The 13 best quotes by Wilhelm Wundt, the first psychologist in history.

Great famous quotes from the precursor of the science of mental processes.

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) is a character studied in all the faculties of psychology in the world. This German physiologist, philosopher and psychologist created the first laboratory of Experimental Psychology in history. Using the scientific method, he set out to study the immediate human experience in depth, measure it and categorize it.

Based on his knowledge as a physiologist, he inaugurated Experimental Psychology by measuring reaction times, that is, timing how long it takes our organism to generate a reaction to a stimulus. He is also one of the first discoverers of the relationship between certain areas of the brain and behavior. In addition, he is also credited with the first steps in the scientific knowledge of certain mental disorders caused by disease in a specific area of the brain.

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Wundt's Famous Phrases

A central figure in the beginnings of Psychology, but at the same time an unknown character in popular culture. In this article we are going to recover the best phrases of Wilhelm Wundt and an explanation to contextualize each of them.

1. The point of view of materialistic psychology can affirm, at most, only the value of a heuristic hypothesis.

Famous quote that inquires about science and one of its basic precepts.

2. The general statement that mental faculties are class concepts, belonging to descriptive psychology, frees us from the need to discuss them and their importance at the present stage of our research.

One of his major efforts was to create the appropriate environment for measuring mental processes.

Our mind is so equipped, fortunately, that it leads us to the most important bases for our thoughts without our having the slightest knowledge of this elaboration work. The results of it remain unconscious.

On the wonders of the human mind.

4. Physiology and Psychology, within the field of vital phenomena, deal with the facts of life in general, and in particular with the facts of human life.

Describing their two favorite scientific fields.

5. Physiological psychology is, therefore, first of all psychology.

According to Wilhelm Wundt, physiology is the basis of what we do.

6. The point of view of materialistic psychology can affirm, at most, only the value of a heuristic hypothesis.

A good reflection on the observable.

7. The psychology of the people must always come to the aid of individual psychology, when the ways of development of complex mental processes are in question.

From the general to the individual, and with a therapeutic utility.

8. Child psychology and animal psychology are of relatively small importance, compared with the sciences dealing with the corresponding physiological problems of ontogeny and phylogeny.

In this sentence, Wundt was establishing a sort of hierarchical categorization between disciplines.

9. Physiological psychology is competent to investigate the relations between the processes of physics and those of mental life.

A simple and concrete description of physiological psychology.

10. The attitude of physiological psychology to sensations and feelings, considered as psychic elements, is naturally the attitude of psychology in general.

Extracted from one of his most famous works: Principles of Physiological Psychology.

11. The distinctive characteristics of the mind are merely subjective; we know them only through the contents of our own consciousness.

A great phrase by Wilhelm Wundt about the nature of the mind.

12. We speak of virtue, honor, reason, but our thought does not translate one of these concepts into a substance.

They are metaphysical elements to which we only have access through our morality.

13. Therefore, even in the domain of natural science the help of the experimental method makes indispensable whenever the set of problems is the analysis of transient and impermanent phenomena, and not only the observation of persistent and relatively constant objects.

A comprehensive analysis should take into account more than a single investigation.