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) 2025 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。


当古人类获得研究抽象问题的能力时，他们首先提出的问题是什么？本文提供了一个新颖、全面的历史分析，对心理学理论具有重要意义。故事开始时，他确定了古希腊哲学中的第一个问题是“我在哪里”，并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，赫拉克利特建议改变。尽管这种话语历来让历史学家感到困惑，但最近的心理学研究表明，这可能在很大程度上是一场关于原始世界信仰的辩论，而本文将介绍和定位一个新兴的研究话题。最近，对原始世界信念的潜在结构进行了统计映射，揭示了 26 个维度。这些信念中的大多数对心理学家来说是新的，但已经由古代哲学家提出——包括毕达哥拉斯的“美丽的世界”信念和赫拉克利特的“变化的世界”信念。确定早期历史中的第一个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一直怀疑的事情：人类是从根本上被驱使去理解他们的处境和它需要什么的生物。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 （c） 2025 APA，保留所有权利）。