Juan Huarte De San Juan: Biography Of This Precursor Of Psychology
Juan Huarte de San Juan (1529-1588) was one of the doctors and philosophers who laid the foundations of modern psychology in Spain, an issue that significantly challenged the religious canons of the time. Among other things he proposed that it was possible to analyze in an experimental way the psychological differences between human beings.
We will see in this article a biography of Juan Huarte de San Juan as well as some of his main contributions to the development of psychology in Spain.
Juan Huarte de San Juan: biography of the “patron” of Spanish psychology
Historical studies show that Juan Huarte He was born in the Basque town of San Juan de Pie de Puerto around 1529 His family emigrated to Andalusia, so in 1540, Juan Huarte was already in the province of Baeza.
Some time later he studied medicine northeast of Madrid, in Alcalá, and then practiced the same profession in La Mancha. Later he returned to Baeza, where the first edition of his great work was published. Examination of wits for the sciencesin 1575.
The impact was such that his work spread quickly throughout different Spanish provinces. From Bilbao to Valencia and later in the neighboring towns, since it was translated into French and Italian. By 1581 it fell into the hands of the kingdoms of Portugal, where It was included in the books banned by the Inquisition The same thing happened in the kingdoms of Spain three years later.
Juan Huarte de San Juan died around 1558. Years later, in 1594, his work was republished with important modifications that Huarte himself had made to avoid the prohibition of the Inquisition. However, in Spain, this edition was printed and distributed until 1846 because it was again abolished.
Examination of wits for the sciences
Juan Huarte de San Juan lived more than a century ago, which is why it has been difficult to recover his complete biography. In fact, little is known about Huarte de San Juan’s life; He is mostly known for his work and the impact it had on the development of psychology and modern science.
What Huarte de San Juan proposed in this work broke with the Christian idea of the immortal and immaterial soul that inhabited the body Within the framework of the organicist conception of the human being, Saint John defended that reason, judgment and understanding (what was understood as soul) were not of a spiritual nature, but rather had a physiological and biological basis that could be studied and manipulated. And for the same reason, he was not properly immortal, but could fall ill and perish.
But he didn’t just suggest that. His thesis also implied that understanding was product of a particular evolutionary development, as well as education therefore, it was completely natural (not mystical or religious) to find important differences between the ingenuity of some and others.
Huarte himself inscribed his research in a “natural philosophy” (which over time would become the bases of modern psychology), and positioned it in an important contrast with the metaphysicians or “vulgar philosophers,” as he described them. he called, referring to medieval philosophers.
Huarte de San Juan was one of the first to maintain that there was a direct relationship between understanding and the brain Unlike his predecessors, this philosopher argued that, for the intellect to develop and manifest, it was necessary for the body to make it possible.
The sensory and bodily experience was what gave rise to understanding, and it was also what allowed us to differentiate the individual way of manifesting itself, which would later be fixed not only in the body but in a single organ (the brain).
In other words, according to Huarte, it is thanks to these differences in the particular functioning of the organs that human beings develop different forms of intellect. Thus, some organs are “more” or “better” developed than others, would determine the development or corresponding intellectual functioning
Furthermore, the differences in ingenuity, for Huarte, could be manifested by three specific foundations, which he explained in the same work:
Finally, in Juan Huarte de San Juan we find something similar to the distinction between fluid and crystallized intelligence that would be made centuries after his death, given that differentiated between mental agility and the fruit of the application of previously acquired knowledge
In short, for Huarte de San Juan, intellect or understanding is the driving force of the body, and nature is the beginning of everything. His work represented one of the first ways of understanding understanding from organic activity, which had an important impact on the beginnings of modern psychology.
