Contributions of aristotle in psychology

History of psychology, understanding Aristotle, his vews and theories

1. Assignment No.2 March 2, 2018

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CONTRIBUTIONS OF ARISTOTLE IN PSYCHOLOGY
 ARISTOTLE: (384–322 B.C.E.)
Aristotle, a naturalist and a philosopher, theorized about psychology’s
concepts. He suggested that soul and body are not separate and that
knowledge grows from experience.
 Aristotle’s psychology:
Aristotle contributed several basic ideas relating to learning and behavior that
reappear many centuries later to influence the development of Psychology.
These include Aristotle's conception of the life-force, "psyche," or "soul" that
distinguishes the animate from the inanimate, his explanation of the four
"causes," and his ideas about the factors involved in memory.
1. “Para Psyche”:
Aristotle, building upon the work of the earlier philosophers and their studies into mind, reasoning
and thought, wrote the first known text in the history of psychology, called Para Psyche, 'About
the Mind.' The ancient Greeks, including Aristotle, were puzzled by the obvious differences
between living and non-living things and sought to account for these differences. Because of lack
of basic physiological knowledge, they had no idea about breathing (taking in oxygen giving out
carbon dioxide). Living things seemed to "have" something that nonliving things lacked, an
animating principle which the Greeks called the “psyche” (Soul). A living human being breathed
and was warm; a dead one did not breathe and was cold. It seemed logical to conclude that the
human psyche had something to do with warmth and breath. The dead were cold and did not
breathe because their psyches had left them.
In Para Psyche, Aristotle's psychology proposed that the mind was the 'first entelechy,' or primary
reason for the existence and functioning of the body. This line of thought was heavily influenced
by Aristotle's zoology, where he proposed that there were three types of souls defining life; the
plant soul, the animal soul and the human soul, which gave humanity the unique ability to reason
and create. Interestingly, this human soul was the ultimate link with the divine and Aristotle
believed that mind and reason could exist independently of the body.
Figure 1 Aristotle

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1. Four causes:
Aristotle’s four causes were the material cause, the forma cause, the efficient cause and the final
cause. The Material Cause – this is the substance that something is made from. For example, a TV
is made from glass and metal and plastic. The Formal Cause – this refers to what gives the matter
its form. For example, a TV is not just a piece of glass but glass and metal arranged in a certain
way and programmed to work as it does. The Efficient Cause – this refers to the reason behind
somethings existence. For example, a TV exists because someone has the idea to build one and
put all the parts together to make it work. The Final Cause – this cause is the reason why something
is the way it is. This asks the question, what is the function of this object? Why does a TV have
glass on the screen? So that we can watch it. The Final Cause is the reason why a thing exists in
the first place, what is its function.
2. Impulses and urges:
Aristotle can be called the first behaviorist. Aristotle attempted to address the relationships
between impulses and urges within the human mind. Aristotle also believed in 'Id'(unconscious)
and 'Ego'(between reality and unconscious), the idea of desire and reason, two forces that
determined actions. Aristotle's psychology proposed that allowing desire to dominate reason would
lead to an unhealthy imbalance and the tendency to perform bad actions. Here, Aristotle's thought
created a paradigm that remained unchallenged for centuries and one that still underpins the work
of modern psychology and philosophy, where desire is renamed as emotion and reason as
rationality.
Uniquely, Aristotle also understood the importance of time on the actions driving a person, with
desire concerned with the present and reason more concerned with the future and long-term
consequences.
3. Human memory:
Aristotle wrote about human memory that how humans can remember one thing by observing
another.

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 REFERENCES
o Martyn Shuttle worth (Jun 19, 2010). Aristotle's Psychology. Retrieved Feb 22, 2018 from
Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/aristotles-psychology
o Britannica Online. (1994-1997). The history of epistemology: Ancient philosophy.
Retrieved 1997 from http://www.britannica.com
o https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-psychology/

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