K. Krstic
MARKO MARULIC — THE AUTHOR OF THE TERM
»PSYCHOLOGY«
In technical and encyclopaedic literature one can find somewhat
different information about when the word »psychology« was formed
and who was the first to use it. In the main psychological and philosop
hical dictionaries, textbooks, and leading world encyclopaedias there
are for the most part three different opinions of the origin of this term
which, as the word denoting scientific or philosophic dealing with the
phenomena of psychic (subjective, conscious) life, has now come into very
wide use. All the three names connected with the formation of the term
»psychology* are the names of the people of German origin from the
16th century. Two of them are of little significance: Rudolf Gockel and
Otto Casmann, while the third is very famous and generally known:
Filip Melanchton.
Rudolf Gockel (1547—1628), in philosophic literature more known
under his latinized name Goclenius, was professor of physics, mathe
matics, logic, and ethics at the university of his native town Marburg on
Lahn. By his philosophic attitude he belonged to the so-called »Semira-
mists«, i. e. the group of the Aristotelians who were half-way between
those advocating dialectic interpretation of Aristotle’s learning, like
Melanchton, and those advocating its averroistic exposition, like Pierre
de la Ramee (Petrus Ramus, 1515—1572) and his followers (»Ramists«).
In addition to several treatises from the field of logic and a philosophic
dictionary (»Lexicon philosophicum«), Gockel published a tractate, in
Marburg in 1590, entitled
v%okoyia
hoc est de hominis perfectione,
anima, ortu«. This work, as far as is known today, is indeed the first
preserved printed book to contain the word »psychology*, and in its
Greek form and written in Greek letters at that.
Otto Casmann (1562—1607) belongs to the liberal Protestant philos
ophers from the close of the 16th century. He was a priest and rector
in Stade. Among his numerous works from the field of philosophy,
theology, and natural sciences, the one having the word »psychology*
in its title is the most important; this is »Psychologia anthropologica*
printed in Hanau in 1594. The second part of the book, under the title
»Anthropologiae pars II«, was published in the same town in 1596.
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