Predecessors of psychology: 17th/18th century developments

Question 1

What is meant by individualisation?

Answer 1

trend in a society towards looser social relations and a greater focus by individuals on themselves than on the groups they belong to

Question 2

Name four factors which lead to the growth of individualisation since the middle ages

Answer 2

• Increased complexity of society ( increased urbanisation and industrialisation put people into more complex and competitive social networks, in which everyone struggled to maintain a sense of dignity and meaning.)
• Increased control by the state (society gathered and stored more and more information about its individuals, which was reported back to the citizens. This information gathering gave people the feeling of standing out of the crowd.)
• Individuality promoted by Christianity (each person’s private state of faith and relation to God is the essence of piety.)
• Mirrors, books and letters

Question 3

What is meant by epistemology?

Answer 3

branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of knowledge

Question 4

who was the first Western philosopher after the Ancient Greeks to value new and independent thinking?

Answer 4

Descartes

Question 5

What is generally thought to be the start of empiricism?

Answer 5

in Great Britain, there grew strong opposition to the rationalist approach of knowledge acquisition. This influenced in particular the philosopher and politician John Locke (1632–1740). In 1689 he published a treatise, An essay concerning human understanding

Question 6

What is meant by empiricism?

Answer 6

Empiricism is the conviction that there is no innate knowledge to start from and that all knowledge arises from sensory experience and induction.

usually involves the idea of associations between ideas to combine the individual perceptions; also emphasis on inductive reasoning

Question 7

What is meant by idealism?

Answer 7

view within philosophy that human knowledge is a construction of the mind and does not necessarily correspond to an outside world; the truth of knowledge depends on the coherence with the rest
of the knowledge in the social group

Question 8

What is meant by realism?

Answer 8

view within philosophy that human knowledge tries to reveal real properties of the outside world; the truth of knowledge is determined by the correspondence of the knowledge with the real world

Question 9

who published a booklet in which he argued that if the contents of the soul entirely consist of impressions acquired through observation, then we have no guarantee, except for God, that the contents of the soul are a faithful rendition of the world.?

Answer 9

the 24-year-old Irish student George Berkeley (1685–1753)

Question 10

Who expanded on this idea of idealism and how did he expand it? (2)

Answer 10

the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776), who pointed out that idealism questioned the scientific endeavour of unearthing causes and effects. Hume also pointed to a second principle humans use to group sensations, namely association by similarity. Because two sensations resemble each other, we assume they come from the same entity in the world.

Question 11

Hume’s analysis of cause and effect provoked a reaction from who?

Answer 11

the German physicist and philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804

Question 12

What did Kant agree with Berkeley and Hume about and where did he disagree?

Answer 12

Kant agreed with Berkeley and Hume that we cannot have direct knowledge of the outside reality (the thing-in-itself) through perception, but he sought to prove that (a) perception is much richer than postulated by Hume and Berkeley, and (b) such perception can only exist in a world of things that is not in contradiction with it.

Question 13

Explain how Kant concluded that human experiences on which knowledge is built are much richer than Hume and Berkeley claimed (3)

Answer 13

Kant started from the observation that humans are conscious of their perceptions. That is, humans not only perceive, they also think about their perceptions. By combining input from their senses with understanding, they come to concepts and judgments that generalise across the perceived instances and go beyond basic experiences. In doing so, the mind adds knowledge (to sensations) that is not derived from the observation itself and, hence, can be considered innate. Because there is continuity in the understanding and the perceptions, the mind can conclude that there must be continuity in time both for the observer and the observed. As a result, perceptions are automatically situated and ordered in time. Second, because sensations are experienced as caused by something from ‘outside’, there is a sense of space that need not be learned and leads to the postulation of perceptions referring to substances situated in space. Finally, Kant argued, the mind puts forward the assumption that ‘every event has a cause’. As a result, the mind sees cause–effect sequences wherever possible.

human experiences on which knowledge is built are much richer than Hume and Berkeley claimed, because they already contain within themselves the features of time, space, substance and causality.

Question 14

What are the three most important types of knowledge added by the mind to oncoming stimuli?

Answer 14

time, space and cause–effect.

Question 15

How did Kant argue that human perception could not arise completely at odds with sensations?

Answer 15

Even if sensations are
subjective, they can only exist if the perceiver inhabits a world that is in line with the input from the senses. Successive sensations must form continuity and unity to be understood, otherwise they are experienced as incoherent and meaningless snap- shots.

Question 16

What was Kant’s final argument against idealism?

Answer 16

Finally, Kant argued, humans are not merely centres of knowledge; they are also agents, operating in the environment on the basis of their knowledge. Not all of these actions are successful, suggesting that an outside reality constrains human activities. (falling and breaking bones)

Question 17

What is metaphysics?

Answer 17

Metaphysics involves the study of the nature of the universe (addressing the question ‘what is really there?’) and usually entails reference to that which is not directly observable

Question 18

Who designated this name to it and what three parts to metaphysics did he distinguish?

Answer 18

1. Ontology: the study of the universe and its entities
2. Natural theology: the study of God(s)
3. Universal science: the study of the axioms and demonstrations on which theoretical knowledge is based.

Question 19

What fouth part was added and what was it regarding?

Answer 19

In the early 1700s the study of the human soul was added as the fourth component to Aristotle’s list and called psychology.

Question 20

Who took ideas from Aristotle, Bacon and Newton to define the subject of psychology?

Answer 20

Christian Wolff

Question 21

According to Wolff, what was empirical psychology based on?

Answer 21

Introspection, In his view, the human mind could perceive its own operations and use this information to build a science of psychology

Question 22

What was meant by introspection?

Answer 22

research method in psychology consisting of

a person looking inward and reporting what he/she is experiencing; usually done under controlled circumstances

Question 23

What is meant by psychometria?

Answer 23

Wolff suggested that psychology should aim for mathematical demonstrations, similar to Newton’s laws of physics. Only then would there be full understanding. He called this approach ‘psychometria’.

Question 24

What conclusion did Immanuel Kant come to that was pretty devastating for the scientific ambitions of psychology?

Answer 24

In Kant’s view, natural science required rational analysis, a system of undisputable axioms and demonstrations. Furthermore (and this was Newton’s influence), a proper natural science required the axioms and demonstrations to be written as mathematical laws.

Question 25

Give four points summarising Kant’s objections to psychology being a proper science

Answer 25

1. The outcome of introspection cannot be formulated in mathematical terms because there are no aspects of substance or space in inner observations, only time.
2. Inner observations cannot be separated and recombined at will, as is possible with outside objects.
3. The act of introspection by itself changes and displaces the state of the observed mind.
4. As a result, psychology can never become a natural science (let alone a proper natural science). It can at most be a historical doctrine of nature, a collection of systematically ordered empirical facts.

Question 26

What happened in Scotland regarding Berkley’s and Hume’s idealism? Give a name

Answer 26

In Scotland, there was a feeling that Berkeley and Hume’s idealism had gone one step too far and was alienating philosophical epistemology from science’s ongoing victory march. In particular, Thomas Reid (1710–1796) argued it was time for a return to what he called ‘common sense’

Question 27

How did Wolff define rational psychology?

Answer 27

he defined rational psychology very much as Aristotle had done for theoretical knowledge. It started from axioms (self-evident truths), which had to be derived from more fundamental disciplines, such as physics and metaphysics.

Question 28

How did Wolff argue that psychology required empirical psychology?

Answer 28

Wolff agreed with Bacon that pure reason without observation entailed a risk of error. Long chains of reasoning without reality checks invited mistakes. Therefore, psychology needed a close interaction between reason and observation, or empirical psychology. In Wolff’s own words

Question 29

How did Immanuel Kant bridge the gap between rational and empirical psychology?

Answer 29

Kant beieved that any proper natural science required both rationalism and empiricism. Kant stated that all natural sciences required rational analysis, a system of undisputable axioms and demonstrations. These undisputable axioms were often aquired through empirical methods. However Kant also claimed that proper natural sciences also required these axioms and demonstrations to be written as mathematical laws. This would require more rationalist approaches such as logic and reasoning.

Question 30

What is meant by the law of continuity?

Answer 30

The Gestalt Continuity Law explains how our brain experiences visual line of elements that are grouped together. There is a tendency to perceive a line continuing its established direction.

Question 31

Name another high-profile person who denied the scientific status of psychology, and what area he was in

Answer 31

Auguste Comte, the proponent of positivism and the founder of sociology.

Question 32

Why was psychology omitted from Auguste Comte’s hierarchy of sciences?

Answer 32

problems with the introspective method; the person observing and the observed is the same, how can this be possible?

Question 33

According to Comte, what is the only way the human mind can be studied scientifically?

Answer 33

on the basis of biology and on the basis of observation of the products produced by the mind, was impressed by phrenology (the view that mental functions were localised in the brain and that the capacity of a function corresponded to the size of the brain part devoted to it. . As for the latter, the products of the human mind formed one of the sub- jects of Comte’s new science: sociology.

Question 34

What was Comte’s hierarchy of the six sciences?

Answer 34

the lower levels depend on the laws discovered in the higher and, therefore, likely to take longer before they reached the same level of perfection:

1. mathematics
2. astronomy
3. physics
4. chemistry
5. biology
6. sociology.

Question 35

What was the subject of Kant’s textbook?

Answer 35

human functioning; Kant did not treat the topic as a science, but as a collection of narratives. Nor did he call the subject psychology (the study of mind) but anthropology (the study of man)

In this book Kant addressed topics such as self-consciousness, self-observation, unconscious ideas and mental processes, the distinction between sensation and thinking, the role of pleasure and pain in human life, how to define and control emotions and passions, and what the differences were between the characters of the French, British, Spanish, Italians, Germans, Greeks and Armenians.

Question 36

Kant also devoted a part to deriving people’s characters from what? Give a name to this and explain Kant’s stance

Answer 36

deriving people’s characters from their appearance and behaviour. The former is known as physiognomy, the belief that the personality of individuals can be deduced from their appearance.

Kant did not fully share the conviction that the interior of humans could be derived entirely from their looks. Rather, he thought the judgement of a person’s interior had to be based on their behaviour in addition to their appearance.

Question 37

Who wrote a textbook specifically for use for educational purposes in 1816? Why did he write this?

Answer 37

Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841)

was written in particular for use in educational studies (Herbart is one of the founders of educational sciences). Herbart was convinced that knowledge of psychology was of principal importance to teachers.

Question 38

What similar subject was studied in America at the time. and what was it heavily influenced by?

Answer 38

students had to take courses on moral and mental philosophy, mental philosophy studied the elements and processes of the mind and how they influenced action. The contents were heavily influenced by Scottish common sense realism, but increasingly took a distinctive American look with locally produced books.

Question 39

Who wrote a particularly popular textbook in America at this time?

Answer 39

A particularly popular textbook was Elements of intellectual philosophy, written in 1827 by the American philosopher Thomas Upham (1799–1872).

Question 40

What assertions did Upham contain at the start of his book which would become recurrent themes in psychological textbooks?

Answer 40

(i) that intellectual philosophy is a science,
(ii) that it differs from the previous, worthless education in Roman Catholic schools, and
(iii) that studying it is not a waste of time.

Question 41

The United Kingdom also saw an impressive series of psychology-related textbooks published. Who published arguably the most influential books?

Answer 41

the Scottish philosopher and educationalist Alexander Bain (1818–1903): The senses and the intellect (1855) and Emotions and the will (1859)

Question 42

What important new element did Bain introduce?

Answer 42

the inclusion of physiology in his books. He was equally interested in the biological basis of mental functioning as in the philosophical writings on the topic

Question 43

Name the authors of the four books discussed and what they attemoted to show

Answer 43

● Kant: anthropology as a collection of observed facts about humans
● Herbart: attempt to make psychology scientific by introducing mathematical laws
● Upham: claim that intellectual (mental) philosophy is a science worthwhile to be studied
● Bain: introduction of the nervous system and other physiological information in a textbook of psychology

Question 44

What were some natural philosophers doing while philosophers in metaphysics were debating the status and contents of psychology? What was the result of this?

Answer 44

some natural philosophers started to run Baconian experimental histories that nowadays would be classified as psychology experiments. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the findings of these experiments would encourage scholars to establish ‘laboratories of experimental psychology’, specifically devoted to this type of research.

Question 45

What two lines of study grew from this

Answer 45

One line of study concerned human perceptual capacities; another examined the speed of information-processing in the nervous system.

Question 46

What did Robert Hooke (1635–1703) contribute to perception?

Answer 46

He was interested in determining the minimal visual angle that could be discriminated. This was important for the use of telescopes and later also determined the degree of detail that could be seen through the newly built microscopes, of which Hooke made extensive use. On the basis of his studies, Hooke concluded that humans could discriminate lines that covered a visual angle of 1 minute of arc, which was later estimated to amount to a retinal width of 0.0035 mm. (black and white lines experiment)

Question 47

Who built upon Hooke’s line experiment and how?

Answer 47

The German astronomer Tobias Mayer (1723–1762). Mayer used more types of stimuli than Hooke had used (black dots, gratings, checkerboards) In addition, Mayer manipulated illumination (by putting a candle at various distances).

Question 48

What did Mayer discover from these experiments?

Answer 48

He found that for black dots, the limit of vision was nearly half that of Hooke’s estimate while the limit for gratings was comparable to Hook’s estimate.
When manipulating illumination, he observed that the relationship between the distance of the candle and the limit of vision was not linear but curvilinear. Using elementary arithmetic, Mayer argued that the limit of vision could be predicted with the following equation:

Limit of vision = k*sqrt^3(distance of the candle)

in which k depended on the type of stimulus used (grating, checkerboard, etc.).

Question 49

What was German physician and professor, Ernst Heinrich Weber (1795–1878), initially interested in?

Answer 49

Unlike most of his colleagues, he was not in the first place interested in vision but in audition and, above all, the tactile senses.

Question 50

What series of studies did Weber first carry out?

Answer 50

First, he used a compass with blunted points and briefly touched people’s skin with them. When the points were far apart, people could clearly feel two different parts being touched (they were blindfolded). When the points were put closer together, from a certain point on, people no longer had the feeling of two different parts being touched but of an elliptic instrument contacting them (i.e. they still could distinguish the axis of the elongation). When the points were brought even closer together, the impression of elongation diminished and, from a certain distance on, was experienced as a single round object touching the person

Question 51

What did Weber call the minimal distance required between the two points? What did he observe about this?

Answer 51

Weber called the minimal distance required between the two points to be perceived the two-point threshold. He further discovered that the two-point threshold was not constant for different body parts: it was much smaller on the tips of the fingers and the tip of the
tongue than on the arm, the leg or the trunk

Question 52

What subsequent series of studies did Weber then carry out?

Answer 52

Weber examined how good people were at discerning weights between the left and the right arm. He examined this by putting unequal weights in the left and the right hand, asking people which weight was the heavier, and examining the minimal difference that could be perceived

Question 53

What did Weber deduce from this series of experiments? (3)

Answer 53

Weber first discovered that people were much better at discriminating between weights when they were allowed to lift them than when the weights were put in their hands and they had to remain motionless. This, according to Weber, showed the importance of muscles and joints for weight discrimination

Weber further observed that, for most people, weights in the left arm seemed to be heavier than weights in the right arm. So, they felt a distinction faster when the heavier weight was placed in the left hand and the lighter weight in the right hand, than vice versa.

Finally, Weber discovered that the difference between the weights had to be larger for heavy weights than for light weights. In other words, it was not the absolute difference between the weights that was important, but the ratio between them

Question 54

When did Weber’s last finding become particularly important? What did this lead to?

Answer 54

when it inspired his colleague Gustav Fechner, to develop a mathematical law connecting sensation magnitude to stimulus intensity. He started a series of experiments to determine whether Weber’s ratio applied to a larger continuum of weights and to other senses as well. While running these studies he also devised new and better ways to measure the minimal differences that could be noticed. In 1860 Fechner published a book Elemente der psychophysik (Elements of psychophysics), in which he described his measurements and conclusions. This was the birth of psychophysics, a branch of research that dealt with the relationship between physical stimuli and their subjective correlates.

Question 55

What two developments in science inspired the interest in 1) perception and 2) The speed of signal transmission in the nervous system and mental chronometry

Answer 55

1) Visual acuity; eg lenses and howe objects become less visible at larger distances
2) Astronomy; precise measurement of the movements of stars and determination of the exact time on earth. ( target star crossing over a given wire in telescope, personal equations for personal differences)

Question 56

Who first tried measuring the speed of nerve impulses and how did he do it?

Answer 56

Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) by using the motor nerve that runs the length of the leg. By stimulating the nerve at a certain place and measuring the passage of the signal at several distances, he could estimate the conduction speed of the nerve.

Question 57

Who was stimulated by this discovery and what did he set out to achieve?

Answer 57

The Dutch ophthalmologist Franciscus Cornelis Donders (1818–1889) wondered whether he could use a similar technique to measure the speed with which humans could perform elementary mental tasks.

Question 58

How did Donders attempt to measure this?

Answer 58

Donders first used a very simple task. A single stimulus was presented (e.g. the auditory stimulus ‘ki’), and the participant had to repeat it as fast as possible. Donders measured the time between the presentation of the stimulus and the start of the response up to a millisecond accuracy. He found that the mean response time for this simple type of reaction was 197 milliseconds.
He then presented five possible stimuli (‘ka, ke, ki, ko and ku’) and the participant had to repeat the stimulus as soon as he heard ‘ki’. In this condition, there was uncertainty about the stimulus that would be presented but not about the response that had to be made. The mean response time now was 243 milliseconds. By comparing the response times in the two conditions, Donders concluded that the time needed to perceive the identity of the stimulus, was 243 − 197 = 46 milliseconds.
Finally, Donders presented a condition in which the participants got the same five stimuli and had to repeat each of them. Now there was uncertainty both with respect to the stimulus that would be presented and the response that had to be given. The response time was now 285 milli- seconds, making Donders conclude that the time needed to choose the correct response out of five alternatives was 285 − 243 = 42 milliseconds.

Question 59

What was Donder’s the basis of?

Answer 59

mental chronometry; using reaction times to measure the time needed for various mental
tasks; on the basis of a comparison of different tasks, models of the mental processes involved in the tasks are postulated

Question 60

Name two common misunderstandings of evolutionary theory

Answer 60

That there is a direction in the genetic changes &

That organisms become better and stronger

Question 61

What did Darwin’s theories inspire Francis Galton (1822–1911) to investigate?

Answer 61

that features were inherited

Question 62

Why was there a need for statistics in psychology in comparison to other sciences?

Answer 62

Because of the intrinsic variability in psychological (and biological) measures, it is not possible to get rid of the noise simply by trying to improve the accuracy of the measurement, as in physics. Discrepancies will always remain between successive observations.

Question 63

Who first discovered the importance of statistical analyses for behavioural data? How did he first show this?

Answer 63

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) who analysed crime statistics from several countries.

Whereas Quetelet was not able to predict a single crime, he was able to predict how many crimes there would be in the next year and which variables affected this number (e.g. differences between men and women, between countries, between seasons and so on)

Question 64

How else did statistics shape psychology?

Answer 64

they also provided them with information on how to design biological and behavioural studies, so that valid conclusions could be drawn.

Question 65

What did Fisher contribute to this integration of statistisc?

Answer 65

Fisher further showed how researchers could adapt their methodology so that the influence of confounding variables could easily be factored out in statistical analyses. (experimental conditions and controls etc)

Question 66

Describe the two general types of people working in the trade of medicine in the eighteenth and nineteenth century

Answer 66

Most medical care was done by practitioners who learned the trade as apprentices. In addition, there were university-educated doctors whose training often only included theoretical knowledge.

Question 67

What was the general care a doctor provided and how did this change towards the end of the nineteenth century?

Answer 67

Effective medicines against the prevailing diseases were lacking and practitioners often resorted to bloodletting, laxatives and purgatives. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a movement emerged which saw the practitioner as a GP listening to his patients and giving advice about how to cope with the illness (the patient-as-a-person movement).