When ancient humans gained the ability to investigate abstract questions, what first question did they pose? This article offers a novel, sweeping, historical analysis with important implications for psychological theory. The story begins with identifying the first question in Ancient Greek philosophy as "Where am I?" with particular interest in the world's overarching basic traits. For example, Pythagoras proposed the world was defined by beauty and Heraclitus suggested change. Though this discourse has traditionally puzzled historians, recent psychological research suggests it might have been largely a debate over primal world beliefs, an emerging research topic that this article introduces and situates historically. Recently, the latent structure of primal world beliefs was mapped statistically, revealing 26 dimensions. Most of these beliefs were new to psychologists, yet already posed by ancient philosophers-including Pythagoras' Beautiful world belief and Heraclitus' Changing world belief. Identifying first questions in early history may have value for psychological theorizing because it hints at something that social psychologists have long suspected: that humans are creatures fundamentally driven to understand their situation and what it calls for. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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心理学家回到西方哲学的第一个问题。


当古代人类获得研究抽象问题的能力时，他们提出的第一个问题是什么？本文提供了新颖、全面的历史分析，对心理学理论具有重要意义。故事首先将古希腊哲学中的第一个问题确定为“我在哪里？”对世界的总体基本特征特别感兴趣。例如，毕达哥拉斯提出世界是由美来定义的，赫拉克利特提出了改变。尽管这一论述传统上令历史学家感到困惑，但最近的心理学研究表明，这可能主要是关于原始世界信仰的争论，这是本文介绍并历史定位的一个新兴研究主题。最近，原始世界信仰的潜在结构被统计绘制出来，揭示了 26 个维度。这些信念大多数对心理学家来说都是新的，但古代哲学家已经提出过，包括毕达哥拉斯的“美丽世界”信念和赫拉克利特的“变化的世界”信念。确定早期历史中的首要问题可能对心理学理论有价值，因为它暗示了社会心理学家长期以来怀疑的一些事情：人类是一种从根本上被驱使去理解自己的处境及其要求的生物。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。