Reaction Journal Five: Functionalism
This week’s reading was over the beginnings of the radical functionalist movement that was lead by Charles Darwin. Darwin was more concerned with how an organism functioned and adapted to change than the perception, sensations, and the structure of consciousness as his fellow psychologists Wundt and Titchener were. Darwin lived a life of privilege and traveled extensively during his lifetime. During his travels, he observed many animal species and made notations about how there were minor differences within the species that helped them survive. Darwin interpreted this as the “survival of the fittest” inasmuch as the traits that were helpful in keeping that species alive were promoted and the traits that were hurtful died out (Schultz, D. & Schultz, S., 2016, p. 108). His theory of evolution was his life’s work, but it also caused him serious health issues and stress due to the fact that it would be going against the teachings of the Bible. According to the text, it took him 22 years to publish his findings and that was because he was literally forced to do so as another naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, wrote him a letter explaining that he had come up with the basically the same theory. Otherwise, who knows how long it would have taken him to publish On the Origin …show more content…
He opened the door to many new types of psychology to include animal psychology. At one time, the church, did not even consider animals to even have souls, as we read in an earlier chapter. So, they were fair game when it came to animal experimentation (more like torture back then). Now, researchers were actively trying to observe their behavior and try to figure out whether or not they had “emotions” such as pain, pleasure, passion, sadness, love, and happiness and their levels of intelligence. Lastly, the researchers were trying to figure out how the animals
This week’s reading was over the beginnings of the radical functionalist movement that was lead by Charles Darwin. Darwin was more concerned with how an organism functioned and adapted to change than the perception, sensations, and the structure of consciousness as his fellow psychologists Wundt and Titchener were. Darwin lived a life of privilege and traveled extensively during his lifetime. During his travels, he observed many animal species and made notations about how there were minor differences within the species that helped them survive. Darwin interpreted this as the “survival of the fittest” inasmuch as the traits that were helpful in keeping that species alive were promoted and the traits that were hurtful died out (Schultz, D. & Schultz, S., 2016, p. 108). His theory of evolution was his life’s work, but it also caused him serious health issues and stress due to the fact that it would be going against the teachings of the Bible. According to the text, it took him 22 years to publish his findings and that was because he was literally forced to do so as another naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, wrote him a letter explaining that he had come up with the basically the same theory. Otherwise, who knows how long it would have taken him to publish On the Origin …show more content…
He opened the door to many new types of psychology to include animal psychology. At one time, the church, did not even consider animals to even have souls, as we read in an earlier chapter. So, they were fair game when it came to animal experimentation (more like torture back then). Now, researchers were actively trying to observe their behavior and try to figure out whether or not they had “emotions” such as pain, pleasure, passion, sadness, love, and happiness and their levels of intelligence. Lastly, the researchers were trying to figure out how the animals