Wilhelm Wundt - Principles of physiological psychology

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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
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
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
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.

Wilhelm Wundt
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
Physiology, in its analysis of the physiological functions of the sense organs, must use the results of subjective observation of sensations; and psychology, in its turn, needs to know the physiological aspects of sensory function, in order rightly to appreciate the psychological.

Wilhelm Wundt
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
Contractile movements arise, sometimes at the instigation of external stimuli but sometimes also in the absence of any apparent external influence.

Wilhelm Wundt
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
We take issue... with every treatment of psychology that is based on simple self-observation or on philosophical presuppositions.

Wilhelm Wundt
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
Physiological psychology is, therefore, first of all psychology.

Wilhelm Wundt
The attitude of physiological psychology to sensations and feelings, considered as psychical elements, is, naturally, the attitude of psychology at large.

Wilhelm Wundt
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
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
The results of ethnic psychology constitute... our chief source of information regarding the general psychology of the complex mental processes.

Wilhelm Wundt
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
The materialistic point of view in psychology can claim, at best, only the value of an heuristic hypothesis.

Wilhelm Wundt
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
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
We speak of virtue, honour, reason; but our thought does not translate any one of these concepts into a substance.

Wilhelm Wundt
Psychological introspection goes hand in hand with the methods of experimental physiology. If one wants to put the main emphasis on the characteristic of the method, our science, experimental psychology, is to be distinguished from the ordinary mental philosophy [Seelenlehre], based purely on introspection.

Wilhelm Wundt
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
The endeavour to observe oneself must inevitably introduce changes into the course of mental events,—changes which could not have occurred without it, and whose usual consequence is that the very process which was to have been observed disappears from consciousness.

Wilhelm Wundt