Chapter 6 - Functionalism Antecedents Flashcards
1
Q
Who was Jenny?
A
- Was a 2-year-old orangutan displayed at the London Zoo in 1838
- Wore a girl’s dress, sat at a table, understood keeper’s directions etc.
- Acted like a human
2
Q
What did Charles Darwin think of Jenny?
A
- Wrote of her intelligence in comparison to man
- Believed man should be humble to consider himself created from animals
3
Q
How did Aristotle discuss evolution?
A
- Recognized that the human hand was analogous to wings or fins
- Not the right time to explore this idea
4
Q
What idea did Al-Jahiz have that predated evolution?
A
- Was a young Iraqi scholar
- Seven-volume book: “Book of Living Beings”
- Wrote that animals had to adapt to survive
5
Q
Who was Erasmus Darwin?
A
- Darwin’s grandfather, direct influence on his thinking
- Believed in God, and that he didn’t intervene to alter species or create new ones
- However, species needed to adapt to the environment they find themselves placed in
6
Q
What did Jean-Baptiste Lamarck develop?
A
- A French naturalist
- Developed a behavioural theory of evolution which suggests species modification to adapt to the environment
- Seen as the first important theory of evolution
- Had a ‘romantic view’ that species strive to perfect themselves (later shown to be inaccurate)
7
Q
What was Lamarck’s Law of the Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics?
A
- Species acquire characteristics that are passed on to immediate descendants
- The structure of the descendant can then change as a result
- Giraffe most famous example (developed long neck over generations to reach for vegetation)
- Suggested humans may have evolved from orangutans (not a popular theory at the time)
8
Q
What was the significance of Thomas Malthus?
A
- A British economist
- Wrote “Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society” in 1838
- Wrote how population has a tendency to increase beyond the means of substinence
- Idea that too many people will have to compete for too little food
- Darwin derived from his ideas, claiming that individuals need to compete for limited resources
9
Q
Who was Charles Lyell and his major contribution to evolution?
A
- A British geologist
- Suggested that the earth passed through various stages of development (i.e., evolution of the planet)
- ‘Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation”
- Became a best-seller
- Created controversy, began to ‘normalize’ the idea of evolution
10
Q
T/F: The evolution revolution was definitely the Zeitgeist of the time.
A
- TRUE
- Scientists learning more about the species that inhabit the earth (biology)
- Centuries of accepting biblical explanations leaves questions: How could Noah fit so many species into
- Examples like Jenny showed animals can be similar to humans
- Fossils that didn’t match living species
11
Q
What other major changes where occurring during the 1800s?
A
- Industrial revolution
- Shifts in values
- Cultural norms
- Relationships
- Migration
- Mechanistic spirit
*The timing was definitely right for evolution to emerge
12
Q
How did Charles Darwin change psychology?
A
- No longer concerned with the structure of consciousness but its function
13
Q
What’s functionalism?
A
- A school of thought that investigates how the mind functions and how it is used by organisms to adapt to the environment (ties into evolutionary psychology)
- Focus on practical, real-world consequences
- What does the mind do? How does it do it?
14
Q
What’s the life story of Charles Darwin?
A
- Grandfathers were two of the most famous men in England
- Mischievous child, did poorly in school
- Showed an interest in natural history
- Mother died when he was 8
- Studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh but quit
- Completed a BA at Cambridge University (not a great student)
- Age 22, hired to be the botanist aboard the HMS Beagle courtesy of a professor
- Married his first cousin Emma, moved to small village outside of London (Down)
- Often ill, often caused by stress
- Found solitude in his work
- His theory of evolution made him very worried, worked on it for years
- Not a very prolific worker
15
Q
What did Darwin’s voyage of the HMS Beagle entail?
A
- Five years long
- Captain Fitzroy almost rejected him because of his nose (i.e., phrenology)
- His job: Record geological formations and collect samples of species, captain wanted him to lend evidence to creationist theory
- Brought with him Lyell’s “Principles of Geology” (influenced his thinking)
- Went to a lot of places
16
Q
What was the significance of the Galapagos Islands?
A
- Darwin was a creationist, but what he found there created doubt
- The specimens he found there indicated that it could be possible for new species to emerge
- In particular he found peculiar differences in finches (differences in beaks)
- The finches did not directly lead him to the theory of evolution
- They were one observation among many
17
Q
What did Peter and Rosemary Grant discover regarding Darwin’s finches?
A
- Princeton University biologists
- Studied finches in the Galapagos beginning in 1973
- Research program lasted over 30 years
- 13 unique species of finches
- Concluded Darwin actually underestimated how quickly evolution was occurring
- Beak sizes changed depending on the current climate
18
Q
What major ideas did Darwin bring together to develop his theory?
A
- After the Beagle, Darwin returned to London
- Thought deeply about what he had found
- Considered the findings of Mathus’s ideas that individuals need to compete for limited resources
- Settled on the ideas of natural selection and survival of the fittest
19
Q
Why did Darwin wait so long to publish his work?
A
- Darwin understood the backlash that would occur
- Worked on his book for 22 years before presenting it to the public
- Wanted it to be irrefutable and unassailable
- Only Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker knew of it’s existence
- Felt like he was confessing to murder
20
Q
Who was Alfred Rusell Wallace?
A
- A naturalist who was younger than Darwin
- Outlined evolutionary theory while recovering from malaria
- Wrote a letter to Darwin and told him he came up with the theory in three days
- This forced Darwin’s hand
- Asked Darwin to help him get published
- Was a very agonizing time for Darwin as his son had died
- Was convinced by Lyell and Hooker that both contributions be presented at a meeting of Linnaen society in 1858
21
Q
What was the initial reaction to the “Origins of Species”?
A
- Darwin was very aware of the controversy that could erupt
- Darwin became physically ill (vomitting) when the book was published in 1859
- Spent two months hiding in a spa in the north of England
- First edition sold out
- The expected reaction was actually quite muted
- Southern united states had the greatest backlash
22
Q
What were the fundamentals of “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”?
A
- Natural selection of traits best suited for the environment
- Survival of the fittest: elimination of those not fit for the environment
- Variation is a law of heredity
- A slow intro into saying that humans evolved from other species
23
Q
Who was Thomas Henry Huxley?
A
- Perhaps Darwin’s most staunch defender
- Biologist and member of the scientific elite in the UK
- Enjoyed debating the enemies of science and evolution
- promoted science as a new religion
24
Q
What happened to Captain Fitzroy post-publication?
A
- He was very distraught that he permitted Darwin on the HMS Beagle
- He was a creationist and tried to debate Huxley with the bible
- Ended up committing suicide
- Darwin sent his widow some money
25
Q
What was covered in Darwin’s “Descent of Man”?
A
- More firmly established the link between human evolution and lower life forms
- Noted the similarities in human and animal cognition
- Both shocking and popular
26
Q
What was covered in Darwin’s “The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals”?
A
- Emotional expressions are remnants of movements which served some practical function
- Emotions evolved, useful ones survived
- Darwin was long fascinated with facial expressions, and would take pictures of his children’s expressions
- Also argued that facial expressions and body language were innate and uncontrollable manifestations of internal emotional states
27
Q
What was Darwin’s influence on psychology?
A
- Focus on animal psychology, caused a rise in behavioural neuroscience as animal models could be used
- Emphasis on the functions rather than the structure of consciousness
- Acceptance of methodology and data from many fields (biology, sociology, anthropology). Illustrated you needed a large body of evidence
- Focus on the description and measurement of individual differences (Wundt and Titchener would not have considered these apart of psychology)
- A lot of behaviour can be explained by evolution
28
Q
What’s the life story of Francis Galton?
A
- Born in 1822 in Birmingham, England, the youngest of nine children
- Wealthy family with political and economic sway
- Extremely intelligent
- Knew English and Greek alphabets as a preschooler
- Pressured by his father to train in medicine at 16 (performed various procedures)
- Self-experimented with medications to assess his reaction, stopped when he took a laxative
- Earned a degree in physics from Cambridge, and left medicine behind when his father died
- Phrenologist told him he had the head shape of an adventurer (travelled through Africa)
- Published works on his travels
- Turned his attention to metrology and developed what we know as the weather map
- First cousin of Darwin
29
Q
What were Galton’s ideas regarding individual differences in people?
A
- His main area of interest
- Example of the spirit of evolution on psychology
30
Q
Who was Juan Huarte?
A
- A scientist from the 1500s who conducted some work regarding the inheritance of traits
- Published book “The Examination of Talented Individuals”
- Not much came of it, example of the influence of Zeitgeist
31
Q
What was in Galton’s “Hereditary Genius” (1869)?
A
- His first psychology book
- Darwin was highly impressed
- Suggested genius did run in families, indicated how eminent men have eminent sons and thought this was too frequent to be due to the environment
- Most subjects were other scientists
- Thought that no amount amount of effort can overcome this genetic endowment (i.e., no impact of environment)
- Did not consider the fact that he was strictly looking at very privileged groups
32
Q
What did Galton mean by the term eugenics?
A
- Proposed eugenics to foster the improvement of inherited qualities
- Greek for “good in stock”
- Human race could be improved via artificial selection (like farm animals)
- Encourage fitness and discourage the ‘unfit’ from having children
- Scientifically paired and paid by the government
