What were Descartes’s contributions to psychology
Rene Descartes was a mathematician, philosopher and scientist. He was influential in the field of mathematics. He refused to trust his own senses and avoided emotional attachments with people. According to him, physical sciences are uncertain and arithmetic and geometric studies are trustworthy.
Descartes invented analytical geometry and many other new ideas from the nature and not from other people. Like Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, Descartes believe that ultimate knowledge is the mathematical knowledge.
His explanation on mind-body interaction and innate ideas were so intense that they launched new positions on both philosophy and psychology. He also explained the difference between minds of animals and humans, which had greater contributions to both physiology and psychology.
He was more influential over the study of consciousness as his work was focused on animal-versus-human behaviors rather than sin-versus-moral behaviors. Descartes also suggested that human body and human mind are completely two different things, which have different functions and are independent.
He explained the mind-body interaction with the example that the cognitive experiences such as hunger, pain or feelings are only due to the close relation of mind with body.
In his work, he also pointed out about unitary structures in the body such as two eyes and two ears. He mentioned one of the structures called pineal gland, which is only present in humans and helps to coordinate the mind and body for any mechanical action.
Though he did not do any statistical analysis of psychological states, he made the conclusions about existence of mind even without the body and vice-versa. For this reason, he was considered as the father of modern psychology in particular.