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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
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More quotes by Wilhelm Wundt

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The attitude of physiological psychology to sensations and feelings, considered as psychical elements, is, naturally, the attitude of psychology at large.
Wilhelm Wundt
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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.
Wilhelm Wundt
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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.
Wilhelm Wundt
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Psychology, on the other hand, seeks to give account of the interconnexion of processes which are evinced by our own consciousness, or which we infer from such manifestations of the bodily life in other creatures as indicate the presence of a consciousness similar to our own.
Wilhelm Wundt
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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.
Wilhelm Wundt
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The task of physiological psychology remains the same in the analysis of ideas that it was in the investigation of sensations: to act as mediator between the neighbouring sciences of physiology and psychology.
Wilhelm Wundt
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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.
Wilhelm Wundt
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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.
Wilhelm Wundt
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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.
Wilhelm Wundt
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Physiological psychology is, therefore, first of all psychology.
Wilhelm Wundt
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Hence, wherever we meet with vital phenomena that present the two aspects, physical and psychical there naturally arises a question as to the relations in which these aspects stand to each other.
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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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.
Wilhelm Wundt
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Experimental psychology itself has, it is true, now and again suffered relapse into a metaphysical treatment of its problems.
Wilhelm Wundt
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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.
Wilhelm Wundt
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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.
Wilhelm Wundt
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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.
Wilhelm Wundt
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In the animal world, on the other hand, the process of evolution is characterised by the progressive discrimination of the animal and vegetative functions, and a consequent differentiation of these two great provinces into their separate departments.
Wilhelm Wundt
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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.
Wilhelm Wundt
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In Aristotle the mind, regarded as the principle of life, divides into nutrition, sensation, and faculty of thought, corresponding to the inner most important stages in the succession of vital phenomena.
Wilhelm Wundt