who were the early developmental Theorists? who / what were the early mechanistics?

-- Rebekah Reese (sugarsugarmag@aol.com), January 22, 2003

Answers

James Mark Baldwin, G. Stanley Hall, among others. There's an interesting early article in Mind by Darwin on infants as well.

Helmholtz, Virchow, Brucke, and Du Bois-Reymond declared themselves to be materialist mechanists in the 1840s, much to the consternation of their vitalist mentor, Johannes Muller. They believed that life itself could be explained solely by reference to the "mechanical" operation of an organism's physiology.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), January 22, 2003.

You'll find lots of examples in Dennis, Wayne (Ed.) (1972). Historical Readings in Developmental Psychology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), January 22, 2003.