German psychology of to-day : the empirical school / by Th. Ribot ; tr. from the 2d French ed. by James Mark Baldwin ; with a preface by James McCosh.

  • Ribot, Th. (Théodule), 1839-1916.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: German psychology of to-day : the empirical school / by Th. Ribot ; tr. from the 2d French ed. by James Mark Baldwin ; with a preface by James McCosh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    the great work of John Miiller on Physiology. Special v/orks began with Herbart of Leipsic, who songht to apply mathematics to psychical phenomena. Little positive truth was thereby discovered, as mathematics, which deals only with quantity and position, can throw little light on the operations of the mind; but inquirers were taught to seek scientific definiteness of results. AYeber made curious discoveries as to the sensitiveness of different parts of the body such as the tongue and back. Fechner, in his Psychophysik, has made some important observ-ations as to the relation bet\veen the external excitation and the psychical jierceptions, and these have been tabulated. It has been difficult to reach a law applicable to all the senses. It may \)e remarked that this subject will not be cleared up thor- oughly till the inquirers take the view of causation given by John S. Mill, that a cause always consists of two or more agents. The external excitant does not constitute the entire cause of the perception, but the two acting and re- acting constitute the cause of the eifect that follows. Lotze was a man of genius, and has had great influence both in Germany and in this country. He has called in Local Signs to account for sense perceptions in space. I believe tliat there is truth in his theory, although he has mixed it up with metaphysics; but the precise nature of these Local Signs, which appear to me to be physiological and not psychical, will require to be definitely determined. The observations and speculations of Fechner and Lotze have raised a great many discussions, and earnest inquirers have reached different results. Hering of Prague has attacked the psychophysics of Fechner at nearly every point, denying that he has been able to establish any of his laws. On the other hand the latter has been defended in some of his positions by Delboeuf, who seeks, by experiment, to establish certain laws of his ow^n discovery. Helmholtz, the great physicist, has thrown himself into