Abstract
Russo Krauss summarizes the role played by Wilhelm Wundt in 19th-century scientific psychology, as well as the state of research on this subject. The centennial of the foundation of the laboratory for experimental psychology in Leipzig revitalized the research on Wundt. Edwin Boring and Kurt Danziger retraced the so-called “positivist repudiation of Wundt” by his former pupils—Hermann Ebbinghaus, Oswald Külpe, Edward B. Titchener—that were influenced by the empiriocriticists Ernst Mach and Richard Avenarius. Russo Krauss aims at showing that, since Avenarius was and still is wrongly considered just a pale copy of Mach, his peculiar part in the “repudiation of Wundt” and in the debate on the foundation of psychology has not yet been investigated.
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Notes
- 1.
An account of Wundt’s—not quite impressive—scientific career up to the time of the publication of the Grundzüge can be found in Diamond (2001).
- 2.
The definition of Wundt as the “psychological pope of the old world” is in a letter that William James wrote to Hugo Münsterberg in 1896 (Perry 1935, 145).
- 3.
On the research conducted in Wundt’s laboratory see Robinson (2001).
- 4.
Wundt tutored 186 students during his stay in Leipzig, but this number does not take into account all the scholars that visited the laboratory for purely scientific reasons (Tinker 1932).
- 5.
- 6.
On this subject see Blumenthal (1980). Specifically, Blumenthal claims that Boring wrongly attributed to Wundt the following ideas: (1) psychology coincides with physiological psychology; (2) psychology belongs to natural sciences; (3) “scientific” equals “experimental;” (4) introspection is the primary method of psychology; (5) consciousness can be reduced to a sum of elemental sensory contents; (6) mind and body are dualistically opposed; (7) there is no such thing as free agency in mental processes (Blumenthal 1980, 438–42). Similarly, Kurt Danziger stresses that Boring only focused on Wundt’s research on perception, while his main interest was actually the voluntary action (Danziger 2001).
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
For example, it is revealing how hastily Boring deals with Avenarius: “Titchener seized especially upon Mach and was ever after greatly influenced by him. Külpe , more given to philosophical intricacies, favored the difficult Avenarius. There is no real difference here, for the two men later agreed that they were both saying the same thing though in very different words;” “Richard Avenarius […] was as difficult, uninspiring, and involved a thinker as Mach was simple, dramatic, and clear. He worked without knowledge of Mach , though at the same time, but both men later agreed that their theories were essentially the same ” (Boring 1929, 389, 391).
- 10.
To get a sense of the disproportion between the two: throughout Lenin’s book, Avenarius is mentioned 279 times and Mach 692 times. In 72 of these occurrences, the two are cited together. This means that Mach is cited over three times more than Avenarius (around 620 to 200, excluding the joint citations). Cf. Lenin (1927).
- 11.
Avenarius is cited, next to Mach , by Kusch (1995, 1999). However, he only refers the little that Danziger’s paper said about him. Avenarius is mentioned only once, still alongside Mach , in Woodward and Ash (1982). There is no trace of Avenarius’ name in Mischel (1970), nor in Kardas (2013). Since the list of studies neglecting Avenarius could extend much further, let us concentrate on the few exceptions to this state of affairs. David K. Robinson (1987) reconstructs the relationship between Avenarius and Wundt from archival sources. Yet, being a historian, he does not focus on the philosophical discussion between the two. Katherine Arens (1989) has the merit of talking about Avenarius by making direct reference to his words. Nonetheless, she only focuses on Avenarius’ psychophysical theory, presented in the Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (Critique of Pure Experience), leaving aside his more philosophical works, such as Der menschliche Weltbegriff (The Human Concept of the World) and the Bemerkungen zum Begriff des Gegenstandes der Psychologie (Remarks on the Concept of Object of Psychology ). Not entirely convincing is also Arens’ choice to place Avenarius between Fechner and Wundt, not only because he was actually a follower of Wundt, at least at first, but also because his mature view on psychology can be considered more advanced than the Wundtian one. For this reason, as we hope to demonstrate with this book, it is difficult to agree with Arens’ statement that “the work of Wilhelm Wundt represented the major trend in academic psychology which aided to obscure the systemic analysis proposed by Avenarius” (Arens 1989, 120). Annette Mülberger (2012) deals with the conflict between Avenarius’ and Wundt’s concepts of psychology, but only indirectly, since she analyzes the work of Avenarius’ pupil Rudolf Willy (1899), who had no significant impact on the debate of the time. Lastly, the great reconstruction of Wundt’s intellectual career by Saulo de Freitas Araujo (2015) crosses Avenarius’ path when it comes to the analysis of Wundt’s articles Über naiven und kritischen Realismus (On Naïve and Critical Realism), directed against the immanentism of Wilhelm Schuppe and Robert von Schubert-Soldern, and the Empiriocriticism of Avenarius and Mach . However, given the purpose of Araujo’s book, Avenarius is only watched through Wundt’s eyes.
- 12.
The only evidence of a correspondence between the two is a telegram Mach sent to Wundt for his 70th birthday (Mach to Wundt, August 16, 1902, Wundt Archive, NA Wundt/III/1601-1700/1601/135/355-356). On the other hand, we have almost fifty letters left from the correspondence between Wundt and Avenarius (see Wundt Archive and Avenarius Archive).
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Russo Krauss, C. (2019). Introduction. In: Wundt, Avenarius, and Scientific Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12637-7_1
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