---
title: "History of psychology"
chunk: 3/15
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_psychology"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:00:20.149396+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Socrates of Athens (c. 470 – 399 BC). Emphasized virtue ethics. In epistemology, understood dialectic to be central to the pursuit of truth.
As early as the 4th century BC, the Greek physician Hippocrates theorized that mental disorders had physical rather than supernatural causes.
Plato's tripartite theory of the soul, Chariot Allegory and concepts such as eros defined the subsequent Western Philosophy views of the psyche and anticipated modern psychological proposals.
Alcmaeon theorizes the brain in the seat of the mind.
In 387 BC, Plato suggested that the brain is where mental processes take place.
Boethius and his work represented an imaginary psychological dialogue between himself and philosophy, with philosophy personified as a woman, arguing that despite the apparent inequality of the world.
In the 6th century AD, Lin Xie carried out an early psychological analysis experiment. It has been cited that this was the first psychology experiment.
Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari, who developed al-‘ilaj al-nafs (sometimes translated as "psychotherapy"),
Padmasambhava was the 8th-century medicine Buddha of Tibet, called from the then Buddhist India to tame the Tibetans, and was instrumental in developing Tibetan psychiatric medicine.
Patanjali founded Yoga and the method of psychological balance and resilience through breathing exercises and inner peace.
Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (Abulcasis), described head surgery.
Ibn Tufail, who anticipated the tabula rasa argument and nature versus nurture debate.
William of Ockham who has lot of interests in writing about logic and invented occams razor.
Thomas Aquinas whose works allocated notion regarded emotions.
Albertus magnus describes metaphysical morals in psychology and philosophical theories.
Maimonides described rabies and belladonna intoxication.
Witelo is considered a precursor of perception psychology. His Perspectiva contains much material in psychology, outlining views that are close to modern notions on the association of idea and on the subconscious.

== Further development ==
Many of the Ancients' writings would have been lost without the efforts of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish translators in the House of Wisdom, the House of Knowledge, and other such institutions in the Islamic Golden Age, whose glosses and commentaries were later translated into Latin in the 12th century.  However, it is not clear how these sources first came to be used during the Renaissance, and their influence on what would later emerge as the discipline of psychology is a topic of scholarly debate.

=== Etymology and the early usage of the word ===
The first print use of the term "psychology", that is, Greek-inspired neo-Latin psychologia, is dated to multiple works dated 1525. Etymology has long been attributed to the German scholastic philosopher Rudolf Göckel (1547–1628, often known under the Latin form Rodolphus Goclenius), who published the Psychologia hoc est: de hominis perfectione, animo et imprimis ortu hujus... in Marburg in 1590. Croatian humanist Marko Marulić (1450–1524) likely used the term in the title of a Latin treatise entitled Psichiologia de ratione animae humanae (c.1510–1517). Although the treatise itself has not been preserved, its title appears in a list of Marulic's works compiled by his younger contemporary, Franjo Bozicevic-Natalis in his "Vita Marci Maruli Spalatensis" (Krstić, 1964).
The term did not come into popular usage until the German Rationalist philosopher, Christian Wolff (1679–1754) used it in his works Psychologia empirica (1732) and Psychologia rationalis (1734). This distinction between empirical and rational psychology was picked up in Denis Diderot's (1713–1780) and Jean le Rond d'Alembert's (1717–1783) Encyclopédie (1751–1784) and was popularized in France by Maine de Biran (1766–1824). In England, the term "psychology" overtook "mental philosophy" in the middle of the 19th century, especially in the work of William Hamilton (1788–1856).