Scientific period of pyschology. History of psychology? School of thoughts?
Scientific period of pyschology? School of thoughts?
By Real contentPublished 7 months ago • 7 min read
- sixteen and seventeen centuries, philosophers and scientists proposed new theories in light of observation and experiments.This period may be divided into two periods.
Renaissance period
Modern period
Renaissance period
Early in 16 century, a severe reaction set in against unquestioning dependence on philosophy and faith in logic without observation. Other influences came from biology and physics.
Francis Bacon(1564-1642)
He was founder of modern science he separated science from religion and philosophy. He proposed several theories upon education habits and human personality.He emphasized the importance of observation instead of speculation.
Descartes( 1596-1650)
He thought organisms as completed mechanism which could be activated by light sound and other stimuli. Although he had a very inadequate concept of structure and function of the nervous system, his study of human organism brought fresh insight to philosophy.
John Locke(1632-1704)
He believed we were born with empty mind in the world like blank slates upon which all of life experiences could be written. Other influences on early psychology came from biology and physics.
Charles Darwin(1809-1882)
He published his book the origin of species in 1859 in which outlined his theory of evolution. In his theory of evolution Darwin suggested that animals and people show behaviour that is adaptive to environment and healthful to their survival.In nineteenth century their development of flourishing school of experimental physiology.The physiologists soon made important discoveries about behaviour.
Hermann von Helmholtz (1820-1894)
He measured the speed of nerve impulse and set forth a theory of colour vision for our perception of musical tones.
ician identify a part of brain working as control centre for speech.
Weber( 1795-1878 )
About the middle of 90 century the discoveries is made in physics give give rise to a new field known as psychophysics. Psychophysics area of psychology that compare the physical energy of stimulus with the sensation reported by a subject.Weber observed the relationship between changes in the physical stimuli and human ability to perceive changes.
Fechner (1860)
He looked into mathematical connection between the physical and psychological changes. For the first time it had been demonstrated that psychological phenomenon could be quantified and investigated with a scientific method.
Schools of thoughts
A set of ideas or opinions which a group of people share about a matter is called school of thoughts.
Much of early period of scientific psychology involved School of psychology.Each school determined among other thing a subject matter and method to be used in investigating that subject matter and the method to be used in investigating that subject matter. There are five School of thoughts that guided psychologist in their actions.
1.Structuralism
In 1979 wilhelm wundt, a German physiologist formally founded psychology as a separate science by setting up the first experimental laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany. In his earliest work he devoted attention on studying the building blocks of the mind.Later defining psychology as the study of conscious experience, he founded the system of psychology known as structuralism.
Structuralism focused on the fundamental element that form the foundation of thinking consciousness emotion and other kinds of the mental states and activities
method.
How basic sensation combined into our awareness of the world, wundt and other structuralists used a procedure called introspection to study the structure of the mind. Using introspection wundt presented his trained subjects with a stimulus such as bright green object or a sentence printed on a card and ask them to describe in their own words what they were experiencing as they were exposed to it.Wundt argued that psychologists could come to understand the structure of mind through the reports that the trained subjects made of their reactions.
The structuralists concluded after many experiments that all conscious processes consisted of three elements sensation, image and feeling. They further felt that these elements combine in such a way that the final result involves not merely adding together of these elements but something quite different from the elements involved.
Criticism
Wundt did not stand the test of time and was greatly criticized. Psychologist became increasingly dissatisfied with the assumption that introspection could unlock fundamental elements of the mind with the assumption that introspection could unlock the fundamental elements of the mind
second, moreover consciousness.
could not be analysed in mental unit or elements.
Finally, introspection was not a truly scientific techniques there was little way that observer could verify the accuracy of introspection that trained subjects did make.
Functionalism
Around 19 century another school of thought that largely replaced actually some came into being as functionalism. This was founded by American psychologist William James and cattel. Functionalism concentrated on what the mind does the function of mental activity Functionalism asked what roles behaviour played in allowing people to better adapt to their environments. William james examined the ways in which behaviour allow people to satisfy their needs.
The American educator John Dewey criticized the structuralists because their objectives were to narrow.He studied functions of the conscious experience and redefiined psychology as a study of the man's adjustment to his environment. He look a functionalist and developed the field of school psychology theorizing about how student needs could best met through the educational system.
The subject matter of functionalism was thought of as the fundamental utilities of consciousness it's method over experimental including the use of introspection.
method.
Functionalist use introspection method to study consciousness. They also used test survey and experimental techniques to study mentall process and consciousness. In studying animal and children as well as adult the key question they asked was. what function does the specific behaviour perform? psychologist of this school study topics such as thinking memory consciousness motivation learning and animal intelligence. They are also interested in applying psychological concept in school, business and homes.
Criticism
This School was also criticized by psychologist.
Functionalist did not explain the function of mind consciousness.
Second, they did not describe the relationship of mind and body.
Third, they used introspection method to study consciousness which was not scientific method.
Finally,Functionalist did not explain the concept of unconsciousness so they work criticized by majority of psychology psychologists
Behaviorism
Behaviourism the functionalist school did not hold good for long. John be Watson developed another school of thought as behaviorism.Althogh trained in the functionalist tradition he did not believe that consciousness could ever be studied scientifically, sense one had to rely on the subjective report of individual trained in introspection. He maintained that the proper subject matter for psychology was behaviour and behaviour only. Behaviour could be studied in a rigorous, objective and experimental manner. His influences was so great that American psychology became rigorously experimental and behaviourist. Watson not only shifted the subject matter of psychology from consciousness to behaviour, he shifted emphasis from instincts to learned behaviour.
According to him environment was all important and given opportunity to rise children as he wished, he could make them into any kind of adults he chose. For him virtually all human behaviour was learned and understanding of the learning process provided the key of mysteries of behaviour. what some behaviour about the importance of learning of work of Russian psychologist about nature of learning that had remainders tremendous impact on WhatsApp basic principal of learning and he set about to apply this principle to human behaviour.
Method
Watson used experimental method to study behaviour.According to him science of psychology must focus on those events that can be measured and observed.
B.F Scanner followed Watson performed many experiment on rats,pigeons and concentrated how behaviour of modified by events in environment. Skinner avoided by reference to mental activities of organism. He defined psychology as the science of behavior.
Criticism
Behaviourist went to extreme with their ideas
They limited psychology to the study of the observable behavioural response given by organism to a stimulus.
They did not explain conscious and subconsciousness.
Psychology is still considered as a science of behaviour. Of course the concept of the behaviour had has been broadened to include the unseen cognitive mental processes. such as thinking feeling which leads to observable behaviour. The school of behaviour greatly influenced bpsychology.
Gastalt psychology.
Another reaction to structuralism was the development of Gestalt psychology in early 1900. Max Wertheimer that is usually regarded as the leader of Gestalt school along with wolfgang kohler and Kurt Koffka.They believed that people are more than the sum of their parts and that we can understand the whole as one unit.The German word Gestalt means ،whole٫ and Gestalt psychology goal was to study perception, learning problem solving or personalty as a whole.The Gestalt school has great great influence in the area of perception but this school was also criticized.Gestalt psychologists were opposed to the idea that one could study something as complex as consciousness by analyzing it into elements. Instead of considering the individual parts that make up thinking, they took the opposite course, concentrating on how people consider individual elements as units or wholes. The viewpoint was the whole is greater than the sum of its parts meaning that, when considered together, the basic elements that compare our perception of objects produce something greater and more meaningful than those individuals elements alone.
Criticism.
Gestaltists performed only in area of perception.
They did nothing about unconscious processes which are three fourth of our cognitive processes.
Their approaches were not purely scientific.
5 ) Psycoanalysis.
Sigmand Freud (1856-1939)
Australian physician was the founder of psychoanalytic school.
He specialized in the disorders of nervous system.He observed that some of his patients had nothing physically wrong with them, even though they had symptoms of physical illness.He suspected that mental conflicts lay behind these symptoms conflicts that had been pushed out of normal awareness and into a part of mind called unconsciousness.He believed that if unconsciousness conflicts could be brought into patient,s consciousness, they would lose their power to control the patient,s life. Psychoanalytic theory had its deep impact on concepts of personality and therapy techniques in psychology.
Criticism
Since psychoanalysis theory is not scientific, it has been criticized by a number psychologist.Freud laid strong emphasis on sex and aggression but did not fully explain consciousness and human behaviour.
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Comments (1)
The 16th and 17th centuries saw big changes in science. Bacon stressed observation. Descartes' view of organisms was interesting. And Darwin's theory of evolution had a huge impact. It's amazing how these ideas shaped psychology.