History of Modern Psychology

Historically, psychology is a very young discipline dating back to the mid-1900's but has its foundation in

philosophy and medicine dating back to the time of the Greek philosophers. In some instances psychology is

traced back even further. During the seventh century B.C., Psamtik I, King of Egypt, was curious about the

belief of all Egyptians that they were the oldest race on earth. Because his curiosity was so strong he believed

that if this were the case, then "if children had no opportunity to learn a language from older people around

them, they would spontaneously speak the primal, inborn language of humankind - the natural language of its

most ancient people - which he expected to show was Egyptian" ( Hunt 1993 p. 1). What he did to try and

prove his hypothesis was to take two infants from a poor woman in one of the villages, give them to a

herdsman to be brought up in a remote area and they were never to hear spoken word from any adult or child

of speaking age around them. They were to be fed and well cared for otherwise. When the children were two

years old, the herdsman opened the door and the children cried out the word "Becos". It meant nothing to the

herdsman but when it happened repeatedly he gave word to the king who had scholars find the meaning of the

word which to his disappointment was the Phrygian word for "bread" (Hunt 1993 p.2).

Today we can smile and appreciate Psamtik I and his idea, however we have proven in the last 12 centuries

since this "first psychological experiment" that unless humans are taught or hear

language, they will not speak anything beyond their infant babblings. Psychology has developed many separate

disciplines within the science since its beginnings and continues to develop and change with changes in the

human perspective; however for the purpose of this paper the roots of psychology leading back to philosophy

will be examined.

Philosophers That Historically Relate to the Beginnings of Psychology

Hermann Ebbinghaus said "Psychology has a long past, yet its real history is very short". His statement was

the opening to the introduction of his textbook on psychology. He

explains in his discourse of that time that psychologists faced many obstacles in expanding as a science

because of their inability to see that the philosophy of centuries past played a part in leading them to where

they were. This has improved in the last century but still not enough emphasis is placed on the philosophical

roots in the history of psychology.

The philosophy of Ancient Greece, leading to the Renaissance, is rich with the writings of the philosophers,

Plato and Aristotle. The time following this, gave history "the great philosopher" Thomas Aquinas, the man "

who united Christian faith with Aristotelian logic (Goodwin, 2008 p. 29) but the End of the Renaissance and

the 17th century brought to history, the man who is "sometimes considered the father of modern philosophy,

mathematics, physiology and psychology (Goodwin, 2008 p. 30) the great philosopher, Rene' Descartes.

Descartes lived during the end of the renaissance and his life overlapped with a great many advances and

changes to history and belief systems in science, philosophy, and the arts. In his summary, Goodwin (2008)

explains,

Descartes was a rationalist, believing that the way to true knowledge was through the systematic use of his reasoning abilities. Because he believed that some truths were universal and could be arrived at through reason and without the necessity of sensory experience, he was also a nativist. In addition, he was a dualist and an interactionist, believing that mind and body were distinct essences, but that they had direct influence on each other (p. 59).

Just prior to his death, Descartes published The Passions of the Soul, "which established his status as a pioneer psychologist and physiologist" ( Goodwin 1993 p 34). It was written to explain human emotion but it also described what we know today as a reflex (an automatic stimulus-response reaction). Descartes showed his position on the mind-body question and included a description of his model of nervous system activity which proved that the reflex was automatic because of the minds response to stimuli (Goodwin 1993 p. 59). It is Descartes' who is most likely responsible for many of the themes that came from the late Renaissance that are incorporated into the science of psychology today, but since that time there are many philosophers in the Western tradition that contributed to the formation of psychology as a discipline.

Western Philosophers that Contributed to the Formation of Psychology as a Discipline

John Locke is the first of a group of men that will be briefly discussed in this section touching on their major contributions to the formation of psychology as a science. Locke, according to Goodwin (2008) "is important to psychology as a consequence of the concepts expressed in two of his books, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690/1963) and Some Thoughts