please can you help me by telling me some of the things that charles darwin did to help the development of psychology.thank you very much.

yours sincerely, GARY STAMPER.

-- gary stamper (gazza.7@genie.co.uk), September 17, 2001

Answers

Here are some:

1) Darwin, Charles. (1877). A biographical sketch of an infant. Mind, 2, 285-294.

2) influenced his cousin, Francis Galton, to develop eugenics (for better or worse)

3) evolution by natural selection was the foundation of the functionalist movement in early 20th-century psychology (Angell and Carr at Chicago; Thorndike at Columbia; Dewey at both)

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), September 17, 2001.

Darwin placed humans on a continuum with other animals, making the causes of their thought and behavior natural phenomena, not supernatural ones. He promoted the concept of inheritance of physical, mental, and behavioral features. He generated interest measuring variability and individual differences in human behavior. The concept of selection of morphological features by natural selection is reflected in Skinner's behaviorism, which emphasizes the selection of behaviors through environmental consequences.

-- Warren Street (warren@cwu.edu), September 24, 2001.

You might also take a look at John Dewey's classic article, "The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy" (see http://paradigm.soci.brocku.ca:80/~lward/Dewey/dewey_18_a.html). Much of it applies to psychology equally well.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), December 15, 2001.