Exam 1: PSY 497 Capstone PSY History & Systems (CH 1-3) USI

Sidney Hall

What was the Cambrian Explosion?

• Dates ½ billion years ago

• biological equivalent to the Big Bang

• Sudden presence of fossils in the
  geological record, indicating a point at which life
  became abundant across Earth

• Because so many small organisms had been
  exhaling an
  enormous amount of oxygen for so long, larger (oxygen-breathing) animals were eventually able to evolve, most
  notably fish, from which we are descended

What is Lake Toba in relation to in human history?

• Lake Toba is the location of the Super Eruption

• Located in Sumatra

• Triggered millennium long ice age that led to mass migration from Africa into the Middle East, the Southern Asia and Southern Europe

What is the Fertile Crescent and why is it important?

• Following the Ice Age, ice melts along with increased rainfall overflow in Africa forming the Nile River

• In turn, more rivers such as the Tigris & Euphrates in Mesopotamia, Indus in Pakistan, Yellow & Yangtze in China aiding in the creation of the Fertile Crescent

• Because of rivers, fertile soil makes it possible to reliably plant seeds/ grow crops

• Located through Western Asia & North Africa

What was the Neolithic Revolution?

• Transition in humans from being hunter-gatherer nomads to living in agrarian settlements

• Comes from planted grains and settlements beginning to appear in
  several places across the globe independent of one another within the Fertile Crescent (aka: Cradle of Civilization)

What is Proto-writing?

• Use of pictographs instead of letters to represent things

• Ex: Caveman drawings

What are the 4 conditions that David Lindberg claims you need for growth in science to be possible?

• 1.) Writing System: external memory/ so that redundancy of effort is minimized and progress can be made

• 2.) Political Stability: time to focus on matters other than hunting/ gather food and safety of settlements

• 3.) Urbanization: (see later question for reason)

• 4.) Patronage: (see later question for reason)

What is Patronage?

• ‘System that affords individuals to be paid for their scientific activity allowing them to not have to spend all their time gathering or building shelters for the settlement/ community’

• Noted by David Lindberg

• 1 of 4 required conditions for growth in science to be possible

What is Urbanization?

• ‘Critical mass of people allowing sufficient interdependence that some members of society can be spared to focus on less urgent pursuits such as acquisitions of knowledge’

• Noted by David Lindberg

• 1 of 4 required conditions for growth in science to be possible

What is the Scholastic Method of teaching?

• Simply memorize texts and take them as ‘gospel’ rather than question or attempt to understand them

• NOT education, is actually Indoctrination which is about control

What is Dualism?

• Proposed by Rene Descartes in the 17th century

• ‘Soul and mind is divine and thereby independent from the body’

• ‘Therefore, thoughts and feelings are not subject to study by the natural sciences’

What is Inductive Reasoning / Induction?

• Deriving general conclusion on the basis of specific observations (~discerning larger truths from smaller ones)

• Important contribution in modern empiricism

• Ex:

  • I saw a protester throw a sandwich at a national guardsmen, therefore all protestors are violent

What is Deductive Reasoning / Deduction?

• Following the rules of logic to discern inarguable smaller truths from larger

• Important contribution in modern empiricism

• Ex:

  • All humans are mortal

  • I am human

  • I am mortal

  • or Descartes “Cogito, ergo sum” [I think, therefore I am]

What is Natural Selection?

• Natural Selection = most fundamental principle of Evolution

• Building off Darwins ideas of Evolution

• French Biologist Francois Jacob (1977)

• viewed evolution similar to a search engine and as engineers and tinkerers

  • Engineers: have a plan and know what they are doing/ going

  • Tinkerers: putting stuff together to see what works

What is ‘Survival of the Fittest’ in reference too?

• From Flora research from Linnaeus, discovery of dinosaurs, and warning on too much procreation surpassing growth of produce leading to famine and war by Malthus, led Darwin to deduce that a world with limited resources will result in competition for those resources and only those best “fit” to compete would survive

What is a Zeitgeist?

• German word that means “spirit of the age” or the idea that someone else would’ve come along, although it might’ve been awhile

• A term within the concept of biases of writing history when it is too person-centered

What is Psychophysics?

• The study of the relationship between environmental stimuli and the brain’s detection of them

• 1860, Gustav Fechner wrote a book titled, “Elements of Psychophysics”

• Proposed that although mind and body appear separate, they are actually 2 aspects of 1 reality

• Psychophysics served as a bridge between philosophy and physiology which birth psychology as an independent field

What does “error” refer to?

• “Error” refers to variables such as biases, confounding variables, individual differences, etc. that are what make people different

• NOT just measurement mistakes

• Note:

  • psychological processes almost always yield at least somewhat different numerical results because of “error” or human-variables / differences of experiences

What was the Protestant Reformation?

• 1517

• German Theologist/ Priest Martin Luther noted and expressed to the people how the church preached to sinners that they could “buy their way into heaven” as long as they made big enough donations to the church

• Northern Europe such as countries like Germany, Britain, and Netherlands abandoned the Catholic Church and became protestant

• Protestants focused on critical thinking and NOT using the scholastic method of teaching

What is Animism?

• Refers to the primitive belief that animals or inanimate objects have souls

• 1871 coined by Ed Taylor

What is Anthropomorphism?

• Refers to ascribing human-like traits / characteristics to an animal or inanimate object

  • e.g. constellations shaped like familiar things, or God as a bearded man in the sky

Who was Plato?

• Socrates best student

• Believed in written records

• Coined the idea of Rationalism

  • 2 realms of existence along with conceptual vs. actual criteria

• Thought humans are born with (innate) knowledge of the ideals and are only distracted by the physical surrounding of this realm

• Believed the only true path to knowledge is through introspective reasoning (thinking logically/ rationally vs. emotionally)

Who was Aristotle?

• Plato’s best student

• Founder of the idea of Empiricism which later was adopted by the Romans

• Believed that the universe and Earth was eternal with no beginning or end to it

  • Church did NOT like this along with how Aristotle said it!!!

• Also believed that the soul is simply the actualization of the body and potentialities

• Reached conclusions on basis of rational thoughts and empirical observations unlike the church with biblical revelations

Who was Lindberg?

• David Lindberg

• Found/ created the 4 conditions as to how growth in science is possible

  • Writing system

  • Political stability

  • Urbanization

  • Patronage

• Also made 3 distinct notes regarding Preliterate Culture:

  • 1.) kills are based on what works, not an understanding of why it works

    • Memory vs. learning

  • 2.) Limited passing on of knowledge (L92: “the fluidity of knowledge” is limited)

    • The “oral tradition” limits the passing down of accurate information to mostly how to use tools and accomplish tasks.

    • Lindberg argues that science cannot occur without written records

  • 3.) Animism

    • (See earlier question for answer)

Who was Charlemagne?

• Christian Leader during Middle Ages

• Ruled Frankish (Pre-French) Empire

• > 50 battles won

• Learned to read and write and therefore expected his people to also learn to read and write

• Overall improved education during the 8th and 9th century when he ruled

Who was Galilei?

• Early 17th c.,

• Italian scientist

• Considered by Stephen Hawking to be the
  founder of modern science

• Also found that:

  • 1. There are a lot more stars than anyone can see with the naked eye.

  • 2. The moon is not smooth, as maintained by Aristotle.

  • 3. Jupiter has four moons.

  • 4. The apparent size of both Mars and Venus Δs.

• Pushed humans away from the center of the universe which in turn made it acceptable to study human beings

Who was Descartes?

• French - Dutch Scholar

• Attempted to end dispute between church and “natural philosophy”/ science

• “Cogito, ergo sum” = I think, therefor I am

• Proposed dualism

• Philosopher & Mathematician

• 1st to explain geometric coordinates (cartesian coordinates)

Who was Kopernik?

• Polish Astronomer

• Changed name to “Nicolaus Copernicus”

• Developed the Heliocentric model

  • The sun is the center of the universe, NOT the Earth

Who was Newton?

• Issac Newton

• English scientist

• Obsessed with occult books, alchemy, and magic

• Magical interactions inspired him to envision forces of attraction that worked at a distance/ by expanding his mind, he was able to conceive the idea of gravity

• Essentially founded the discipline of physics w/ the 1687 publication of his book, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

Who was Locke?

• John Locke

• Scotland

• Contributed to development of Modern Empiricism

• Maintained that all human knowledge is acquired through sensation & perception

• Proposed new metaphor, “Tabula Rasa”

  • Each mind is essentially blank at birth. As we grow, our perceptions & experiences begin to write on it

• Believed that human observation is both limited & flawed, sometimes deeply so

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Who was Malthus?

• Thomas Malthus

• British Economist

• Published An Essay on the Principle of Population

• projected that -- if humans did not exhibit greater procreative restraint -- we would eventually surpass our ability to produce sufficient food which would lead to famine and war

Who was Darwin?

• Several observations from the floral taxonomy research influenced Charles Darwin

• Wrote (On the Origin of Species,1859) to deduce that a world of limited resources necessarily results in competition for those resources, and only those best equipped to compete would survive. In other words, survival of the fittest.

• 
  

Who was Linnaeus?

• Carl Linnaeus

• Swedish Physician

• Published the first edition of his taxonomy of plants, wh/ he called System of Nature

• Investigated the diversity in flora throughout the known world as well as that they seemed to be classified into some sort of order (or “system”). Plus, natural variation seemed to play an important role

• Influenced Darwin’s research regarding animals and natural selection / ‘survival of the fittest’

Who was Quetelet?

• Adolph Quetelet

• Belgian Mathematician

• Analyzed crime statistics in various countries

• Unable to predict crime

• Was able to predict the #of crimes in a given year, as well as the size of effect that certain variables (daily temperature, gender makeup in the local population, time of day, etc.) would have on the number of crimes in various communities by using level of analysis

• Level of Analysis: Predicting aggregate behavior is much easier than predicting individual behavior

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