Key thinkers
Discover more about psychology’s ‘Key Thinkers’ throughout history.
Julien de La Mettrie (1709–1751)
Despite the implied mechanisitic materialism in the title of his work, Man a Machine, de La Mettrie rather offered an early version of emergent materialism and evoluntionary thinking, well before evolutionary thinking was taking hold; he also anticipated cultural evolution. His was far from simplistic reductionism and mechanism and, even though now considerably dated is worth giving a read for its historical significance.
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For the full text, see: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/la-mettrie/1748/man-machine.htm
Conwy Lloyd Morgan (1852–1936)
Conwy Lloyd Morgan was one of the founders of comparative psychology, an approach that attempts to compare humans to non-humans in terms of physiology and behavior, in an effort to identify similarities and differences.
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John Dewey and Karl Marx: Parallels
Dewey was a strong critic of Marx, but, uncharacteristically, he had no firsthand knowledge of the writings of Marx. Dewey had been to the Soviet Union after the 1917 revolution and had thought of it as a ‘promising experiment’ but in time this attitude would change. Dewey would end up taking Marx’s interpreters as true representatives of Marx’s thinking, in particular the Stalinists. This meant that the atrocities of the dictator Stalin were, it seemed, at least in the mind of Dewey, attributable to the originator of the thinking – Marx, whose true position had suffered perversion in Stalin’s hands.
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The Cultural-Historical School: The Key Thinkers Involved
Initiated by Vygotsky, Luria and their Circle, the Cultural-Historical School aimed to establish a ‘new psychology’ that attributed an inseperable unity of mind, brain and culture. While the phrase cultural-historical psychology was never used in the writings of Vygotsky, this is how the intellectual movement is now widely known.
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Roger Sperry (1913–1994)
The first experiments into split-brains with humans were conducted in the 1930s in an effort to alleviate severe epilepsy. The assumption was that the corpus callosum, connecting the hemispheres was producing the brain waves that were the source of the seizures. The most outstanding finding was an apparent lack of impact on the behavior of the individual or to personality. This inspired Sperry and his colleagues to research and experiment severing the corpus collosum, first in monkeys and cats, then in humans.
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For a visual depiction of split-brain reseach, see: http://www.collegeofteachers.ac.uk/content/does-education-tap-only-half-our-brain-power-unravelling-concerns-about-standards-professor-
For an overview, see Sperry (1973): http://people.uncw.edu/puente/sperry/sperrypapers/70s/173-1973.pdf
Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1895)
Charcot was a French neurologist who first classified nervous diseases and who discovered multiple sclerosis. During the final phase of his career he developed an interest in hysteria (now conversion disorder, involving physical complaints but lacking organic causes) and hypnosis.