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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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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
Objects
Intensely
Attention
Flags
Turns
Perfectly
Times
Psychology
Energy
Object
Able
Towards
Life
Direct
Uniformly
Ordinary
Steadily

More quotes by 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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We speak of virtue, honour, reason but our thought does not translate any one of these concepts into a substance.
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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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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 materialistic point of view in psychology can claim, at best, only the value of an heuristic hypothesis.
Wilhelm Wundt
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Physiological psychology, on the other hand, is competent to investigate the relations that hold between the processes of the physical and those of the mental life.
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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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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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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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The distinguishing characteristics of mind are of a subjective sort we know them only from the contents of our own consciousness.
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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.
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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
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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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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
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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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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 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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Contractile movements arise, sometimes at the instigation of external stimuli but sometimes also in the absence of any apparent external influence.
Wilhelm Wundt