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Wilhelm Max Wundt (August 16, 1832-August 31, 1920), German physiologist and psychologist, is generally acknowledged as the founder of experimental psychology. His chief method of investigation
was introspection; he asked subjects to look inwards and then describe how they saw their minds as functioning. Special training
was supposed to make them more complete and careful in their observations, and to prevent them from interpreting their own minds
too much. This experimental introspection was in contrast to what had been called psychology until then, a branch of philosophy
where people introspected themselves, rather than being studied by a psychologist.
Wundt subscribed to a "psycho-physical parallelism", which was supposed to
stand above both materialism and idealism. His epistemology was an eclectic mixture of the
ideas of Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, and Hegel.
Wundt's life and works
After graduating in medicine from the University of Heidelberg in 1856, Wundt studied briefly with Johannes Müller before joining the University of Heidelberg, where he became an assistant to the physicist and physiologist Hermann von
Helmholtz in 1858. There he wrote Contributions to the Theory of Sense Perception (1858-62).
It was during this period that Wundt offered the first course ever taught in scientific psychology, stressing the use of
experimental methods drawn from the natural sciences. His lectures on psychology were published as Lectures
on the Mind of Humans and Animals (1863). He was promoted to Assistant Professor of Physiology in 1864.
Bypassed in 1871 for the appointment to succeed Helmholtz, Wundt applied himself to writing a work that came to be one of the
most important in the history of psychology, Principles of Physiological Psychology (1874). The Principles
advanced a system of psychology that sought to investigate the immediate experiences of consciousness, including sensations,
feelings, volitions, apperception, and ideas.
In 1875 he took up a position at the University of
Leipzig where, in 1879, he established the first psychological laboratory in the world. Two years later he founded a journal
of psychology, Philosophical Studies.
Several of Wundt's students became eminent psychologists in their own right. These include James McKeen Cattell, the first professor of psychology in the
United States, and Charles
Spearman, the English psychologist who developed the two-factor theory of intelligence.
Wundt died in 1920, having completed his 10-volume masterwork, Völkerpsychologie (social psychology).
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