RENAISSANCE

Changing Times
in Psychology
 BEFORE RENAISSANCE:

• Till 14th and 15th century, philosophy served religion

• Two classes: believers and nonbelievers

• Nonbelievers were physically punished, imprisoned or killed (stupid and evil)

• Astrology, superstition and magic became extremely popular.

• Not a time for open inquiry.

• Philosophers engaged in ‘normal philosophy’

• Church authority was on a decline.

• Little philosophical, theological or scientific growth.

• For progress to occur, Church authority had to be broken.
• Zia’s Regime??
 BEGINNING OF MODERN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY:

• Renaissance means ‘rebirth’

• Going back to the more open-minded inquiry – Greek philosophers’ method.

• Europe – from God-centered to human-centered.

• God existed in nature so studying nature is studying God.

• There was more to humans that their souls.

• Reliable sensory system- why not use them?
• Reasoning powers- why not exercise them?

• Enjoyment- why not ENJOY?

• From heavens to living in the world. (From Living for Afterlife to Living for Life)
• The Renaissance was a period of time from the 14th to the
17th century in Europe. This era bridged the time between
the Middle Ages and modern times. The word
"Renaissance" means "rebirth".
• The Renaissance was a time of "coming out of the dark". It
was a rebirth of education, science, art, literature, music,
and a better life for people in general.
• The term Renaissance is used to describe the development
of western civilization that marked the transition from
medieval to modern times.
 • The Renaissance is best known for its art as this was the age of
geniuses as Leonardo da Vinci, Petrarch, Dante, and Michelangelo.
• Where the medieval period of art was looked upon as an age of
beliefs and religious faiths (It was laden with work that depicted
fears and superstitions). The Renaissance period of art was also
looked upon as a rebirth period. It was regarded as an age of hope.
People were beginning to think more logically without accepting
everything that church said during this time. This change in the
thought pattern was illustrated as paintings too.
• Another point of comparison between the Renaissance and Middle
Ages is the literature. The development of the printing press was the
greatest cultural achievement of the Renaissance. This encouraged
the writers to write in the local language.
 • The term Renaissance Man refers to a person that is an
expert and talented in many areas.

• Under this new way of thinking, knowledge was seen as one

of the primary raisons d'être for life itself – and there
followed a passion to seek out forgotten books among the
monasteries and libraries of Europe. With every “lost” classic
rediscovered, the influence of these texts grew.
It was an intellectual movement which originated in the thirteenth
century, and came to dominate Europe through out the Renaissance.
Humanism was using the study of classical texts to alter contemporary
thinking, breaking away from the medieval mind-sets and creating
something new.

Humanism denotes an intense interest in human beings, as

if we were discovering ourselves for the first time. During
this time, interest was focused on a wide range of human
activities. How do we think, behave, and feel? Of what are
we capable?

RENAISSANCE HUMANISM
• Four major themes: 2. Personal religion – Religion to be
1. Individualism – Great concern with more personal and less ritualistic,
human potential and achievement, religion to be more personally
power of individualism. The belief in experienced than imposed on
the power of the individual to make a people by church.
positive difference in the world
created a spirit of optimism.
RENAISSANCE HUMANISM
Humanism- interest in human beings (as discovering ourselves for the first
time).How do we think, behave and feel? What are we capable of?

4. Anti-Aristotelianism – Aristotle’s philosophy as

Bible
3. Intense interest in past – Interest in the work
of Greek and Roman philosophers, and poets • Humanists were against it as Aristotle was a human
• Interest in Plato as he was re-found an re- and capable of making errors
studied • Unfortunately, Aristotle’s philosophy had to be
• Marsilio Ficino- founded Platonic academy accepted to be a Christian
in Florence
• Accepting church dogma became more important
• Old Eastern religions were re-discovered.
than one’s personal relationship with God;
therefore, the humanists attacked church dogma
harshly
FRENCESCO
PETRARCH
(1304–1374)
Petrarch (1304 - 1374) has been called the Father of Italian Humanism. He argued that
each person should study the ancients and create their own style to reflect
themselves. Had Petrarch not lived, Humanism would have been seen as more
threatening to Christianity.

• Influential- his writings mark the beginning of Renaissance

• All the themes discussed previously are found in his work
• Concerned with freeing human spirit from medieval traditions
• Target of attack- Scholasticism- said ‘Like those who have no notion of architecture,
they make it their profession to whitewash walls’
• Urged a return to personal religion like described by St. Augustine
• Scholasticism made religion too intellectual to compete it with Aristotelian rationalism
• God wanted humans to use their vast capabilities and not inhibit them.
• By actualizing human potential we can change the world for the better
• Did not create anything new philosophically.
• His scepticism towards all forms of dogma helped pave the way for modern science
 MARTIN LUTHER:
(1483–1546)

https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=FhGGjRjvq7w
 MARTIN LUTHER:
• Augustinian priest and biblical scholar, disgusted by present Christianity
• Human intentions are inspired either by God or by Satan: former results in God’s work, latter is
sin
• If people have sinned, they should suffer the consequences
• Intensely personal religion: everyone is answerable to God
• Reformation (1517)- Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the castle church in
Wittenberg
• Opposed the idea of sinner paying a fees to reduce the retribution for their sins
• Jesus preached the glory of simple life, devoid of luxury and privilege
• Major reason for the downfall of Catholicism was its assimilation of Aristotle’s philosophy
• Due to all the arguments he had with Erasmus on free will, Luther’s protest against church gave
birth to a new religion Protestantism insisting that every individual has the right to interpret the
Bible in his or her own way
• Dispute over which version of Christianity was correct soon divided Europe
 The decline in the church’s authority was directly related to the
rise of a new spirit of inquiry that took as its ultimate authority
empirical observation instead of the scriptures, faith, or
revelation. Gradually, church dogma was replaced by the very
thing it had opposed the most—the direct observation of nature
without the intervention of theological considerations. But the
transition, although steady, was slow and painful. Many
Renaissance scholars were caught between theology and
science because of either personal beliefs or fear of retaliation
by the church. They reported their observations with extreme
caution; in some cases, they requested that their observations
be reported only after their death
 The work of a few astronomer-physicists was
most detrimental to church dogma and most influential
in creating a new way of examining nature’s
secrets. That new way was called science.
GALELIO
(1564–1642)
 • Brilliant Mathematician

• Set out to correct a number of misconceptions about the world and

about heavenly bodies

• Challenged Aristotle’s contention that heavy objects fall faster

than lighter ones
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5vezYaOpC4
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Maqhxq_LEMQ
 Modified the newly invented telescope and discovered 4 of Jupiter’s moons

 Which meant that there were at LEAST 11 bodies in the solar system and
not 7 like the church had said

 People refused to look through his telescope  heresy (blasphemy)

 “If God meant man to use such a contrivance in acquiring knowledge, He

would have endowed men with telescopic eyes”
 Objective and Subjective Reality

 Objective Reality  exists independently of anyone’s perception of it 

Physical reality  quantity, shape, size, position, and motion or rest.

 Subjective Reality  exists through our senses  purely psychological

experiences  purely relative, subjective, and fluctuating
 Conscious experiences cannot be scientific

• Conscious experiences are inferior to the “real world”

• Thus, for Galileo, what we study in Psychology today could never be

quantified and thus should never be a science

• Secondary qualities  UNRELIABLE

 • A man named Ronald Cotton went on
trial

• He was accused of brutally raping a

university student named Jennifer
1986 Case Thompson

• Jennifer testified that during the ordeal,

which happened at night in the darkness
of her apartment bedroom, she intently
studied the rapists face
 1986 Case
• Jennifer  15 years later:
• “‘I looked at his hairline; I looked for scars, for tattoos, for anything that would
help me identify him.”

• STRONG MEMORY

• Identified Mr. Cotton  Rapist

 1986 Case

• “I knew this was the man. I was completely confident. I was sure. . . . If there was
the possibility of a death sentence, I wanted him to die. I wanted to flip the
switch”

• Mr. Cotton was sentenced to serve life + 54 years

 1986 Case
• Mr. Cotton consistently appealed his conviction  maintaining his innocence

• Another man  Prison inmate Bobby Poole  discovered to have boasted to

his cellmates about having committed the rape for which Mr. Cotton had been
convicted.

• Ms. Thompson was shown Mr. Poole  “I have never seen this man in my life,
I have no idea who he is”
 1986 Case

AFTER SERVING 11 YEARS IN PRISON  Mr. Cotton was EXONERATED of the

crime

DNA EVIDENCE  confirmed Bobby Poole was the rapist

Jennifer Thompson  became a strong advocate of EXTREME caution when

convicting a defendant solely on the basis of someone’s memory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubuXSiv0wtw
FRANCIS BACON
(1561–1626)
 RADICAL EMPIRICIST
Who believed that nature could be understood only
by studying it directly and objectively. Accounts of
how nature should be based on scripture, faith, or any How Many Teeth
philosophical or theological authority would only Does A Horse Have?
hamper one’s efforts to learn how the world Actually
Functions.
In the year of our Lord 1432, there arose a grievous quarrel among the brethren over the
number of teeth in the mouth of a horse. For thirteen days the disputation raged without
ceasing. All the ancient books and chronicles were fetched out, and wonderful and ponderous
erudition such as was never before heard of in this region was made manifest. At the beginning
of the fourteenth day, a youthful friar of goodly bearing asked his learned superiors for
permission to add a word, and straightway, to the wonderment of the disputants, whose deep
wisdom he sore vexed, he beseeched them to unbend in a manner coarse and unheard-of and
to look in the open mouth of a horse and find answer to their questionings. At this, their dignity
being grievously hurt, they waxed exceeding wroth; and, joining in a mighty uproar, they flew
upon him and smote him, hip and thigh, and cast him out forthwith. For, said they, surely Satan
hath tempted this bold neophyte to declare unholy and unheard-of ways of finding truth,
contrary to all the teachings of the fathers. After many days more of grievous strife, the dove of
peace sat on the assembly, and they as one man declaring the problem to be an everlasting
mystery because of a grievous dearth of historical and theological evidence thereof, so ordered
the same writ down.

—Francis Bacon, 1592

 • Galileo vs Bacon
• Galileo  sought general principles that governed the physical
world  Science should be based on deduction (Theory 
prediction  testing  conclusion)

Baconian (Deduction: involves predicting a particular event from a general

principle)
science
• Bacon  science should only involve facts of observation 
should be based on induction (Observation  testing 
prediction  conclusion)
(Induction: Specific to General)
 • Deduction  pre-conceived notions (Aristotle’s Final Causes)

• Accepting a theory  create a bias in one’s observations

Baconian • No authority, no theory, no words, no mathematical formulation,

science no belief, and no fantasy could displace empirical observation as
the basis of factual knowledge.

• Today  Positivism
 • In Baconian science, one proceeds from observation to
generalization (induction); in Galilean science, and later in
Newtonian science, one proceeds from a general law to the
prediction of specific, empirical events (deduction).
• Bacon did not deny the importance of the rational powers of
Baconian the mind, but he believed that those powers should be used
to understand the facts of nature rather than the figments of
science the human imagination.
• What Bacon (1620/1994) proposed was a position
intermediate between traditional empiricism (simply fact
gathering) and rationalism (the creation of abstract
principles)
 “Empiricists, like ants, merely collect things and use
them. The Rationalists, like spiders, spin webs out of
themselves. The middle way is that of the bee, which
gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and
field, but then transforms and digests it by a power of its
Baconian own. And the true business of philosophy is much the
same, for it does not rely only or chiefly on the powers
science of the mind, nor does it store the material supplied by
natural history and practical experiments untouched in
its memory, but lays it up in the understanding changed
and refined. Thus from a closer and purer alliance of the
two faculties—the experimental and the rational, such
as has never yet been made—we have good reason for
hope. “
 • Science should provide useful information

• Science should change the world for the better

Baconian • “Human knowledge and human power come to the same

thing, for where the cause is not known the effect cannot

science be produced. We can only command Nature by obeying

her”
• By “understanding nature,” Bacon meant knowing how
things are causally related; once these relationships are
known, their practical implications could be explored.
• Hence the Famous “KNOWLEDGE IS POWER” QUOTE
 Baconian science
• Ahead of his time  scientists should purge their
minds of their biases

• Currently it is agreed that observations of ALL

SCIENTISTS are ”theory-laden”

• One’s acceptance of a theory influences what one

observes and how one interprets what one
observes
 • Does this happen?

• Does one’s acceptance of a theory influence what one

"Right Now” observes and how one interprets what one observes?

Discussion • Examples?

• Cognitive Dissonance and Self-fulfilling Prophesies

RENE DESCARTE
(1596–1650)
• Went through an intellectual crises 
everything he had ever learnt was useless
(especially philosophy)

• Philosophers had been seeking the truth for

centuries  never found it or agreed on
anything  hence everything in philosophy
was uncertain

• This realization  deep depression

• He decided that he would be better off
learning things for himself instead of from
the “experts”
4 RULES FOR CERTAINTY

1. Never accept anything as true unless I

recognize it to be evidently as such (avoid
prejudices) carefully to avoid all precipitation
and prejudgment, and to include nothing in
my conclusions unless it presented itself so
clearly and distinctly to my mind that there
was no reason or occasion to doubt it.
2. Divide each of the difficulties encountered
into as many parts as possible
3. Think in an orderly fashion beginning with the
simplest and gradually moving towards the
more complex knowledge
4. Always make enumerations complete, and
reviews so general, that I would be certain
that nothing was omitted
• Thus began Descartes’s
search for philosophical
truth. He resigned
himself to doubt
everything that could be
doubted and to use
whatever was certain.
• After a painful search, Descartes concluded that the only thing of
which he could be certain was the fact that he was doubting; but
doubting was thinking, and thinking necessitated a thinker.

• Thus, he arrived at his celebrated conclusion:

“Cogito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am).
• Descartes established the certainty of his own thought processes, a
certainty that, for him, made the introspective search for knowledge
valid.
• It was the end of the search Descartes conducted for a statement that
could not be doubted. He found that he could not doubt that he
himself existed, as he was the one doing the doubting in the first
place!
https://1000wordphilosophy.com/2018/11/26/descartes-i-think-therefore-i-am/
INNATE IDEAS

• Natural components of the mind.

• I am imperfect  but some ideas I have are perfect  Since
perfect cannot come from imperfect  must be innate

• “The only hypothesis left was that this idea was put in my mind
by a nature that was really more perfect than I was, which had all
the perfections that I could imagine, and which was, in a word,
God”
• Because God exists and is perfect  he would not deceive humans  thus we can trust
the information provided by our senses

• Sensory information must be clear and distinct  to be accepted as valid.

• Clear means that the information is represented clearly in consciousness, and distinct
means that the conscious experience cannot be doubted or divided for further analysis

• Seeing a stick partially submerged in water  concluding that it is bent

• Descartes concluded (1) that rational processes were valid and that knowledge of the
physical world gained through the senses could be accepted because God would not
deceive us, but (2) that even sensory information had to be analysed rationally in order to
determine its validity.
• Descartes method  Intuition + Deduction
• Intuition  unbiased and attentive mind arrives at a clear distinct idea such that it’s validity
cannot be doubted

• Once the idea is discovered  One can deduce many other valid ideas
• Example: God exists (intuition)  We can trust sensory information because God will not
deceive us (Deduction)

• It is important to note that Descartes’s method restored the dignity to purely subjective
experience.
• In fact, Descartes found that he could doubt the existence of everything physical (including his
own body) but could not doubt the existence of himself as a thinking being!
• Descartes was a rationalist  Logic
above all else
• He was a nativist  innate ideas
• But he was also a phenomenologist 
studied the nature of conscious
experience
• The mind-body interaction
• The human body operates on physical principles but the mind
does not
• Animal, human behaviors and internal processes could be
explained mechanically.
• Only humans possessed a mind that provided consciousness,
free choice, and rationality.
• Furthermore, the mind was nonphysical and the body physical;
that is, the body occupied space but the mind did not.
• In the process of arriving at the first principle of his
philosophy—“I think, therefore I am”—Descartes believed that
he had discovered the fact that the mind was nonmaterial
• However, they still INTERACT with each other.
• Contribution to Psychology

• Offered a mechanistic explanation of bodily functions and

behavior

• After him, philosophers often either talked about human

beings as machines or stressed upon the importance of
cognition (consciousness)

• Thus, in one way or the other they were all reactions to

Descartes’s theory
THANK YOU.