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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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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
Life
Observation
Mental
Regard
Probable
Large
Beginnings
Science
Standpoint
Back
Hypothesis
Must
Date
Mind
Highly

More quotes by Wilhelm Wundt

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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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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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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.
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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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The distinguishing characteristics of mind are of a subjective sort we know them only from the contents of our own consciousness.
Wilhelm Wundt
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Physiological psychology is, therefore, first of all psychology.
Wilhelm Wundt
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We speak of virtue, honour, reason but our thought does not translate any one of these concepts into a substance.
Wilhelm Wundt
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Contractile movements arise, sometimes at the instigation of external stimuli but sometimes also in the absence of any apparent external influence.
Wilhelm Wundt
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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
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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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Philosophical reflection could not leave the relation of mind and spirit in the obscurity which had satisfied the needs of the naive consciousness.
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.
Wilhelm Wundt