Essay About English Naturalist And Father Of Modern Philosophy

Contributors to Psychology
Essay Preview: Contributors to Psychology
Report this essay
Contributors to Psychology
René Descartes
Considered to be the father of modern philosophy, because his ideas departed widely from the current understanding in the early 17th century ← which was more feeling-based

“I think; therefore I am.” – Descartes
Thoughts cannot be separated from me; therefore, I exist
Employed a method called hyperbolical or metaphysical doubt/methodological skepticism: rejects any ideas that can be doubted, and then reestablishes them to acquire a firm foundation for genuine knowledge

Brought the idea of using scientific experiment/method to find real truths
Start with observations → Ask questions (Why? How?) → Form hypothesis → Conduct an experiment
Was a structuralist
Asserts that aspects of reality are best understood in terms of empirical scientific constructs of entities and their relations, rather than in terms of concrete entities in themselves

Pierre Jean George Cabanis
Wrote On the Relations Between the Physical and Moral Aspects of Man (1802)
Psychology is directly linked to biology: sensibility is the highest grade of life and the lowest of intelligence
All intellectual processes are evolved from sensibility, and sensibility itself is a property of the nervous system
Charles Darwin
An English naturalist who gained great fame for the development of the evolutionary theory
Had an influence on William James’ psychological theory of functionalism (biological perspective → adaptability → human beings are animals)
Wilhelm Wundt
Created the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany
Regarded as the ‘founding father’ of psychology
Pioneered structuralism, the first approach to investing psychology
Thought the object of psychological investigation should be the conscious mind
Should be studied by introspection (looking inwards at one’s own mental experience) in order to break it down into its component parts (e.g. images, sensations, and feelings)

William James
The Principles of Psychology (1890), which took 12 years to write, was a major landmark in psychology’s literature
Began teaching a course on the relationship