Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008 Chapter 5 - The Renaissance A History of Psychology: Ideas and Context (4 th edition) D. Brett King, Wayne Viney, and William Douglas Woody This multimedia product and its contents are protected under copyright law. The following are prohibited by law: any public performance or display, including transmission of any image over a network; preparation of any derivative work, including the extraction, in whole or in part, of any images; any rental, lease, or lending of the program

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008 The Renaissance The Renaissance extended through the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. The Renaissance incorporated several paradoxical trends. –Rebirth of inquiry. –Rising interest in the individual and humanism. –Continued stagnation in some areas.

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008 The Renaissance The Black Death killed approximately one third of the population of Europe. –It helped to usher in the Renaissance. Psychological reactions to the plague included stoicism, heroism, opportunism, hedonism, and flight. Many viewed the plague as punishment from God. The Jews were the most common scapegoat for the plague. –Torture, imprisonment, and massacre were commonplace for the Jews. Some individuals joined flagellant orders to atone for sin and appease God. The plague generated doubt about the institution of the Church.

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008 The Renaissance Expanding geographical knowledge also damaged the authority of the church. –Explorers returned to Europe and suggested that theological leaders were wrong about the shape of the earth and other topics. More people were reading the original Greek classics instead of the texts approved by the church. –Many people genuinely speculated as the Greeks did.

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008 The Renaissance The authority of the Roman Catholic Church diffused in a number of ways. –Emerging nation-states challenged the church. Both politically and financially. –A wider-reading public began to question church doctrine and the Bible. –Some financial practices of the church created frustration. –The Protestant Reformation also diffused church authority. –The Reformation may or may not have contributed to the development of science. Protestant authorities were as restrictive of inquiry as were Catholic authorities.

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008 The Renaissance Growth of empirical studies continued in many areas. –Anatomy –Botany –Zoology Interest grew in quantification and mathematics. –Math was used for practical applications in business and navigation.

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008 Changing Views of the World Astronomers provided evidence to challenge the geocentric cosmology and replace it with a heliocentric cosmology. The geocentric work of Ptolemy was accepted as church doctrine and could not be challenged. –Humans were the center of existence. –Human history is the history of the universe. Nicolaus Copernicus argued for a heliocentric system. Johannes Kepler refined the Copernican system by introducing elliptical planetary orbits.

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008 Changing Views of the World Galileo Galilei refined the telescope and challenged the assumptions of the church. –The conflict between Galileo and the church was not only a conflict of cosmology. It was also a conflict over epistemology. The church favored authority as a method of knowledge and forced Galileo to recant his views. The Copernican revolution increased sphere in which natural causes could act. –Predictable, lawful, and quantifiable forces were at work in astronomy, and these forces threatened extrinsic teleology

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008 Psychology in the Renaissance Psychological thought in the Renaissance included some isolated but significant interest in natural approaches. –Petrarch freely studied Greek classics. He set the stage for the expansion of humanism through the Renaissance. –Niccolò Machiavelli encouraged the use of a naturalistic, objective, and descriptive methodology that rejected moralistic approaches to human behavior.

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008 Psychology in the Renaissance Juan Luis Vives may be viewed as the founder of modern psychology in methods and topical selection. –He described emotions objectively and in bodily terms. –He argued for associationism in memory. –He advocated a broad and secular approach to education including education for women.

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008 Psychology in the Renaissance Leonardo da Vinci ‘s contributions to psychology include –an accurate anatomy of the visual system, –advances in understanding of visual perception, and –descriptions of the variety of emotional facial expressions. Paracelsus was an innovative chemist who argued that mental processes may affect the health of the body and vice versa. –He argued for knowledge through experience instead of by authority. Julius Caesar Scaliger was one of the first to study kinesthetic and muscle senses and the role of muscles in habit.

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008 Psychology in the Renaissance Michel de Montaigne was a Catholic with strong Protestant sympathies in a time of religious violence. –He wrote his Apology for Raimond Sebond to attack the arrogance of human knowledge. –He personally explored psychological topics including thought, emotion, and motivation. –He argued against the brutal child-rearing practices of his day. –He argued that experience is not pure. –He accurately described much of human behavior as inconsistent in terms of both conduct and opinion.

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008 Psychology in the Renaissance Olivia Sabuco examined the physical and psychological consequences of the passions. –She emphasized the importance of intellectual processes, but –She stressed the central role of emotions for humans. Juan Huarte studied individual differences in aptitude. –He attributed these differences to the effects of the humors and the condition of the brain. Although the Renaissance was a great intellectual leap forward, it was not a renaissance for women.