Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Psychology

Introduction

In the mid nineteenth century, scientists started to investigate human mental life experimentally. The mind had, up until this point, mainly been the topic of theoretical or logical discussion or, when empirical, based on the everyday observations of thinking and feeling. Now, however, the new methods and equipment of laboratory science were turned towards the investigation of the mind. But though the methods of science were mobilised in this direction, this did not mean that the investigators in this new field had completely jettisoned philosophical ideas about the mind as put forward by some of their predecessors. Indeed, as we shall see in this chapter, developments in the scientific approach to mind were explicitly informed by philosophical theories and the resulting empirical work was an attempt to make concrete the theoretical ideas of certain philosophers. Two philosophers in particular had an important influence on the development of physiological psychology. One of them was Kant, who has already been discussed in Chapter 6; the other is Spinoza.