Task 3 - Body-Mind Flashcards
What are central aspects of Copernicus’ model?
- Heliocentric
- Planets cycling around the sun with a sphere of stars surrounding the system
- one day is a 360° turn of the earth around itself
- a year is one cycle around the sun
- Epicycles explain movement of stars
What are central aspects about Rene Descartes?
- 1596 - 1650
- Rationalism
- Dualism with bidirectional influences
- > Interactionist Dualism
- Cogito ergo sum - the undeniable existence of thought
- Mechanistic world view
- Connection point of mind and body is the pineal gland
What findings of Newton were the most essential for science?
- based on Galileos work
- Thought experiment with cannonball: If shot at the right height and with the right force, it would fly around the world
- > Idea of gravity
What was the title of Newton’s most influential book and what did it roughly contain?
- > Principa Mathematica
- > contained his laws of physics
- > use of precise mathematics makes the use of philosophy redundant because everything can be calculated
Why is Wilhelm Wundt an influential person in science and psychology?
- Founded the first laboratory for experimental psychology
- > Leipzig, 1879
- > often seen as the birth of Psychology
- Promoted experimental methods
What were the experimental methods used by Wundt?
- Psychophysics
- > measurement of duration of mental processes (reaction time measurement)
- > Accuracy of reproduction in memory tasks
- Introspection
- > self-reports on internal sensations
- Historical Method
- > Used in his later years
- > investigating products of human culture, to infer on higher functions of their mind
Why is Wundt’s legacy when it comes to concrete scientific knowledge limited?
His writing was unclear and sometimes contradictory. He also didn’t develop any concrete laws or mathematical formulas.
Explain the subdivision of introspection and why it was introduced.
Introspection was seen critically by peer scientists due to subjectivity.
Wundt recognized the criticism and introduced two kinds of introspection:
- internal perception (more philosophical, not scientifically valid)
- experimental self-observation (scientific)
Who was William James?
- Early lecturer at Harvard
- Wrote the textbook “The principles of Psychology” in 1890
- Promoted introspection
- His views formed the base of functionalism
- > inspired by evolutionary theory
- > Sees the mind as an adaption in order to increase likelihood of survival
Who was Edward B. Titchener?
- student of Wundt
- Founder of Structuralism
- opposed the existence of imageless thoughts
- Criticized by the functionalists, Gestalt psychologists and the Würzburg school
What is Structuralism?
The idea of discovering the structure of the brain through introspection. It never became a big movement in psychology.
Who was the Würzburg School?
Group of psychologists at Würzburg university, that said that there are imageless thoughts / unconscious processes, that can’t be uncovered by introspection.
What is a central view of gestalt psychologists?
That the human mind and perception is more than the sum of its parts.
Which scientists played a central role in the enlightenment?
- Newton
- Locke
- Bacon
What are some of Locke’s views?
- No innate knowledge - Tabula Rasa
- empiricist
- Primary / Secondary qualities
- > primary: definite characteristics
- > secondary: how we perceive it
