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» Home » 100 MEN WHOSE IDEAS CHANGED OUR WORLD
 100 MEN WHOSE IDEAS CHANGED OUR WORLD |
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Henry Kissinger
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Henry Kissinger (1923- ) is a German- Jewish-American. His parents, along with him, fled Nazi Germany and settled at New York, USA. He served in the US army as an interpreter of German language during the Second World War. At the termination of the war he completed his education at Harvard and obtained a doctorate degree in political science. Thereafter, he embarked on teaching the nature of political realism at Harvard University.
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Carl Von Clausewitz
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Carl Von Clausewitz (1780-1831) was a Prussian military general who wrote the famous treatise on the military, On War (Vom Kriege). That book is considered unsurpassable in its understanding of military affairs: military strategy, military tactics and the politics of war. Von Clausewitz was a professional soldier and served in many capacities while in the army. Indeed, for a while he served in foreign armies, the Russian army; he served as the military attaché in his country's embassies abroad.
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Prince Klemens Von Metternich
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Prince Klemens Von Metternich (1773-1859) was an Austrian diplomat in the nineteenth century, especially during the Napoleonic wars. He was not a scholar and did not write great books. His path to historical remembrance is his political realism. He is an adept at practicing political realism. Let us therefore discuss the concept of political realism and use this dull Austrian of questionable talents as an illustration of the idea.
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John Stuart Mill
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John Stuart Mill (1806-1893) was an English utilitarian thinker and prolific writer on assorted subjects, including representative democracy. We have reviewed utilitarianism while talking about Jeremy Bentham and will look at John Stuart Mill mainly in regard to his writing on representative government, though he obviously wrote extensively on utilitarianism. His book, On Liberty, is considered a classic on utilitarian approach to governance and democracy.
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Jeremy Bentham
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Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was an English philosopher and jurist noted for his contribution to Utilitarian philosophy. Utilitarian philosophy asks basic questions, such as: who are human beings and what motivates their behaviors? Human beings are those animals whose bodies dispose to seek pleasure and avoid pain. If you bring noxious stimuli towards the human body, such as fire (heat), pin (prick) the body automatically moves away from it. The body moves away from whatever causes it pain.
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Jean Jacques Rousseau
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Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) is probably one of the greatest Political Philosophers produced by France. His ideas, especially those contained in his most famous book, Social Contract, influenced the French Revolution of 1789. His ideas also influenced other areas of human endeavor; his book, Emile, even set out to show how to raise children who would turn out well functioning citizens
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Voltaire
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Francois Marie Arouet aka Voltaire (1698-1778) was a French enlightenment writer. He wrote on many subjects: literary, philosophical, religious and political. His most famous book is probably Candide, a satirical look at belief in God in a world where natural forces seem to prove that nature governs the world, not god.
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Charles de Montesquieu
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Charles de Montesquieu (1689-1755) is known for one thing and one thing only, his elaboration of the good that he thought that he saw in the British form of government, the division of governmental powers into the three natural branches of governance: legislative, executive and judiciary. He believed that this trend boded well for England. He extrapolated from the English experience to make a universal argument that division of the powers of government into the three branches of government
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John Locke
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John Locke (1632-1704) probably has had the greatest influence on English political thought? Certainly, he had profound influence on the American Revolution; in fact, the founding fathers of America, such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin etc carried his Second Treaty on Government with them and freely quoted from him and saw him as their source of inspiration.
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Thomas Hobbes
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Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is generally considered the first English social scientist. By this is meant that he was the first Englishman to dispense with theological criteria in his efforts to understand human (political) behavior. Prior to him English men attempted to explain why human beings did what they did with the perspective of God, Satan and other theological categories.
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Niccolo Machiavelli
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Whereas Aristotle is generally considered the first social scientist, Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) is considered the first political realist. Machiavelli went from merely studying politics to suggesting how politics ought to be practiced. Based on his understanding of what people do in politics, as opposed to what they say that they would do, Machiavelli advised leaders, The Prince, (in this case, the Duke of his native Florence) to behave in a certain manner that he construed as politically realistic, if he wants to accomplish his political goals, that is.
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ARISTOTLE
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We begin our review of seminal social scientists with Aristotle (384-322 BC) not because what Aristotle said could be construed as science by today’s understanding of what science is but because of his general approach to his studies. He self consciously determined to study things empirically, as they are, not as he wants them to be. His teacher, Plato, emphasized finding out the essence of things and that inquiry led him to asking such questions that the nature of things as they are to our physical eyes were ignored...
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Helen Schucman : SPIRITUAL PSYCHOLOGISTS
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Spiritual psychology continues Carl Jung’s efforts and tries to show that there is an element of human beings that transcends their existence in matter, space and time. Hitherto that unknown element in people was approached by religion but now must be approached through rational thinking. The nature of that unknown element in people though beyond the categories of science must still be shown as self evident and not just believed on blind faith and worshipped; it is not to be worshipped.
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Hans Eysenck etc : BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGISTS
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Neuroscience believes that the human self is epiphenomenal, that is, is a product of the configuration and behavior of particles, atoms and elements in our nervous system, our brain. Personality, personality disorders and mental disorders are seen as products of faulty chemical interactions in the human brain. Where there is a mental disorder, instead of talk therapy, medication therapy is seen is the most therapeutic. Psychotherapy is seen as mere adjunct to medications.
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Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck : COGNITIVE PSYCHOTHERAPISTS
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Albert Ellis established the psychotherapeutic approach that focuses on peoples thinking, cognitions; he tries to see how rational the individual’s cognitions are, and if they are not rational tries to make them rational. He did not focus on understanding how what is irrational was motivated by unconscious issues. For example, if you are afraid of other people’s rejection, which is an irrational belief, and could be changed so that you understand that, you do not need other people’s acceptance to live a happy life.
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Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, Jerome Kagan : CHILD PSYCHOLOGISTS
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What exactly are children? Are they mini adults or are they different? Did they come into this world already formed and are just small persons? Are they a bundle of protoplasm, with a tabla-raza mind to be shaped into whatever adults wanting them to become or do they have a will and mind of their own? How do they grow? Are there stages to their growth patterns and cognitive functioning?
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Kurt Lewin, Albert Bandura, Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGISTS
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When I was a college student I used to wonder why my fellow African students were reluctant to study or listen to Western psychologists. When I asked them why, without even having taken courses in psychology, they would say that psychology is a Western perspective on human behavior and that they have no use for another Western brainwashing mechanism, that there are African ways of explaining human behavior, ways they believed are superior to whatever was taught by Westerners.
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THE BEHAVIORISTS - Ivan Pavlov, John Watson, B. F. Skinner
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THE BEHAVIORISTS - Ivan Pavlov, John Watson, B. F. Skinner
Pavlov accidentally discovered that animals can be conditioned to respond, at the physiological level, to stimuli that ordinarily one would not expect them to do so. For example, one would expect actual food to make animals intestines release digestive juices but a bell associated with food could make animals release such digestive juices.
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OTHER NOTABLE PSYCHOANALYSTS
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OTHER NOTABLE PSYCHOANALYSTS
Wilhelm Reich, Fritz Perls, Karen Horney
Wilhelm Reich posited what he called orgone energy that pervades the universe and saw it as the source of life, particularly as the source of sexual energy and tried to optimize it in people.
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GORDON ALLPORT
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GORDON ALLPORT
Gordon Willard Allport (1897-1967) was an American academic psychologist. He pretty much spent his professional career at Harvard University as a professor of psychology. Like many academic psychologists, he really was a cataloguer of knowledge rather than generator of knowledge. Allport delineated character traits and suggested that individuals tend to have certain traits dominant in their personality structures.
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HARRY STACK SULLIVAN
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HARRY STACK SULLIVAN
Sullivan believed that interpersonal issues contribute to the etiology of psychosis. Psychotics, as he say them, are the products of families who did not know how to relate to their children in such a manner that they felt accepted and loved, and a society that does not do the same. He, therefore, concentrated on improving peoples interpersonal skills, so as to get them to relate to each other in a manner that all felt related to hence whole and healthy.
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OTTO RANK
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OTTO RANK
Otto Rank was a writer and artist; he tried to use psychoanalytic categories to understand the creative process. Later, he wrote that traumatic experiences in childhood contributed to the etiology of neurosis. His Will Therapy, however, concentrated in the here and now issues that contribute to the genesis of neurosis and how to deal with them realistically without wasting time talking about what is in the individual’s unconscious mind.
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ABRAHAM MASLOW
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ABRAHAM MASLOW
Abraham Maslow contributed one seminal idea to psychological discourse, the idea that there is a hierarchy of needs that folk must meet if they are to be productive persons. Abraham Harold Maslow (1908-1970) was an American psychologist noted for one seminal contribution to psychology: the hierarchy of needs schema.
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GEORGE KELLY
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GEORGE KELLY
Kelly contributed one salient idea to psychology, the idea that personality is a personal construct, that the individual, acting as a creative agent, utilized his inherited biological constitution and social experiences to construct his self concept and self image. George Kelly (1905-1967) was an American psychologist. He is known for one idea and one idea only, his contention that it is the individual who, behaving like an engineer (Kelly was trained as a physicist.
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Carl Ransom Rogers
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CARL ROGERS
Carl Rogers preached a sermon of unconditional positive self acceptance. As he saw it, neurosis and even psychosis is caused by our efforts to become idealized self concepts and defending those false selves with the various ego defenses. If folk lighten up and just be themselves they would live more peaceful, happy and productive lives. Rogers influenced the clinical practice of psychotherapy. I doubt that there is a clinician out there who does not practice an aspect of Rogers ’client centered, or as he later called it, person centered, therapy.
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