The Greeks were a powerful nation, excelling in every subject from theatre to philosophy. The age of the philosophers began at about 600 BC with Thales. Philosophy was the beginning of all scientific thought and it later branched of into psychology, however, some of the basic premises of the biological perspective are visible in some Greek philosophers’ ideas. Alcmaeon said in the 5th century BC that the brain was the ‘seat of the soul’, implying that the brain did in fact play a part in cognitive functioning, and a century later Plato agreed with this. Hippocrates believed that the brain was the organ of intellect, controlled the senses and movements, and that any damage caused a contralateral effect. Even Galen in the second century concluded that the frontal lobes were the seat of the soul. However with the fall of the Greek empire and the rise of the Romans, much philosophy disappeared for many years.
It wasn’t until much later down the timeline that there was another boom of psychological research. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the scientific method was established and new ways of looking at questions which had bothered people for some time emerged. Most importantly, the use of case studies, large scale experiments, and the development of particular technologies has advanced our understanding of the human body hugely. The first steps were the unravelling of the nervous system by Gall, Helmholtz, and other studies like Sherrington, who discovered that reflexes are composed of direct connections between sensory and motor nerve fibres at the level of the spinal cord. At the same time, Cajal detected synapses between neurons, which Sherrington later proved and theorised about neurotransmitters and how the brain is made of a complex pattern of neurons. Later, some significant case studies started to appear which provided evidence for theories of localisation and lateralisation of function such as the story of Phineas Gage, Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke’s studies on language, and Roger Sperry’s studies on split brain patients. Soon more refined methods of brain research were produced such as direct electrical stimulation of the brain, which Harvey Cushing used to map the whole somatosensory cortex, and the EEC for measuring electrical pulses of neurons. The next big step was the development of x-ray based brain scanning techniques, starting with the creation of the CAT scan in 1972. This created a burst of information and all of the areas and functions of the brain were completely mapped by the end of the century.
To an abstract degree, the biological perspective was forged in two short periods of time: the age of philosophers, establishing the base questions of the theory, and the age of technology of science to answer all the questions through scientific evidence. Since then, the biological perspective of psychology has gone on to explain all sorts of ideas in other areas of science and medicine and has produced some great benefits for the general public.
