PSY 3061 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Ethology, Behaviorism, Oliver Sacks
Document Summary
2. 1 thinking about the biology of behavior: from dichotomies to. It"s easy to think in dichotomies because they are simple. Many cultures have asked the same question for centuries: before the 1400"s, people believed what the church told them, after 1400, the renaissance began studying things by direct observation, often against the church. Ren descartes advocated for a split universe, with one part going to the church and the other to science: cartesian dualism: sanctioned by the church o. Physical matter: obeys the laws of nature, able to be investigated scientifically; includes the human body and nonhuman species. The human mind: obeys no natural laws, controls human behavior, aligned with the church"s views o. Still surviving even with the centuries of scientific progress since then. Many early american experimental psychologists were firmly for nurture o. European psychologists were focused on ethology, the study of the behavior of animals in the wild o.
