The Contributions of Charles Darwin to the Scientific Community. Brent Royeton DeVry University The Contributions of Charles Darwin to the Scientific Community Charles Darwin’s contributions to society were farther reaching than just biological science. His empirical methods and theories also affected sociology as well. Many political or national conquests were justified by the use of his theory of “Survival of the fittest”. U.S. senator Albert J. Beveridge had stated “We are a conquering race.
Instead, there are several popular models competing for dominance, and the supporters of each model are having trouble understanding each other. ("Evolutionary Psychology ", 2009). Psychology is a discipline that asks and answers the fundamental question, why do we behave the way we do and think the way we think? The best way to characterize the different approaches that are taken to answer the question of psychology is to identify them as major perspectives. The major perspectives represent fundamental assumptions that underlie the research questions and methods that are used in order to answer the questions of psychology.
Stacey Snyder Professor McMichael Introduction to Philosophy April 08, 2014 Paley’s Teleological Argument In this paper, I will be discussing Paley’s teleological argument for the existence of God. This is a valid argument but in my opinion it is not enough to prove the existence of God. I believe that even if all the premises are true and they relate to the conclusion, which they do, that the argument can still be proven wrong by other theories. Paley’s teleological arguments, also called the design argument, attempts to prove that God exists by proving that God created the earth and created humans. Paley’s version of the argument is commonly recognized by the “watchmaker” analogy which is as follows.
The evolutionary approach argues that gender role division is a consequence of the adaptation to the challenges and circumstances faced by our ancestors. This suggests that the role differences we observe are more a product of our biological inheritance and evolution than social factors acting on our behavior. As evolutionary theory is a biological approach to gender development, it suggests that our genes have coded aspects of human behavior because they were or are adaptive. However a debate to this approach is the nature vs. nurture approach, nature supporting the evolutionary approach being that we have evolved through survival and adaptation to the situations and therefore passing on the adaptive genes of the survivors. Nurture on the other hand is a view, is a view proposed by the social approach suggesting that behavior is affected by socialization and environment.
It was referred to as phrenology, and is primarily concerned with the localization of brain function. Franz Josef Gall was a phrenologist who could prove his theory of contra lateral function which believed that the right side of the brain controlled the left side of the body and vice versa. New innovative advancements during the 19th century allowed for new clinical studies to be performed that allowed scientists and psychologists to study individuals with mental illnesses and brain damage. If we wouldn’t had the advancements in the 19th century scientists and psychologists would have continued to struggle to prove theories on the basis of ideas rather than scientific evidence. Conclusion The history of todays psychology has been influenced by many important people throughout time.
Contrast Theories Explaining Altruism in Humans Altruism according to evolutionary theory is a behaviour that reduces the fitness of the altruistic individual but increases the fitness of the individual receiving help (Okasha, 2008). Fitness is a central tenet in evolutionary theory. It refers to an individual’s capacity to pass on copies of his or her genes to the next population (Rosenberg & Bouchard, 2008). On the face of it, altruism does not make much sense from an evolutionary point of view, as the behavior seems unlikely to have been transformed into an adaptation. Adaptations, which are driven by natural selection, are features especially important for an animal’s survival.
There is much debate over whether psychology is considered to be a science or not. So what is science? Science is generally defined as the knowledge gained through observations of the world via scientific methods, rather than what we believe to be true of the world (American Psychological Association, 2007). Psychology is widely recognised as the study of mental processes and behaviour (Wickens 2000). From this outline psychology could clearly be defined as a science as it involves gaining a deeper understanding of humans within the world.
This weaker version seems to make more sense to me. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is in effect two propositions, which in a very basic form could perhaps be summed up as firstly Linguistic Determinism (language determines thought), and secondly Linguistic relativity (difference in language equals difference in thought). This topic of determinism and relativity can be applied to many areas – the study of to what extent technology influences our lives is termed the technological determinism debate. In psychology, discussion of this nature regarding the effect of environment and genetic makeup on our lives is called the nature/nurture debate. In a ‘purer’ form, there are philosophical questions of free will and determinism.
The re-discovery of Mendelism made Mendelism a controversial but important theory. Its most vigorous promoter in Europe was William Bateson, who coined the terms genetics and allele to describe many of its tenets. The model of heredity was highly contested by other biologists because it implied that heredity was discontinuous, in opposition to the apparently continuous variation observable for many traits. Many biologists also dismissed the theory because they were not sure it would apply to all species. However, later work by biologists and statisticians such
As the text states, it started with a concern for, “…explaining the processes of thought by using the technique of introspection (i.e., self-reflection)” (Wickens, 2005). Since self-reflection is biased then there had to be a more investigational method, conceivably, a method where the information could be observed and recorded. Psychology has become more about the study of behavior and mental phenomena, whereas, biopsychology is about the study of the brain and how it relates to behaviors. In my paper I will identify some of the important theorists that are associated with biological psychology and describe the relationship between biological psychology and other fields of psychology and neuroscience. I will also describe the major underlying assumptions of a biopsychological approach.