ABSTRACT
Charles Darwin is widely regarded as the founder of modern evolutionism. Darwin also confronted the human implications of evolutionism in his Descent of Man exploring the link between humans and their ape-like ancestors and the implications of such a link for the nature of society. During an abortive attempt to study medicine at Edinburgh, Darwin met the Lamarckian evolutionist R. E. Grant, who aroused his interest in fundamental biological problems. Two factors stimulated the rise of developmental psychology towards the end of the nineteenth century. First, Darwin's claim of continuity between humans and nature revived the discussion among philosophers such as John Locke, Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau regarding the origins of mind. The second factor which stimulated the growth of developmental psychology was the hope of solving social problems. Compulsory education brought about a growing realization of the inadequacy of traditional teaching methods and a call for new ones based on scientific understanding of the child's mind.
