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Charles Darwin's Influence On Psychology

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Although Charles Darwin is usually just looked at in the light of purely biology, his work that impacted other fields such as psychology or his work that lead to the rapid expansion of certain fields such as ethology, is often looked over. Darwin’s work impacted these fields both directly and indirectly at such a level of influence that some people believe that psychology should be looked at as pre- and post-Darwin. On the Origin of Species, while being primarily about biological phenomena and theories, was one of these works that impacted psychology indirectly. Other than giving a new perspective for psychologists to possess when contemplating different ideas, Darwin’s work on natural selection lead to the creation of evolutionary psychology. …show more content…

One instant of that is where he states, “It is scarcely possible to doubt that the love of man has become instinctive in the dog,” where he argues that dogs acquired their instinctive love for humans because the love towards humans would lead to a higher chance of survival for the dog. The reason Darwin barely incorporated his notes from the M notebook was because, like many of his other potentially controversial ideas, he was afraid that talking about human emotion in a way that made it into a less meaningful idea. People like the thought that emotion is extremely complex and completely their own. Although people like Freud, a very distinguished psychologist also quite influenced by Charles Darwin, believed that emotion is very tangible and almost calculable. In The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Freud picks apart emotion in daily life to come to the conclusion that all emotion is able to be understood by looking at specific events in a person’s life. Freud’s work encountered the same hostile response as Darwin did when he published The Expression of the Emotions in Man and …show more content…

Emotions relating high spirits have their own chapter, emotions relating to low spirits are grouped together and have their own chapter, and so on. Darwin includes reflection and meditation as a state of emotion which is interesting because normally one would not assume that meditation or reflection are emotions. How Darwin interpreted reflection and meditation was that when one is in a melancholy state, they tend to go off on their own to think about that emotion. Reflection and meditation was even viewed in many different types of animals where the animal would go off to be in solitude and the animal wouldn’t do anything. This was only viewed after the animal lost something of value like food or an opportunity to mate. For the most part Darwin and his fellow associates did not find a time when a human or animal would go off to reflect or meditate in solitude after a pleasant event that lead to the individual’s positive emotion. A large purpose of the entire book was to see how these physical movements like going off into solitude and reflecting were connected to emotion. The purpose was also to see why these connections were made in the first place and why they were and are a necessity to be passed

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