Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-5r2nc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-07T17:59:36.408Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fechner: Inadvertent Founder of Psychophysics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Edwin G. Boring
Edwin G. Boring*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Certainly the most interesting tool that science employs in its perpetual pursuit of knowledge is the scientist, with his enthusiasms, egoisms, and prejudices, his inevitable unconscious attitudinal orientation in the consensus of contemporary opinion, which we call the Zeitgeist. One wonders what science would be like if automation could take over completely. Are there mechanical equivalents for jealousy and pride and pigheadedness and insight, and those other interacting personal forces that contribute to contemporary truth in the scientific field?

Fechner never tried to found psychophysics or a new experimental psychology. He was, in his own estimation in those last forty-five years of his life, a philosopher, fighting what he regarded as the crass materialism of his day, the Nachtansicht or “night view,” as he called it, and promoting the faith that mind and soul are the ultimates of reality, the Tagesansicht or “day view.” This favoring of the clear philosophical vision in the day view as opposed to the materialistic darkness of the night view is Fechner’s panpsychism, a faith that seems mystical to most modern scientists, partly because the German word Seele does not distinguish between mind and soul, between that which compares the sensory intensities of two lifted weights and whatever it is that persists after the body’s death.

Type
Original Paper
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , March 1961 , pp. 3 - 8
Copyright
Copyright © 1961 The Psychometric Society

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Boring, E. G. A history of experimental psychology (2nd ed.),. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1950, 275–296.Google Scholar
Brett, G. S. A history of psychology, III. New York: Macmillan, 1921, 127–139.Google Scholar
Hall, G. S. Founders of modern psychology. New York: Appleton, 1912, 123–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, W. A pluralistic universe. New York: Longmans Green, 1909, 131–177.Google Scholar
Kuntze, J. E. Gustav Theodor Fechner, Leipzig: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1892.Google Scholar
Lasswitz, K. Gustav Theodor Fechner, Stuttgart: Fromanns, 1896.Google Scholar
Murphy, G. Historical introduction to modern psychology (2nd ed.),. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1949, 84–92.Google Scholar
Perry, R. B. Philosophy of the recent past. New York: Scribners, 1926, 81–86.Google Scholar
Ribot, T. A. German psychology of to-day (2nd ed.),. New York: Scribners, 1886, 134–187.Google Scholar
Titchener, E. B. Experimental psychology. Vol. II. New York: Macmillan, 1905, xx–cxvi.Google Scholar
Wundt, W. Gustav Theodor Fechner, Leipzig: Engelmann, 1901.Google Scholar