In existographies, John Watson (1878-1958) (CR:7) was an American psychologist, often compared to Burrhus Skinner, generally known as one the founder of behaviorism, noted for his effort to reduce the soul, mind, and thinking to chemical processes; in a way that supposedly did away with Cartesian dualism. [1]
Education
Watson, at the University of Chicago, studied philosophy under John Dewey, and under the influence of Jacques Loeb, completed his PhD in 1903 with a dissertation on “Animal Education: An Experimental Study on the Psychical Development of the White Rat, Correlated with the Growth of its Nervous System”, wherein he described the relationship between brain myelinization and learning ability in rats at different ages, according to which the degree of myelination was largely related to wand learning, i.e. that the kinesthetic sense controlled the behavior of rats running in mazes. In 1908, Watson became a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University, shortly thereafter becoming chair of the psychology department.
Influenced
A noted student of Watson was Karl Lashley. Watson was influential to Albert Weiss (1925).
Quotes | By
The following are related quotes by Watson:
“No one has ever touched a soul, or seen one in a test tube.”
— John Watson (1924), Behaviorism [2]
References
1. Henry, Carl F.H. (1999). God Who Stands and Stays (pg. 390). Crossway.
2. (a) Watson, John B. (1924). Behaviorism (pg. 3). The People’s Institute Publishing Co.
(b) Kroth, Jerry. (2011). Psyche’s Exile: an Empirical Odyssey in Search of the Soul (pg. 31). Genotype.
External links
● John B. Watson – Wikipedia.
