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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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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
Thinks
Hold
Disappeared
Littles
Inclined
Little
Metaphysical
Really
Seldom
Always
Psychology
Men
Entirely
Thinking
Prejudice

More quotes by Wilhelm Wundt

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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.
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.
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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.
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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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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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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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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 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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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 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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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 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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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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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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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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Experimental psychology itself has, it is true, now and again suffered relapse into a metaphysical treatment of its problems.
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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
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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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Our mind is so fortunately equipped, that it brings us the most important bases for our thoughts without our having the least knowledge of this work of elaboration. Only the results of it become unconscious.
Wilhelm Wundt