Psychology
“Psychology has given the world little cause for amazement”
Sinead Clarke
Word Count: 1,769
“Psychology has given the world little cause for amazement”
In 1843, John Stuart Mill published “System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation” (A System of Logic) in which he declared “psychology should leave the realm of speculation and philosophy and become a science of observation and experiment.” Commencing in the 1800s, psychology began its gradual transition from philosophy to experimentation and the study of physiology. Previous to this, psychology had never been defined as a science in its own right like biology, physics and chemistry. Today, the scientific method is based on the hypothetico-deductive model (Popper, 1935) which suggests that theories and laws about the world should come first and these should be used to generate hypotheses which can be falsified or verified by both observations and experiment. However psychologists seek to determine causes for the way in which humans behave by using the scientific method; a process complicated by the subjective nature of the human race. (Shaughnessy, Zechmeister & Zechmeister, 2012). Psychology has gradually been acknowledged as a modern day science due to the many psychological experiments that have led to greater understanding of human behaviour in many different contexts, which will be outlined below. By exploring the various breakthroughs psychology has made in past decades, psychology can be shown to have hugely contributed to modern day life.
Behaviourism was a psychological school of thought that was founded by John B. Watson after his publication of the paper “Psychologist as the Behaviourist Views It” (1913). Its hypothetical aim was that it would be capable of predicting and possible controlling behaviour. However many dismissed behaviourism due to the fact “its commitment to the thesis that
Sinead Clarke
Word Count: 1,769
“Psychology has given the world little cause for amazement”
In 1843, John Stuart Mill published “System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation” (A System of Logic) in which he declared “psychology should leave the realm of speculation and philosophy and become a science of observation and experiment.” Commencing in the 1800s, psychology began its gradual transition from philosophy to experimentation and the study of physiology. Previous to this, psychology had never been defined as a science in its own right like biology, physics and chemistry. Today, the scientific method is based on the hypothetico-deductive model (Popper, 1935) which suggests that theories and laws about the world should come first and these should be used to generate hypotheses which can be falsified or verified by both observations and experiment. However psychologists seek to determine causes for the way in which humans behave by using the scientific method; a process complicated by the subjective nature of the human race. (Shaughnessy, Zechmeister & Zechmeister, 2012). Psychology has gradually been acknowledged as a modern day science due to the many psychological experiments that have led to greater understanding of human behaviour in many different contexts, which will be outlined below. By exploring the various breakthroughs psychology has made in past decades, psychology can be shown to have hugely contributed to modern day life.
Behaviourism was a psychological school of thought that was founded by John B. Watson after his publication of the paper “Psychologist as the Behaviourist Views It” (1913). Its hypothetical aim was that it would be capable of predicting and possible controlling behaviour. However many dismissed behaviourism due to the fact “its commitment to the thesis that
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