Читать книгу The Handy Psychology Answer Book - Lisa J. Cohen - Страница 24

The pre-Socratic philosophers—i.e., those who predated Socrates—lived in the early fifth century and sixth centuries B.C.E. Philosophers such as Alcmaeon, Protagoras, Democritus, and Hippocrates introduced concepts remarkably relevant to modern ideas. Shifting focus from the gods to the natural world, they attributed mental activity to nous (the later spelling of noos), which some even located in the brain. Several of these philosophers believed that our knowledge of the world is only learned through the sense organs. As we can only know what we see, hear, smell or touch, all human knowledge is necessarily subjective and will differ from individual to individual. This belief in the relativism of human knowledge was a radical idea that remains pertinent to modern psychology.

Do all the ancient Greeks’ ideas hold up in the light of modern science?

Not all of the ancient Greeks’ ideas make sense from a contemporary point of view. Hippocrates, for example, believed that mental illness is caused by imbalances between bile, phlegm, and blood, and Alcmaeon believed that perceptions reached the brain through channels of air. Nonetheless, the attempt to find biological explanations of psychological processes is extraordinarily similar to modern views.