Monday, August 1, 2011

The influence of Biology on Psychology

I had stressed before the influence of Biology on Psychology, but not with the synthesis power R.S. Peters can do it; and since this is such an important stage in the history and development of Psychology as a science, I have a third excerpt invited:

"The influence of biology has proved to be the farther-reaching influence sustained by psychology, besides the philosophical, religious and medical traditions that had mainly conditioned its development.  But that influence did not show with all intensity until the end of XIXth Century and the beginnings of the XXth one, when those who knew Darwinian biology began to study man in the same way they studied the animal, and using for the human conduct the same type of explanatory hypothesis.  There was, however, a time of transition, before the different psychology schools of XXth Century appeared; during that time, the biologic approach did not have a radical influence on the old traditions of the psychology of "ideas" but, rather, corrected them.  Psychology continue being essentially introspective.  We must wait until the beginnings of XXth Century to see reflected in different "schools" the concrete result, for Psychology, of the Darwinian statement that men are, after all, animals, and that the same kind of problem can be considered with regard to men as with regard to animals." (p. 464)

Free translation from:
Historia de la Psicologìa by G.S.Brett
Editorial Paidòs, Buenos Aires
Edited and abridged by R.S.Peters




considered with regard to men as with regard to animals.