chapter 3: psychology during mid-millennium...
TRANSCRIPT
Chapter 3:
Psychology During Mid-Millennium
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PSK301-History of Psychology Assoc. Prof. Okan Cem Çırakoğlu [email protected]
While there is no universally accepted theory to explain the global complexity of mid-millennium transitions, historians generally agree about Western civilization. They describe this period in terms of three fundamental developments:
The Renaissance
The Reformation
The Scientific
Revolution
The Renaissance
• Rebirth
• Historians associate the Renaissance with the reintroduction of major elements of Greco-Roman antiquity in arts, sciences, and education.
• 14-16th centuries in Italy
• 16th century in NorthernEuropean countries
The Renaissance
• Innovation• Secularism• Enthusiasm• Rationality• Good manner inbehaviors and honor
The Renaissance
• Created an anti-scholastic mood
• New universities were established in Europa
• Ottoman Empire, Persia, and Central Asiacontributed to science
▫ Mathematics
▫ Philosopy
▫ Physics
▫ History
▫ Literature
The Renaissance
• 17th century▫ Western science challenged theology and Catholic church
▫ Islamic Middle East tradition connected to theology
Reformation
• As the advancing Reformation movement grew in Europe, religious faith was becoming increasingly a matter of individual conscience
Reformation
• Protestant church
• Individual responsibility fordecisions
• Questioning authority
• Beliefs in human rights andindividual freedom
• Individualism Martin Luther 1483-1546
Reformation
• Protestant Reformation
▫ Calling to read Bible outside churches
▫ Joint education of boys and girls
▫ However, no significant change in women’sposition in society, religion and education
▫ National languages in science rather than Latin
Scientific Revolution
• Scientific revolution: For the educated, the mysterious and unpredictable quality of nature was unfolding into something clear and quantifiable.
Isaac Newton (1643-1727)
• Laws of motion
• Applied to all physical bodies in the world
• Materialistic views of Greeks has been widelyaccepted
Scientific Revolution
• Johannes Gutenberg
▫ First book published by printingpress in 1455
▫ Many books in less time and cost
• Among upper class, reading andwriting increased
• Scientists correspondence via letterswith sponsors (inc. Kings andqueens)
Scientific Revolution
• Renewed interest in gender
▫ Restricted social roles for women until 15th century
▫ This tradition has begun to change. More womeneducation, literature, music, history, fine arts
• However, for only aristocratic women
• Not all areas of interest were open to women
Scientific Discoveries in
16-17th Centruies
Case In Point
Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576) wrote a detailed autobiography (a relatively common practice among scientists), filled with meticulous details about his activities and psychological experiences including thought process, doubts, and anxieties. He provided an interesting account of therapeutic techniques, such as self-inflicted physical pain to reduce more serious psychological disturbances. Small pain or irritation, he believed, would overtake psychological anguish caused by a more serious disturbance.
Psychology in Mid-Millennium
Scientific Knowledge• 16-18 Centuries
• Human beings were part of the natural world
• A part of animal kingdom with a superiority of rationalthinking
• Believed secrets of the nature are coded in mathematicalformulas
• From divine and or spiritual to mechanical or chemical
• Galen’s view of imbalance of the humors was mandatoryin medicine
Psychology in Mid-Millennium
Scientific Knowledge
• A general processing mechanism: sensorium▫ Located in the brain
▫ Brain is sensitive root attached to sense organs
• Speculative views on human reproduction
▫ Active matter from men
▫ Passive matter from womenWilliam Harvey
1578-1657
• Scholars offered certain stable patterns of behaviorand thinking▫ Similar to today’s personality traits▫ Natural makeup of the body, the temperament was the
source of psychological activities▫ Character of the soul▫ Soul imitates the complexions of the body
Choleric people: active, ambitious, wrathful
Sanguine people: even tempered and kindly
Melancholics: depressed, envious but creative
Phlegmatics: slow and slothful
Psychology in Mid-Millennium
Scientific Knowledge
• Anatomy of Melancholy By Robert Burton published in 1621 was one of the earliest books devoted to anxiety and mood problems
• Identified specific environmentalfactors
▫ Rigorous diet
▫ Alcohol
▫ Biological rhythms
▫ Passionate love (persistent sadness)
• Melancholia as «love sickness»
• He discussed causes and symptoms of melancholia and treatment methods
▫ Avoiding the source of sadness
▫ Redirecting thoughts
Religion-based and Folk Knowledge
Mysticism, a belief in the existence of realities beyond perceptual reflection or scientific explanations but accessible by subjective experience, remained a very important element in the lives of the Christian and Jewish communities in Europe and in the Muslim communities of the Middle East and North Africa.
Witchcraft was part of human folk tradition supported by religious beliefs. From the evidence accumulated in printed sources, including The Malleus Maleficarum, we can infer that the “work of the devil”, and witchcraft in particular, was attributed to psychological and behavioral symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, or manic episodes.
Prosecution of Women for Witchcraft
• Usually old women from lower classes
• 80 % of all accused people were women
• Why women?
The Influence of Literature
The Influence of Literature
• Contribution to psychological knowledge
▫ Shakespeare (1564-1616) Analysis of human characters, passions, rational
decision making, psychological disorders
Hamlet: detailed descriptions of major depressiveepisodes
King Lear: age-related dementia
• Cervantes (Don Quixote), Moliere (Don Juan...), Lope de Vega (A Certainity for a Doubt)
Views of Basic Psychological Activities
Humanists
• Three major themes
▫ Dignity
▫ Independence from intellectual authorities (i.e. religious institutions)
▫ Human frailty (zaaf)
• Focuses on individual and individual goals
• Emphasis on free will
Scientific Rationalists
• Human beings as a part of the universe
▫ Orderly
▫ Predictable
• Mathematic and physics can explain mental processes
• Moral behavior was guided by principle of mechanics:
▫ People choose actions that bring satisfaction and avoiddispleasure
• Machiavelli (1469-1527)
▫ Human motivation and self-interest
René Descartes
• Cogito ergo sum
▫ Anyone who thinks should exists
▫ There is no consciousness without body
▫ Sensation helps indivduals in gatheringknowledge
▫ Human soul does not operate out of sensationsalone
▫ The ideas are inborn
▫ External signals trigger existing knowledge
René Descartes 1596–1650
René Descartes
• Descartes believed that animal spirits are light and roaming fluids circulating rapidly around the nervous system between the brain and the muscles.
• Animal spirits come into contact with the brain and trigger, strengthen, or weaken affective states in the soul, or passions of the soul.
• Descartes distinguished six basic passions: wonder (surprise), love, hatred, desire, joy, and sadness.
Pineal glandthe doorway between the soul andthe body
- signals go from senses to the pinealgland by means of animal spirits- the soul moves the gland- pushes the animal spirit toward thepores of the brain- different motions in the glandcause different passions- Animal spirits that move freelyaround the body could distort thecommands from the gland- people have to learn their passions, otherwise, negative consequencescan occur
René Descartes
• He described automatic bodily reactions
▫ Contributed to reflex theory (19th century)
▫ Automatic reactions do not necessarily require a thought process
Benedict Spinoza
• All existence is contained in one substance
▫ Nature, universe, God
• Mathematics and geometry can be applied tomental activities, esp. emotion
• Study of emotion
Benedict Spinoza1632-1677
Benedict Spinoza
• His views of emotions:
▫ We too often follow our impulses and become virtual slaves to our wishes
▫ We lose freedom because we are trapped in the continual search for gratification of our wishes without knowing why we do so
▫ To avoid this endless quest for pleasure, we should know more about the causes of our own actions
▫ This knowledge can make people free
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
• Psychological parallelism
▫ Physical and mental processes are set todevelop in parallel courses
• Monadolgy
▫ Universe is made up of an infinitenumber of spiritual forces
▫ Monads: windowless entities
▫ Each reflecting every other
▫ Each has potential of all the propertieswhich come from past or may be exhibited in the future
1646–1716
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
• According to Leibniz, the soul has an infinite number of monads and therefore perceptions. Monads can perceive, and the soul possesses “little perceptions” that are not conscious but could become so because of memory and attention.
• The soul possesses several areas of knowledge distinguished by the strength of apperception: clear knowledge, fragmented knowledge, and unconscious knowledge.
• Leibniz is one of the first scholars to have identified a category of unconscious psychological phenomena.
• Like Descartes, Leibniz believed in the existence of innate ideas because he felt it was impossible to derive certain abstract ideas directly from experience.
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)
• Hobbes believed that the essence of human behavior is in physical motion and that the principles of Galileo’s mechanics could explain sensation, emotions, motivation, and even moral values.
• Unlike Descartes, Hobbes understood the soul as mechanical movements in the body.
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)
• His understanding of soul was a reductionist view
▫ Reductionism: Explaining nature of complex processesby reducing them to interactions of their elements orunderlying processes i.e. psychological functions that are described as simple
physiological reactions or reflexes.
• He laid foundations for the empirical branch of epistemology and psychology and supported empiricism, the scientific belief that experience, especially sensory processes, is the main source of knowledge.
John Locke (1632–1704)
• Locke believed that the child’s mind is a “clean board,” or in Latin, tabula rasa. Experiences can be recorded in the mind in a fashion similar to the way in which teachers use a piece of chalk to write on the board.
• Following a tradition in epistemology, Locke continued to distinguish between the primary and secondary qualities of things. Primary qualities are inseparable from the body and reflect the qualities of objects; these included extension, motion, number, or firmness. Secondary qualities, such as color or taste, exist only in sensations.
• A materialist who believed in cause-and-effect relationship betweenthe body and soul.
George Berkeley
• Sensory processes is the major source of knowledge
• To understand Berkeley is to comprehend his famous principle: to exist is to be perceived (esse estpercipi in Latin).
• Solipsism: the self as the only entity that can be known and verified (similar to Taoism andBuddhism)
• We always use our sensations to prove the desk’s existence! Therefore, every object requires a perceiving mind.
1685–1753
David Hume (1711–1776)
• Hume contributed to psychology by developing pragmatic views in the fields of naturalism and instrumentalism.
• Naturalism refers to the view that observable events should be explained only by natural causes without assuming the existence of divine, paranormal, or supernatural causes such as “magic” or “evil eye.”
• Instrumentalism applied to Hume’s works means that human action is reasonable as long as it justifies this individual’s goals.
• Suicide is similar to dying because of an infection or byanother cause. No religious crime should be associated withthe suicide (A base for humanistic psychology)
Hume’s Views of Personality
• He described four personilty types:
1. The Epicurean displays elegance and seeks pleasure.
2. The Stoic is a person of action and virtue.
3. The Platonist is the person of contemplation and philosophical devotion.
4. The Skeptic is the person of critical thinking.
Immanuel Kant
• One cannot understand the world and orderby relying on senses
• Each individual has innate abilities tounderstand reality from a programmedposition
▫ Time and space are the innate concepts(or categories) that are not learned; theyare installed in us
▫ A category is software that allows us tosee the world as three-dimensional andorganized in periods
▫ The world makes sense to us because wehave innate tools to understand it
1724–1804
Immanuel Kant
• “Golden Rule”: act according to your rational will but assume that your action, to be considered moral, should become a universal law for others to follow. He believed that such a moral imperative should be innate, which means, in contemporary terms, that all human beings should have a natural predisposition for moral behavior.
• Many years later, founders and supporters of humanistic psychology and its many branches emphasize the moral side of human behavior and, like Kant, they celebrate moral act as a natural expression.
Paul-Henri Thiry (1723–1789)
• He believed that the brain is capable of producing within itself a great variety of physical motion called intellectual faculties.
• In his materialist outlook, the brain is the center of all activities attributed to the soul. To understand how the brain works, scientists should combine their efforts as physicians, natural philosophers, and anatomists.
• In addition to his publications, he was best known for hosting his famous salon -- a common name for periodic “get-togethers” of people of social status and intellectual merit.
Abbé de Condillac (1714–1780)
All mental operations are forms of sensation
The children should be educatedaccording to the skills they developedat each stage and teachers hould adjusttheir methods accordingly
A contribution to evolutionary and cultural theories of human development
Julien Offray de LaMettrie (1709–1751)
• In “Man a Machine”, he defended a view that a human being is just a complex machine. Each tiny fiber or part of a living body moves by a particular principle. People are trained to perform simple and complex tasks in the same way that animals are trained to look for food and protect themselves. A geometrician, according to La Mettrie, learns to perform the most complicated calculations in the same way as a trained animal learns to perform tricks.
• Even the most complex communications can be reduced tosimple sounds or words
• Extreme reductionism
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• He openly glorified the very early stages of human civilization, the view endorsed today by some cultural anthropologists and psychologists
• Rousseau even coined the term, “noble savage” suggesting that people were essentially good when they lived under the rules of nature, before modern civilizations were created. Those rules, in his mind, stood for honesty, reliability, and spiritual freedom.
1712–1778
