Philosophy and Pschology

I'm extremely interested in philosophy and psychology however my school won't offer them for GCSEs. I don't want to do a GCSE however if anyone has any recommendations for any books/textbooks/anything that can help a year 9 student learn more about these topics, that would be really great, thank you!!

Reply 1

dowchbag

Imo psychology is a hard subject to get started on by virtue of the fact that it’s a subject with multiple approaches (a subject of subjects). Namely social, cognitive and biological psychology (amongst others) all work on different assumptions about the mind, as opposed to ‘hard sciences’ where the method of inquiry is pretty uniform. It is also important to view fields like cognitive neuroscience as an amalgamtion of different approaches. That being the case, I recommend reading the approaches and research methods section of aqa a level psych textbook (year 1 i think) and find out where ur interest lies in and then start reading actual books or papers.

For philosophy, I recommend the philosophize this podcast, or for a summary of contemporary philosophy, o’hear’s ‘what is philosophy’. Again, though, find where your interest lies and engage in further reading from there… It doesn’t need to be one particular area (probably shouldn’t be).

(edited 6 months ago)

Reply 2

Arden University

Original post by FlyingSquirrel10

@FlyingSquirrel10
Two very interesting subjects. Psychology: A Complete Introduction: Teach Yourself by Sandi Mann might interest you.

If you did want to do Psychology at A level eventually there are lots of useful text books especially designed for the specifications out there.

Philosophy's not really my cup of tea, I only really know "I think therefore I am" by Descartes because its mentioned in a Billie Eilish song.

Enjoy!

Marc
Arden University Student Ambassador