The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology

Psychologists are sometimes curiously touchy about the recent origins of their discipline. For most practical purposes it can be said to have begun with the establishment of Wilhelm Wundt's laboratory in 1879, but, like many other parvenus, psychologists are anxious to dredge up evidence of an older and more distinguished ancestry. Any philosopher who has written about human nature is likely to find himself enrolled as an honorary progenitor. Locke and Hume are usually hijacked in this fashion, but it is not unknown for the family tree to be taken all the way back to Empedocles or Pythagoras. Psychologists tend...