Outline historical or cultural conditions that have given rise to the biological perspective.

Outline historical or cultural conditions that have given rise to the biological perspective.

The biological perspective in psychology approaches humans as biological organisms, with our thoughts and actions having their basis in our physiological structure—“All that is psychological is first physiological”. Up to the 17th century, most believed that the body was controlled by an intangible soul. The biological perspective began with biological researchers attempting to understand two (occasionally overlapping) fundamental issues reflecting our biological nature. The first of which is the relationship between mind and body, and the other being the influence of heredity on behaviour—both of which will be further elaborated in this essay.

René Descartes, who sparked off the theory of dualism (which remained dominant in Western culture for 2 centuries), held that the mind is a non-physical substance and that mental phenomena can be metaphysical. Believing that the mind and body are distinct but are able to interact, he became the first to formulate the mind-body problem. The biological perspective rejects Descartes’ dualism in favour of monism, the belief that mind and body are a single entity, and materialism, which is the assumption that all behaviour has a physical basis.

Amongst one of the firsts who ignited the rise of the biological perspective was the French physician Julien de La Mettrie in 1745.Whilst having contracted a fever, he detected that his physical ailment had affect his mental state as well as his physical state. Reflecting heavily on this phenomenon he had observed, he wrote a book asserting (against Descartes’ position) that the mind is part of the body. Less than 50 years after La Mettrie during the French Revolution, Cabanis, a physician, stated his belief that guillotine victims would become unconscious once they were beheaded; leading to the theory that consciousness is a function of the brain. One of the strongest igniters of the biological perspective was Paul Broca, a doctor at an asylum, in 1864. He encountered a patient who...