On Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:56:01 -0700, Michael Sylvester wrote: >Although classical history of psychology reverts to the early >speculations of philosophers re the nature of mind(Locke,Descartes), >I am just curious as to whether some ideas of Thomas Aquinas >(Summa Theologia) had any imprt in the history of psychology. >Aquinas did philosophize about a first cause for virtually everything. >Wouldn't this in keeping with the deterministic aspects of >psychoanalytic and behavioristic theories.
Some might say that it would be best to examine the history of psychology texts for such an answer but I think that it might be best to do a "citation analysis" instead. As most academics know, a citation analysis would reveal how "influential" an article or a text is by identifying how often it has been cited by others. Indeed, industries have developed to do this, such as the old "Science Citation Index" (SCI) and "Social Science Citation Index" (SSCI) which have been combined into Thomson & Reuters "ISI Web of Science". Putting "Aquinas T*" in the author field turns up only five hits in the combined SCI and SSCI database. Thus, on the basis of citation analysis, one can quantitatively say that St. Thomas Aquinas has apparently had almost NO influence on 20th century science, let alone psychology. ;-) <-Note! >Any theologians on Tips? I'd actually be interested in hearing if there are any. And I mean someone who is an academic theologian in contrast to someone who got a certificate from a website annointing one as a theologian (or something similar). -Mike Palij New York University [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
