The history of psychology is built upon understanding the work of particular individuals throughout history. Your textbook mentions several major and minor

The Pursuit of Knowledge

Many of the questions posed by the early Greek philosophers centered on how we learn about and understand the world around us, and whether or not reality and truth are something that exist universally, or are subjective to each person’s experience.

Sophists, such as Protagoras and Gorgias, saw truth as subjective. Since people developed different perceptions of the world based on their experiences, the Sophists argued that they each had their own version of reality. Therefore, when it came to logic and truth, the Sophists argued that the argument itself is more important than the “truth” being argued.

Socrates did not disagree with the idea that individual experiences and perceptions could influence the way people think. However, he did believe that there was ultimately one reality, and universal truths about how things worked.

Socrates saw the pursuit of knowledge to be one of the highest virtues. Socrates also believed that we are born with knowledge. However, they have to work to access it. His method of asking increasingly deeper questions was designed to elicit critical thinking, and with it the deeper knowledge that people already had. Essentially, he believed that people could access universal truths by being asked the right question.

Plato, a student of Socrates, also believed that we are born with knowledge. Where Socrates focused on asking the right questions to elicit knowledge, Plato focused on the internal thought processes themselves. Like the Sophists, Plato believed that we are influenced by experiences. However, he saw sensory experiences as potentially misleading. His Allegory of the Cave demonstrated that the individual experiences and interpretations of sensory input can hide and distract from universal reality. For Plato, logical reasoning was the way to understand the world around us.

Aristotle, a student of Plato, agreed with Plato that logical reasoning was required to understand things around us. However, he also believed that sensory input from our environment was important. He believed that we learn through observation of our environment, then examining and comparing those observations through logic.

Wilhelm Wundt

Sigmund Freud

Aristotle

Socrates

Socrates (ca. 470–399 B.C.) agreed with the Sophists that individual experience is important. He took the injunction “Know thyself,” inscribed on the portals of the temple of Apollo at Delphi, to indicate the importance of knowing the contents of one’s own mind or soul (Allen, 1991). He went so far as to say, “The life which is unexamined is not worth living” (Jowett, 1988, p. 49). However, he disagreed with the Sophists’ contention that no truth exists beyond personal opinion. In his search for truth, Socrates used a method sometimes called inductive definition, which started with an examination of instances of such concepts as beauty, love, justice, or truth and then moved on to such questions as, what is it that all instances of beauty have in common? In other words, Socrates asked what it is that makes something beautiful, just, or true. In this way, he sought to discover general concepts by examining specific examples. It was thought that these concepts transcend their individual manifestations and are, therefore, stable and knowable. What Socrates sought was the essence of such things as beauty, justice, and truth. The essence of something is its basic nature, its identifying, enduring characteristics. To truly know something, according to Socrates, is to understand its essence. It is not enough to identify something as beautiful; one must know why it is beautiful. One must know what all instances of beauty have in common; one must know the essence of beauty.

It is important to note that although Socrates sought the essence of various concepts, he did not believe that essences had abstract existence. For him, an essence was a universally acceptable definition of a concept—a definition that was both accurate and acceptable to all interested parties. Once such definitions were formulated, accurate communication among concerned individuals was possible. Contrary to the Sophists, who believed truth to be personal and noncommunicable, Socrates believed truth could be general and shared. Still, the essences that Socrates sought were verbal definitions, nothing more.

For Socrates, the understanding of essences constituted knowledge, and the goal of life was to gain knowledge. When one’s conduct is guided by knowledge, it is necessarily moral. For example, if one knows what justice is, one acts justly. For Socrates, knowledge and morality were intimately related; knowledge is virtue, and improper conduct results from ignorance. Unlike most of the earlier philosophers, Socrates was concerned mainly with what it means to be human and the problems related to human existence.

In 399 B.C., when Socrates was 70 years old, he was accused of disrespect for the gods and of corrupting the youth of Athens. Socrates was charged with corrupting the youth of Athens because he caused them to question all things, including many cherished traditional beliefs. Perhaps on the latter charge, he was guilty. In any case, Socrates was found guilty on both charges and sentenced to death. However, the end of his trial coincided with a religious observance throughout which executions were prohibited. During the month-long delay, Socrates was imprisoned but met regularly with his friends. Apparently, it would have been easy for Socrates to escape from Athens at this time, and he was encouraged by his friends to do so. It is even suggested that Socrates’ escape would have been condoned by the authorities, “to whom the execution of such a prominent figure may well have been an embarrassment” (Taylor, 1998, p. 11). Socrates preferred death over exile from his beloved Athens, and, in the end, he consumed a drink containing deadly hemlock, thus fulfilling the order of the court.

Aristotle

Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) was born in the Macedo-nian city of Stagira, located between the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea. His father was court physician to King Amyntas II of Macedon. Although his father died when Aristotle was a young boy and Aristotle was raised by a guardian, we assume that he received training in medicine. In 367 B.C., Aristotle journeyed to Athens and soon established himself as one of Plato’s most brilliant students; he was 17 years old at the time, and Plato was 60. Aristotle continued to study at the Academy until he was 37 years old. When Plato died in 347 B.C., Aristotle moved to Asia Minor, where he engaged in biological and zoological fieldwork. In 343 B.C., Aristotle returned to Macedon and tutored the son of King Philip II, the future Alexander the Great, for about four years. After a few more journeys, Aristotle returned to Athens where, at the age of 48, he took over the Lyceum, a famed public school. In Aristotle’s time, the Lyceum would host many teachers, offer regular lectures, and contain a substantial library and large natural science collections—much like a modern university. When Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C., Aristotle fled Athens and died a year later in Chalcis at the age of 63.

Why did Aristotle flee Athens? Macedon, where Aristotle was born, was an ancient Greek-speaking country to the north of Greece. With the goal of unifying diverse Greek communities into a powerful Greco-Macedonian nation, King Philip of Macedon invaded and conquered a number of Greek citystates, including Athens. When Philip was assassinated in 336 B.C., his 19-year-old son Alexander (Aristotle’s ex-student) became ruler, and his subsequent military accomplishments are legendary. Although Aristotle had many disagreements with Alexander, both preferred “Greek solidarity to city patriotism” (Durant, 1926/1961, p. 94). When Alexander died in 323 B.C. at the age of 32, the Macedonian leadership was overthrown in Athens, and Athenian independence was again proclaimed. Undoubtedly because of his association with the Macedonians, Aristotle faced the trumped-up charge of impiety brought against him. He was accused of having taught that prayer and sacrifice were ineffective. This, of course, is reminiscent of what happened to Socrates. Unlike Socrates, however, Aristotle chose to flee Athens rather than meet his inevitable fate, saying, “He would not give Athens a chance to sin a second time against philosophy” (Durant, 1926/1961, p. 94).

Importantly for us, Aristotle was the first philosopher to extensively treat many topics that were later to become part of psychology. In his vast writings, he covered memory, reasoning, sensation, motivation, morality, social behavior, education, development, geriatrics, sleep and dreams, language, and learning. He also began his book De Anima (On the Soul ) with what is considered to be the first history of psychology. Taken alone, Aristotle’s contributions to psychology are truly impressive. It must be realized, however, that with the possible exception of mathematics, he made substantial contributions to almost every branch of knowledge. The influence of his thoughts on such philosophical and scientific topics as logic, metaphysics, optics, physics, biology, ethics, politics, rhetoric, and poetics have lasted to the present time.

The Basic Difference between Plato and Aristotle

Both Plato and Aristotle were primarily interested in essences or truths that go beyond the mere appearance of things, but their methods for discovering those essences were distinctly different. For Plato, essences corresponded to the forms that existed independently of nature and that could be arrived at only by ignoring sensory experience and turning one’s thoughts inward. For Aristotle, essences existed but could best become known by studying nature. He believed that if enough individual manifestations of a principle or phenomenon were investigated, eventually one could infer the essence that they exemplified. In the opening passage of his Metaphysics, Aristotle demonstrates that his attitude toward sensory information is much friendlier than was Plato’s.

All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer sight to almost everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things. (Barnes, 1984, Vol. 2, p. 1552)

Some writers describe Plato as the patriarch of rationalism and Aristotle then as the forerunner of empiricism, but that is misleading in its simplicity. In fact, Aristotle’s philosophy shows the difficulty that is often encountered when attempting to clearly separate the philosophies of rationalism and empiricism. As noted in Chapter 1, the rationalist claims that logical, mental operations must be used to gain knowledge, and the empiricist emphasizes the importance of sensory information in gaining knowledge. Aristotle embraced both rationalism and empiricism. He believed that the mind must be employed before knowledge can be attained (rationalism) but that the object of rational thought is the information furnished by the senses (empiricism).

The general principles that Plato and Aristotle (and other philosophers) thought were real and knowable have been referred to in different ways through the years—for example, as first principles, essences, or universals. In each case, the assumption is that something basic existed that could not be discovered by studying only individual instances or manifestations of the abstract principle involved. Some type of rational activity is needed to find the principle (essence) underlying individual cases. The search for first principles, essences, or universals characterized most early philosophy and, in a sense, continues in modern science as the search for laws governing nature. In Chapter 20, we will examine Ludwig Wittgenstein’s criticism of the concept of essence and his proposed alternative to it.

For Aristotle, first principles could be attained by examining nature directly. For Plato, all knowledge exists independently of nature; but for Aristotle, nature and knowledge are inseparable. In Aristotle’s view, therefore, the body is not a hindrance in the search for knowledge, as it is for Plato and the Pythagoreans. Also, Aristotle disagreed with Plato on the importance of mathematics. For Aristotle, logical analysis (such as the syllogism) is a powerful tool, but often his emphasis was instead on the careful examination of nature by observation and classification. Here we see again the empirical component of Aristotle’s philosophy. In Aristotle’s Lyceum, he made an incredibly large number of observations of physical and biological phenomena, all of which he then categorized. Through this method of observation, definition, and classification, Aristotle compiled what has been called an encyclopedia of nature. He was chiefly interested in studying the things in the empirical world and learning their functions. Because Aristotle sought to explain several psychological phenomena in biological terms, we recognize him as one of the first physiological psychologists (D. N. Robinson, 1986).

In some ways, where Plato’s philosophy followed in the Pythagorean, mathematical tradition, Aristotle’s was more in the Hippocratic, biological tradition. The views of Plato and Aristotle concerning the sources of knowledge set the stage for epistemological inquiry lasting to the present time. We could evaluate almost every subsequent philosopher (and most psychologists) in terms of their agreement or disagreement with the views of Plato or Aristotle.

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