The word psychology is originated from two Latin words, "psyche" (means soul, spirit, mind or breath) and "logia" (means study or research). So "Psychology" means the study of mind or soul.
As the development of time, psychology also progressed as a pure empirical science. For example, in ancient Greek people have believed in the existence of soul or spirit but when the scientific observation developed it questioned the existence of soul or spirit. This led to the notion that, the concept of soul or spirit is highly abstract. Due to the inability to state the existence of spirit, the philosophers (or precisely scientists) of that time rejected this notion and embraced the viewpoint, psychology as the scientific study of mind. Gradually and naturally, the abstractness of "mind" concept also questioned and psychology has became the study of "consciousness". At a later point science has found that the concept of consciousness also abstract and at last now, psychology is considered as the study of "behaviour" which is observable and can be recorded empirically. So now a days, psychology is the study of human and animal behaviour.
R. S. Woodworth humorously comprehended this progressive evolution of psychology as given below:
"First psychology lost its 'soul', then its 'mind', then it lost its 'consciousness'. It still has 'behaviour' of a sort."
- R. S. Woodworth
As
we have seen, psychology is the scientific study of human and animal
behaviour, it investigates why human beings and animals behave as they
do. Even though it is known as behavioural sciences, by changing its
core pattern or method, psychology did not exclude the basic ideas of
soul, spirit, mind, consciousness etc. completely as some people
believes. It embraces conscious and unconscious phenomena as well as
thoughts and emotions from a maximum possible scientific and logical
manner. Psychology studies about sensation, perception, learning,
awareness, communication, interaction etc. Psychology also studies about
electro-chemical signaling and message transmission across human beings
and animals with the help of physiology. The blending of psychology and
physiology is the most modern development in the field. A very basic
revolutionary contribution from this shared strata is the identification
of role of electro-chemical imbalances in mental disorders. According
to physiological psychology mind is the environment created by brain.
The whole human body including brain is created by physical matters.
Always, as in any science, there will be many questions that leads
beyond the limit of that branch of science. It is not different in the
case of psychology, questions that have answers beyond it always results
in higher strata of the same. May the science can answer why the dog
salivates when it see the food, but till now it did not answer do the
dog has a soul? Where the mind is located as? What happens to a human
after death? Where the consciousness goes or why it happens? Does
earthly beings are created or originated? What is enlightenment? How
telepathy occurs? These type of questions lead to the field of
'Parapsychology'.
Definitions of psychology:
"Psychology is the scientific study of the behaviour of individuals and their mental process."
-American Psychological Association (APA).
"Psychology is the scientific study of people, the mind and the behaviour."
-The British Psychological Society.
"Psychology is the science of behaviour and experience."
-B. F. Skinner
"Psychology is the study of human behaviour and human relationships."
- Crow and Crow
"Psychology is the scientific study of the activities of the individual in relation to the environment."
-Woodworth and Marquis
"Psychology is the scientific study of behaviour of living creatures in their contact with the outer world."
-Koffka
[Scope of psychology will be discussed in the next article].
Comments
Post a Comment