History of Psychology :: Historical Social Sciences Psychology Essays

History of psychological scienceIn this essay I am looking at where Psychology as a force field has come from and what affects these early ideas have had on psychological science today, Psychology as a whole has stemmed from a number of different areas of report from Physics to Biology,But the first Psychological foundations are rooted in philosophy, which to this day propels psychological inquiry in areas such as nomenclature acquisition, consciousness, and even vision among many others.While the great philosophical banknote between mind and body in western thought nookie be traced to the Greeks, it is to the influential work of Ren Descartes, French mathematician, philosopher, and physiologist, that we owe the first domineering account of the mind/body relationship. As the 19th cytosine progressed, the enigma of the relationship of mind to brain became ever more pressing. The word Psychology comes from two Greek words Psyche and Logos. The term ? psychology? apply early on described the study of the spirit. It was in the 18th century when psychology gained its literal meaning The study of behaviour. In studies today psychology is defined as the scientific and systematic study of human and tool behaviour. The term psychology has a colossal history but the psychology as an independent discipline is fairly new.Psychology started, and had a long history, as a topic within the fields of philosophy and physiology. It past became an independent field of its own through the work of the German Wilhelm Wundt, the break out of experimental psychology and structuralism. Wundt stressed the use of scientific methods in psychology, curiously through the use of introspection. In 1875, a room was shape-aside for Wundt for demonstrations in what we now call sensation and perception. This is the same year that William James set up a similar lab at Harvard. Wilhelm Wundt and William James are usually thought of as the fathers of psychology, as well as the founde rs of psychology?s first two great ?schools? Structuralism and Functionalism. Psychologist Edward B Titchner tell ?to study the brain and the unconscious we should break it into its structural elements, after that we piece of tail construct it into a whole and understand what it does.? (psicafe.com) Functionalism, an early school of psychology, focuses on the acts and functions of the mind rather than its internal contents. Its most prominent American direction is William James. William James is the author of ?The Principles of Psychology? a book that is considered to be unmatched of the most important texts in modern psychology.