Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt , born the August 16th 1832 in Neckarau (today district of the town of Mannheim) and dead the August 31st 1920 with Grossbothen (close to Leipzig), physiologist of formation, is a psychologist and German Philosophe .

He is the founder, in 1879 of the first laboratory of experimental Psychologie, in Leipzig where will come to train many European and North-American students with the methods of experimental psychology.

He carried out work on the Perception. It was also interested in measurement of complexity of the psychological processes by the method “of the reaction times”. He is the first to use the experimental method of the Introspection.

Influences and principal contributions

Wilhelm Wundt studied medicine with the Université of Heidelberg and the Université of Tübingen before settling in Berlin in 1855 to work there under the direction of Johannes Müller. It is on this occasion that it also met Emil Of Wood-Reymond. It became in 1857 assistant of Hermann von Helmholtz, then was named titular pulpit of anthropology and medical psychology at the Medical college of Heidelberg.

It accepted in 1874 a post of professor of inductive philosophy to Zurich then, one year later, a station of philosophy to the Université of Leipzig, city where it founded its Institute of experimental psychology. The radiation of its work throughout the world contributed to establish psychology like empriric science. Its work extended to other fields related to a psychology from the culture like art, the language, the myths, manners etc Wundt is remained, in the course of this work, rather near to a philosophical approach in psychology, and it maintained a constant exchange with the intellectuals Leipzig like the historian Karl Lamprecht. It also was in liaison with the principal representatives of Monisme, in particular Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) and Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932). Among the people who assisted it in Leipzig or collaborated with him, one finds in particular Bechterew, Boas, Emile Durkheim, Bronislaw Malinowski, G.H. Mead or Sapir.

The philosophical independent source of Wundt is at Leibniz, in the doctrines of the apperception which inspires its fundamental thesis to him, the topicality of the psychic one.

Wundt made at the sides of Helmholtz of the courses on “psychology since the point of view of sciences of nature” (“Psychology vom naturwissenschaftlichen Standpunkt”). It also published five treaties on the theory of perception, appeared in 1862 pennies the title of Beiträge zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmung , which prepare its theory of psychophysical parallelism. In 1867, its thought knew a revival with the publication of its treaty of cellular physics Über die Physik der Zelle in ihrer Beziehung zu den allgemeinen Prinzipien der Naturforschung . Wundt breaks with the current naively materialist there by considering that interpretation that it is necessary to give to the concept of matter is not distinct. It adopts in that an intermediate and sometimes undecided position between materialism and idealism. There as for the theory of knowledge, the position of Wundt rejects still an approach too naively materialist and rather endeavors to reintroduce some presupposed idealistic like that of the autonomy of the psychic one: if the psychic one is well governed by laws, those are basically different from those which control material nature, and take the form of associative or apperceptive processes rather. Its principle of psychophysical parallelism must in this direction being contrasted with the reductionistic approaches of the mental life, current which intends as for him to bring back the psychic one to a whole of nervous and cerebral processes material. From the methodological point of view, the innovations of Wundt are marked mainly with the introduction of the experimental method, as with the use of statistics which became thereafter a fundamental process for psychology.

Wundt was made citizen of honor of the town of Leipzig in 1902, and of the town of Mannheim in 1907. In 1914, it was one of the signatories of the Manifeste of the 93. It had as wire the German philosopher max Wundt (1879-1963).

Principal works

• Die Lehre von der Muskelbewegung , 1858
• Lehrbuch DER Physiology of Menschen , 1865
• Die physikalischen Axiom und ihre Beziehung zum Causalprincip , 1866
• Handbuch DER medicinischen Physik , 1867
• Beiträge zur Theory der Sinneswahrnehmung , 1862
• Vorlesungen über die Menschen- und Thierseele , 1863/1864
• Grundzüge DER physiologischen Psychology , 1874 text in line
• Untersuchungen zur Mechanik der Nerven und Nervencentren , 1876
• Logik , 1880 to 1883,3 Volumes
• Essays , 1885
• Ethik , 1886
• System DER Philosophy , 1889
• Hypnotism and suggestion , 1892 (transl. 1893, Felix Alcan) text in line
• Grundriß DER Psychology , 1896
• Völkerpsychologie , 10 Volumes, 1900 (a) 1920
• Kleine Schriften , 3 Volumes, 1910
• Einleitung in die Psychology , 1911
• Problem der Völkerpsychologie , 1911
• Elemente der Völkerpsychologie , 1912
• Reden und Aufsätze , 1913
• Sinnliche und übersinnliche Welt , 1914
• Über den wahrhaftigen Krieg , 1914
• Die Nationen und ihre Philosophy , 1915
• Erlebtes und Erkanntes , 1920

External bonds

• virtual Exposure of the University of Leipzig on Wilhelm Wundt
• bibliographical Biography and reference to the numerical sources in project VLP of the Institute max Planck of history of sciences

Be-X-old: ВільгельмВунт