Lecture 1: Introduction to the History of Psychology

Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin was not a psychologist, but rather a naturalist or biologist. He is fundamental for introducing a new way of looking at nature and human beings. He revolutionised our perspectives on the world, introducing a naturalistic way of looking at the natural world. There were no miracles - everything, humans included, had a natural cause. Thus, the mind and behaviour should be explainable by natural causes. In Darwin's day, this was rather controversial, and it made atheism a valid belief.

Darwin was fascinated with variation and extinction within species. He studied fossils and eventually came up with the theory of evolution and natural selection. This was opposed by religious people. For one, Darwin's theories went against what was written in the Bible. However, there were also many philosophical arguments.
 

The Religious View

William Paley's Argument from Design is one of the most well-known of these arguments. It goes like this: Suppose you don't know what a clock is, and you wonder to yourself, where does it come from? You open it up and realise that all of the parts of the clock are perfectly designed for the purpose of telling time. This perfection shows that the clock has been designed, and the same goes for the perfection within plants and animals. According to Paley's theory, plants and animals must have come from an intelligent designer, or God. As it turns out, though, the organs of many species are not very well designed. They have flaws that would not have resulted from being constructed from scratch.

Another argument for the religious argument is that the world was actually rather young. James Usher calculated the age of the Earth back to 4004 BC, based on the genealogy of Jesus Christ. This theory opposed Darwin's evolutionary theory because evolution takes time. The proposed age of the Earth was not long enough to support Darwin's theory.

However, more and more evidence against the religious view came to light, including fossils and variation, and naturalistic theories were become more popular.

The Naturalistic View
 

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck theorised that individuals of a species acquire characteristics over life. For example, giraffes have very long necks. This could have occurred due to the giraffes reaching for food, stretching its neck. According to Lamarck's theory, the offspring's neck would be a little bit longer, and the pattern would continue. Unfortunately, there are many physical characteristics that do not.....read more