing, or the negation of body.

Atoms are by their nature intrinsically unchangeable; they can only move about in the void and combine into different clusters. Since the atoms are separated by void, they cannot fuse, but must rather bounce off one another when they collide. Because all macroscopic objects are in fact combinations of atoms, everything in the macroscopic world is subject to change, as their constituent atoms shift or move away. Thus, while the atoms themselves persist through all time, everything in the world of our experience is transitory and subject to dissolution.

Because all macroscopic objects are in fact combinations of atoms, everything in the macroscopic world is subject to change, as their constituent atoms shift or move away. Thus, while the atoms themselves persist through all time, everything in the world of our experience is transitory and subject to dissolution. The cosmos consists of nothing but identical, indestructible particles moving randomly in a void.

Hystory and Systems