Paul Broca's Argumentative Analysis

Psychology is rooted in philosophy. Questions of how the mind worked were first posed by the Greeks. Two main schools of thought nativism, the theory founded by Plato where mental processes are innate, and philosophical empiricism, a theory posed by Aristotle which felt that mental processes were learned from experience. Although this “nature” vs “nuture” debate remains, the next fundamental players tried to differentiate the mind from the brain philosophically and experimentally.
While Rene Descartes posited that the brain is made from substance and the mind or soul was made from nonsubstance, Thomas Hobbes believed that the mind is a function of the brain. Gall, Flourens and Broca approached this philosophical debate experimentally. Gall discovered that intelligence roughly correlated with the size of the head. Flourens determined that an intact brain was required for mental processes by studying animals that had their brains systematically removed and comparing their progress with animals with intact brains. Paul Broca was able to pinpoint a small portion of the left side of the brain was needed in language by having a patient with language …show more content…
Instead he saw consciousness as a confluence of factors that arose as an adaptive response to one’s environment and that we could only study it in the natural environment. Inspired by Darwin’s theory of natural selection, James posited that behavior was a product of natural selection. Therefore, things like jealousy could be a behavior that grew from protecting one’s mate and continuing your line. Hall would champion this school of thought, open a lab at Cornell, and posit the notion that the evolution of thought could be seen as a child grows into a