Wilhelm Wundt quotes

Wilhelm Wundt was a German psychologist, widely recognized as the founder of experimental psychology. His establishment of the first psychological laboratory in Leipzig marked the beginning of psychology as an independent scientific discipline. He is remembered for shaping the field through his systematic approach to studying consciousness and mental processes. Here are 25 of his quotes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

If we take an unprejudiced view of the processes of consciousness, free from all the so-called association rules and theories, we see at once that an idea is no more an even relatively constant thing than is a feeling or emotion or volitional process. There exist only changing and transient ideational processes; there are no permanent ideas that return again and disappear again.

Wilhelm Wundt

Physiological psychology is, therefore, first of all psychology.

Wilhelm Wundt

The distinguishing characteristics of mind are of a subjective sort; we know them only from the contents of our own consciousness.

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

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

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

Physiology seeks to derive the processes in our own nervous system from general physical forces, without considering whether these processes are or are not accompanied by processes of consciousness.

Wilhelm Wundt

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

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

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

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

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.

Wilhelm Wundt

We call that psychical process, which is operative in the clear perception of a narrow region of the content of consciousness, attention.

Wilhelm Wundt

The whole task of psychology can therefore be summed up in these two problems : (1) What are the elements of consciousness? (2) What combinations do these elements undergo and what laws govern these combinations?

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