Psychology as a Science

The first 200 words of this essay...

Describe and Discuss the historical development of psychology as a science.

According to Russell & Jarvis(2003: 469) "the word 'science' comes from the Latin word 'scire', meaning 'to know'"; thus it is the knowledge of specific study. Psychology was defined by Atkinson et al. (2000: 3, cited by Mestre. et al. 2002: 811) as the "scientific study of behaviour and mental processes". Psychology has been universally recognised as a science since the late 1800's when James (1890, cited by Gross 1999: 3) stated that 'Psychology is the Science of Mental Life". Though many praise the study of psychology for it's findings and achievements there will always be those who are sceptical of these findings and whether or not they can be seen as 'solid'.

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) is widely seen as the 'founding father' of 'new psychology', in which we mean psychology as a separate scientific discipline, rather than it had been previously; a part of philosophy. Wundt created 'structuralism', this is the study of the mind by breaking all chains of thought down in to such things as images, feelings and sensations, for example, if one were to think of chocolate, one may picture the bar,