Historical and conceptual issues in psychology, by Brysbaert, M and Rastle, K (second edition) - a summary
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Foundation of Psychology
Chapter 2
The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century and its aftermath
Introduction
The word psychology did not appear in literature before 1500.
Scientific revolution: name given to a series of discoveries in the seventeenth century, involving Galilei, Descartes and Newton, that enhanced the status of science in society.
The geocentric model of the universe in the sixteenth century
The earth as the centre of the universe
The model that of the universe used in the sixteenth century was the model described by Aristotle who built on others) and elaborated by Ptolemy.
Aristotle’s universe was a limited universe with the Earth in the middle
Geocentric model: model of the universe in which the Earth is at the centre; was dominant until the seventeenth century.
The addition of epicycles
A key problem within the Aristotelian universe was the movements of some of the wandering stars.
To explain strange movements, Ptolemy used the notion of ‘epicycles’.
Epicycles: small cycles made by the wandering stars in addition to their main orbit around the earth.
Copernicus’s alternative heliocentric model
The sun at the centre of the universe
Aristotle’s model was not the only one that had been proposed in ancient cultures.
Heliocentric model: model of the universe in which the sun is at the centre.
Copernicus saw the heliocentric model as a valid alternative for the geocentric model.
Why Copernicus waited to publish his model
Only shortly before his death, Copernicus was persuaded to get his book printed.
Possible reasons
Galilei uses a telescope
Because of the many problems with Copernicus’s model, it failed to have much impact.
Galilei’s observations
Galilei built a telescope and found out that:
Response of the Roman Catholic church
On the basis of this evidence Galilei started to argue in letters that Copernicus’s heliocentric model was much more likely than Ptolemy’s geocentric model.
This resulted in an investigation of the church, after which Galilei received a private warning to stop defending Copernicus’s model.
In 1632 Galilei published a book in which one of the characters defended the geocentric model, and the church gave him house arrest for the rest of his life.
Independent of the Church’s reaction, the main outcome of Galilei’s research was that the evidence he presented was so convincing that the heliocentric view rapidly came to dominate astronomy.
Interim summary
Descartes’ philosophy of man
Dualism
Descartes identified the soul as being divine and independent of everything else.
Dualism: view of mind-body relation according to which the mind is immaterial and completely independent of the body; central with religions and also in Descartes’ philosophy.
Mechanistic view of the universe, including the human body
Descartes viewed the universe and all matter in it (including the human body) as one big, sophisticated machine that could be studied by humans.
Mechanistic view: world view according to which everything in the material universe can be understood as a complicated machine; discards the notion that things have goals and intentions as assumed by the animistic view; identified by Descartes.
This was important for the development of science.
Implications for the advancement of science
Interim summary
Why is the Earth orbiting the sun?
Movements as result of forces
Newton had the insight that objects attract each other.
But, because of differences in mass, the pulling force varies.
In his book Prilosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, Newton described all known movements in the Copernican universe on the basis of three laws and the postulation of a gravitational force.
Each of these components was described in mathematical terms.
Interim summary
Factors that contributed to the scientific revolution
Demographic changes
Europe’s population nearly halved in the fourteenth century as result of the Great Famine, the Hundred years war, and the black death.
At the end of the fifteenth century a new growth began.
Around the same time, the feudal system came to an end, which depleted aristocracy.
Cities grew and installed more democratic regimes.
There was an emergence of a large group of merchants that formed a link between the hand workers and the intellectual elite.
Absence of stifling pressure from religion or authority
There were problems in the Catholic church
As a result, the actions of the Roman Catholic church against Galilei were limited in their impact.
The church made a strict distinction between the worldly and the heavenly.
This resulted in two different authorities.
New inventions
The existence of universities and patronage
Universities provided a place for natural philosophers in society and conveyed the message that the pursuit of knowledge about nature was a worthwhile in its own right.
This increased the chances of patronage by wealthy families or even the involvement of those families in the expansion of science.
Massive enrichment from the Greek an Arab civilisations
In the sixteenth century, many more texts became available than those of Plato and Aristotle.
Major breakthroughs happen (or can happen) when two main civilisations interact.
This creates a fluidity and dynamism in which new ideas can grow.
Natural philosophy became detached from the big philosophical questions
Gradually, natural philosophers felt allowed to study a phenomenon without prior knowledge about the totality of things (like man’s place in the universe)
Factors that helped the fledgling science grow
Interim summary
The following factors are thought to have precipitated the scientific revolution in seventeenth-century Europe
The scientific revolution could also have died prematurely if:
The scientific revolution could not take place unless something fundamental changed in the way scholars approached knowledge-gathering.
Francis Bacon and the importance of the interaction between perception and reason
Traditionally, science was associated with knowledge that depended on reasoning.
The new organon
In 1620 Bacon published a book ‘New organon’, in which he described the new view of science, as opposed to Aristotle’s approach.
Bacon argued that natural philosophers should experiment to see which changes worked and which not, without bothering about the implications for the totality of the universe.
But, natural philosophers should go beyond the experiments mechanics set up to solve practical problems.
Experimenta frutifera (fruit-bearing experiments): solve practical problems
Experimenta lucifera (light-bringing experiments):determine true causes.
They should additionally use clarifying experiments to determine the true causes of phenomena.
Natural philosophers must go from particulars (works) to axioms, which in turn will lead to new particulars.
The existence of axioms also allows natural philosophers to purposely search for new phenomena, rather than having to rely on chance findings.
Sometimes an observation or a clarifying experiment may even decide between two alternative explanations. These are crucial instances.
The link between particulars and axioms must be closer than in Aristotle’s view.
To achieve this, Bacon recommend working with a hierarchy of axioms, starting with lesser axioms (close to the observation), going over to middle axioms, to the highest axioms (general and abstract).
Inductive versus deductive reasoning
Deductive reasoning: form of reasoning in which one starts from a number of indisputable premises, from which new, true conclusions can be drawn it the rules of logic are followed.
Because this requires indisputable premises to start with, it usually defends some form of innate knowledge.
Inductive reasoning: form of reasoning in which one starts from observations and tries to reach general conclusions on the basis of convergences in the observations.
This is needed in science to turn observed phenomena into scientific laws, but does not guarantee that the conclusions are true.
Experimental histories to extract the truth from nature
Bacon did not simply argue that deductive knowledge should be replaced by inductive knowledge.
He was well aware of the limitations of perception and inductive reasoning.
Rather, he proposed a much closer coupling between perception and axiom, in which observations are used to formulate and evaluate axioms, and in which axioms were used to guide perception.
Experimental history: method introduced by Bacon in which the natural philosopher extracts the truth from nature by active manipulation and examining the consequences of the intervention.
Are scientific theories always observation-based?
Although Bacon’s writings had a great impact on the development of natural philosophy, to some extent they underestimated the importance of reasoning beyond observation in scientific research.
Knowledge is to be discovered and not to be retrieved from antiquity
In the scientific revolution, there was a growing awareness that a lot of knowledge was still to be discovered.
Gradually, natural philosophers started to realise that the ancient civilisations did not know everything and that some of their knowledge was plainly wrong.
Because of the revision of the past, for a natural philosopher the truth of statements could no longer be based on the authority of history and tradition.
Interim summary
The method of the natural philosopher
The impact of science on daily life
Science and prosperity
Although the practical implications of natural philosophy remained very limited in the first 200 years after Bacon’s writings, by the nineteenth century the new thinking started to alter everyday life.
Industrial revolution: name to refer to the socio-economic and cultural changes in the nineteenth century caused by the invention of machines; involved, among other things, the replacement of the labour of peasants and craftsmen by mass production in factories and the resulting massive relocation from the countryside to the towns.
Science and specialisation
Scientific advances led to a further differentiation of occupations people could hold.
Increasingly they also had to train for these jobs, because these involved specialised knowledge and skills.
This made society more complex and people made use of ‘recipe knowledge’.
Individuals knew how to operate tools but had no idea of their workings.
Proposals to ground society in the natural sciences
The age of enlightenment
The more successful science grew, the more intellectuals in the Western world began to see it as a way not only to gather knowledge, but also organise society.
Age of enlightenment: name given to the Western philosophy and cultural life of the eighteenth century, in which autonomous thinking and observation became advocated as the primary sources of knowledge, rather than reliance on authority.
One of the elements that attracted intellectuals to the natural sciences was the belief that knowledge provided by these disciplines was objective.
Positivism
Positivism: view that authentic knowledge can only be obtained by means of the scientific method; saw religion and philosophy as inferior forms of explanation.
New claims about the status of scientific knowledge
Together wit the assertion that the sciences provided the only valid knowledge, positivists also upped the virtues of the scientific method to their communication to the wider public.
The counter forces
Not everyone was happy with the rise in status and power of science.
The Roman catholic church
The first institute to challenge science’s ascent was the Roman Catholic church.
The main message conveyed by the Roman Catholic church was not one of science being heretic.
In several countries of Europe the strong position of the church in education was part of the struggle between the proponents of enlightenment and the traditionalists.
Protestant churches
Because the new Protestant churches still had to establish their power base, many tended to see science as an ally rather than an adversary.
At the same time, there was little doubt that scientific knowledge dealt with worldly matters and, hence, was the handmaiden of the heavenly wisdom form the scripture and church fathers.
For the Protestants as well scientific knowledge was dangerous if not guided by religion.
Many protestant churches enjoyed good relationships with science.
The relationship between Protestant religion and science deteriorated in the 1870s, when scientists began to react against what they felt to be the patronizing attitude of church authorities.
The humanities
Also outside religion there was a large segment of the population that preferred to keep away from the scientific realm.
Humanities: academic disciplines that continued the traditional study of the ancient classics, increasingly supplemented with teachings of contemporary literature and art.
Romanticism
Romantic movement: movement in the late 1700 to early 1800s that reacted against the mechanistic world view and the emphasis on reason preached by enlightenment. It saw the universe as a changing organism and stressed everything that deviated from rationalism; the individual, the irrational, the imaginative, the emotional, the natural and the transcendental.
The two cultures
There is evidence that the divide between science on the one hand and religion/humanities on the other hand increased in the first half of the twentieth century.
Interim summary
Science has induced many changes in society, such as:
The reactions to the scientific revolution can roughly be divided into positive and negative ones
The two cultures
Three factors that hindered historians’ awareness of the impact of science on society
Part of the reason why the notion of scientific revolution has gained currency is that it made the history of science more attractive
Although many aspects of seventeenth-century thought were innovative and ground-breaking, there has been more continuity in human thought than suggested by the word ‘revolution’
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This is a summary of the book: Historical and conceptual issues in psychology, by Brysbaert, M and Rastle, K. This book is about the history of Psychology and how now-day psychology came to be. The book is used in the course 'Foundations of psychology' at the second year of
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