Structuralism is widely regarded to have its origins in the work of the Swiss linguistic theorist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 - 1913) in the early 20th Century, but it soon came to be applied to many other fields, including philosophy, anthropology, psychoanalysis, sociology, literary theory and even mathematics.

When was structuralism first introduced?

In fact, the basic idea of structuralism can be traced back at least as far as 1725, to the writings of Giambattista Vico, and in many ways owes a debt to the core continental tradition of rationalist philosophy that was advanced by René Descarte, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, and Immanuel Kant.

How did structuralism begin?

Though Titchener is usually the one credited with the establishment of structuralism and bringing the ideas to America, the ideas started with Wundt. ... Wundt believed that the mind could be broken down into structures by classifying conscious experiences into small parts that could be analyzed, similar to other sciences.