Don't you know 'bout a zillion years ago some star sneezed, now they're paging you in reception...
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PSYC 3100 sec 03
History And Systems Of Psychology, Summer Session I 2009
UConn Storrs Campus, BUSN 112
MON WED 1:00-4:15
Eric Lundquist

Office: BOUS 136
Office Hours: by appointment
Phone: (860) 486-4084
E-mail: Eric.Lundquist@uconn.edu

READING:

1. REQUIRED: Hergenhahn, B.R. (2005). An Introduction to the History of Psychology (5th ed.). Wadsworth. (ISBN: 0534554016)
2. REQUIRED: On-Line Readings and Reserve Readings (to be announced)
3. OPTIONAL: Classics In The History Of Psychology - Here's a collection of links to papers I'll refer to in class - and a few of them will appear among the required readings for the class.

GRADING:

	Midterm Exam:	50%	approximately class #6 (Wednesday 6/17)
	Final Exam:	50%	Wednesday July 8 (class #12, last class meeting)

Introductory topics: General orienting issues for the course; the three essential dates to know; some historical roots of the PDP / Connectionist model of mind. Here are some OPTIONAL supplements:

• Koole, S.L., Greenberg, J., & Pysczcynski, T. (2006). Introducing psychology to the science of the soul. Psychological Science, 15 (5), 212-216: This is a paper on finding meaning in life vs. the fear of death -- not very natural-science-oriented topics -- that nonetheless proposes future research directions involving cognitive neuroscience and PDP models (see p. 215); this makes the point that these are truly pervasive features of modern cognitive psychology. But I've only posted the paper here for those of you who may be interested.
• Chomsky, Noam (1959). A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior. Language, 35(1), 26-58. The famous critique of the behaviorist approach is fairly difficult, but rewarding if you're interested.
• Roddy Roediger's March 2004 commentary from the APS Observer, 17(3) re-examines the simplistic story about behaviorism's fate after the rise of cognitive psychology, shedding some important light. One nice point he makes is that Chomsky contributed a rationalist intellectual foundation to refuting Skinner's behaviorism, but mainly was arguing at cross-purposes with Skinner and maybe shouldn't be thought of as have fomented a revolution.
• Alferink, Larry (2005). Behaviorism Died Today, Again! The General Psychologist, 40(1) (Spring 2005), 7-9. This is a brief mention of some of the many ways, both scientific and practical, in which behaviorism is still thriving today, which should counter the cliché that it's a thing of the past.
• Crimson by Josip Novakovich is a moving and disturbing short story that features this intriguing passage -- an insight that is certainly knowledge of a sort, but not scientific knowledge: "Milan thought how strange it was that he should be held responsible for the past, three years ago, when he was conscripted and enslaved--when he wasn't even himself. 'We all have multiple personalities,' he said. 'One of us is the past, and another the future, and there's no present me. We are vacant right now--spaces through which the past and the future disagree.'"

PowerPoint slides on Early Psychology: some of psychology's 19th century precursors, followed by Wundt and voluntarism, Titchener and structuralism, the imageless thought debate with Kulpe, and Watson's turn to behaviorism -- all in very brief overview.

Language Development: here are a couple of brief passages scanned from Erika Hoff's text that describe the Chomskyan view of language acquisition, along with an orientation to the perspectives of empiricism and nativism.

Notes On The Mind-Body Problem: I've summarized some information from Paul Churchland's Matter And Consciousness (Revised edition), and while there's a little more detail here than you need, it's better than the mere 1.5 pages (pp. 15-17) offered in Hergenhahn's Chapter 1. I've also added an outline and an explanation of exactly how Churchland's terminology differs from Hergenhahn's. (Depending on your browser, my nice numbered organization of the various positions might be very messed up, but you'll get the point.)

• PowerPoint slides on the Mind-Body Problem in text format

Where Am I?: a philosophical article in the form of a short story, that highlights the links between the mind-body problem and the idea of personal identity.

A digression on quantum physics (featuring former President Clinton's grand jury testimony). After appreciating the irony in the quotations, follow the link to the simulation of the "two-hole experiment," and when that says "to be continued," be sure to click on the little picture of Einstein that says "how do we know this is true?"

• A well-done popular exposition of some of the phenomena of special relativity and quantum mechanics, from Decoding the Universe by Charles Seife. The book demonstrates the relevance of Claude Shannon's mathematical information theory (also very relevant and influential in cognitive psychology) to describing the cosmos. That may sound intimidating but if you stick with this two-chapter discussion, you will follow it all, and then you'll probably be inclined to buy the whole excellent book! Or, if it gets too thick for you, skim a bit till you alight on another section that catches your attention. (For instance, this is one of the few reasonable popular accounts I've seen concerning the physics of time-travel.)

ENIAC article in Wikipedia: a description of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, commonly (though perhaps inaccurately) considered to be the first electronic computer. The general History Of Computing Hardware article is pretty interesting too, if you just want to see a long chronology of the ancestors of your PC.

Old and New Style Dates; The Julian Calendar; The Gregorian Calendar: these links will tell you more than you want to know about the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in various countries. My favorite bit might be that the most famous date associated with Julius Caesar himself is that of his assassination on March 15, 44 BCE (the Ides Of March) on the Roman calendar, but when the Romans fully adopted his Julian calendar, that date became March 14 instead. So in retrospect it wasn't even really the 15th ("Ides") after that.

Alan Turing's memorial -- note that it took almost half a century to appear.

• "Computing Machinery and Intelligence": Turing's 1950 paper in which he first made the analogy between minds and computers and proposed the "imitation game" now known as the Turing Test. Note that toward the end he says the evidence for E.S.P. is overwhelming and as such poses a counterargument to his theory of thought. That was an embarrassing bit of gullibility on his part, because such evidence is non-existent. (His 1936 paper "On Computable Numbers," which introduced the Turing Machine, is also linked here, but it's not so readable.)
• Cartoon tributes to Alan Turing: the Turing machine; the Turing test; and another mentioning the Turing test

PowerPoint slides on Philosophy of Science in text format

• Outline of Logical Positivism: This is a very brief sketch of the philosophy of science known as Logical Positivism, which was very influential in the development of psychology in the first half of the 20th century. For the moment, all you need focus on is the end of the first section where Logical Positivism, Popper, and Kuhn are mentioned, and the second section titled "A Brief Outline of Logical Positivism."
• Diagram of the logical positivist view of science from Leahey's History Of Psychology.
• Diagram of Kuhn's view of revolutionary change in science from Leahey's History Of Psychology.
• Randy Hickey from My Name Is Earl distills the essence of Kuhn's concept of the paradigm as disciplinary matrix.
• A somewhat racy illustration of the effects of relative motion on different observers' perceptions of time in special relativity

Das Rad (The Wheel): a 2003 Oscar nominee for best animated short film; its relation to Heraclitus's philosophy will be fairly clear.

• The Wheel And The Maypole, XTC's final song from their final album, finds impermanence (of relationships, people, civilization, the entire universe) quite a freeing and even joyful thought, in an 80's-pop / ancient-pagan-ritual sort of way.

Steve Martin reflects on philosophy and religion and other stuff, c. 1977.

Some Pythagoras links, for those who would be Pythagoreans if they could:

• Pythagoras in the BBC production "The Story Of 1", a program in which Terry Jones of Monty Python fame recounts the history of numbers - kind of silly as you'll see, but it makes its points accurately.
• Pythagoras on Wikipedia
• Pythagoras in the University Of St. Andrews History Of Mathematics Archive
• Pythagoras in a history of mathematics page at Texas A&M

Greek Philosophy through Aristotle, from Thomas Leahey's textbook on the history of psychology. It's a little more sophisticated than Hergenhahn's treatment so it may make for interesting reading; you don't have to study from it though!

Laughing Philosopher / Weeping Philosopher, by John Heath-Stubbs: Those are the traditional nicknames of Democritus and Heraclitus, referring to their respective attitudes toward their shared acknowledgement of the impermanence of the world. This poem is inspired by that difference, as described by Montaigne: "Democritus and Heraclitus were both philosophers; the former, finding our human circumstances so vain and ridiculous, never went out without a laughing or mocking look on his face: Heraclitus, feeling pity and compassion for these same circumstances of ours, wore an expression which was always sad, his eyes full of tears." (Montaigne, Essays, c. 1580)

Socrates is portrayed here in an excerpt from Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter by Thomas Cahill. In just a few fun pages you get a character sketch, an example of his method of questioning (and why it was annoying), some mention of the nature of Plato's rendering of Socrates, and a note on his appeal to early Christianity due to the similiarities between him and Jesus. It's a sideways pdf file, sorry, but you can just click the rotate button - or print it, of course.

• The Death Of Socrates as portrayed by Plato in his dialogue called Phaedo. The ending is the relevant portion, beginning around where it reads: "We will do our best, said Crito. But in what way would you have us bury you?" Someday you should probably get around to reading the whole thing, along with the first two dialogues in the sequence, Apology (the trial of Socrates) and Crito (Socrates in prison).
• The Death Of Socrates as portrayed by Steve Martin in a 1980 TV special, "Comedy Is Not Pretty." It's a really big file, 56 MB or so, so give it time. Totally worth the wait.
• I Think, Therefore I Am Misunderstood: A short essay from Newsweek magazine in which a philosopher tries to explain what it's like being a philosopher today. Naturally he cites Socrates as his inspiration.

Some excerpts from Plato's Dialogues: They're very readable even in this classic translation from the 19th century. "Meno" features the slave boy demonstrating that he knows the Pythagorean Theorem (this version with illustrations may be easier to follow); Book VI of "Republic" describes the Divided Line; Book VII contains the Allegory Of The Cave. The excerpt from "Symposium" is Plato's famous discussion of the nature of love.

• Just for kicks, compare the excerpt from the Symposium with this excerpt from Hedwig And The Angry Inch (and for a limited time only, check out this video clip).
• Okay, due to the vast popular demand, here is the scene where Hedwig (still going by "Hansel", I guess) has been dumped by his GI boyfriend after coming to the US with him (the sex change was botched but the boyfriend still brought Hansel home to a military base in Kansas). And now he's sitting depressed in his trailer home, when news of the fall of the Berlin Wall comes on the TV. He suddenly thinks, there's no more separation of East and West, of the me that was then and the me that is now, and why should I pretend the dichotomy between man and woman is real either? So he grabs the giant blond wig the army guy gave him to make him more "womanly" and decides to let his female side out, and becomes Hedwig... the song is Wig In A Box.

Ode On A Grecian Urn, by John Keats: This poem is a meditation on a very old Greek urn (a vase) decorated with pictures of life at the time it was made. It captures the Platonic theme of abstract eternal existence, of music and love for instance (note especially the second stanza), as well as Plato's notion of "The Good" (in the last few lines).

The School Of Athens, a fresco in the Vatican by Renaissance painter Raphael. This link helpfully allows you to click on the figures and identify them, but you may find other sites that additionally explain the significance of the figures' poses and activities. For instance, you will note the central positions of Plato, gesturing toward the heavens and the realm of the abstract ideal forms, and Aristotle, gesturing toward the natural world surrounding us which reveals itself to the careful observer. Maybe more important, though, is that links are provided to the major works of many of these philosophers so if you're interested, you can just click away.

PowerPoint slides from Thales to Democritus in text format.
PowerPoint slides from the Sophists to Aristotle in text format.

A discussion of Socrates's "daemon" led us to ponder the exile of spirits' influence from the explanation of human behavior, except in the case of evil behavior which is still widely viewed as being due to some force outside of human nature. Freud's notion of thanatos, however, acknowledged that the urge to death and destruction was indeed part of human nature, a view that is chillingly echoed by this quote from a book about the former Yugoslavia and its sad history: "Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginning and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations." (Rebecca West (1941), Black Lamb And Grey Falcon.)

Excerpt from Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach: a few subtly hilarious pages that take us through the history of scientific thought about how the soul gets into the body, from Aristotle to Descartes -- including the story of how sperm and egg were discovered when the first microscopes were turned toward... well, you know. Anything that begins, "There's a very good chance you underestimate the historic import of the sea urchin" is clearly right up my alley, and hopefully yours too. (Sorry the excerpt just leaves off... If you find this selection fun, don't go get the book -- instead, first read her debut Stiff about things that are done with human cadavers, which is high on my list of the most interesting and funniest things I've ever read.)

• Here's another excerpt from Spook that just happens to be online, in case you like it. It'll fill you in on that bit of folklore that says the soul weighs 21 grams since that's the weight you lose at the moment of death. (Hey, in case you don't read this, let me just add: that's not actually true!)

PowerPoint slides on epistemology: These are slightly more current than the Epistemology web page that summarizes them. The web page version, though, may be a useful reference for some of the technical terms that come up in lecture, as well as for the timeline along the top. NOTE: the "Rationalism vs. Empiricism" section lists five questions that distinguish the two approaches, and the last three of those are not specifically intended for PSYC 3100 -- so if you find them mystifying you can ignore them. The last of them may describe some familiar comparisons though.

We're All Light is another track from XTC's final album Wasp Star (see also The Wheel And The Maypole above), in which they reflect on the fact that cosmologically speaking we're made of some ancient and profound stuff, and they then try to use that fact as a pickup line.