lundi, septembre 20, 2004
account, chronicle, narrative, report, story, version
Today was a long day. After a long weekend. I'm t-i-r-e-d.
Since I haven't talked about it much before, I thought I'd share a little about what I'm learning in my classes so far. I just got out of the "History of Psychology" class so that's what I'll get into today. After today's class I'm more and more convinced that this class does not really try and conform to its expected content. Today's lecture (and probably a couple previous ones) could have been called "the psychology of history" (or, the psychology of the study of history), not vice versa. And it gets pretty philosophical, with Dr. Stout randomly selecting quotes from authors we may or may have not have heard of to help make the points HE thinks are important. At least, they're important to him. I'm not sure how much these ramblings are contributing to our understanding of the HISTORY of PSYCHOLOGY (unless it's Dr. Stout's current psychology we're trying to understand).
I mean, it does get interesting at times, but for the most part, I'm not sure what we're supposed to get out of these lectures. One theme we kept coming back to today was this idea that in studying history, one can make the mistake of thinking that just because something DID happen means that it HAD to happen. Over and over he mentioned this point. And all I could think was SO WHAT? I'm not sure that the way in which we regard history (with events being either necessary or contingent) has anything to do with understanding the history of the development of psychology as a field of study. Who cares whether something HAD to happen? It DID happen, and that's how we got here. Why explore the other possibilities, unless that was our defined pursuit? Just teach us some history.
I was doing some reading before class of a piece called "Epilegomena" (part of our assigned reading for the week). It made a point that another mistake we might make in studying history was thinking that just because a discovery was made at a certain date, that the actual fact did not exist before. We might know that Newton discovered gravity in year X (what do I know about the discovery of gravity?), but the discovery in itself was incidental to the existence of gravity as it is.
So does that help me understand the history of psychology?
Again, I think it should be called the psychology of the study of history so far. | ¶ 6:11 p.m.
Since I haven't talked about it much before, I thought I'd share a little about what I'm learning in my classes so far. I just got out of the "History of Psychology" class so that's what I'll get into today. After today's class I'm more and more convinced that this class does not really try and conform to its expected content. Today's lecture (and probably a couple previous ones) could have been called "the psychology of history" (or, the psychology of the study of history), not vice versa. And it gets pretty philosophical, with Dr. Stout randomly selecting quotes from authors we may or may have not have heard of to help make the points HE thinks are important. At least, they're important to him. I'm not sure how much these ramblings are contributing to our understanding of the HISTORY of PSYCHOLOGY (unless it's Dr. Stout's current psychology we're trying to understand).
I mean, it does get interesting at times, but for the most part, I'm not sure what we're supposed to get out of these lectures. One theme we kept coming back to today was this idea that in studying history, one can make the mistake of thinking that just because something DID happen means that it HAD to happen. Over and over he mentioned this point. And all I could think was SO WHAT? I'm not sure that the way in which we regard history (with events being either necessary or contingent) has anything to do with understanding the history of the development of psychology as a field of study. Who cares whether something HAD to happen? It DID happen, and that's how we got here. Why explore the other possibilities, unless that was our defined pursuit? Just teach us some history.
I was doing some reading before class of a piece called "Epilegomena" (part of our assigned reading for the week). It made a point that another mistake we might make in studying history was thinking that just because a discovery was made at a certain date, that the actual fact did not exist before. We might know that Newton discovered gravity in year X (what do I know about the discovery of gravity?), but the discovery in itself was incidental to the existence of gravity as it is.
So does that help me understand the history of psychology?
Again, I think it should be called the psychology of the study of history so far. | ¶ 6:11 p.m.
