Philosopher Bertrand Russell said: "In all history, nothing is more surprising or more difficult to understand than the sudden rise of Greek civilization." The Greeks borrowed most of their culture from Egypt, Mesopotamia, and neighboring countries until the 6th century B.C., but from the 6th to the 4th century B.C. they produced A large number of distinctive new cultural materials.They created, among other materials, complex new forms of literature, art, and architecture, compiled the first authentic historical records (as opposed to mere chronicles), invented mathematics and science, and developed schools. and sports venues, and created a democracy.A large part of the later Western civilization developed straight from Greek civilization. In particular, the philosophy and science of the past 25 centuries were the descendants of the explorations of the great Greek philosophers to understand the nature of the world.Above all, the story of psychology is a long story, an ongoing effort passed down from generation to generation to answer some of the questions about human thought that were first posed by these great ancestors.

It is somewhat mysterious that Greek philosophers suddenly began to summarize human mental processes in psychological, or at least in quasi-psychological, terms.Because, despite the 150 or so city-states surrounding the Mediterranean Sea with their sacred temples, elegant sculptures and fountains, and bustling marketplaces, their conditions of existence were in many ways quite primitive, one would think, Such a condition of existence will not help them to think about such delicate problems as psychology. Only a few could read and write, and those who could read and write had to expend great effort scratching wax boards, or, for permanent records, moving bundles of papyrus and 20- A 30-foot piece of parchment rolled on a stick.Books—actually hand-copied scrolls—were expensive and cumbersome to use.

The Greeks had no clocks, no watches, they had a very primitive sense of time.Sundials only give approximate time, are not easy to transport, and are not helpful on cloudy days.The water clocks used to limit the time of court arguments were little more than large bowls filled with water that flowed through a small hole in six minutes. Lighting at that time was just using some erratic oil lamps.A few wealthy people have bathrooms with hot water in their homes, but most people lack bathing water. They can only scrub their bodies with oil, and then use a crescent-shaped scraper to scrape away the oil to clean themselves. (Fortunately, there are more than 300 sunny days a year, and the Athenians live outdoors most of the time.) Few city streets are paved with stones, and most of them are loess roads. Dusty; rainy and muddy streets.Transportation was by hordes of mules or horse-drawn carts with no springs and bruised bones.Messages are sometimes conveyed by fire towers or carrier pigeons, but most of them are conveyed by people running.

Splendid Athens was the center of Greek culture, but they could not support themselves, the surrounding plains were barren, and the hills and hills were all stone and barren.The main food of the Athenians was supplied by sea trade and conquering foreign nations. (The Athenians established several colonies and once controlled the Aegean Sea, thus receiving tribute from other vassal states.) However, although their ships had sails, the Athenians only knew how to steer with the wind, and the wind and wind from other directions Steering against the wind, or when there was no wind, there was nothing to be done but to force the slaves to row their oars hard, hour after hour, at speeds of up to eight miles an hour.The multitudes of Athenian armies transported in this manner to remote fields to expand, had to fight with long-haired, short swords, and bows like their primitive ancestors.

Most of the labor force in Greek factories and silver mines was also composed of slaves. Although human muscles were extremely fragile compared with modern machinery, they were the only source of power at that time except for the livestock transported by packs.Slavery was in fact the economic basis of the Greek city-states.Men, women, and children, taken from overseas by Greek armies, formed the bulk of the population of many city-states.Although in democratic Athens and the related neighboring city of Attica, 115,000 of the 315,000 inhabitants were slaves.Among the 200,000 free Athenians, only 43,000 men whose parents were both Athenians enjoyed citizenship, including the right to vote.

On the whole, it is a way of life from which mature and inquiring philosophy, or its offshoot psychology, cannot be expected to flourish. But what explains the astonishing intellectual achievement of the Greeks, especially the Athenians?Some people half-jokingly said that the climate is a reason.Cicero said that the clean air of Athens was helpful to the quick thinking of the Athenians.Some modern analysts have speculated that the Athenians lived most of their lives outdoors and often exchanged ideas with each other, which prompted questions and thoughts.Others take a different view, saying that commerce and conquest kept the Athenians and other Greeks in constant contact with other cultures, and made them curious about the origin of human differences.Still others say that the mutual cultural influence of the city-states gave Greek culture a hybrid vigor.

None of the explanations is really satisfactory, but perhaps all of them taken together might be a little more satisfying.The Athenians reached the pinnacle of culture and their golden age (480-399 BC) after it and its allies defeated the Persians.Victory, wealth, and the burning of the Acropolis of Athens by the Persian chief Kessex and the need to rebuild the temples, together with some of the above-mentioned favorable influences, may have produced an explosion of culturally savvy masses and creativity. Some of the Greek philosophers of the sixth and early fifth centuries BC, among other speculations, began to offer explanations of human mental processes that had the character of the natural sciences.These hypotheses and their inferences have thus become the core of Western psychology.

What kind of people are they?What inspired them, or at least gave them the strength, to consider the problem of human cognition in such a radical way?We know their names--Thales, Alcmaeron, Empedocles, Ennes Sogorras, Hippocrates, Democritus, and others--but what about these Many of these we now know very little; and of others we do know, in large measure, through hagiography and romance. We read, for example, that Thales of Miletas (c. 624-546 BC), one of the earliest philosophers, was an absent-minded dreamer who, while studying the night sky, would be so absorbed in some radiance thoughts, so that he accidentally fell into the ditch.We also read that he cared little for money until one day, tired of being ridiculed for his poverty, he used his knowledge of astronomy one winter to predict a bountiful olive harvest, All oil machines are rented at a low price, and then rented to others at a very high price during the harvest season.

Gossip chroniclers tell us that Empedocles (490?-430 BC) of Acklegas in southern Sicily had such extensive scientific knowledge that he could call the wind and rain and revive A woman who had been dead for 30 days.He believed himself to be a god, and when he was old he jumped into Mount Etna so that after his death there would be no trace of what had been human.A limerick poet in later generations laughed at him and said: Great Empedocles, this burning soul; Dive headlong into Mount Etna and roast yourself whole. Etna, however, spat out his bronze slipper and threw it over the rim of the crater, thus proclaiming his immortality.

These details hardly help us to gauge the true nature of these psychophilosophers, if we may call them so.Nor did any of these people think to leave any records—at least none that survive—that would allow us to speculate on how they thought and why they were interested in the mechanics of thought.We can only assume that, at the dawn of philosophy, some thinking minds began to ask probing questions about the world and about the nature of man, and so, naturally, they also asked how their own thinking about these matters came to be. Where do these ideas come from. One or two people actually did studies that touched some of the physiological organization that gave rise to psychological processes.Alcmaeon (c. 520) in the eastern city of Cono in southern Italy performed animal dissections (human dissection was taboo at the time) and discovered the optic nerve that connects the eyes to the brain.However, most people are neither first-hand investigators nor experimenters, but people of the leisure class. Based on self-evident facts and some phenomena they observe in their daily life, Hope to deduce the essence of the world and thinking.

Most of these psychophilosophers are walking, or sitting with their disciples at the local fair, or in the backyard of their academic institutions, engaging in endless debates about some issue that interests them.Of course, it is also possible for them to spend a long time in meditation alone, just like Thales watched the sky at night.However, few of the fruits of their labor survive, and almost all copies of their works were lost or destroyed.Most of the sources we know of their ideas are short passages quoted from the original works in later works.However, even this little material shows that they asked many important questions--questions to which they proposed some plausible answers, some of which were outlandish explanations--questions that have attracted the attention of later psychologists. their endless exploration. From the obscure and useless anecdotes with which later writers speak of the thought of these philosophers, we may infer that some of their references to nous (which they invariably say Be it soul, mind, or both) the question is, what is its nature (what is its composition), and how does a seemingly so intangible being relate to the body. Thales considered these questions, but a sentence from Aristotle's De Anima (On the Soul) is the only surviving record of their thinking: "From some Judging by anecdotes, he holds that the soul is the cause of motion, and if this is true, he is affirming that the magnet also has a soul, since it also causes the motion of the iron." Though only a few words, it says, Thales believed that the soul or mind is the source of human behavior, and its movement is caused by its inner natural forces. This view is very different from the early Greeks who believed that human behavior is guided by supernatural forces. Over the course of a century, some philosophers and physicians, Alcmaeon, proposed that the brain was not the center of other organs, as early people thought, but the place where the nous existed and where thought arose.Some think it's some kind of spirit, others think it's the brain itself, but in neither case do they say anything about the memory, reasoning, or other thought processes that take place in it.They were more eager to address the more fundamental aspect of the question, namely, where did thought get its material from—if not from the gods? Their overall answer was sensory experience.Among them, Alcmaion once said that the sensory organs send sensations to the brain, and through the process of thinking, we interpret them there and derive concepts from them.What fascinates him and others is how sensations are transmitted from the senses to the brain.They did not know nerve impulses, even though he had discovered the optic nerve, and believed, on an abstract, metaphysical standpoint, that air was an essential building block of the mind, and that sensations must pass along air passages from the senses to the brain: although he No passage had ever been seen, nor existed; reasoning told him that this must be the case. (Later, the Greek anatomists would call the air the pneuma, which they believed existed in the nervous and cerebral systems as "vitality," and that ideas of one form or another would dominate thinking about the nervous system until 18 century.) Although Alcmaion's theory is completely wrong, the emphasis on the senses as a source of knowledge was at the origin of epistemology—the study of how humans acquire knowledge—and provided the basis for the development of the subject since then. The debate lays the groundwork. Alcmaeon's ideas were spread by travelers in the extensive Greek city-states.Soon, philosophers elsewhere were exploring their own explanations for how sensations occur, and some of them emphasized that this is the basis of all knowledge.Some, however, see trouble with the implications of this view.Protagoras (c. 490-421 BC), the most famous of the Sophists (the word at the time meant not fallacious reasoning but "teacher of wisdom"), advanced a point of view that made him Contemporaries and disciples were thrown into confusion by pointing out that since sensation is the only source of knowledge, there is no absolute truth.His famous dictum was: "Man is the measure of all things." This, he explained, meant that any given thing is to me what it appears to me to be if it were presented to you A different look is what it looks like in front of you.Every feeling is real—for everyone who feels it.Philosophers are willing to defend this view, but politicians find it subversive.When Protagoras visited Athens, he unsuspectingly applied this theory to religion, saying that there was no way for him to establish whether there was a God.Angry rallygoers chased him away and burned his work.He fled and drowned en route to Sicily. Others have continued along this line of inquiry, coming up with a number of explanations for how sensations arise, insisting that since knowledge is based on sensations, then all truth is also relative and subjective of.The most complex of these meditations was developed by Democritus of Sinas Abdera (460-c. 370 BC), the most learned man of his time.He is very interested in some human thinking errors, so he is called "the laughing philosopher".The greatest cause of his fame is actually not his psychological musings, but his brilliant conjectures.He guessed that all matter is composed of invisible particles (atoms), which differ from each other in shape and are all connected in different combinations; draw a conclusion.This theory, unlike Almachon's theory of air passages, will prove to be absolutely correct. Starting from this doctrine, Democritus arrived at an explanation of sensation.Each object leaves an imprint of its own image of the air on the atoms, through which it travels to the observer's eyes, where it interacts with its atoms.The results of this interaction are transmitted to the mind, which in turn interacts with its atoms.Thus, even though the details were mostly wrong, he conjectured that today's theory of vision is that photons emanating from an object travel to the eye, enter the eye, and stimulate the endings of the optic nerve, which in turn Information is sent to the brain, where it acts on the brain's neurons. According to Democritus' theory, all knowledge comes from the interaction of transmitted images and thoughts.Like Protagoras, he concluded that this meant that we had no way of knowing whether our feelings correctly represented external things, or whether other people's feelings corresponded to our own."We know nothing with certainty," he said, "but only those changes which are brought about in our bodies by the forces which come into close contact with it." Unlimited troubles have led many of them to imagine more elaborate theories to escape the trap of this complexity, and to establish the idea that there must be some way of knowing what is the true picture of the world. Early philosophical psychologists concluded that thinking happens in thinking.Naturally, they also wonder why our minds are sometimes clear and sometimes confused, and why most of us are mentally healthy while others are mentally ill. They did not think like their predecessors, who believed that insanity was the result of the action of gods or demons, and looked for naturalistic explanations.Among these philosophers, the most widely accepted view is that of Hippocrates (460-377 BC), the father of medicine.The son of a physician, he was born on the Greek island of Kos, off the coast of what is now Turkey.There he researched and practiced, treating many disabled people and treating some tourists who came for the island's hot springs.Rumors of his fame spread far and wide, and rulers from faraway lands came to him for medical treatment.In 430 BC, a plague broke out in the whole city of Athens, and he was sent to treat it.Seeing some blacksmiths who seemed immune to the plague, he ordered fires to be lit in the squares throughout the city, and, according to legend, thus brought the plague under control.Among the more than seventy pamphlets bearing his name, only a few were written by him himself, while others were written by his disciples following his ideas. Some of the contents of these pamphlets are reasonable, but some Some are downright ridiculous.For example, he emphasized restricting diet and exercising without relying on drugs. However, he recommended fasting for many diseases. The theory is that the more we feed a sick body, the more damage it will do to the body. His greatest contribution was the separation of medicine from religion and superstition.He said that all diseases are not the work of gods, but have natural causes.In this understanding, he taught that most of the physical and mental illnesses of his patients had a biochemical basis (although the word "biochemical" probably meant nothing to him).His set of health and disease explanations was based on the prevailing material theory of the time.Philosophers had long believed that the raw materials of the world were water, fire, air, and so on, and Empedogles was supplemented by a more theoretically convincing doctrine that dominated Greek and other systems of thought at the time .All things, he said, were made of four elements—earth, air, fire, and water, held together in varying proportions by a force he called "love," or by their opposite "conflict." Spread out.Though the exact details were all wrong, many centuries later scientists would discover that his central concept—that all matter is made up of basic elements, either alone or in combination—was right. Hippocrates borrowed the theory of the four elements from Empedocore and applied it to the body.Good health, he said, was the result of the balance of four bodily fluids, or "humors," which corresponded to the four elements—blood to fire, phlegm to water, black gall to earth, and yellow gall to air.In the next two thousand years, doctors will attribute many diseases to the result of the imbalance of body fluids, and they will make up for some insufficient body fluids by withdrawing some kind of excess body fluids (such as bloodletting) or by some kind of medicine for treatment.The damage done by this method, especially bloodletting, over the centuries is simply incalculable. Hippocrates used the same doctrine to explain mental health and disease.If the four humors are in balance, consciousness and thought can function normally, but if any one of them is in excess or deficiency, mental illness of one kind or another will appear.He wrote: One should know that our happiness, joy, laughter and jokes and our sorrows, pains, sorrows and tears come from the brain and only from the brain - we experience these things because of the diseased brain, because at this time, it is in an abnormal state. Normal heat, cold, wet or dry—madness comes from its wetness.When the brain is in an abnormally wet state, it moves as needed, and when it moves, sight and hearing cannot settle down, and what we hear and see is one moment, then another, The tongue speaks in agreement with what is seen or heard at any time.However, when the brain is in a quiet state, a person becomes wise. The brain is destroyed not only by mucus, but by the action of bile.You might as well distinguish the two in this way: those who are mad with mucus are mostly quiet, neither shouting nor fooling around; ; at a time when the brain has cooled down and contracted uncharacteristically, the patient also suffers from unexplained feelings of depression and distress.These conditions are caused by mucus, and it is these conditions that cause memory loss. Later, Hippocrates expanded his theory of humors to account for differences in temperament.Galen in the 2nd century AD said that the mucous type suffers from an excess of bile, the choleric suffers from an excess of jaundice, the melancholic suffers from an excess of black bile, and the sanguine suffers from an excess of black bile. Painful from excess blood.This expression dominated Western psychology until the eighteenth century, and it remains in our colloquial language—we say that some people are "slimy people," "bilious people" and so on—if our psychology There is no such vocabulary in school. Although the humoral theory of personality and mental illness seems silly now, like thinking that the earth is the center of the universe, its premise—that there is a biological basis, or at least It's the biological elements in it - but it's been confirmed recently, without any doubts.New research by neurophysiologists and brain scientists confirms that substances produced by brain cells trigger thought processes and that foreign substances, such as drugs or toxins, can distort or interfere with these processes.After all, Hippocrates was close to this goal. We can only marvel at the psychological meditations of philosophers of mind before Hippocrates and Aristotle.They had no laboratory, no methodology, and no empirical evidence—they identified and explained a range of outstanding topics, and derived some of the psychological theories that have been crucial from their time to ours . We now meet a man different from the preceding figures, a real man, a living being, whose appearance, personal habits, and thoughts are thoroughly and thoroughly recorded: Socrates (ex. 469-399 BC), he was the most important philosopher of his time and the advocate of a theory of knowledge.This theory of his completely contradicts the theory based on sensation.We know a great deal about him personally because two of his disciples—Plato and the historian and soldier Xenophon—wrote the results of his detailed meditations.Unfortunately, Socrates himself did not write anything, and his thoughts were mainly passed down through Plato's dialogues, and many of the words he said here are likely to be borrowed by Plato for dramatic effect. His own opinion expressed through the mouth of Grates.However, Socrates' contribution to psychology is very clear. He lived in the first half of the heyday of Athens (that is, from the time when the Greeks defeated the Persians at Salamis in 480 BC to the death of Alexander in 323 BC), when philosophy and art flourished.Socrates, the son of a sculptor and midwife, was fascinated in his youth by something he had learned from Protagoras and Eli's Sinonian philosophy.He decided early on to devote his life to philosophy, but, unlike the Sophists, he taught for free.He often talks to anyone who wants to discuss ideas with him.He sometimes worked as a stonemason and carver, but he preferred the pleasures of thought and debate to the comforts money could buy.He is willing to be poor, wears only simple and shabby robes all year round, and walks barefoot.Once, when he was walking in the market, he suddenly cheered loudly: "There are so many things I don't need!" He was not an ascetic, he liked to make good friends, he sometimes went to parties given by the rich, and he confessed to feeling a "fire" in him when he saw people through the clothes of a young man.He was not ordinary ugly, with a huge belly, a bald head, a short squat nose, thick lips, and, his friend Alcibias told him, he looked like a nymphomaniac.However, unlike a satyr, he is a model of modesty and self-control. He rarely drinks alcohol, keeps himself sober when drinking, and remains chaste when in love.The beautiful but immoral Alcibias got into Socrates' bed one night to seduce him, but was surprised to find that he was almost taught by his father. "I think I have been despised," he added later, according to Plato's writings, "but I like the way this man was made, and his self-control and courage." Socrates took good care of his body, and he fought valiantly in the Peloponnes War, amazed by his ability to endure hunger and cold on the battlefield.After teaching students for many years, he was tried in court and condemned because the Athenians believed that his teaching would corrupt the young.The real problem was that he scorned the democracies of the day and counted among his disciples many aristocrats, their political enemies.He calmly accepted his sentence and refused to run away, preferring to die with his head held high. Although the Oracle of Delphi had declared Socrates the wisest man in the world, he contested the decision vigorously.His style is that he likes to claim that he doesn't know anything, that the only thing he thinks he's smarter than other people is that he knows he doesn't know anything.He proclaimed himself the "Midwife of Thoughts," someone who only helped others generate their own thoughts.Of course, this is only a gesture, and in fact he has many unwavering views on philosophical matters.However, unlike most of his contemporaries, he was not interested in cosmology, physics, or perception, as he said in Plato's "Justification": "I have nothing to do with natural speculation." What he cared about The problem is ethical.His goal is to help others live a virtuous life, which he says comes from knowledge, because no one does evil knowingly and knowingly. To help his disciples acquire knowledge, Socrates did not rely on lectures, but taught his students in a completely different way.He asked his disciples questions that would lead them to discover the truth step by step on their own.This method, known as dialectics, was first developed by Sinoo, from whom Socrates may have learned, but Socrates perfected it and made it very popular.In doing so, he propagated a theory of knowledge which would henceforth be a different method of knowledge acquisition than a theory based on perception. According to this theory, knowledge is recollection; we acquire knowledge not from experience, but from inferences that lead us to discover knowledge that exists within us (“education” comes from the Latin, meaning “derived”).Sometimes Socrates interrogates definitions and then leads his interlocutors into contradictions until the definition is reformulated.Sometimes he provides or asks for an example from which his collaborators eventually form a generalization.Sometimes his steps lead him to a conclusion that contradicts what has just been said, or a conclusion that he does not know is already implicit in his beliefs. Socrates cites geometry as an ideal model to illustrate his method.Starting from self-evident axioms, people discover some other truths in the already known truths through assumptions and induction.In the "Memorandum" dialogue, he asks a slave boy some geometrical problems, and the child's answers seem to show that he already knows this conclusion, which in turn is the result of Socrates guiding him.He does not know, he knows that these conclusions are reached when he recalls them through dialectical reasoning.Likewise, in many other dialogues Socrates neither raises the issue nor provides the answer, but asks a friend or disciple questions which lead him through inference after inference until he discovers the , some truth of political science, or epistemology--in which case he should know these things, but is not aware that he knows this knowledge. Those of us who lived in the age of positivist science know that Socratic dialectics, while it can expose fallacies or inconsistencies in some belief systems, or draw new conclusions in formal systems such as mathematics, cannot Discover new facts.Until Anton van Leeuwenhoek (AD 1622-1723) saw red blood cells or bacteria under his lens for the first time, the Socratic teacher failed to guide his disciples or himself to "remember" Such things exist.Until astronomers saw evidence of "redshift" in distant galaxies, no philosopher could logically discover that the universe was already expanding at a calculable rate. However, Socrates' pedagogy greatly influenced the development of psychology.His idea that knowledge is within us and we just need to discover it through correct reasoning became part of the psychological theories of various great figures such as Plato, St. Thomas Aquinas, Kant and even some modern psychologists, who believe that character and behavior are largely determined by genes, and linguists, who believe that our minds are equipped with a structure for understanding language ; and there are quasi-psychologists who believe that each of us has existed before and can therefore "step back" to recall our previous lives. The idea that we lived once before is relevant to Socrates' other major contribution to psychology.He argues that the existence of inherent human knowledge, revealed through dialectics, proves that we have an immortal soul, an entity that can exist separately from brain and body.With this statement, some vague and mystical concepts of the soul that had long existed in Greek and related cultures acquired a new meaning and identity.The soul is consciousness, but it can exist separately from the body, and consciousness does not stop because of death. In this position, a Platonic and later Christian dualism would be established: the world is divided into consciousness and matter, reality and appearance, thought and object, intellect and senses, the former of each group not only appearing more real than the latter , and morally higher.Although these distinctions are primarily philosophical and religious, they are pervasive and have influenced human quests for self-understanding for centuries. His name was Aristocles, but the world knew him only as Plato—in Greek, he was called plato, or “broad”—and this was his name as a young wrestler because of his shoulders and arms. Very wide, a nickname people gave him.Born in Athens in 427 B.C. to wealthy aristocratic parents, he was an accomplished student in his youth, attractive and attractive to both men and women, and almost became a prostitute. famous poet. At the age of 20, when he finished a poetic play and was about to hand it in, he heard Socrates' speech in a public place. Since then, he has burned the poetry collection and became the philosopher's disciple.也许是因为苏格拉底的辩证法中含有的游戏成分吸引了这位以前的摔跤手，也许是因为苏格拉底思想的微妙之处吸引了这位严肃的学生，也许是因为苏格拉底哲学中的宁静与安详，在一个充满政治混乱和背叛、战争与失败、革命和恐怖的时代，诱惑了这位古老世系的后裔。 柏拉图跟从苏格拉底学习了8 年。他是个专心的学生，而且还是个不苟言笑的人。一位古代作家曾说从未见他大笑过。他的情诗中有少数一些残片还保留下来，有些是献给男人的，有些是给女人的，可其真实性都值得人怀疑。没有任何有关他的爱情生活的闲话，也没有任何证据证明他曾经结过婚。可是，从他对话录的大量细节中，我们还是可以看出，很明显，他是雅典社会生活的积极参与者，而且是人类行为和状态的仔细观察者。 前404 年，包括他自己的一些贵族亲戚在内的一个寡头政治宗派催促他进入公众生活，由他们在背后支持他。年轻的柏拉图很聪明地加以暂避，希望等看出这个集团的政治面目以后再说，可他对这个集团把暴力和恐怖当作施政手段而深感厌恶。可是，当民主力量重获政权时，他却对他们审判他最尊敬的老师的暴行而更感厌恶。他在《辩解》一书中称，这位老师是“我所认识的最有智慧，最公正，也是最好的人”。苏格拉底于前399年死后，柏拉图逃出了雅典，在地中海一带周游，会见其他一些哲学家，与他们一起进行研究，回到雅典去为他的城市而战斗，然后又四处漫游和研修。 40 岁那年，他在与锡拉库萨的君主丢尼修修士谈话时，大胆地谴责独裁制。丢尼修修士大为激怒，对他说：“你说这话形同老朽。”柏拉图反驳说：“你的语言是一个暴君的口吻。”丢尼修修士下令逮捕他，并把他拿去奴隶市场卖掉，这可能会终结他的哲学生涯。可是，一位有钱的崇拜者安里塞里斯把他赎回了，并送回到了雅典。朋友们募集了3O00德拉马克要赔偿安里塞里斯，可他拒绝了。他们于是用这笔钱为柏拉图在郊区买了一处房产，他就于前387年在这里开设了他的学院。这座高等教育院将在接下来的九个世纪里成为希腊的文化中心，直到公元529年东罗马帝国皇帝佳士丁大帝出于对真正的信仰的狂热和最高利益而关闭了它。 我们几乎没有任何有关柏拉图在这所学院的活动的详细资料，他在这里当了41 年的院长，直到他于前327年81岁的时候逝世为止。有人相信，他以合并苏格拉底式的对话法和讲座的方法来教学生，通常是在他和他的听众在庭院里来来回回地散步很长时间时，边走边进行的。（后世一位不怎么出名的著作家嘲笑他的这个习惯，他在剧中通过一位角色的口说，“我实在没有什么好说的了，来回走动如同柏拉图，可没有想出任何聪明的办法，只不过徒劳双脚而已。”） 柏拉图的约三十五次对话——实际的数字不能肯定，因为至少有一半是伪造的——并不是供他的学生用的。它们是用于更大一些的人群的，都是他以一般人喜闻乐见的通俗形式表现出来和半戏剧化的思想。它们处理的是形而上的、道德的和政治的问题，而且这里那里还有一些是关于心理学方面的内容。他对哲学的影响是巨大的，他对心理学的影响，虽然不是他的主要贡献，也比他以前的任何人留下的影响为大，比以后两千多年的时间里除亚里士多德以外的任何人也要大些。 尽管一般人对柏拉图心存崇敬，可是，从科学的立场来说，他对心理学发展的影响却是害处多于益处。最大的负面影响，是他对知识来源于知觉这种理论的反感，他相信，从感觉得来的材料是变动不居和不太可靠的；他认为，真正的知识只是由从推理中得来的概念和抽象。他曾嘲笑过知觉为基础的知识：如果每个人都是所有事情的尺度，那么，猪和狒狒为什么就不能成为同样有效的尺度呢？因为它们也有感觉啊？如果每个人对世界的感觉都是真理，那么，任何人就都跟神灵一样聪明，他比一个傻瓜也就聪明不到哪里去，等等。 更严重的是，柏拉图让苏格拉底指出，哪怕我们同意一个人的判断跟另一个人的判断一样真实，则聪明人的判断可能会比无知者的判断带来较好的结果。比如，医生对一个病人病情发展的预测，就可能比病人本人的预测更正确一些，因此，聪明人总起来说在对事物的把握上就比愚蠢人的把握更准确一些。 可是，一个人怎样才能变得聪明些呢？通过触摸，我们会感知硬和软，可是，他说，并不是感官才使我们知道它们是相对的概念。是意识作出这个判断的。通过视觉，我们可能会判断两个物体是一样大的，可是，我们永远没有看见或者感知到绝对的平等。这些抽象品质只能够通过其它办法来理解。我们是通过回忆和推理，而不是通过感官印象来得到真正的知识的——也就是一些像绝对平等，相同和不同，存在与不存在，荣誉与不名誉，善与恶等概念的知识。 柏拉图在这里已经跟上一种重要的心理学功能的轨迹，通过这个方法，意识可以从具体的观察中得出总体的原则、范围和抽象概念。可是，他对感觉材料的偏见引导他提出了一套完全无法证实的纯粹思辩的过程解释。跟他的老师一样，他坚持认为，一种概念性的知识是通过沉思来到我们身边的，我们天生就具有这些知识，并通过理性思维来发现这个知识。 可是，他比苏格拉底更进一步，他辩称，这些概念比我们感觉到的物体更为“真实”。关于“椅子”的概念——有关椅子的抽象概念——比这把或那把物质的椅子更长久，更真实。后者会腐烂然后停止存在，而前者却不会。任何美丽的个人最终都会变老，满头皱纹，会死去，并且不再存在，可是，美这个概念却是永恒的。直角的概念是完美的和无时间的，而任何在蜡或者羊皮纸上划出来的直角都是不完美的，有一天都将不再存在。的确，在学院的门上就刻着这样的字：“不要让没有几何知识的人进来。” 这是柏拉图意识（或者形式）理论的中心所在，他的形而上的教条是，现实是由概念或者形式构成的，而形式会在遍布于宇宙的灵魂——上帝——中长生不死，而物质的物体都是短暂的和虚幻的。柏拉图因此成为一位唯心主义者，不是指一个有崇高理想的人那个概念，而是指一位倡导思想对物质实体的超越。我们的灵魂会传达这些永恒的思想，我们在出生的时候就带着它们。当我们在物质世界看到物体时，我们理解它们是什么以及它们之间的关系——较大些或者较小些等等——方法是回忆我们的思想并把它们当作指向经验的向导。 或者也可说，如果我们因为哲学而得到了解放，我们就会如此，否则，我们就会被感官所迷惑而生活在谬误之中，如柏拉图著名的同洞比喻。他在中说，想象一个山洞，里面的囚犯被束缚起来，都面对一座内心的墙，而且只能看见由外面的火映照进来的影子，这些影子是他们自己和在他们后面经过的那些拿着各种各样的容器、雕像和动物形状的人的影子。这些囚犯一点也不知道自己身后是些什么东西，他们把影子当作真实。最终，一个人逃跑了，他看见了实际的物体，并知道了自己一直在受骗。他像一位哲学家一样认识到，物质的东西只是真实的影子，现实是由理想的形式构成的。他的职责是要深入洞穴，并把囚犯们领出来，回到现实的光芒中。 柏拉图也许会被苏格拉底或者他自己的推理引导着去建立他的空想的、纯粹哲学的、有关真知的阐释。可是，也许是他那个时代的军事和政治混乱使他寻求某种永恒的、不可动摇的、绝对的东西来信仰。很显然，他为一个理想国所开的药方都在一书里说得很清楚，其目的是要通过一种严格的等级制度和由少数哲学家帝王组成的精英进行极权统治而达到国家的稳定和长治久安。 不管怎么说，在柏拉图的认识论中，任何物质的、个别的和必死的东西都被看成是虚幻和谬误的，而只有概念性的、抽象的和永恒的东西才是真实的和现实的。他的概念理论极大地扩展了苏格拉底的二元论，将感觉描述成虚幻的东西，把精神看成是通往真理的惟一通道。表象和物质的东西都是虚幻和短暂的，概念是真实和永恒的；肉体是腐朽的和堕落的，灵魂是不可玷污的，纯洁的；欲望和饥饿是麻烦和罪恶的源泉，而哲学的苦行生活是通往善的道路。这种二分法听起来极像是早期“教会之父”的思想大爆发的昭示，而不像是苏格拉底自己的观点： “肉体把各种爱和肉欲和恐惧和新奇的喜好尽数塞给我们……我们成了伺服（肉体的）奴隶。如果我们有了对任何事物的真正的知识，我们就必须抛弃肉体——灵魂自己会照看自身的一切。然后，我们会得到希望的智慧，变得纯洁， 与纯洁的人对话……而且，除了灵与肉的分离之外，还有什么别的纯洁可言呢？ " 对柏拉图来说，灵魂除了是希腊人长久以来相信的那种无形体和不朽的实体以外，它还是意识。可是，他从没有解释，为什么思想可以在一个没有形体的基质上发生。由于思想需要努力，因此也需要使用能量，那么，让灵魂能够去思想的能量从何而来？柏拉图说，运动是灵魂的基质，心理活动与其内在的运动相关，可是，这样的运动的能量来源他却只字未提。 然而，他是一个敏感的人，对这个世界有很多的经验，他对一些有关灵魂的心理学猜想是实事求是的，听起来像是现代人说的话。在他的中年和后来的一些对话中——特别值得注意的是在等著作中——他说，当灵魂栖居于肉体时，它在三个层面上运作：思想或者理智，精神或者意志，喜好或者欲求。他虽然苛评肉体的奢求，可他又说，压抑喜好或者精神，跟让它们其中的任何一个胜过理智都是一样有害于理智的。当灵魂的三个方面协调发挥作用的时候就会得到善。这里，他又依靠比喻来表明他的思想：他把灵魂比作两头小马，一匹马活泼且温驯（精神），另一匹狂暴且难以控制（喜好），这两匹马用马轭束在一起，由一战车驭手（理智）来驱赶，这位驭手以相当大的努力使它们相互配合且一并使力。柏拉图没有进行过任何临床的研究，亦没有对任何人进行过心理分析就得出了这些结论，可它的结论以令人吃惊的程度预示了弗洛伊德对性格的分析，即由超我，自我和本我构成的人格。 柏拉图还在没有任何实验证据的情况下说，理智位于大脑内部，精神在胸部，而喜好在腹部，说它们由骨髓和脑髓连接在一起，说情感由血管在周身传播。这些猜测一部分是荒唐可笑的，另一部分却又对未来的发现来说有先见之明。考虑到他并不是一位解剖学家，人们只能猜测他这些结论是如何得来的。 在一书中，柏拉图以惊人的现代术语描述了喜好得不到控制的时候会发生的事情： 当性格的推理、驯服和统治力量沉睡时，我们心中塞饱了肉类和饮品的野兽会苏醒过来，等它完全清醒之后会进而满足自己的欲望；这时候，就没有任何可以想象的愚行或者罪恶——除开乱伦和残杀父母，或者除开吃禁食以外——是这个已经厚颜无耻地离开了同伴的人不准备干的事。 而且，他还以几乎是现代人的术语描述了我们叫做矛盾情绪的状态，这对他来说是一种理智没有能够控制住的、精神与喜好之间的冲突。在一书中，苏格拉底拿出了他的例子： 有人曾给我讲了一个故事，对此我深信不疑，故事是说，阿格莱翁之子里翁西阿斯有一次从皮里阿斯出来向北行走，来到屋外的北墙处，看到一些死尸在地上，还有一些行刑人在旁边站着。他立即感到心里有想前去看一眼的欲望，可同时他又为这个想法感到恶心，因而试图转移自己的注意力。他在内心斗争了一番，闭上了他的眼睛，直到很长时间之后终于被欲望所击败。他用手指撑大了眼睛，朝死尸跑去，惊叫起来：“瞧，你们这些可怜的人，好好看一眼这个场景吧！” 可他也说过——这是驭车手和马儿比喻中最为重要的一段信息——喜好不应该被驱除掉，反而应该加以控制。想把我们的欲望统统压抑住，就会像把马儿完全勒住不让跑一样，而我们的目的是要驱赶着它们奔向理智的目的地。 柏拉图心理学的另外两个方面也都是值得我们注意的。一个是他的性爱欲望概念（Eros），即与自己爱的人结合的欲望。它通常有性欲和罗曼蒂克的含义在里面，但是，在柏拉图的更广泛的含义里，它是指一种与已经另外一方证实的概念或者永恒的形式结合在一起的欲望。尽管这个概念有形而上的陷阱的含义在里面，它却给心理学提供了一种新观点，即我们基本的驱动力是要与永不死亡的原则相结合。心理学史学家罗伯特·沃森说：“Eros一般都翻译成爱，可是，它经常是可以更有意义地翻译成'生命力'的。这有时候与想生存的生物愿望，即生命能量是同种的关系。” 最后，柏拉图偶然地提出了一种有关记忆的思想，这个思想将在很久以后用来对抗他自己有关知识的理论。尽管他认为通过推理的回想是最重要的记忆形式，但他的确承认，我们会从日常经验中学习和保留一大部分东西。为了解释为什么我们中的一部分人会比别的人记得更多这样的经验，或者记得更准确一些，而且为什么我们经常会忘记我们已经学习到的东西，他在对话中用了一个比喻，把对经验的记忆比作在蜡板上刻字。正如这些板面有大有小，有硬有软，有潮湿有干燥，有干净有不干净一样，不同人的思想在容量、学习能力和保留能力上也有差别。柏拉图没有就这个想法深究下去，可很久以后，它会发展成一种与他有关知识的理论正好相反的理论。17世纪的哲学家约翰·洛克和20世纪的行为主义者约翰·沃森，将会把他们的心理学建筑在这样一个假设上面，即，我们知道的任何事情都是经验在新生的思维这块白板上写下的东西。 柏拉图的高足亚里士多德在学院学习了20 年，可离开学院以后，他有效地提出了许多与柏拉图教给他的大部分思想相矛盾的主张，最后对哲学形成了与他的恩师齐名的影响。除此之外，他还通过哲学在非常广泛的一些学科上留下了自己的印记：逻辑和天文学，物理和伦理学，宗教和美学，生物学和修辞学，政治学和心理学。有位学者安塞勒姆·阿马迪奥说：“他形成了现在叫做西方文明的所有内容和方向的特征，这可能超过其他任何思想家。”而且，虽然心理学远远不是亚里士多德所关心的主要课题，可他对心理学“留下了历史上最为完整和系统的记录，”心理学家和学者丹尼尔·罗宾逊说。他还说，“它还直接或间接地成为最有影响的记录。在留下来的作品中，可以找到学习和记忆、感觉、动机和情感、社交能力和性格的记录。” 人们可能会想，这样一个知识巨子一定是个怪人，可是，几乎没有任何有关他的记录描述过他的特别之处。半身像显示的是一位漂亮的、留着胡子的男子，面容优雅而细腻。一位心怀恶意的当代人说他生就一对小眼睛和一双棒槌腿，可亚里士多德用高雅的服装和无可挑剔的发式使人们转移对他这些小毛病的注意。他在学院里的私人生活几乎没有任何记录，可在37岁的时候，他因堕入爱海而结婚。他的妻子早亡，他在遗愿中说，他要求自己死后把她的尸骨埋在他的尸体旁边。他再婚了，与他的第二个妻子度过了余生，并让她在自己死后得到很好的照顾，“以感谢她对我稳定的感情”。他通常是和霭可亲和热情待人的，可当有人冒犯他时，也可能会非常严厉。有一个罗嗦的人问他说：“我的唠叨不休是否已令阁下烦透？”他回答说：“没有，真的没有——我完全都没听您讲话。” 尽管他出生富有，但他一生都是个格外勤奋努力的人，在追求知识的探索中从不辜惜任何东西。当柏拉图大声颂读自己的对话时，心烦的听众都蹑着脚尖一个一个溜了出去，而只有亚里士多德留在那里，直到对话的结尾。他度蜜月的时候，把大部分时间用于收捡海贝，而且他在写作和研究的时候如此专心至致，竟在40年的时间里完成了170部著作。 亚里士多德前384 年出生于希腊北部的斯达吉拉，他父亲是马其顿国王阿敏塔斯三世的御医，而阿敏塔斯三世的儿子就是菲力普二世，即亚历山大大帝的父亲。医学知识在希腊是一项代代相传的传统，亚里士多德一定学习过很多生物学和医学知识。这就可以解释后来使他成为典型的现实主义者的科学和实验世界观，在这一点上，他与柏拉图典型的唯心主义正好相反。 他17 岁上来到柏拉图的学院，并在那里一直呆到37岁。然后，他离开学院，有些人说是愤怒地离开的，因为柏拉图死后，他的侄子，而不是亚里士多德被指定为继承人。他有13年的时间远离雅典，先在小亚细亚的亚述暴君赫米斯那里当哲学顾问，然后在莱斯博斯岛的麦迪伦当了几年哲学院院长，接着在菲利普国王的首都贝拉给少年时代的亚历山大当教师。这期间，他一直大量地读书，观察动物和人类行为，而且笔耕不辍。他的一些作品，都以对话形式刻下来，据说都是些文学杰作，可这些都丢失了。留下来的47篇尽管在知识上很深刻，但都是麻木不仁的散文体和学究气十足的东西。它们可能都是些讲课笔记，或者只准备用于教学的一些材料。 49 岁的时候，他到达了自己的权利巅峰，便回到了雅典。尽管学院的负责人位置又一次空缺，可他却又一次轮空了。于是，他开办了一所竞争性的学院，即学园，就在城外面，在那里收集了一些师生，一座图书馆，还有一些动物标本。他早晨和下午都教课，一边在poripatos上，即学园铺有石料的小路上散步，（peripatetic-逍遥派这个词即从此而来），但他把一些研究领域都交给学生去做，很像如今的一些大学教授，把学生的发现一本接一本地汇集在自己的作品中，从而使自己的学术产量大增。 在学园13 年后，他离开了雅典，当时有一股反马其顿的骚动在城里爆发出来，他因为与马其顿人的联系而遭到攻击。他说，他离开的理由是为了拯救雅典人，使其不对哲学犯两次罪过（第一次罪过是对苏格拉底的审判和杀害）。他因为一种腹痛病死于次年（前322年），享年62岁或者63岁。 所有这些都不足以解释他的巨大成就。人们只能推想，如在莎士比亚、巴赫和爱因斯坦的情况下一样，亚里士多德是一位少见的天才，他碰巧正好生活在一个特别适合他的超凡天才的时代和地方。 确切地说，他的许多学说都在后世被推翻或者废弃，而他的科学作品也都混在一系列神话。民俗和明显的错误中。比如，在他著名的De Generatione Animalium（《动物史》）一书中，他报告了一项事实，即老鼠如果在夏天喝水就会死亡，说蟮鱼是自发产生的，说人类只有8根肋骨，还说女人比男人的牙齿少。 可是，他跟柏拉图不一样，他有一种对实验证据的饥渴和对仔细观察的爱好，并为从此之后的科学研究树立了榜样。虽然他对演绎推理和形式逻辑百般强调，可他认为归纳推理也很重要，即从观察到的案例中导出总体概括，这是科学方法中最基本的一个部分，也是与柏拉图所倡导的得出知识的方法完全相反的。 亚里士多德不认为感觉是虚幻和不可信任的，远非如此，他认为这些都是知识的基本原料。一位亚里士多德研究者说，对一位曾师学于柏拉图的弟子来说确属非凡，因为他对“具体的事实有强烈的兴趣”，认为除了像在数学这类抽象的领域以外，对真实事物的直接观察是理解的基础。比如，在De GenerationeAnimalium中，他先承认自己不知道蜜蜂怎样繁殖，然后说： 到目前为止，事情尚没有完全搞清楚。如果弄确凿了，也应该给观察而不是给理论以荣誉，就算给理论，也只能给那些经观察到的事实证实了的理论。 跟早期的哲学家一样，他努力去理解感觉如何发生，可是，又没有办法去收集这方面的确证——测验与实验还不知道，人体解剖得不到许可——他只能依靠形而上的解释。他得出理论说，我们感知事物不能光凭其诸如黑白方圆这类的性质，这些只是物质固有的非物质的“形式”。当我们观察事物的时候，它们就在人眼里得到重新创造，它们唤起的感觉通过血管被传送到意识里面——这个意识，他认为，一定是在心脏里面，因为头部受伤的病人往往能够恢复，而心脏受伤却无一例外会致命。（他认为，大脑的功能是在血液过热的时候起凉血的作用。）他还讨论过一种内部感觉可能的存在，即“共有”感觉，通过它，我们可以得知，从不同的感官得来的各种感觉——比如说白色，圆形，温暖和柔软——都来自同一个单独的物体（在本例中就是一团毛线）。 如果不看这些荒诞之处，我们就会发现，亚里士多德对感觉如何成为知识的解释是符合常识和令人信服的，而且对普罗泰戈拉及德谟克利特以感觉为基础的认识论形成互补。亚里士多德说，我们的意识能在一系列的物体中找到共性——这是归纳推理的精髓所在——从这些共性之中，可以形成一个“万有”，一个词或者概念，它不是指一个实际的东西，而是指一种东西或者一个普遍的原则，这是通往更高级知识层次和更高智慧的通道。理智或者知识因而就对感官材料产生作用，它是一种积极的，有组织力的力量。 亚里士多德在生物标本的检查上花费了许多年的时间，他不再可能把感觉的对象看成是纯粹的错觉，也不可能把概括性的概念当作比它们总括起来的个别物体更为真实的东西。柏拉图说抽象的概念可以脱离物质的东西而永恒存在，而且比这些东西更真实；而他的现实主义弟子却说，它们只是某些具体事物可以“预测到的”特性。尽管亚里士多德从没有彻底放弃希腊思想形而上的牢笼，他差不多就要说，这个宇宙没有任何东西是可以在人的思想意识之外存在的。他因而就把希腊人有关知识的两大思想主流溶合起来了：普罗泰戈拉和德谟克利特对感官感觉的极端强调和苏格拉底及柏拉图对理想主义的极端重视。 至于意识与肉体的关系，有时候他令人失望，语焉不详，另外一些时候又明晰透亮如晶石。模糊不清的地方关系到“灵魂”的本质，对此，他形而上地称作肉体的“形式”——不是它的外形而是它的“精髓，”它的独特性，或者也许是它的生存能力。这种混浊不清的概念会搅浑许多世纪以来心理学这片池水。 另外一方面，他对灵魂产生思想的这部分的评论却是明晰而且有道理的。他在《动物论》中说：“一些作者痛痛快快地把灵魂称作思想的产生之地，可这个描述不能作为一个整体应用到灵魂上，而只适用于思想的力量。”他在大部分时间里把灵魂产生思想的地方叫做psyche（心灵），不过有时候，他是拿这个词来指整个的灵魂。尽管这里存在一个不一致的问题，可是，说灵魂的思想部分是概念形成的地方，而不是在灵魂栖居肉体之前它们就已经存在于此的一个地方，在这一点上，他是前后一致的。 灵魂或者心灵也不是一个可以脱离肉体而单独存在的实体。“很清楚，”他说，灵魂无法脱离肉体而单独存在，灵魂的某些部分也不能与身体分开，这是同样正确的。 他抛弃了柏拉图所谓受禁锢的灵魂最高的目标是要从物质的束缚中逃脱出来的说法。跟柏拉图的二元论相对，他的系统从根本上来说是一元论的。（可这是他成熟后的观点。因为他的观点一生变化不止，基督教神学家可以在他的早期作品中发现大量的材料来证实其二元论。） 亚里士多德一旦把这些东西清除出去以后，他就来论述自己真正的兴趣所在：意识如何既使用归纳也使用演绎来获取知识。他的描述，按罗伯特·沃森的说法，构成了“精神过程最初的功能观点……（对他来说，）心灵是一个过程，心灵就是心灵所做的一切。”心灵不是一种非物质的本质，它也不是心脏或者血液（它也不可能是大脑，尽管他曾认为心灵是在大脑中的），而是思想过程中所采取的步骤——功能主义者的概念，即今天支持认知学说、信息理论和人工智能的概念。毫不奇怪，那些了解亚里士多德心理学的人都非常敬畏他。 他对思想过程的描述，听起来就好像他是以实验结果为依据的。当然，他没有任何实验证据，而他却是如此聪明的一个生物标本收集者，他很可能做过类似的某些事情，也就是说，仔细打量他自己的经验和别人的经验，把它们当作标本来研究，再用它们作为自己概括的基础。 这些概括当中最为重要的一个是，思想意识，不管是以归纳或者是以演绎的形式来进行的，都使用感官感觉或者记住的感觉来形成普遍的真理。知觉带给我们对于世界的感觉，记忆允许我们存储这些感觉，想象使我们能够从记忆精神图景按照感觉来重新创造，而从积累下来的图景当中得出普遍的思想。这与他的师门柏拉图的思想完全不同，亚里士多德不相信灵魂天生就带有知识。按照丹尼尔·罗宾逊的说法，他相信，人类都有认知的能力，通过它，外部事物（感知的）记录会导向他们在记忆中的存储，这就形成了经验，而从经验——“或者从已经来到灵魂中安息的整个宇宙中”——会达成一个可证实的原理。 这是一个超凡的观点，科学心理学将在23个世纪以后证明它。 因为他是那个时代的人，他有关记忆的一些评论现在是毫无意义的，比如，他说，当我们的记忆处于潮湿状态时，我们记忆事情的效果最好，干燥的时候效果最差，而且说，年轻人的记忆比较差，因为其（像蜡板一样的记忆的）面积会在成长过程中快速地变化。可是，他的许多观察还是很有见地，而且接近事实的。例如，一个经验重复的次数越多，它就越发容易被记住。还有一例：一些虽然只经历了一次，但是在非常强烈的感情下经历的事情，会比一些经历了许多次的事件更容易记住。还有一例：我们从记忆中调用一些东西，是靠概念之间不同的联系进行的——如相似、对比和接近等。比如，为了找回一段失去的记忆，我们在记忆里寻找一些我们相信的东西，或者知道会引导我们找到我们正在搜寻的记忆的东西。 每当我们想重新找到某个东西时，我们都会体验到以前的某种运动（即记忆内容），直到最终我们会找到某种东西，通常在其后紧跟着我们要寻找的东西。因此，我们总是在一个系列中寻找，要么从当前的这个或那个直觉着手，或者从某种类似或者相反的东西搜寻，要么就从与它接近的东西那里寻找。 虽然这很难说是不朽的真言，但心理学史学家大卫·默里说：“这最后一句话有可能是心理学史上最有影响的名言，因为它明确地表明了这个信仰，即我们是通过联想从一个概念到达另一个概念的。”这个信仰将从17世纪起成为主要的学习理论的基础，和解释人类发育和行为的主要方法。 在《动物论》和其它一些著作中，亚里士多德简要地处理或者浮光掠影地触及过其它一些心理学课题。虽然没有一点是值得我们严加考察的，但这些评论的范围和见地却是令人惊叹的。除开其他的不说，他还提出了一种有关愉快和痛苦的动机理论，他触及到产生各种行为的驱动因素（勇敢、友谊、气质和其他一些因素）。还大致描述了宣泄理论（怜惜和恐惧的错位清洗），以解释为什么我们会在戏院里看到悲剧的时候感到一种报偿。 对于他的其它一些大胆的猜想，我们可能只能报以大笑，比如美餐会使我们睡得好，因为消化引起气体和体热围绕在心脏跟前，从而干挠心灵。但是，罗伯特·沃森说：“对亚里士多德的研究会得到惊奇的报答，人们会因为他就心理学的一些事情所产生的现代思想而惊讶……当然，他在许多所谓的事实上是错误的，他还省掉了一些重大的课题，可是，他有关成长、感觉、记忆、欲求、反应和思想的总的框架却只有少数错误，它们与现代心理学岂止相像。”