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that disagreements between people could not be psychology was William James. He published a
resolved by appeal to Scripture and church tea- definitive review of the field in 1890 called The
chings, but only by rational argument and em- Principles of Psychology, in which he declared
pirical evidence gained through well-designed that “psychology is a natural science” (Vol. I, p.
experiments and evaluated with careful measu- 183). The American Psychological Association
rement and mathematics. They sought a sure, (APA) was formed two years later.
objective foundation for universal knowledge
which all people could use to settle intellectual Modern psychology quickly became the only
disputes. Signifying this shift, philosophers like recognized approach for understanding indivi-
Descartes, Locke, and Kant wrote on psycholo- dual human beings in American universities, a
gical topics, but they only used philosophical dominance that has continued to the present.
arguments that appeared neutral with respect Reflecting the norms of the natural sciences,
to religion, since they did not rely explicitly on the goal of modern psychology is the descripti-
their Christian beliefs. These thinkers paved the on, explanation, and prediction of human brain
way for a new kind of psychology that was enti- function, behavior, and thought, all from a se-
rely secular. cular standpoint. Over the past 100 years the
field has flourished as investigators have used
Three other influences contributed to the birth an ever-expanding set of experimental and sta-
of what came to be known as modern psycho- tistical techniques to explore ever-expanding
logy: research on sensation and the brain, the areas of human nature, including physiology,
theory of evolution, and the measurement of neuroscience, sensation and perception, cogni-
mental abilities. In the 1800’s natural science tion (memory, reasoning, problem-solving, and
methods came to be applied to human life and intelligence), human development, motivation,
experience. Investigators began studying the personality, psychopathology, psychotherapy,
human senses and their limits and how brain and social influence and relationships. More re-
damage compromised language and thinking search than you care to read has been published
abilities. Darwin’s Origin of the Species was on such diverse topics as color blindness, the
published in 1859, and to intellectuals eager importance of bonding relationships in infancy
to leave behind Christian beliefs, it seemed to (called attachments), the role of the neurotrans-
offer an intellectually satisfying account of hu- mitter serotonin in depression, the formation of
man origins based on empirical evidence that long-term memories, the relation between vio-
required no appeal to the activity of a Creator lence in media and aggressive behavior, the best
God. Coming to believe that natural selection counseling skills, and the dysfunction of group
favored the fit, in the late 1800’s interest grew dynamics. At this point the amount of infor-
in individual intellectual abilities, and resear- mation amassed in a single subdiscipline of the
chers devised tests and statistics to measure the field is enormous, and the value of most of this
competitive differences between people. Such research is self-evident.
influences fit well with the growing allegiance
to a purely naturalistic worldview that came to Given the influence of postmodernism of late
characterize modernism. across the academy, one might expect contem-
porary psychology to be moving away from
The first psychology laboratory was established its modernist roots. However, the American
by Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig Psychological Association is in some ways still
in 1879. This is commonly seen as the birth of strengthening them. In its recent blueprint for
modern psychology, a secular version based undergraduate education the APA (2010) makes
exclusively on natural science methods which the case that psychology programs should con-
were believed to provide a sure foundation that tinue to emphasize empirical research since it
would yield universal (that is, religiously neu- considers psychology to be a STEM discipline
tral) psychological knowledge. One of the first (STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering,
Americans to travel to Europe to study this Mathematics).

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