Rationalism And Empiricism

Rationalism and empiricism are two methods that can be understood under the concept of epistemology, psychology and philosophy of psychology to understand where the source of knowledge comes from. “In psychology and its philosophy, empiricism and rationalism concern the sources of psychological states and capacities that may include, but are not confined to, state of knowledge (Longworth, 2009).” Rationalism states a priori knowledge, deduction and the concept of an active mind. According to rationalist, our minds have innate set of principles and skills. If we only use our logic in accordance with these principles is enough to obtain accurate information about all the objects that make up the universe.
“Knowledge of a particular subject

Two important ideas of Descartes which are 1) perception, reproduction and attention as function of body and 2) animal do not possess soul helped who follow him to study on animals and understand to human behavior. Descartes provide testable hypotheses about relationships between behavior and physiology. He believed in concept of consciousness that was the distinction between human beings and animals. From his influential work, Spinoza and Leibnitz contribute to early development of science of psychology.
The rationalist and their followers developed theoretical positions ranging from existence and nature of God to detailed theories of physical and physiological processes. They looked to observation and experience to provide data and evidence for their theories.” They look at metaphysics and physics of the human and this led them to psychological topics concerning the characteristics and principles of animal behavior, the process of sense perception, the passion, emotion and the cognitive operations of the mind and the relationship between mental phenomena and bodily processes in the brain and sense organs (Viney&King,

His theories contribute several areas of psychology such as cognitive psychology, social psychology and developmental psychology. However his major influence the development of psychology and comparative psychology is originate from this theory of mental continuity of animals and human beings. Darwin’s theory of evolution speeded up animal studies in psychology. Before Darwin published his theories, there is no reason for scientist to study animals. Opposite to Darwin’s founding, there is clear distinction between animal and human being. In “The Descent of Man” changed this idea. Darwin asserted that human beings are descended from animal ancestors and he argued that the mental activities of humans and animals are practically