PSY 3360 – Historical Perspectives on Psychology

CGS 3325 – Minds and Machines since 1600

Spring semester  2012

Dates	Topics	Readings
Jan 18	General introduction	Fancher, Chapter 1
Jan 23	17^th century background
Jan 25	European rationalism: Descartes	Fancher, Chapter 2
Jan 30	European rationalism: Spinoza and Leibniz
Feb 1	British empiricism: Hobbes, Locke
Feb 6	British empiricism: Berkeley, Hume	Fancher, Chapter 4
Feb 8	Kant's synthesis of rationalism & empiricism
Feb 13	Helmholtz (I)	Fancher, Chapter 3
Feb 15	Helmholtz (II)
Feb 20	Rise of psychophysics and neuroscience	Fancher, Chapter 5
Feb 22	Wundt and 19^th century experimental psychology
Feb 27	Midterm review session	Study guide posted online
Feb 29	Midterm Exam
Mar 5	Darwin and the theory of evolution	Fancher, Chapter 6
Mar 7	Galton and individual differences	Fancher, Chapter 7
Mar 12-17	Spring Break – no class
Mar 19	Peirce and James	Fancher, Chapter 8
Mar 21	Russian reflex school; Pavlov	Fancher, Chapter 9
Mar 26	Behaviorism I: Watson
Mar 28	Behaviorism II: Skinner	Fancher, Chapter 10 & 11
Apr 2	Freud; changing conceptions of mental illness
Apr 4	Ethology and animal behavior	Fancher, Chapter 13
Apr 9	Piaget and development
Apr 11	Rise and fall of radical behaviorism	Fancher, Chapter 12
Apr 16	Information processing and cognitive psychology	Fancher, Chapter 14
Apr 18	Impact of computers; Minds, machines, free will	Term paper due[1]
Apr 23	Approaches to the study of language
Apr 25	Developments in cognition and neuroscience	Fancher, Chapter 15
Apr 30	Recent developments
May 2	Last class: final exam review session	Study guide posted online
Fri May 11	Final exam: ** FRIDAY MAY 11 –  8:00-11:00 AM **

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[1] Late papers will lower the paper grade by one notch per class period (that is, from A to A-, or from A- to B+).

These descriptions and timelines are subject to change at the discretion of the Professor.