From the invention of psychoanalysis and the creation of experimental psychology as a scientific discipline to recent developments in evolutionary psychology, psychopharmacology, and cognitive neuroscience, the sciences of mind have given us a variety of ways to understand ourselves, other people, and human nature. These ways of thinking about mind have been powerful tools for classifying people and for understanding the differences between them. We have come to use the sciences of mind to understand, explain, measure, and manage intelligence, merit, illness, and deviance. This course examines how the mind sciences have developed their conceptual frameworks and methodological tools, how they consolidated as disciplines, and how they have drawn inspiration from and contributed to cultures in which they formed. |