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The history of evolutionary psychology began with Charles Darwin, who said that humans have social instincts that evolved by natural selection.Darwin's work inspired later psychologists such as William James and Sigmund Freud but for most of the 20th century psychologists focused more on behaviorism and proximate explanations for human behavior.
Many cultures throughout history have speculated on the nature of the mind, heart, soul, spirit, brain, etc. For instance, in Ancient Egypt, the Edwin Smith Papyrus contains an early description of the brain, and some speculations on its functions (described in a medical/surgical context) and the descriptions could be related to Imhotep who was the first Egyptian physician who anatomized and ...
Evolutionary psychology is the long-forestalled scientific attempt to assemble out of the disjointed, fragmentary, and mutually contradictory human disciplines a single, logically integrated research framework for the psychological, social, and behavioral sciences – a framework that not only incorporates the evolutionary sciences on a full ...
The term strongly suggests natural selection, yet Spencer saw evolution as extending into realms of sociology and ethics, so he also supported Lamarckism. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Spencer developed an all-embracing conception of evolution as the progressive development of the physical world, biological organisms, the human mind, and human culture and societies.
c. 50 – Aulus Cornelius Celsus died, leaving De Medicina, a medical encyclopedia; Book 3 covers mental diseases.The term insania, insanity, was first used by him. The methods of treatment included bleeding, frightening the patient, emetics, enemas, total darkness, and decoctions of poppy or henbane, and pleasant ones such as music therapy, travel, sport, reading aloud, and massage.
The word was coined by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976) as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. [14] [20] Examples of memes given in Dawkins' book include melodies, catchphrases, fashion, and the technology of building arches. [21]
Ψ , the first letter of the Greek word psyche from which the term psychology is derived, is commonly associated with the field of psychology. In 1890, William James defined psychology as "the science of mental life, both of its phenomena and their conditions." [14] This definition enjoyed widespread currency for decades.
He coined the phrase "nature versus nurture". [3] His book Hereditary Genius (1869) was the first social scientific attempt to study genius and greatness. [4] As an investigator of the human mind, he founded psychometrics and differential psychology, as well as the lexical hypothesis of personality.