Charles Darwin had a major influence on the idea of functionalism. His theory of evolution by natural selection was the key component of sparking functionalism. Functionalism was an idea brought to the United States created in opposition of structuralism. John Dewey and James Rowland Angell were the most prominent advocates for functionalism. The writings of these great thinkers of the functionalism movement were both influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.
Charles Darwin was a Naturalist and Geologist from England. His ideas and studies paved the way for future evolution studies and many discoveries in science. Darwin believed that all species were linked by a common ancestor. He formulated this idea in his …show more content…
He called his journey The Voyage of the Beagle. He observed and collected data on the birds that inhabited the island. He later realized that all of the birds were finches and were different yet they were closely related to each other. Long ago one species of finch migrated from South America to the Galapagos Islands; eventually that one species diverged into about 14 species. This is called adaptive radiation in which multiple species comes from one species. The finch species diverged due to varying diets; some ate insects, leaves, flowers, seeds, even the blood of other birds. The original finch was a seed-eating, ground-dweller. The latter 14 species some were ground-dweller that ate seeds; some lived on cactuses and ate seeds, some lived in trees and ate seeds, and some lived in trees and ate insects. This data helped Darwin create his most brilliant idea known as natural …show more content…
Functionalism was created to oppose the idea of structuralism. The goal of functionalism was to explain the mental processes, the relationship between the conscious and human behavior, and individual differences. Functionalism is essentially the psychological study of how the mind functions and how the organism uses it in its environment, which is where Darwin’s ideas come into play. An organism must adapt to their environment in order to survive; whether it is physically, emotionally, or even today’s modern society. One must have a job that pays enough in order to support their family, but one must have a certain level of education to obtain such job. If one does not have the resources to attend school in order to get that level of education, then they will not have the opportunity to have a job to support their family and they will not survive nor will their offspring. This idea was brought to the United States by Herbert Spencer in