Freud

Freud's studies on the subconscious and psychoanalysis brought a new element to the field of science that is still hard to grasp even today. 19th century science and society ran on notions of tangibility. Naturally people are much more willing to agree and be confident about ideas that can be witnessed and experienced. Nietzsche challenged this safe tangibility and Freud seemed to incorporate a similar thinking into his own work. The human mind is something so abstract, yet so powerful that analysis of it seems necessary. But the sheer vagueness of it is foreboding. The mind is a central component of the human psyche, an entity that endows humans with independent thought, but its abstractness narrows the success of any classically scientific approach taken to it. Freud's extensive theories on the mind provided introspective views to its indefinite nature, but Freud's work did not model itself in traditional scientific approach to theories, which relied on hard evidence and provable hypotheses. Freud's work explores the mind's depths through complex terms, but it would forever remain hypotheses; no manufactured scientific tool or practice could affirm or refute Freud's studies. The unprovable nature of Freud's work further influenced science in a way that Nietzsche had first contributed to. The idea that science was exact, proven truths, was refuted by Nietzsche with his belief that truth was in itself unprovable. Freud's scientific endeavours incorpated scientific study that was founded in the irrational and intangible; his ideas were well-respected but could never be accepted as truths. As the 20th century approached, Freud's work expanded the realm of science by suggesting that science did not have to lead to final conclusions.