“As you’ll see, psychology has twin roots: philosophy and physiology. These roots are evident in most of the people we’ll discuss as potential founders of modern psychology. For example, Wilhelm Wundt, a German many historians of psychology credit with founding psychology as a science, was trained as a physician—there’s that physiology root—but was interested in philosophy throughout his career. Even before Wundt, Gustav Fechner, another German, developed methodology that some historians consider the beginning of scientific psychology. Fechner, like Wundt, was trained as a physician but was always interested in philosophy. There are even some American historians who consider William James the founder of psychology, with his monumental Principles of Psychology. Care to guess James’s training and interests?

“In keeping with psychology’s long past, however, we won’t begin our look at psychology’s history by visiting relatively modern psychologists. Instead, we’re going to start with a visit to ancient Greece, at a time when there was relative peace and prosperity. We’re going to the Golden Age of Greece, the period between the birth of an enlightened ruler named Pericles in about 490 B.C.E. and the death of Aristotle in 322 B.C.E.

“During this period, such famous philosophers as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle lived and died. We can see in their writings much of relevance to later developments in psychology.

“Actually, Socrates left no writings, and most of what we know about him comes from the writings of his pupil Plato. The name Plato, by the way, was actually a nickname meaning ‘broad shoulders.’ Plato’s real name was Aristocles, which means ‘best and renowned’ and was a perfect fit for a person who excelled in virtually everything. Plato considered becoming either a poet or a politician before falling under the sway of Socrates and becoming a philosopher.

“Plato, and Socrates before him, took an extreme position on what was known in the 20th century as the nature-nurture problem. This is the issue of whether knowledge is built in, innate, part of our nature, or whether it comes from experience, learning, our nurture. Like Socrates, Plato taught that knowledge is innate and that our experiences actually prevent us from remembering what we have already known.