Psychology Timeline: Psychology's Early Major Contributors

Plato: (428/427-348/347 BC): Plato was one of Greece's early philosophical thinkers. Plato insisted that the human mind was the base of all mental processes, and believe that ideas are innate to the human mind. That we are born with certain knowledge and thoughts.

Aristotle (384-322 BC): Aristotle argued against Plato and debated that the heart was the base of all mental processes. Aristotle also denied Plato's theory of innate ideas.

John Locke (1632-1704): Locke made waves in psychology by rejecting his predecessor, Rene Descartes', theory of innate ideas, and is best known for his description of the human mind as a "blank slate" at birth.

Ernst Heinrich Weber (1795-1878): Weber was one of the earliest researchers into the field of human responses to physical stimuli. He approached his research in a quantitative fashion, and ended up formulating what was later called "Weber's Law." Weber's Law is an attempt at describing the relationship between the physical magnitude of stimuli and the perceived intensity of stimuli. His work was given a great deal of attention by Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-1887) as he offered an interpretation of "Weber's Law."

Charles Darwin (1809-1882): Perhaps best known for his work on the evolutionary theory. After expeditions and journals of his observations, Darwin documented his theory of natural selection in his book On the Origin of Species. Darwin's work led to a great deal of further study on evolution in many different fields, including psychology.

Wilhelm Wundt (1832- 1920): Wundt established the first psychology laboratory in Liepzig, Germany in 1879. One of his student's, one G. Stanley Hall, would later (1883) open a psychology laboratory at John Hopkins University.

Carl Wernicke (1848-1905): Wernicke is known for his discovery of an "Wernicke's area" an area in the left temporal lobe of the brain that causes disruptions in ability to comprehend or produce spoken or written language when damaged. Wenicke is also known for a model he created of language.