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The materialistic point of view in psychology can claim, at best, only the value of an heuristic hypothesis.

Wilhelm Wundt

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Wilhelm Wundt
Age: 88 †
Born: 1832
Born: August 16
Died: 1920
Died: August 31
Philosopher
Physician
Physiologist
Politician
Psychologist
University Teacher
Wundt
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt
Point
Materialistic
Values
Hypothesis
Best
Claim
Psychology
Claims
View
Value
Heuristic
Views
Heuristics

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On the other hand, ethnic psychology must always come to the assistance of individual psychology, when the developmental forms of the complex mental processes are in question.
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Physiological psychology is, therefore, first of all psychology.
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Physiology is concerned with all those phenomena of life that present them selves to us in sense perception as bodily processes, and accordingly form part of that total environment which we name the external world.
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Now the word-symbols of conceptual ideas have passed so long from hand to hand in the service of the understanding, that they have gradually lost all such fanciful reference.
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The animal kingdom exhibits a series of mental developments which may be regarded as antecedents to the mental development of man, for the mental life of animals shows itself to be throughout, in its elements and in the general laws governing the combination of the elements, the same as the mental life of man.
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Psychology must not only strive to become a useful basis for the other mental sciences, but it must also turn again and again to the historical sciences, in order to obtain an understanding for the more highly developed metal processes.
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Now, there are a very large number of bodily movements, having their source in our nervous system, that do not possess the character of conscious actions.
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From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large.
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Hence, even in the domain of natural science the aid of the experimental method becomes indispensable whenever the problem set is the analysis of transient and impermanent phenomena, and not merely the observation of persistent and relatively constant objects.
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We know, from ordinary life, that we are not able to direct our attention perfectly steadily and uniformly to one and the same object... At times the attention turns towards the object most intensely, and at times the energy flags.
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Physiology seeks to derive the processes in our own nervous system from general physical forces, without considering whether these processes are or are not accompanied by processes of consciousness.
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The results of ethnic psychology constitute, at the same time, our chief source of information regarding the general psychology of the complex mental processes.
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The old metaphysical prejudice that man 'always thinks' has not yet entirely disappeared. I am myself inclined to hold that man really thinks very little and very seldom.
Wilhelm Wundt
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There are other sources of psychological knowledge, which become accessible at the very point where the experimental method fails us.
Wilhelm Wundt
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Child psychology and animal psychology are of relatively slight importance, as compared with the sciences which deal with the corresponding physiological problems of ontogeny and phylogeny.
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The general statement that the mental faculties are class concepts, belonging to descriptive psychology, relieves us of the necessity of discussing them and their significance at the present stage of our inquiry.
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Some say that everything that is called a psychical law is nothing but the psychological reflex of physical combinations, which is made up of sensations joined to certain central cerebral processes... It is contradicted by the fact of consciousness itself, which cannot possibly be derived from any physical qualities of material molecules or atoms.
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Experimental psychology itself has, it is true, now and again suffered relapse into a metaphysical treatment of its problems.
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We speak of virtue, honour, reason but our thought does not translate any one of these concepts into a substance.
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Physiology and psychology cover, between them, the field of vital phenomena they deal with the facts of life at large, and in particular with the facts of human life.
Wilhelm Wundt