Aristotelian Psychology; the study of the soul

Though his works on ethics and politics remain amongst the most influential of all time, Aristotle’s contributions to science are often overlooked. To this day, we tend to associate the Socratic philosophers with their metaphysical reflections, but disregard how Aristotle combined these with the natural sciences to produce what he referred to as “the study of the soul”; in other words, psychology. His critical attitude exemplified the analytical nature of the modern scientific approach, he provided the basis for contemporary scientific methodology -that combines observations and inferences to reach conclusions- and wrote the first book on psychology, De Anima, which laid the basis for extant branches of psychology including Behaviourism. Considering this, it is safe to say that Aristotle has earned his title as the founding father of psychology.

Aristotle’s theory on the acquisition of knowledge

Though Aristotle is considered to be a Socratic philosopher, his views contrast and criticise those of Socrates and, in particular, those of Plato; of whom Aristotle himself was a student. One of the major distinctions lay in their epistemological theories. Plato, a rationalist, believed that fundamental truths about reality lay in the mind; in intellectual, abstract concepts as opposed to the physical world, and that knowledge was hence acquired using a deductive approach. This meant using innate rationality to acquire information about tangible things. In contrast, Aristotle argued that knowledge was gained by making observations about reality, reflecting on them, then coming to a conclusion. Aristotle suggested that knowledge is acquired through an inductive approach that combines empiricism and rationalism. By criticising the prominent view that material experiences would deter one from making valid discoveries, Aristotle produced a method to acquire knowledge that combined both physical observation and intuitive reasoning.

We see Aristotalian reasoning manifested in the scientific method. Scientists collect data -empirical facts- and then use their innate logic to classify, examine the reliability, evaluate hypotheses and make conclusions surrounding the data. Modern scientific methodology is, therefore, simply an application and extension of Aristotle's metaphysical and epistemological position.

Aristotle’s theory of memory: The four laws of association

Aristotle’s theory of the acquisition of knowledge led him to question Plato’s theory of memory. Plato had previously suggested that humans are born with memories and -as with knowledge- we must simply retrieve them from the world of the forms using our rationale. Aristotle disagreed, arguing that memories are composed of sensory experiences and physical encounters with the material world. Memories aren’t simply recalled, but rather formed through interactions with reality.

In de Memoria, Aristotle suggests that memory works through various cerebral associations, the dominant hypothesis that prevails in current psychological theory. He outlines these in the 4 laws of association; which attempt to explain how we retrieve and recall information. The first law -the law of contiguity- relies on cooccurrence, stating that events and objects that occur simultaneously in space and time are linked together in the mind. For example, when thinking about listening to music, one may also recall dancing as they often co-occur. Aristotle’s second law -the law of similarity- states that concepts that are similar in nature are also linked in the mind. Aristotle suggested that our minds subconsciously homogenise similar events, leading us to perceiving them as a part of a greater whole, causing a mental correlation. According to Aristotle, this law extended to contrasting concepts; opposites become linked in the mind as a result of their difference. The colour black, for example, may elicit memories of the colour white as they are directly contrasting. Finally, Aristotle proposed the law of frequency, arguably the most influential theory of memory, which states that the more often two events co-occur, the stronger the mental association between them. We can witness the law of frequency around us every day: you wake up to your alarm every morning, so when you hear it during the day it jolts you awake, or when you see a calculator and it involuntarily evokes the suppressed horrors of GCSE maths.

How did these theories develop?

Until the 17th century, nobody would be as influential to psychology as Aristotle. In the 1600s, Aristotle’s laws of association became the basis for Associationism; a psychological theory illustrated by seventeenth century philosopher John Locke. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke proposed that complex concepts are generated from creating a subconscious network of association between simple ideas. This suggestion of cerebral connections as being a passive process became known as Associationism, a term coined by Locke himself in 1700. Associationism later evolved to form Behaviourism, a branch of psychology which states that all behaviours are learned through continued interactions with environmental stimuli by processes of conditioning. Behaviourism is demonstrated in quintessential psychological experiments such as Pavlov’s Dog and the Little Albert experiment, both of which explore the effects of classical conditioning.

It is clear that psychological discoveries remain indebted to Aristotle’s works and that the impact of his examination of human learning continues to penetrate the fields of science, education and philosophy. By presenting psychology as a union of biology, epistemology and metaphysics, Aristotle showed that psychology is a progressive and ubiquitous field that proves its relevance in any and every discipline.