One of the students in my History of Psychology class posed this question today (yes, we're in the 5th week and we're just getting to the 17th and 18th centuries): "I found Locke's example's of unreasonable beliefs interesting because he correctly described some of the laws of learning such as a person developing an averse reaction to a certain stimulus if that stimulus is at some point connected with a negative or painful event. Was he the first one to document that kind of a aversive phenomenon?" If anyone knows the answer to this, I'd be grateful to hear from you.

-- Harry Whitaker (hwhitake@nmu.edu), September 27, 2001

Answers

I've been pondering this for a few days now. I can't imagine he was, but I can't give you specific examples. Surely (he said) there must be some text on animal training or pedagogy from Medieval or even Ancient times that notes that an animal or child will shy away from an object with which he/she/it has been previously hit.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), September 29, 2001.