This chapter demonstrates ways in which Darwin challenged aspects of Enlightenment thought, including racial and sexual hierarchies, gendered stereotypes and androcentric perspectives. In doing so, he called into question Cartesian dualism—the separation of mind and body—and its colonial implications in configuring the body as unruly and in need of subjection to a scientific control that was masculine and European. Situating Darwin’s work in relation to contemporary political debates over race, slavery, and sex, it explores the forceful argument against innatism presented by Darwinian evolution, which undid biologistic arguments for biologically determined roles or behaviors, and shows that while he is often assumed to have occupied a separate and opposing camp to John Stuart Mill, which foregrounded biology rather than ethics, Darwin and Mill in fact shared notable common ground. It argues that, in a climate emergency and at a time of devastating and rising global poverty, Darwin’s strong sense of interdependence and interrelations counters authoritarian disregard for the vulnerable and disadvantaged.

The scope of this book is summarized in terms of the basic issues that have historically confronted psychology. The five systems of psychology -- psychoanalysis, Gestalt psychology, the third force movement, behaviorism, and cognitive psychology -- have been compared along critical areas of neo-functional applications and extensions of psychology as well as the enduring questions. The result points to the relationship between psychology and science, and in particular, the problems resulting from a reliance on materialistic empiricism. Psychology as a theoretical discipline has suffered from the disagreements and controversies since its formal definition in the 1870s. Yet during this time, psychology has been successful as an applied science.