Week 2 Post 2

In this week's reading, Chapter two was about the theories of development.  Over the past few hundred years, different psychologists have developed different types of theories of development.  Each different psychologist came up with their own ideas about development.  For example, Ivan Pavlov developed the theory of classical conditioning.  He performed an experiment in which he conditioned dogs to salivate when they hear a tone right before they see food.  In every science, such as biology, chemistry and psychology, somebody has made a new discovery in which they made observations to develop a new theory.  For example, Charles Darwin observed animals in the Galapagos Islands.  He saw that there were all different species of birds.  Out of the 13 species, they had either small, medium or large beaks.  He realized that they all came from the same species and diversified from that one species.  He developed a theory of evolution that we still use today.  Theories are what make for the basis of study in every field.  Without scientists developing theories, we wouldn't know as much about civilization as we do today.