Juan Huarte de San Juan: biography of this precursor of Psychology

This Spanish physician and philosopher introduced in the 16th century ideas that are still valid today.

Juan Huarte de San Juan (1529-1588) was one of the physicians and philosophers who laid the foundations of modern psychology in Spain, an issue that significantly challenged the religious canons of the time. Among other things, he proposed that it was possible to analyze in an experimental way the psychological differences between human beings.

We will see in this article a biography of Juan Huarte de San Juanas well as some of his main contributions to the development of psychology in Spain.

Juan Huarte de San Juan: a biography of the "patron saint" of Spanish psychology

Historical studies show that Juan Huarte was born in the Basque town of San Juan de Pie de Puerto around 1529.. His family emigrated to Andalusia, so that in 1540, Juan Huarte was already in the province of Baeza.

Some time later he studied medicine northeast of Madrid, in Alcalá, and then practiced the same profession in La Mancha. He later returned to Baeza, where the first edition of his great work Examen de ingenios para las cienciaswas published in 1575.

The impact of his work was such that it spread rapidly through different Spanish provinces. From Bilbao to Valencia and later in neighboring towns, since it was translated into French and Italian. By 1581, it fell into the hands of the kingdoms of Portugal, where it was included in the books it was included in the books forbidden by the Inquisition.. The same happened in the kingdoms of Spain three years later.

Juan Huarte de San Juan died around 1558. Years later, in 1594, his work was republished with important modifications that Huarte himself had made to avoid the prohibition of the Inquisition. However, in Spain, this edition was printed and disseminated until 1846 because it was abolished again.

Examination of wits for the sciences

Juan Huarte de San Juan lived more than a century ago, which is why it has been difficult to recover his complete biography. In fact, little is known about Huarte de San Juan's life; he is mostly known for his work and the impact it had on the development of psychology and modern science.

What Huarte de San Juan proposed in this work broke with the Christian idea of the soul. broke with the Christian idea of the immortal and immaterial soul dwelling in the body.. Within the framework of the organicist conception of the human being, St. John defended that reason, judgment and understanding (what was understood as the soul) were not of a spiritual nature, but had a physiological and Biological basis that could be studied and manipulated. And by the same token, he was not properly immortal, but could fall ill and perish.

But he was not only suggesting that. His thesis also implied that understanding was product of a particular evolutionary development, as well as to educationIt was therefore completely natural (not mystical or religious) to find important differences between the wits of one and the other.

Huarte himself inscribed his investigations in a "natural philosophy" (which in the course of time would become the basis of modern psychology), and positioned it in an important contrast with the metaphysicians or "vulgar philosophers", as he called them, referring to the philosophers of the Middle Ages.

Relationship between intellect and brain

Huarte de San Juan was one of the first to maintain that there was a direct relationship between the intellect and the brain. a direct relationship between the intellect and the brain. Unlike his predecessors, this philosopher argued that, in order for the intellect to develop and manifest itself, it was necessary for the body to make it possible.

It was the sensory and bodily experience that gave rise to the intellect, and it was also that which made it possible to differentiate the individual way of manifesting itself, which would later be fixed not only in the body but also in a single organ (the brain).

In other words, according to Huarte, it is thanks to these differences in the particular functioning of the organs that human beings develop different forms of intellect. Thus, some organs are "more" or "better" developed than others, would determine the corresponding intellectual development or functioning..

Furthermore, differences in wit, for Huarte, could be manifested on three specific grounds, which he explained in the same work:

• On the one hand, nature, referring to. the physiological foundations of the human being and the faculties of each one..
• On the other hand, art, which refers to the differences of wits and sciences according to their political needs.
• Finally, the harmony of the two previous ones, represented by the king for being the highest scale of ingenuity in his terms.

Finally, in Juan Huarte de San Juan we find something similar to the distinction between fluid and crystallized intelligence that would be made centuries later after his death, since he differentiated between mental agility and the fruit of the application of previously acquired knowledge..

In short, for Huarte de San Juan, the intellect or understanding is the motor of the body, and nature is the principle of everything. His work represented one of the first ways of understanding the understanding from organic activity, which had an important impact on the beginnings of modern psychology.

Bibliographical references:

• Bellido Mainar, JR., Sanz Valer, P., Berrueta Maeztu, LM. (2012). Juan de Huarte de San Juan: a precursor of activity analysis and occupational orientation. TOG (A Coruña) [Online]. Retrieved October 18, 2018. Available at http:Bellido Mainar, JR., Sanz Valer, P., Berrueta Maeztu, LM. (2012). Juan de Huarte de San Juan: a precursor of activity analysis and occupational orientation. TOG (A Coruña) [Online]. Retrieved October 18, 2018. Available at http://www.revistatog.com/num15/pdfs/historia1.pdf.
• Gondra, J.M. (1994). Juan Huarte de San Juan and the differences in intelligence. Anuario de Psicología. Universitat de Barcelona, 60: 13-34.
• Velarde, J. (1993). Huarte de San Juan, patron saint of psychology. Psicothema, 5(2): 451-458.