Psychology, Anatomy, Physiology

Abstract

Psychology was once in the cool hands of the philosophers. In his Discourse on the Method (1637), Descartes had stated a famous principle: ‘I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am, was so solid and certain that all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were unable to upset it.’ I think must be broadly construed. The subjective awareness of an individual mind is the most certain reality, rather than any kind of material existence outside such a consciousness. Even the body can be regarded as no more than a complicated machine, an automaton — an assertion that became ‘a more or less scandalous commonplace supported on the one hand by enormous advances in physiology and biochemistry, and on the other hand by equally enormous developments in machinery’ (A. Flew, An Introduction to Western Philosophy (1971), pp.280–95). This ‘Cartesian dualism’, or sharp distinction between mind and body, became a main frame of reference for Western philosophers and psychologists into this century. Though the philosopher Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind (1949) argues against ‘the ghost in the machine’, it can be very useful as an organising concept when considering what was often called ‘mental philosophy’ or ‘science of mind’ well into the nineteenth century.