-
424
Plato 424-348 BC
Aristotles' teacher, Plato believed the mind is separable from the body and that it continues after death. However, Plato believed that knowledge is innate. -
Jan 22, 1561
Francis Bacon
He is the creator of empiricism: the theory of knowledge that states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience. Named after him, the Baconian method is the same as the scientific method, which he also created and used. -
Rene Descartes
Descartes believed some ideas are innate and that the mind is distinct from the body. This would mean the mind would survive after the body died. -
John Locke
Locke argued in his "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" that the human mind is a "blank slate" at birth. This helped form empiricism and the idea that we learnto percieve the world through our experiences. -
Dorthea Dix
She was a large advocate for constructing mental hospitals that treated patients more humanely in the US and Canada. -
Charles Darwin
An English naturalist, Darwin came up with the theory of natural selection, which says that evolution gets rid of traits that don't do well in a particular environment. These traits are passed down from parents to offspring, so traits in behavior in humans is included in natural selection -
Wilhelm Wundt
He established the first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig, Germany. His most famous study was performed here; he measured the time difference between hearing a sound and becoming aware of a sound -
William James
James used Darwin's natural selection theory to explain that the nose smells and the brain thinks because these are traits that ensured our ancestors' survival.James taught Calkins at Harvard. -
G. Stanley Hall
One of the first psychologists to analyze adolescence, Hall believed the tension between biological maturity and social dependence creates a period of "storm and stress", meaning that some people would choose not to relive their teen years. -
Mary Whiton Calkins
Two of her major publications are "The Persitent Problems of Philosophy" and "The Good Man and The Good". Calkin's research on dreams was cited by Sigmund Freud when he did his works. Calkin's idea of slf-psycholgy explains that the self is an agent acting consciously and purposefully. -
E.B. Titchener
He introduced structuralism and encouraged people to use introspection. Introspection was supposed to lead to knowledge about the strucural elements of the human mind, but it varied too much from person to person and wasn't reliable, so both ideas were discredited. -
Margaret Floy Washburn
The first woman to recieve a psychology Ph.D. Her greatest contribution was that of the animal mind, believing that animals did have a similar brain process as humans'. -
Rosalie Rayner
John B. Watson's assitant in the Little Albert experiment, in which they taught him to fear fuzzy objects with loud sounds. This means some emotions can be trained. -
Aristotle 384-322 BC
Aristotle contradicted Plato by suggesting the heart is the seat of mental processes. He also denied the existence of innate ideas, or a universally known fact that is inborn in the human mind -
Socrates 469-399 BC
Socrates was Plato's teacher and agreed with Plato that ideas are innate and the mind is separate from the body.
