Gustav Fechner

Gustav Theodor Fechner (April 19, 1801 – November 28, 1887), was a German experimentle psychologist. A pioneer in experimental psychology, he inspired many 20th century scientists, including the philosopher Professor Gerardus Heymans. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (774x1100, 564 KB) Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887), German experimental psychologist. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (774x1100, 564 KB) Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887), German experimental psychologist. ... April 19 is the 109th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (110th in leap years). ... The Union Jack, flag of the newly formed United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. ... November 28 is the 332nd day (333rd on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1887 (MDCCCLXXXVII) is a common year starting on Saturday (click on link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar. ... A psychologist is a scientist who studies psychology, the systematic investigation of the human behavior and mental processes. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the... A professor giving a lecture The meaning of the word professor (Latin: one who claims publicly to be an expert) varies. ... Gerardus Heymans (1857 – 1930) was a famous philosopher, psychologist, a follower of Fechners idea of psychic monism, and from 1890 to 1927 a Professor at Groningen University. ...

He was born at Gross-Särchen, near Muskau, in Lower Lusatia, where his father was pastor. He was educated at Sorau and Dresden and at the University of Leipzig, the city in which he spent the rest of his life. In 1834 he was appointed professor of physics, but in 1839 contracted an eye disorder while studying the phenomena of colour and vision, and, after much suffering, resigned. Subsequently recovering, he turned to the study of the mind and its relations with the body, giving public lectures on the subjects dealt with in his books. Bad Muskau, formerly Muskau, is a small county town in Lusatia, Germany, being the site of the famous Muskauer Park. ... Lusatia (German Lausitz, Upper Sorbian Łužica, Lower Sorbian Łužyca, Polish Łużyce, Czech Lužice) is a historical region between the Bóbr and Kwisa rivers and the Elbe river in the eastern German states of Saxony and Brandenburg, south-western Poland (voivodship of Lower Silesia and the... Main article: Minister of religion A pastor is the head minister or priest of a Christian church. ... Å»ary (German: Sorau) is a town in western Poland with 40,900 inhabitants (1995). ... Dresden (Sorbian: Drježdźany; etymologically from Old Sorbian Drežďany, meaning people of the riverside forest) is the capital city of the German Federal State of Saxony and situated in a valley on the River Elbe. ... The University of Leipzig (Universität Leipzig), located in Leipzig in the Free State and former Kingdom of Saxony, is one of the oldest universities in Europe. ... 1834 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... The first few hydrogen atom electron orbitals shown as cross-sections with color-coded probability density. ... Color is an important part of the visual arts. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Mind refers to the collective aspects of intellect and consciousness which are manifest in some combination of thought, perception, emotion, will, memory, and imagination. ...

Works

• Das Büchlein vom Leben nach dem Tod (1836, 5th ed., 1903), which has been translated into English
• Nanna, oder über das Seelenleben der Pflanzen (1848, 3rd ed., 1903)
• Zendavesta, oder über die Dinge des Himmels und des lenseits (1851, 2nd ed. by Lasswitz, 1901)
• Uber die physikalische und philosophische Atomenlehre (1853, 2nd ed., 1864)
• Elemente der Psychophysik (1860, 2nd ed., 1889)
• Vorschule der Ästhetik (1876, 2nd ed., 1898)
• Die Tagesansicht gegenüber der Nachtansicht (1879).

He also published chemical and physical papers, and translated chemical works by J. B. Biot and Louis Jacques Thénard from the French language. A different but essential side of his character is seen in his poems and humorous pieces, such as the Vergleichende Anatomie der Engel (1825), written under the pseudonym of "Dr. Mises." Categories: People stubs | 1774 births | 1862 deaths | French physicists | French mathematicians | Members of the Académie française ... Louis Jacques Thénard. ... French (français, langue française) is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered in speakers only by Spanish and Portuguese. ... Poetry (ancient Greek: poieo = create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... Look up Humour in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Fechner's epoch-faking work was his Elemente der Psychophysik (1860). He starts from the Spinozistic thought that bodily facts and conscious facts, though not reducible one to the other, are different sides of one reality. His originality lies in trying to discover an exact mathematical relation between them. The most famous outcome of his inquiries is the law known as Weber's or Fechner's law which may be expressed as follows: Benedictus de Spinoza (November 24, 1632 – February 21, 1677), named Baruch Spinoza by his synagogue elders and known as Bento de Espinosa or Bento dEspiñoza in his native Amsterdam, was a Jewish-Dutch philosopher. ...

"In order that the intensity of a sensation may increase in arithmetical progression, the stimulus must increase in geometrical progression."

Though holding good within certain limits only, the law has been found immensely useful. Unfortunately, from the tenable theory that the intensity of a sensation increases by definite additions of stimulus, Fechner was led on to postulate a unit of sensation, so that any sensations might be regarded as composed of n units. Sensations, he argued, thus being representable by numbers, psychology may become an "exact" science, susceptible of mathematical treatment.

His general formula for getting at the number of units in any sensation is S = c log R, where S stands for the sensation, R for the stimulus numerically estimated, and c for a constant that must be separately determined by experiment in each particular order of sensibility. This reasoning of Fechner's has given rise to a great mass of controversy, but the fundamental mistake in it is simple. Though stimuli are composite, sensations are not. "Every sensation," says Professor James, "presents itself as an indivisible unit; and it is quite impossible to read any clear meaning into the notion that they are masses of units combined." Still, the idea of the exact measurement of sensation has been a fruitful one, and mainly through his influence on Wundt, Fechner was the father of that "new" psychology of laboratories which investigates human faculties with the aid of exact scientific apparatus. William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher. ... Wilhelm Max Wundt (August 16, 1832-August 31, 1920), German physiologist and psychologist, is generally acknowledged as the founder of experimental psychology. ...

Fechner also studied the still-mysterious perceptual illusion of Fechner color, whereby colours are seen in a moving pattern of black and white... Fechner color is an illusion of color seen when looking at certain rapidly changing or moving black-and-white patterns. ...

Though he had a vast influence in this special department, the desciples of his general philosophy were few. His world concept was highly animistic. He felt the thrill of life everywhere, in plants, earth, stars, the total universe. Man stands midway between the souls of plants and the souls of stars, who are angels. God, the soul of the universe, must be conceived as having an existence analogous to men. Natural laws are just the modes of the unpholding of God's perfection. In his last work Fechner, aged but full of hope, contrasts this joyous "daylight view" of the world with the dead, dreary "night view" of materialism. Fechner's work in aesthetics is also important. He conducted experiments to show that certain abstract forms and proportions are naturally pleasing to our senses, and gave some new illustrations of the working of aesthetic association. Fechner's position in reference to predecessors and contemporaries is not very sharply defined. He was remotely a disciple of Schelling, learnt much from Johann Friedrich Herbart and Christian Hermann Weisse, and decidedly rejected Georg Hegel and the monadism of Rudolf Hermann Lotze. In philosophy, materialism is that form of physicalism which holds that the only thing that can truly be said to exist is matter; that fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. ... Aesthetics, esthetics or æsthetics is both the study of beauty and a term that denotes those properties of an entity that appeal to the senses. ... Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (January 27, 1775 - August 20, 1854) was a German philosopher. ... Johann Friedrich Herbart Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) was a German philosopher, psychologist, and founder of pedagogy as an academic discipline. ... Christian Hermann Weisse (August 10, 1801–September 19, 1866), was a German Protestant religious philosopher. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Look up Monad in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Rudolf Herman Lotze (May 21, 1817 - July 1, 1881), was a German philosopher. ...

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Encyclopædia Britannica, the 11th edition The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910–1911) is perhaps the most famous edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...

Modern discussions

Fechner's introduction of quantitative methods into psychology is discussed by

• Heidelberger, M. (2001) Gustav Theodor Fechner, Statisticians of the Centuries (ed. C. C. Heyde and E. Seneta) pp. 142-147. New York: Springer.

• Stephen M Stigler. The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1986. pp. 242-254.

External links

An extract from Elements of Psychophysics is available from the Classics in the History of Psychology website.

• Elements of Psychophysics.

and an introduction by Robert H. Wozniak

• Introduction to Elemente der Psychophysik.

• Biography and bibliography in the Virtual Laboratory of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science