History of Psychology 2008

History of Psychology 2008 Lecture 4 Professor Cupchik Office: S634 Email: cupchik@utsc.utoronto.ca Office hours: Wed 1-2; Thurs 12-1 Course website: www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~cupchik TA: Michelle Hilscher Office: S142 Email: hilscher@utsc.utoronto.ca Office hours: Wed 12-2 pm Textbook: Benjafield’s History of Psychology

After Aristotle, naturalistic psychology gradually disappeared from the scene. The centre of learning shifted from Athens to Alexandria but psychology was not pursued. It gave way to a kind of practical and ethical anthropology and later to a form of spiritistic theology. There were cultural and social reasons for this. In Alexandria, a doctrine of inwardness and subjectivity prevailed over an objective appreciation of psychological activities. The intellectual systematization of the 4th century BC reflected the unified Periclean Age. The cultural conditions which supported Plato and Aristotle gave way to a new human condition - Hellenism. The intellectual achievements of the Greeks were changed, diluted and eventually transformed by the campaigns, conquests and political manoeuvring of Alexander and his successors.

With one war after another, conditions discouraged an independent and unbiased search for scientific meaning, and turned thinkers toward mythology and superstition. The decline of Hellenistic culture took place over a period of three centuries. The ensuing period is deeply involved in the search for religious meaning. Some Christian thinkers, like St. Paul, were affected by Platonic ideas. But these ages of physical turmoil left little room for an intellectual interest of any kind.

St. Augustine (ca. 354-450 AD) influenced church thought for the next 6 centuries. * The soul controls a person’s acts. He develops the first faculty psychology which includes memory, imagination and will among the most important faculties. * The will is dominant as exhibited in attention since the will selects from among the objects offered by the senses and these become conscious. It also controls memory in light of reason. * Imagination is intermediate in function between memory and reason. * The faculties are partially independent capacities. Each faculty is like a person in a partnership, bound by the final decision of the full group. * St. Augustine searched for “truth” without presupposition. He found certainty only in relation to inner experience. For him, revelation was the only guarantee of truth. * This is the religious version of what we call insight but it pertains to spiritual matters.

The Christian theologians stressed revelation and introspection. This differs from science which stresses inter-subjective evidence. The period from St. Augustine to the 12th century AD was a Dark Age for psychology in Europe. Thinking was discouraged since man had little time left from political conflict and from meeting the bare necessities of existence. There was no incentive for independent thought. Generally speaking, the classical schools were forgotten and many of the works were destroyed lest they weaken Christian belief.

But the Arabs had preserved the writings of Aristotle after the destruction of the library in Alexandria and continued to write commentaries on them. By contacts with Spain, their influence spread in some degree throughout Europe and, when the Moors were driven from Spain in the late 15th century, copies of the works of Aristotle became available to European scholars. Then came for obscure stirrings of scientific and philosophical thought. Systematic psychology reappeared in Western European culture in the 13th century AD in the form of textual revival. The new emphasis on natural and a modern scientific psychology involved the adopting of observational, quantifying and experimental techniques from the non-psychological sciences.

Scholasticism (10th & 11th centuries) This was an approach to knowledge that stressed quibbling over the details of a system whose basic assumptions are never seriously challenged. Disagreements were over the correct interpretations of Aristotle. The thinker was similar to an administrator - ideas like that of church hierarchy had to be welded into a system that would resist stresses from within and without. Academic method:Writers engaged in the study of theories and not of man. This involved encyclopaedic learning and subtlety of argument. Quote and define… a kind of intellectual fencing. The church was against any recognition of the fact that mental powers depended on the body or that man might be similar to the animal world.

The challenge to authority and rise of individualism During the first 3/4 of the 13th century, scholarship was valued more highly than originality. Scholars interpreted Aristotle and little time was given to the study of nature. We have opposite foundations for knowledge: 1. Experience and Mysticism 2. Experiment and Natural Science Challenges to authority began as scholars looked more closely at nature. Leonardo da Vinci examined the human forms that he depicted. But the church was against any form of autopsy.

Macchiavelli noted, in a dispassionate manner, the politics of the 15th and 16th centuries. He described religion as a useful form of social cement. He saw society as a repressive agency from which the genius or man of power escapes. Cult of the Renaissance genius…Leonardo…Michelangelo… The new naturalism was associated with an emphasis on what there is and how we actually see it.

1. The decline of the Catholic church as a political and moral force due to corruption - led to the establishment of Protestantism (Luther, 1511). The Holy Roman Empire was crumbling… The Bible was still quoted but to illustrate rather than prove. 2. World Exploration - the widening of outlook with the discovery of America - greater autonomy of thought. 3. Improvement of communication and the invention of the printing press. 4. Beginning of physical science (astronomy) with optics and the development of the telescope… the idea of experimentation became clearer… treating the eye as an optical instrument.

5. We find curiosity for strange things as well as genuine observation and a new power of seeing the meaning in ordinary events. 6. There was a new focus on the living force of the individual… human life as a force and not merely a relation between form and matter. 7. Increasing knowledge about the human body… dissection of human bodies was permitted in the 16th century (e.g., Fissure of Sylvius, 1510) Artists began anatomical charts that exhibited organs accurately and old myths, such as a bone in the heart were dismissed. 8. Revival of classical learning and a concern for how best to impart knowledge - topics like memory and intellectual capacity were examined.

9. Nations were being born - England, Spain, France and Portugal were emerging from the feudal period - achieving a new self-consciousness. 10. Scholarship was becoming secularized - the scholarly community was growing in size and new universities were being founded. Scholarly interest was extending beyond the traditional subjects like theology, law and medicine to include literature and the sciences. The new Humanistic Movement (Erasmus, 1467-1536) demanded a broadening of education to include all subjects of vital human concern - aided by the printing press. Latin remained the official language of scholars. 11. Fall of Constantinople (Istanbul) sent Greek scholars to Italy.

12. Use of gunpowder outmoded the feudal system. 13. Copernican theory - heliocentric theory (1) depreciated the importance of man’s soul by multiplying the possibility of other souls and (2) robbed man of a definite site for heaven. New instruments, new crafts and new worlds meant that human powers were not limited to the repetition of ancient theories. In the 16th century there was a steady growth of interest in the study of man as a part of nature but traditional ideas hampered growth. A belief in the infinite possibilities of nature was beginning to supersede the older ideas of passive matter and limited possibilities. You could no longer deny something on the grounds that it was impossible.

The dividing line between man and the rest of nature was becoming less clearly drawn. Questions arose such as: “When does man cease to be a man?” “What if he is born with 6 fingers or is blind in one eye?” Lemnius established the principle in 1574 that natural causes explain all events. He argued that mind and body are subject to changes due to climate and regions of the earth. Humours, not evil spirits, cause disease. But progress was limited by tradition. Writers credited reports of old fables: sirens, mermaids, headless men or men with tails were faithfully described and depicted. The 16th century scientist was still terrorized by the church, confused in his religious beliefs, worried about his livelihood, but entranced by the world.

The Development of Science Two theories of history: (1) Personalistic emphasizes the great individual who helps science forge ahead. (2) Naturalistic emphasizes social and cultural changes that lay the foundation for new developments. We need to integrate the two viewpoints: The Zeitgeist (spirit of the times) must be prepared for the crucial insight or else it will be lost. Science involves the seeing of general relationships in nature. In the modern sense, science is a social institution involving cooperation that requires a written language to transmit knowledge since oral communication is subject to change and deterioration.

The early Greek civilization represented a major step (5th through 3rd centuries BC) in the systematization of knowledge. But it was not adapted to the emergence of experimental science. It favoured intuition, insight and intellectual processes but not the extraction of secrets from nature by experimental techniques. That came 2000 years later! In the Dark Ages (ca. 500-1200 AD) and the Middle Ages (ca. 1200-1500), although science was advanced in the Byzantine culture of the East, the cultural life of Western Europe was dominated by theological interest. Thoughts were on prospects for the soul. Thinkers were concerned with truth but the values of the time led them to believe that it would be revealed in accordance with the divine will and so they looked at dogmas to guide them (i.e., the authority of Aristotle). So they accept 7 as a sacred number, g-d had put only 7 bodies in the immediate celestial universe (earth, sun, moon, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars). Galileo’s discovery of 4 moons of Jupiter appeared sacreligious.

The Emergence of Modern Science… Copernicus (1473-1543) Kepler (1571-1630) Laws of planetary motion Galileo (1564-1642) Dynamics of moving bodies Newton (1642-1727) Calculus, principle of gravitation, laws of motion, white light as a mixture of light of different colours

In this new age scientists believed that nature rather than dogma was the authority. They believed in the uniformity and stability of nature. Cooperation among scientists was an important theme. This required communication. Travel was difficult. Letters were not common and journals were non-existent. Nor was publication in books prompt. A book could be published after the death of its author. The remedies lay in (1) correspondence and (2) societies of scientists. (1) Father Mersenne undertook to correspond with many of the great scientists: Descartes, Hobbes, Gassendi, Galileo, Torricelli. (2) Societies Paris: Academie des Sciences in 1666 under Louis X1V London: The Royal Society in 1610 Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften in 1700 These societies helped scientists to exchange ideas but also created a social world for them and legitimized the role of the scientist in society.

The first journals were reports of their meetings. Royal Society - Philosophical Transactions, 1665 Academie des Sciences - Memoires, 1666

Galileo Galilei Galileo Galilei (February 15, 1564 in Pisa - January 8, 1642) was an Italian physicist, astronomer, astrologer and philosopher who is closely associated with the scientific revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope, a variety of astronomical observations, the first and second laws of motion, and effective support for Copernicanism. He has been referred to as the “father of modern astronomy”, as the “father of modern physics” and as the “father of science”. The work of Galileo is considered to be a significant break from that of Aristotle. In addition, his conflict with the Roman Catholic Church is taken as a major early example of the conflict of authority and freedom of thought, particularly with science, in Western society.

Galileo Galilei - Improved the telescope in 1610 - Humanist, son of a musician, charm, literary grace - He said that wine was “light held together by moisture” Approach: Isolate a typical phenomenon and, after only a few critical experiments, deduce by mathematical manipulation a vast number of conclusions that go beyond those already revealed by experience or experiment. For example: The path of a projectile is a parabola and we can demonstrate that the maximum range is achieved at a 45 degree angle of launch. - Concentrated on “pure cases” with systematic variations. This differs from Aristotle’s collection of a great number of cases and arriving at conclusions based on simple enumeration. - He allowed a place for both sense observation and mathematical reasoning (he stressed the latter).

Method: 1. Senses present us with a problem. 2. Think about the phenomenon and resolve it into sections (e.g., extension, figure and motion). 3. Quantify the variables and deduce general conclusions. 4. Confirm conclusions by experimental observation. He reduced all nature to his primary qualities including figure, number and motion.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St. Alban, KC (22 January, 1561-9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman and essayist but is best known for leading the scientific revolution with his new ‘observation and experimentation’ theory which is the way science has been conducted ever since. He was knighted in 1603, created Baron Verulam in 1618, and created Viscount St. Alban in 1621; both peerage titles became extinct upon his death. He began his professional life as a lawyer, but he has become best known as a philosophical advocate and defender of the scientific revolution. His works establish and popularize an inductive methodology for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method. Induction implies drawing knowledge from the natural world through experimentation, observation, and testing of hypotheses. In the context of his time, such methods were connected with the occult trends of hermeticism and alchemy.

- He has a complex character, was interested in public affairs, accepted bribes but said that they would not influence him, had desire for literary fame. - Like Galileo he objected to syllogistic reasoning as a way of understanding nature and he differed from Galileo in his distrust of mathematics and abstract axioms. - He favoured the collection of “well attested facts” or data without any “anticipations of nature” or provisional hypotheses. - Words should denote conditions not qualities. He emphasized the role of precision in specific language. - He held that proper method would guard against a tendency to generalize too soon. - He discouraged theory in favour of the accumulation of details. - He discouraged abstract generalization in favour of natural history. - He would have none of Kepler, Copernicus, or Galileo or anyone who would extend a few calculations into a system of the world.

- The form in the facts will be discovered if countless words or instances are collected. Method: Complete tables of instances, tables of presences, absences, and degrees (e.g., in all examples of heat, motion is co-present, co-absent, and co-variant). Through induction: motion is the form or generating nature of heat. So scientists must start from facts or observations, preferably measurements, collected carefully and cautious generalizations should not go beyond the collected data. Bacon’s neglect of hypotheses can be related to his disregard of deduction of which mathematical deduction is the most precise form. The orderly arrangement of data will make the right interpretation obvious, there being no method for inventing hypotheses to coordinate observations.

Fundamental Problem with Bacon He failed to see that hypotheses are essential to the collection of data. How do we determine the relevance of potential data points? Scientific data are always relative to the person’s existing knowledge, his interests and problems. Expectations sensitize us to data. (e.g., Darwin seeing the meaning of a fossil).

More on Method: 1. Apply the inductive method - against scholastic science which began with the principle and deduced the consequences. Bacon would begin with the particular fact, with all relevant facts, and rise by steps to the general principles. He stressed the role of experiment - Experiments practice the principle of the elimination of the irrelevant. “Nature when vexed takes off her mask and reveals her struggles.” 2. Create a universal natural history - to use induction you need a vast collection of particulars and so classification is the crucial instrument. 3. Public organization of science - He believed that a complete science is feasible. It should have a public designation and expense since science will benefit humanity. He reveals a materialist commitment; tough-minded and humanitarian. He wanted to demonstrate the worth and dignity of learning and so he analyzed its obstacles.

In the Novum Organum (the new instrumentality for the acquisition of knowledge) Francis Bacon classified the intellectual fallacies of his time under four headings which he called idols. He distinguished them as Idols of the Tribe, Idols of the Cave, Idols of the Marketplace, and Idols of the Theatre. An idol is an image, in this case held in the mind, which receives veneration but is without substance in itself. Bacon did not regard idols as symbols, but rather as fixations. In this respect he anticipated modern psychology.

Idols of the Tribeare deceptive beliefs inherent in the mind of man, and therefore belonging to the whole of the human race. They are abstractions in error arising from common tendencies to exaggeration, distortion, and disproportion. Thus men gazing at the stars perceive the order of the world, but are not content merely to contemplate or record that which is seen. They extend their opinions, investing the starry heavens with innumerable imaginary qualities. In a short time these imaginings gain dignity and are mingled with the facts until the compounds become inseparable. This may explain Bacon’s epitaph which is said to be a summary of his whole method. It reads, “Let all compounds be dissolved.”

Idols of the Caveare those which arise within the mind of the individual. This mind is symbolically a cavern. The thoughts of the individual roam about in this dark cave and are variously modified by temperament, education, habit, environment and accident. Thus an individual who dedicates his mind to some particular branch of learning becomes possessed by his own peculiar interest, and interprets all other learning according to the colors of his own devotion. The chemist sees chemistry in all things, and the courtier ever present at the rituals of the court unduly emphasizes the significance of kings and princes. The title page of Bacon’s New Atlantis (London, 1626) is ornamented with a curious design or printer’s device. The winged figure of Father Time is shown lifting a female figure from a dark cave. This represents truth resurrected from the cavern of the intellect.

Idols of the Marketplaceare errors arising from the false significance bestowed upon words, and in this classification Bacon anticipated the modern science of semantics. According to him it is the popular belief that men form their thoughts into words in order to communicate their opinions to others, but often words arise as substitutes for thoughts and men think they have won an argument because they have out talked their opponents. The constant impact of words variously used without attention to their true meaning only in turn condition the understanding and breed fallacies. Words often betray their own purpose, obscuring the very thoughts they are designed to express.

Idols of the Theatreare those which are due to sophistry and false learning. These idols are built up in the field of theology, philosophy, and science, and because they are defended by learned groups are accepted without question by the masses. When false philosophies have been cultivated and have attained a wide sphere of dominion in the world of the intellect they are no longer questioned. False superstructures are raised on false foundations, and in the end systems barren of merit parade their grandeur on the stage of the world. Bacon used the theatre with its curtain and its properties as a symbol of the world stage. It might even be profitable to examine the Shakespearean plays with this viewpoint in mind.

Bacon took a chill while stuffing a chicken with snow… his most famous experiment… and died. In March, 1626, Lord St. Alban came to London. Continuing his scientific research, he was inspired by the possibility of using snow to preserve meat. He purchased a chicken (fowl) to carry out this experiment. While stuffing the chicken with snow, he contracted a fatal case of pneumonia. He died at Highgate on 9 April 1626, leaving assets of about about £7,000 and debts to the amount of £22,000. It is said that the chicken still haunts Pond Square in London.

Rene Descartes(1596-1650) Great genius and a philosopher who spanned the Ancients and Moderns. He lived a long time in Holland. Trained in a Jesuit College… in spite of this he acquired a skeptical attitude which had become a fashion due to the constant disagreement among theorists. After the 18th century knowledge passes from philosophy to science which assumes only uniformity of law and neither unity of truth nor cosmic personality. He was the last to make a major contribution out of a metaphysical position. The image of infinite mechanics proved ultimately to be irrelevant. Science ranges between the unity of nature and the multiplicity of phenomena. From Descartes we conclude that atoms could never be fundamental because space-matter is infinite in both ways, in extension and in division.

Scientific Contributions • He developed the principle of inertia. It paralleled with conceptions of infinity. • 2. Analytic geometry - write equations that determine a geometric form. Galileo turned time into a dimension - an abstract parameter of the state of motion which science can measure. • Descartes crossed time at right angles with distance and space in depth. • 3. Correct laws of refraction. • 4. Eliminates purposive organism.

Rational Method 1. Accept as true only that which presents itself to the mind with such clarity and vividness as to remove the smallest element of doubt. 2. Divide a problem into as many discriminable elements as possible. 3. Work from a solution to the smallest to that of the greatest. 4. … to ensure the generality of the solution. In relation to epistemology… Recognize the limits of the senses and adapt a skeptical position that all is illusion. But even if the body is an illusion; even if all our actions and experiences are unreal, the ideas of the mind must exist or doubt itself is impossible. Reason, not matter, therefore confirms existence.

Mind and matter are qualitatively different. Matter is res extensa (extended substance) and Mind is res cogitans (thinking substance). He followed Vesalius (1514-1564) who founded the discipline of anatomy. He also knew of Harvey (1578-1657) who founded physiology and worked out the exact connection of the cavities of the heart with each other and with the lungs, the arteries and the veins. This showed the way the blood must be flowing. Descartes studied anatomy and made dissections. He developed a model of reflex action based on the mechanical models of the times. He was impressed by the clockwork types of machines that were popular in the gardens of the aristocracy. They had fountains constructed in such a manner that water running through tubes would move manikins, play instruments or even produce sounds like winds. Descartes saw an analogy between these water pipes and the tubes he thought the animal spirits moved through. The absence of voluntary movements in the statues was seen as parallel to the movements of the body which were executed without conscious intention.

So he arrives at the theory of reflex action based on: 1. Knowledge that not all movements are voluntary and 2. Movements performed by decapitated animals. Reflex Theory: Eye - Sensory Nerve - Brain - Motor Nerve - Muscle… 1. Nerves were like hollow tubes and 2. The brain was like a sponge… porous… The nervous system works through the actions of fluids. The fluid or animal spirit is like a gas… not quite material. When an impression is made on a sense organ, the sensory nerve works like a bell wire, it pulls open the valve to which it is attached and allows the animal’s spirits to flow down the corresponding motor nerve to the muscle. This form was the basis of all physiological psychology of the 17th and 18th centuries.

But what about the soul? The body and soul are clearly separate. 1. The body is part of the world of matter peculiar to man. Therefore, as matter it can be dealt with scientifically or mechanically. 2. The soul does not move the body. Death is not due to the absence of the soul from the body, when the bodily functions cease, the soul disappears. So Descartes removes the soul from every part of the concept of physical life. Physical life is essentially movement which depends on the muscles and these in turn depend on the nerves. The corporeal principle of movement is a kind of fire, a natural heat that resides in the heart. Like Aristotle, Descartes recognizes two levels of conscious activity (thinking/remembering and common sense/imagination/instinct).

How can the mind affect the body if it does not exist in space? As the “seat of the soul” he selected the pineal gland probably because of its uniqueness. The mind makes the pineal gland bend thereby deflecting the animal spirits into a different channel. Cogito ergo sum - “I think therefore I am.” Dubito ergo sum - “I doubt therefore I am.”

Ideas: 1. The clearest ideas are those that give the most fundamental truths and they are innate in the soul - the idea of G-d, self, and axioms of mathematics. 2. The ideas of external objects come through the senses and others, like hunger or thirst, or awareness of the emotions, arise within the body and affect the mind. 3. He does suggest in some places that memories are connected with traces left in the brain. In one place he describes the animal spirits are running through the pores of the brain until they find a specific memory desired by the mind. Descartes does separate man completely from the animal world. They are reduced to mere machines but later he admits that animals may have sensations.

In sum, reason is only proper to man but humans and animals overlap with the reflex theory. The human body is an animal organism associated with a rational soul. Animals are bodies only. The idea that, as a body, man belongs to the animal kingdom, while as mind he belongs to another realm led to the study of man being divided into (1) physiology and (2) psychology.

Final Summation: 1. He revolted against the ancients. 2. He revised the concept of the human mind as partly free and rational and partly mechanical and automatic. 3. His is the father of dualistic thinking (separates mind and body) and of the reflex arc. 4. He believed in a free unsubstantial soul and a mechanically operated body. 5. He applied principles of physics to the body… mechanics of the body. 6. He also anticipated projection theory… changes which occur in the motion of the animal spirits may cause them to open certain pores of the brain rather than others. 7. While he broke with ancient philosophy, he still adhered to a deductive method - Rationalist.

History of Psychology 2008