Historical introduction to modern psychology

the long version

Psychology, in the sense of reflection upon the nature and activities of mind, is a very ancient discipline, one which reached great heights in ancient Greece and has continued (in intimate relation with philosophy) with every phase of European civilization. During the nineteenth century this literary and philosophic psychology underwent profound changes, chiefly as a result of the progress of biology, from which both concepts and methods were freely borrowed. Many of its greatest students began to rely upon experimental and mathematical method, believing that psychology could become a science akin to other biological sciences. It is the purpose of this volume to trace the course of those changes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which have thus tended to transform psychology and to give it its present character. This text presents a detailed history of modern psychology not limited to the experimental tradition. -- Description from http://psycnet.apa.org (June 12, 2012.).