## 1. Biographical Timeline



1832 born at
Neckarau/Mannheim, August 16
1845 enters Bruchsal
Gymnasium
1851-2 study of
medicine at Tubingen
1852-5 study of
medicine at Heidelberg
1853 first publication
"on the sodium chloride content of urine"
1855 medical assistant
at a Heidelberg clinic
1856 semester of study
with J. Muller and DuBois-Reymond at Berlin;
  doctorate in
medicine at Heidelberg; habilitation as *Dozent* in
physiology;
  nearly fatal
illness
1857-64 *Privatdozent*
at the Physiological Institute,
Heidelberg
1858 *Beitrage
zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmung*; Helmholtz becomes director of
the Heidelberg Physiological Institute
1862 first lectures in
psychology
1863 *Vorlesungen
uber die Menschen- und Tier-Seele*
1864 made
*ausserordentlicher Professor*; lectures on physiological
psychology (published as Wundt 1873-4)
1870-71 fails to
be named Helmholtz's successor at Heidelberg; army doctor in
Franco-Prussian War
1873-4 publishes
*Grundzuge der physiologischen
 Psychologie*[5]

1874 called to
Zurich to the professorship in "inductive
philosophy";
1875 called to Leipzig
as professor
1879 founds the
*Institut fur Experimentelle Psychologie*, Leipzig; birth
of son, Max
1881 *Philosophische
Studien* founded
1880-83 *Logik*,
2 vols.
1886 *Ethik*, 3
vols.
1889 *System der
Philosophie*, 2 vols.
1889-90 Rector of
Leipzig University
1904 *Volkerpsychologie*,
2 vols.
1915 emeritus
1917 retires from
teaching; replaced by his student, Felix Krueger (Sluga 1993:
95)
1920 dies at
Grossbothen, near Leipzig, at the age of 88, August 31

## 2. Life & Times



Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt was born on August 16, 1832, in the German
town of Neckarau, outside of Mannheim, the son of a Lutheran minister
(Titchener 1921b: 161). The family moved when Wilhelm was six to the
town of Heidenheim, in central Baden (Boring 1950: 316). By all
accounts, he was a precocious, peculiar boy, schooled mainly by his
father's assistant, the vicar, Friedrich Muller; young
Wilhelm was so attached to Muller that he moved in with him when
the latter got a post in a neighboring village (Boring 1950: 316).
Wundt studied at the *Gymnasien* at Bruchsal and Heidelberg and
entered the University of Tubingen at 19, in 1851 (Boring 1950:
317). After one year he transferred to the University of Heidelberg,
where he majored in medicine. By his third year, his intense work
ethic yielded his first publication (Boring 1950: 318). Nevertheless,
doctoring was not Wundt's vocation and he turned instead to
physiology, which he studied for a semester under Johannes Muller
(the "father of experimental physiology") at Berlin
(Boring 1950: 318). In 1856, at the age of 24, Wundt took his
doctorate in medicine at Heidelberg, and habilitated as a
*Dozent* in physiology. Two years later, the physicist,
physiologist, and psychologist, Hermann von
 Helmholtz,[6]
 received the call to Heidelberg as a professor of physiology, a
decisive moment for Wundt's career, with Wundt working as
Helmholtz's assistant from 1858 until 1865 (Boring 1950: 300,
319; Araujo 2014: 55).



When Helmholtz moved to Berlin in 1871, Wundt was passed over as
Helmholtz's replacement; three years later he took the chair in
"inductive philosophy" at the University of Zurich.
He remained at Zurich for only one year before receiving an
appointment to "a first-class chair of philosophy at Leipzig in
1875" (Ben-David and Collins 1966: 462). Leipzig's
philosophy department, dominated by Herbartians, provided the ideal
environment for his intellectual flowering, the soil having been
prepared by Fechner, Weber, and Lotze (Littman 1979: 74; cf. Kim
2009). Wundt became famous at Leipzig. It was here, in 1879, that the
university formally recognized his little room of equipment as a
*bona fide* laboratory, the world's first devoted to
 psychology.[7]
 Students flocked to
 Wundt,[8]
 and while he set the tone and direction of research, it was largely
they who constructed apparatus, performed experiments, and published
results.



> 
> 
> Enrollment in his courses doubled about every 15 years, reaching a
> peak of 620 students in the summer of 1912. Wundt ended up sponsoring
> 186 Ph.D. dissertations, about a third of which apparently involved
> purely philosophical topics (Tinker, 1932). (Quote--including
> reference to Tinker-from Hearst 1979b: 22)
> 
> 
> 



Though Wundt participated actively in labor politics in his early
years at Heidelberg, even being elected to the Baden parliament, he
steadily drifted rightwards, eventually being persuaded by his
"virulently
 anti-Semitic"[9]
 son, Max, a historian of philosophy, to join the ultranationalist
*Deutsche Philosophische Gesellschaft*, after
 1917.[10]
 It is hard to ignore Wundt's unattractive
"application" of his late social and cultural psychology
to the tendentious critique of Germany's enemies (Kusch 1995:
220-1). Nevertheless, his drive and unflagging intellectual
advocacy will arouse admiration in some: even at age 80, he remained
involved in academic
 controversy.[11]
 But let us consider the man through his work.



To understand Wundt's philosophical importance one must know
something of his intellectual context. Early nineteenth-century German
psychology labored under the looming shadow of Kant and his arguments
that a science of psychology is in principle impossible. This fact by
itself illustrates the oddity of the situation, from our point of
view: why would a psychologist care what a philosopher thought about
his practice? The answer is that since ancient times, psychology had
been a basic part of philosophical speculation, though after
Kant's criticisms many considered it a dying branch, dangerously
close to breaking off. Psychologists were philosophers on the
defensive (cf. *L* III: 163).



Psychology, as a part of philosophy, had already several times changed
the way it defined its object: as "soul", "mental
substance", "mind", etc. By the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, many regarded psychology to be the account
of consciousness or "inner experience", distinct from the
natural scientific accounts of external, sensible reality. After
having dealt the *coup de grace* to the speculative,
rational, *a priori* psychology of the soul epitomized by
Christian Wolff, however, Kant tried to cut off any retreat into the
empirical study of consciousness, as well. In the *Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science*, he argued that empirical
psychology cannot be an exact science because the phenomena it seeks
to explain are not mathematically expressible (Kitcher 1990: 11).
Moreover, it can never become an experimental science "because
it is not possible to isolate different thoughts" (Kitcher 1990:
11). Finally, and most fatally, the only access to the phenomena of
inner experience, introspection, *ipso facto* alters those
phenomena: if I try, by introspection, to study what it's like
to be tristful, the phenomena of my sadness are now something
different, namely, phenomena of my sadness-being-studied-by-me
(Kitcher 1990: 11). Thus psychologists found their object declared
beyond the limit of possible investigation and their methods vain.
While such arguments did not persuade all of Kant's successors
of the hopelessness of their enterprise, their attempts were
unpromising. On the one hand, the German Idealists' fanciful
speculation about *Geist* collapsed upon itself. On the other
hand, the efforts of
 J.F. Herbart
 to devise a mathematical mental mechanics suggested a possible way
forward although in the end it proved equally fruitless. Thus, for
those mid-nineteenth-century enthusiasts of mental phenomena, the
future of a genuine psychology seemed blocked.



At the same time, however, progress was being made in human
physiology, especially of the sensory systems. In 1834, the
physiologist, E.H. Weber, published a startling discovery in his
*De tactu*. His experiments on the sensation of weight had led
him to find that there obtains a constant ratio between, on the one
hand, a given stimulus and, on the other hand, a second stimulus
sufficiently larger for the difference between the two stimuli to be
just noticeable, no matter the magnitude of the first
 stimulus.[12]
 In other words, if the first stimulus is of intensity \(I\), then
\(\Delta I\) is the amount by which it must be increased for the
difference to be just noticeable; the ratio of \(I\) and \(\Delta I\)
is constant (\(k\)): \(\Delta I / I = k\) (cf. *L* III: 186).
This equation, which later came to be known as Weber's
 Law,[13]
 was crucial to the development of psychology because it apparently
demonstrated that where Herbart had failed in his aprioristic
construction of mathematical regularities of mind, experimentation
could succeed. The situation nevertheless remained murky as
interpretations of Weber's Law multiplied. Fechner, for example,
elaborated Weber's experiments but took his results as the basis
for an arcane panpsychic monism (Wundt's own
"psychological" interpretation is treated in
 Section 4)
 (cf., e.g., Boring 1950: 286).



In founding the experimental science of psychology, Wundt in effect
"triangulated" a *media via* between the available
options: he rejected Fechner's mysticism while maintaining his
experimental approach; at the same time, Wundt went beyond the purely
physical interpretation of physiological experiments a la
Helmholtz, arguing that at least in humans experimentation could
reveal law-like regularities of *inner* (psychological)
reality. Thus, to use the phrase of Ben-David and Collins, he
established the "hybrid science" whose dual provenance is
expressed in Wundt's name for it, "physiological
psychology" (Ben-David and Collins 1966: 459; Kusch 1995: 122,
 ff.).[14]
 Wundt's interest, both to scholars of the history of philosophy
and to contemporary philosophers of mind, flows ultimately from the
definition, methodology, and "metaphysics" of this
physiological psychology. Sections
 3
 and
 4
 are devoted to a description of its definition, method, and doctrine,
while
 Section 5
 is concerned with its theoretical underpinnings. The practical and
theoretical limits of experimental psychology will be treated in
 Section 6,
 on *Volkerpsychologie*.


## 3. Experimental psychology: object and method


### 3.1 Object



"The exact description of consciousness [*Bewusstsein*]
is the sole aim of experimental psychology" (cited by Titchener
1921b: 164). Wundt identifies "physiological" with
"experimental"
 psychology.[15]
 Thus, for Wundt, experimental psychology is the unmediated study of
consciousness, *aided* by the experimental protocols of the
natural sciences. Yet this definition involves two contestable
assumptions: first, that "consciousness" is susceptible to
experiment (rejected by Kant); second, that psychology, even if
conceived as experimental, has for its object consciousness or
"the mental" (later rejected by the Behaviorists) (cf.
Hearst 1979b: 10). Let us focus on the first assumption, since it is
one Wundt addresses.



Wundt defines consciousness as "inner experience;" it is
only the "immediately
 real"[16]
 phenomena constituting this experience, and nothing behind or beyond
it, that is the object of *psychological*, as opposed to
physiological or psychophysical investigation (*PP* II: 636).
Wundt's project is not only a "psychology without a
soul", in F.A. Lange's phrase, but also a science without
a substrate *tout
 court*.[17]
 Wundt therefore presents himself as a radical empiricist. The subject
of psychology "is itself determined wholly and exclusively by
its predicates", and these predicates derive solely from direct,
internal observation (on which below). The basic domain of inquiry,
accordingly, is that of "individual psychology" (cf. e.g.
*L* III: 160, ff), i.e. of the concrete mental contents
appearing to particular human beings, and not some mental substance or
bundle of
 faculties.[18]
 In Wundt's declaration that individual psychology must become a
science via the experimental manipulation of inner phenomena, we see a
pragmatic attitude perhaps peculiar to the working scientist: the
future science as *doctrine* takes shape in and through the
present *practice* of experimentation, its essays, assays,
trials, and errors. Instead of simply submitting to Kant's
injunctions against the very possibility of a scientific psychology,
Wundt finds that certain aspects of our inner experience can be, and
in fact have been, made susceptible to experiment and mathematical
representation: Weber and Fechner did this.


### 3.2 Method



Nevertheless, Wundt repeatedly addresses the objections raised against
the very possibility of psychological, as opposed to physiological or
psychophysical, experimentation. How are we to subject the mind-body
complex to physiological stimulation such that the reactions may be
given a purely psychological interpretation? From the physiological
point of view, experimentation with stimulus and response are not
experiments of sensation, but of externally observable excitations and
reactions of nerve and muscle tissue. For example, a nerve fiber or a
skin surface may be given an electric shock or brought into contact
with acid, and twitches of muscle fiber are observed to follow. It is
obvious, especially when the nerve-tissue in question belongs to a
dead frog (Wundt describes such an experiment in *PP*), that
these experiments say nothing about the "inner" experience
or consciousness of sensation. Wundt's innovation is the attempt
to project the experimental rigor of physiology into the domain of
inner experience by supplementing these experiments with a
*purely* psychological set of procedures. These procedures
constitute Wundt's well-known yet misunderstood method of
*Selbstbeobachtung*, i.e. "introspection" or,
better, "self-observation".



Because "inner" distinguishes itself from
"external" experience by virtue of its immediacy, all
psychology must begin with self-observation, so that physiological
experiment is given an ancillary function (Boring 1950: 320-21).
Now Wundt is well aware of the common criticism that self-observation
seems inescapably to involve the paradoxical identity (described in
the previous section) of the observing subject and observed object.
Indeed, he takes pains to distinguish his notion of self-observation
from that of "most advocates of the so-called empirical
psychology", which he calls "a fount of self-delusions
[*Selbsttauschungen*]":



> 
> 
> Since in this case the observing subject coincides with the observed
> object, it is obvious that the direction of attention upon these
> phenomena alters them. Now since our consciousness has less room for
> many simultaneous activities the more intense these activities are,
> the alteration in question as a rule consists in this: the phenomena
> that one wishes to observe are altogether suppressed [i.e., by the
> activity of focused attention upon them]. (*L* III: 162)
> 
> 
> 



Wundt believes that one can experimentally correct for this problem
by



> 
> 
> using, as much as possible, unexpected processes, processes not
> intentionally adduced, but rather such as involuntarily present
> themselves [*sich darbieten*]. (*L* III:
>  162)[19]
> 
> 
> 



In other words, it is in the controlled conditions of a laboratory
that one can, by means of experimenter, experimental subject, and
various apparatus, arbitrarily and repeatedly call forth precisely
predetermined phenomena of consciousness. The *psychologist* is
not then interested in the *psychophysical* connections between
the somatic or nervous sense-mechanisms and the elicited
"inner" phenomena, but solely in describing, "and
where possible measuring", the *psychological*
regularities that such experiments can reveal, viz., regular causal
links within the domain of the psychic alone (*L* III: 165).
According to Wundt, psychological experiments thus conceived
accomplish in the realm of consciousness precisely what
natural-scientific experiments do in nature: they do not leave
consciousness to itself, but force it to answer the
experimenter's questions, by placing it under regulated
conditions. Only in this way is



> 
> 
> a [psychological] *observation* [as opposed to a mere
> perception {*Wahrnehmung*}] at all possible in the scientific
> sense, i.e., the attentive, regulated pursuit of the phenomena.
> (*L* III:
>  165)[20]
> 
> 
> 



A detailed account of these experiments themselves, however, lies far
beyond the scope of this
 article.[21]



## 4. Wundt's "individual psychology"


### 4.1 Sensation



Wundt, like most early experimental
 psychologists,[22]
 concentrated his investigations upon sensation and perception; of all
psychic phenomena, sensation is the most obviously connected to the
body and the physical world (Hearst 1979b: 33). For Wundt, sensations
and our somatic sensory apparatus are especially important for the
project of physiological psychology for the simple reason that
sensations are the "contact points" between the physical
and the psychological (*PP* I: 1). Sensations
(*Empfindungen*), as the medium between the physical and
psychic, are uniquely susceptible to a double-sided
 inquiry,[23]
 viz. from the "external" physical side of stimulus, and
the "internal" psychological side of corresponding mental
representation
 (*Vorstellung*).[24]
 The Wundtian psychologist therefore controls the external,
physiological side experimentally, in order to generate diverse
internal representations that can only "appear" to the
introspective observer. According to Wundt, the representations
(*Vorstellungen*) that constitute the contents
(*Inhalt*) of consciousness all have their elemental basis in
sensations (*Empfindungen*) (*PP* I:
 281).[25]
 Sensations are never given to us as elemental, however; we never
apperceive them "purely", but always already
"combined" (*verbunden*) in the representation of a
synthesized perception (*PP* I: 281). Yet, the manifestly
composite nature of our representations forces us to abstract such
elementary components (*PP* I: 281) (cf. *PP* II: 256).
Pure sensations, according to Wundt, display three differentiae:
quality, intensity, and "feeling-tone"
(*Gefuhlston*) (*PP* I:
 282-3).[26]



His treatment of quality and intensity are especially important for
getting a clearer notion of his notion of psychological
experimentation. It is a "fact of inner experience" that
"every sensation possesses a certain intensity with respect to
which it may be compared to other sensations, especially those of
similar quality" (*PP* I: 332). The outer sensory stimuli
may be measured by physical methods, whereas *psychology* is
given the corresponding



> 
> 
> task of determining to what degree our *immediate estimation*
> [*Schatzung*] [of the strength of sensory stimuli] that we
> make aided by our sensations--to what degree this estimation
> corresponds to or deviates from the stimuli's *real*
> strength. (*PP* I: 332-3)
> 
> 
> 



There are two possible tasks for psychophysical measurement of
sense-stimuli: the "determination of limit-values between which
stimulus-changes are accompanied by changes in sensation"; and
"the investigation of the lawful relations between
stimulus-change and change in sensation" (*PP* I: 333).
Sensation can thus be measured with respect to changes in intensity
*corresponding* to changes in strength of stimuli (*PP*
I: 335-6).



Weber's Law (WL) is the most striking example of such a
relation, and Wundt's interpretation of WL sheds much light on
what he means by "physiological psychology". Wundt
writes:



> 
> 
> We can formulate [this law] as follows: A difference between any two
> stimuli is estimated [*geschatzt*] to be equal if the
> relationship between the stimuli is equal. Or: If in our apprehension
> [*Auffassung*] the intensity of the sensation is to increase by
> equal amounts, then the relative stimulus-increase must remain
> constant. This latter statement may also be expressed as follows: The
> strength of a stimulus must increase geometrically if the strength of
> the apperceived sensation is to increase arithmetically. (*PP*
> I: 359)
> 
> 
> 



Now these various
 formulations[27]
 of WL admit, as Wundt says, of three different, and indeed
incompatible interpretations; that is, there are three different
conceptions of what WL is a law *of*. First, the physiological
interpretation takes it as a manifestation of the "peculiar laws
of excitation of the neural
 matter;"[28]
 second, the psychophysical (Fechnerian) interpretation takes WL as
governing the interrelation between somatic and psychic activity
(*PP* I: 392). Wundt rejects both of these in favor of a third,
the psychological interpretation; his arguments are instructive.
Against the physiological interpretation Wundt raises the following
main point, viz. that



> 
> 
> the estimation of the intensity of sensation
> (*Empfindungsintensitat*) is a complicated process, upon
> which--in addition to the central sensory excitation--the
> effectiveness of the center of apperception will exert considerable
> influence. We can obviously say nothing *immediate* about how
> the central sense-excitations would be sensed independently of the
> latter; thus Weber's Law, too, concerns only
> *apperceived* sensations, and therefore can just as well have
> its basis in the processes of the apperceptive comparison of sensation
> as in the original constitution of the central sensory excitations.
> (*PP* I: 391-2)
> 
> 
> 



Now apperception (see below) is a purely psychological act in
consciousness--and it is solely as a law of the psychological
processes involved in the "measuring comparison of
sensations" that Wundt understands WL (*PP* I: 393). In
other words, WL



> 
> 
> does not apply to sensations in and for themselves, but to processes
> of apperception, without which a quantitative estimation of sensations
> could never take place. (*PP* I: 393; cf. *PP* II:
> 269)
> 
> 
> 



Wundt sees WL as simply a mathematical description of the more general
experience that



> 
> 
> we possess in our consciousness no absolute, but merely a relative
> measure of the intensity of the conditions [*Zustande*]
> obtaining in it, and that we therefore measure in each case one
> condition against another, with which we are obliged in the first
> place to compare it. (*PP* I: 393)
> 
> 
> 



For this reason Wundt's "psychological
interpretation" makes WL into a special case of a more general
law of consciousness, viz. "of the *relation* or
*relativity of our inner conditions*
[*Zustande*]" (*PP* I: 393). WL is therefore
not a law of sensation so much as of apperception.



This solution typifies Wundt's general view that the domains of
psychic and physical phenomena do not stand in conflict, but rather
constitute separate spheres of (causal) explanation. His
interpretation of WL nicely illustrates how, on his view,
physiological experiments can yield mathematically expressible
results, not about the physical, somatic processes involved in
sensation, but about the relationships among these sensations *as
apperceived*, i.e., as *psychological* elements and objects
of consciousness. He writes that "the psychological
interpretation offers the advantage of not excluding a simultaneous
[i.e. parallel] physiological explanation" (presumably once the
neurophysiological facts of the matter have been better elucidated
-- cf. *PP* I: 391); by contrast, the two competing
interpretations "only permit a one-sided explanation" of
WL (*PP* I: 393).


### 4.2 Consciousness



Psychology finds consciousness to be constituted of three major
act-categories: representation, willing, and feeling; our discussion
is limited to the first two. Now while Wundt is forced to speak of
representations and representational acts as distinct, he is
nevertheless clear that they are merely different aspects of a single
flowing process. This is his so-called theory of actuality
(*Aktualitatstheorie*) (1911a: 145). Representations are
representational *acts*, never the "objects with constant
properties" propounded by adherents of a so-called theory of
substantiality (*Substantialitatstheorie*) (1911a: 145).
This identity of representation and representational act typifies what
we may call Wundt's "monistic
 perspectivism".[29]
 Everywhere he insists that the "psychic processes form a
*unitary* flow of events [*einheitliches
 Geschehen*[30]
 ]", the constituents of which--"representing,
feeling, willing, etc."--are "only differentiated
through psychological analysis and abstraction" (1911a: 145).
Keeping in mind the underlying active unity of the psychic, let us
examine some of Wundt's "analyses and
abstractions".



As discussed in the previous section, all consciousness originates in
sensations. These, however, are never given to consciousness in a
"pure" state as individual sensory atoms, but are always
perceived as already
 compounded[31]
 into representations (*Vorstellungen*), that is, into
"images of an object or of a process in the external
world" (*PP* II: 3; 1). Representations may be either
perceptions (*Wahrnehmungen*) or intuitions
(*Anschauungen*): the same representation is called a
"perception" if considered as the presentation of
objective reality, and an "intuition" if considered in
terms of the accompanying conscious, subjective activity (*PP*
II: 1). If the representation's object is not real (cf.
*PP* II: 479) but merely thought, then it is a so-called
reproduced
 representation.[32]



Now the formative *process*, by which sensations are connected
into representations either through temporal sequencing or spatial
ordering (*PP* II: 3), constitutes a main aspect of the
activity we call consciousness; the other is the "coming and
going of [these] representations" (*PP* II: 256). On the
evidence of "innumerable psychological
 facts",[33]
 Wundt claims that all representations are formed through
"psychological synthesis of sensations", and that this
synthesis accompanies every representational act (*PP* II:
256). We are therefore entitled to take the act of representational
synthesis as a "characteristic feature of consciousness
itself" (*PP* II: 256). Although consciousness consists
in the formation of representations, on the one hand, and of the
coming and going of such representations, on the other
hand--i.e., although its contents are a continuous streaming of
fusing and diffusing representations--yet it is not merely this
(*PP* II: 256). We are also aware within our consciousness of
another activity operating upon our representations, namely of paying
them attention (*PP* II: 266).



Attention may be understood in terms of the differing degrees to which
representations are present (*gegenwartig*) in
consciousness. These varying degrees of presence correspond to the
varying degrees to which consciousness is "turned towards
[*zugewandt*]" them (*PP* II: 267). Wundt appeals
to an analogy:



> 
> 
> This feature of consciousness can be clarified by that common image we
> use in calling consciousness an inner vision. If we say that the
> representations present [*gegenwartig*] at a particular
> moment are in consciousness's field of vision
> [*Blickfeld*], then that part of the field upon which our
> attention is turned may be called the inner focal point of vision
> [*Blickpunkt*]. The entry of a representation into the field of
> inner vision we call "perception", and its entry into the
> focal point of vision we call "apperception". (*PP*
> II: 267)
> 
> 
> 



Thus consciousness is a function of the scope of attention, which may
be broader (as perception) or narrower (as
 apperception[34]
 ). Apperception, in turn, may either actively select and focus upon a
perceived representation, or it may passively find certain
representations suddenly thrusting themselves into the center of
attention (*PP* II: 267; 562). There is no distinct boundary
between the perceived and the apperceived, and Wundt's analogy
may be misleading (cf. esp. *PP* II: 268) to the extent that it
gives the impression of two separable forms of attention able in
principle to subsist together simultaneously (that is, apperception
focusing upon a point in the perceptual field while that field
continues to be perceived). No: perceptive attention becomes
apperceptive attention just as it focuses more strenuously,
constricting the perceptive field. The more it contracts, the
"brighter" the representation appears, now becoming the
focal point of apperception as the fringes of the perceptual field
retreat into "darkness" (*PP* II: 268). For Wundt,
the distinguishing feature of the apperceptive focus is that it
"always forms a unitary representation", so that a
narrower focal point (or rather, the focal "field"
[*PP* II: 268; 477]) results in a correspondingly higher
intensity of attention (*PP* II: 269). Hence



> 
> 
> the degree of apperception is not to be measured according to the
> strength of the external impression [i.e. physically or
> physiologically], but solely according to the subjective activity
> through which consciousness turns to a particular sense-stimulus.
> (*PP* II: 269)
> 
> 
> 



Thus,
 apperception[35]
 is closely akin to the will, indeed is a primordial expression of
will: "the act of apperception in every case consists in an
inner act of will [*Willenshandlung*]" (*L* I:
34). By contrast, Wundt argues that the processes by which the
representations are themselves formed, fused, synthesized, and
"delivered" into the perceptual field, are associative
processes "independent of apperception" (*PP* II:
278-9; 437, ff). Passive apperception may be characterized
simply by saying that here the associative form of representational
connection is predominant (cf. *L* I: 34), whereas when
"the active apperception successively raises representations
into the focal field of consciousness", this *active*
passage of representations obeys the special laws of what Wundt calls
"apperceptive connection" (*PP* II: 279). He does
not consider the types of association to be genuine psychological
laws, i.e. laws governing the "succession of
representations", because they merely generate the
*possible* kinds of representational compounds. It is
apperception, in accordance with its own laws, that
"decides" which of these possible connections are realized
in consciousness (*L* I: 34). We see here the important role
played by his so-called
 voluntarism:[36]
 associationist psychologists, according to Wundt, cannot give an
account of the (subjective) *activity* that immediately
characterizes consciousness (cf. Wundt 1911b: 721, ff.; Lipps 1903:
202, ff.; cf. esp. *L* I: 33). Yet this is not to deny
association of sensations altogether. Rather, it is to conceive of
association as merely a subliminal process, the products of which,
representations, then become the actual objects of consciousness. Thus
the "apperceptive connections of representations presuppose the
various types of association", especially the associative
 fusion[37]
 of sensations into
 representations.[38]



Apperception operates according to its own peculiar laws (*PP*
II: 470). These laws, like those of association, govern acts of
combination (*Verbindung*) and separation (*Zerlegung*).
How do apperceptive laws differ from those of association? Wundt
writes:



> 
> 
> Association everywhere gives the first impetus to [apperceptive]
> combinations. Through association we combine, e.g., the
> representations of a tower and of a
>  church.[39]
>  But no matter how familiar the coexistence of these representations
> may be, mere association does not help us form the representation of a
> church-tower. For this latter representation does not contain the two
> constitutive representations in a merely external coexistence; rather,
> in the [representation of the church-tower], the representation of the
> church has come to adhere [*anhaften*] to the representation of
> the tower, more closely determining the latter. In this way, the
> *agglutination of representations* forms the first level of
> apperceptive combination. (*PP* II: 476; on
> "agglutination of representations", see also *L* I:
> 38, f.)
> 
> 
> 



It is on the basis of such "agglutinative"
representations, exhibiting characteristics essentially different from
their constituents, that apperception continues to synthesize ever
more representations, a process resulting in their compression
(*Verdichtung*) or displacement (*Verschiebung*)
(*PP* II: 476-7; cf. *L* I: 43). The more the
original associative or agglutinated representations are compressed or
displaced, the more they disappear altogether from consciousness,
leaving in their stead a *single* representation whose original
composite structure has disappeared. This process, which Wundt calls
"representational synthesis" proper, is reiterated at ever
higher levels until even the sensory foundation vanishes, as in the
case of abstract and symbolic concepts (*L* I: 39).



Apperception is not only a synthetic process; it is also governed by
rules of separation. Apperceptive separation operates only upon the
representations already synthesized out of the "associative
stock [*Assoziationsvorrath*]", but does not necessarily
decompose them into their original parts (*PP* II: 478).
Wundt's notion of apperceptive separation is one of the most
philosophically original, consequential, and ambiguous of his
theories. He argues that it is usually the case that



> 
> 
> the original representational totality [*ursprungliche
> Gesammtvorstellung*] is present to our consciousness at first as
> an indistinct complex of individual representations. These individual
> parts and the manner of their connection become distinct only through
> the separative activity of apperception. (*PP* II: 478)
> 
> 
> 



Thus, conscious thought and judgment (on judgment, see *SP* I:
34, ff., esp. 37, ff.) (separating and combining subject and
predicate) is not, as may seem at first blush, an act of



> 
> 
> gathering together [representational] components and then fitting them
> together in the successive articulation of the total representation
> [*Gesammtvorstellung*]. (*PP* II: 478)
> 
> 
> 



Rather, "the whole, albeit in an indistinct form, must have been
apperceived prior to its parts" (*PP* II: 478). Only in
this way can one explain the



> 
> 
> well-known fact that we can easily and without trouble finish
> [composing] a complicated sentence-structure. This would be impossible
> if the whole had not been represented at the outset. The
> accomplishment of the judgment-function therefore consists, from the
> psychological point of view, only in our successively making clearer
> the obscure outlines of the total picture [*Gesammtbild*], so
> that at the end of the composite thought-act the whole, too, stands
> more clearly before our consciousness. (*PP* II: 478)
> 
> 
> 



Because according to Wundt's principle of "actuality
[*Aktualitat*]" consciousness is purely an activity,
it is impossible to render his theory in terms of
"structures". It consists in constantly interacting
*processes*: on the one hand, there are associative processes
that fuse sensations into elemental representations. These stream into
and thereby constitute a *fluctuating* field of attention:
flowing and broad, it is called "perception;" ebbing and
concentrate, "apperception". As an activity, attention is
an expression of will; since consciousness just is attention in its
shifting forms, it is the activity of will manifested in the
selection, combination, and separation of disposable representations
(*PP* II: 564). These representations are constantly
"worked over" by apperception, which through its synthetic
and diaeretic activity constructs them into ever "higher
developmental forms of consciousness", such that in the end
their origins in sensation and perception might be completely erased.
In other words, as the apperceptive activity becomes increasingly
intense it seems as it were to rise above the field of perception,
above the field of its own constructs, becoming aware of itself as
*pure* activity, as pure *self*-consciousness:



> 
> 
> rooted in the constant activity [*Wirksamkeit*] of
> apperception, [self-consciousness] ... retreats completely into
> apperception alone, so that, after the completion of the development
> of consciousness, the *will* appears as the only content of
> self-consciousness.... (*PP* II:
>  564)[40]
> 
> 
> 



Thus the self as will appears to itself as independent from and
opposed to an external world of both sensation and culture, though
Wundt hastens to add that this is but an illusion; in reality,
"the abstract self-consciousness maintains constantly the full
sensible background of the empirical self-consciousness"
(*PP* II:
 564).[41]


## 5. The theoretical framework of experimental psychology



As we have seen
 (Section 3.2),
 for Wundt the possibility of a physiological *psychology* (as
opposed to a purely physiological inquiry into sensation, behavior,
learning, etc.) depends on the possibility of self-observation.
Self-observation, in turn, is of scientific use only if the sequence
of "inner" phenomena of consciousness is assumed to fall
under an independent principle of psychic causality. For if it does
not, then these phenomena could never be more than a chaotic muddle,
of which there could be no science. Alternatively, if the
"inner" phenomena could be shown to fall under the
physical causality of the natural sciences, then there would be no
need for a special psychological method, such as self-observation (cf.
Natorp 1912). In fact, however, a system of psychic causality can be
determined, Wundt argues, one that at no point is reducible to
physical causality: "no connection of physical processes can
ever teach us anything about the manner of connection between
psychological elements" (Wundt 1894: 43, quoted in Kusch 1995:
134). This "fact", which Wundt thinks is given in the
psycho-physiological experiments described above, leads him to his
so-called principle of psychophysical parallelism (PPP).



The PPP has caused a great deal of confusion in the secondary
literature, which persists in characterizing it as a
 metaphysical[42]
 doctrine somehow derived from Leibniz (e.g., Wellek 1967: 350;
Thompson and Robinson 1979: 412) or Spinoza (cf. *L* I: 77).
Wundt however is crystal-clear that the PPP is not a metaphysical
"hypothesis". It is merely an admittedly misleading name
for an "empirical postulate" necessary to explain the
phenomenal "fact" of consciousness of which we are
immediately aware (Wundt 1911a: 22; cf. esp. 28). By denying any
metaphysical interpretation of his principle, Wundt insists that the
"physical" and the "psychic" do not name two
ontologically distinct realms whose events unfold on separate yet
parallel causal tracks. He is therefore not an epiphenomenalist, as
some commentators have claimed. Rather, the "physical" and
"psychic" name two mutually irreducible perspectives from
which one and the same world or Being (*Sein*) may be observed:
"nothing occurs in our consciousness that does not find its
sensible foundation in certain physical processes", he writes,
and *all* psychological acts (association, apperception,
willing) "are accompanied by physiological nerve-actions"
(*PP* II: 644). In distinguishing the empirical from the
metaphysical PPP, Wundt contrasts his own view against
Spinoza's, which, according to Wundt, makes the realm of
material substance exist separately from, though parallel to that of
mental substance (Wundt 1911a: 22, 44-5; cf. esp. Wundt 1911a:
143, ff.).



The investigator of psychological phenomena, therefore, must assume,
solely for heuristic reasons, two "parallel" and
irreducible causal chains by which two distinct types of phenomena may
be accounted for (Wundt 1911a: 143; cf. Van Rappard 1979: 109). Wundt
compares the distinction between psychological and physiological
explanation to the different viewpoints taken by chemistry and physics
of the same object, a crystal. The chemical and physical accounts are
not of two different entities; rather, they describe and explain the
same entity from two distinct points of view, and in this sense the
two accounts are "parallel". Similarly, (neuro-)
physiology and psychology do not describe different processes, one
neural and one mental, but the same process seen from the outside and
the inside, respectively. As Wundt writes,



> 
> 
> "inner" and "outer" experience merely
> designate distinct *perspectives* that we can apply in our
> grasp and scientific investigation of what is, in itself, a unitary
> experience. (Wundt 1896a; quoted at Natorp 1912: 264).
> 
> 
> 


## 6. *Volkerpsychologie*



Whereas experimental psychology focuses in the first place on the
effects of the physical (outer) upon the psychic (inner), the willing
consciousness is characterized by intervening in the external world,
that is, by *expressing* the *internal* (*PP* I:
2). This latter feature of consciousness lies beyond the scope of
experiment, because the origins of conscious expression cannot be
controlled. Moreover, psychological development is obviously not
determined merely by sensation, but also by the meaningful influences
of the individual's "spiritual [*geistig*]
environment"--his culture--influences again not
obviously susceptible to
 experimentation.[43]
 Hence, just as Wundt reserved for physiology an ancillary role in
experimental psychology, so too he now argues for the utility of a
distinct methodological approach to analyze and explain the



> 
> 
> psychic processes that are bound, in virtue of their genetic and
> developmental conditions, to spiritual communities [*geistige
> Gemeinschaften*]. (*L* III: 224)
> 
> 
> 



It is the inquiry into "cultural products
[*Erzeugnisse*]" of the "totality of spiritual life
[*geistiges Gesammtleben*] in which certain psychological laws
have embodied themselves", specifically, language, art, myth,
and customs (*Sitten*) (*PP* I: 5; *L* III: 230).
These objects cannot be investigated in the same way as those of
individual "inner" experience, but require a mode of
explanation appropriate to their external, yet non-physical
phenomenology. This inquiry, which complements and together with
experimental psychology completes the discipline of psychology, Wundt
calls "*Volkerpsychologie*" (hereafter
abbreviated: *VP*) (*L* III:
 225).[44]



While Wundt had already discussed the role of a *VP* necessary
for the completion of psychology in his early writings, it was not
until old age that he committed himself to its realization. The result
was his ten-volume work, entitled *Volkerpsychologie*.
While an examination of the contents of these tomes lies beyond the
scope of this article, his justification and clarification of the
*volkerpsychologisch* project as such are of interest for
those interested in truth and method in the social and human sciences.
Wundt stresses that although *VP* shares object-domains with
such sciences as history, philology,
 linguistics,[45]
 ethnology,[46] or anthropology (*L* III:
226), yet it is only interested in these domains insofar as they
"are determined by general psychological laws, and not just by
historical conditions" (*PP* I: 5). In other words,
*VP* is not interested in the unique and specific facts of this
nation's history or that tribe's language as such, but
only insofar as these reveal "the general psychological
developments that arise from the connection of individual
[developments]" (*L* III: 226). This quotation is
important. While *VP* does not concern itself with historical
or linguistic facts as such, this does not mean that it is not
concerned with individuality. Indeed, it is through the study of the
psychological motives only apparent in history or language--i.e.,
in communal existence--that our understanding of the
*individual* is completed (cf. *L* III: 224, 228). This
view is typical of Wundt's perspectivism. Just as psychology is
an alternative perspective to that of physiology, so too
(*within* psychology) *VP* provides an alternative
perspective to that of experimental psychology. Wundt considers none
of these various perspectives dispensable, since each one is a
complement necessary for total science. But while each of these
perspectives reveals a (phenomenologically) irreducible
("parallel") network of causal chains, the
*process* so explained, Wundt holds, is in every case one and
the same. There is just *one* empirical world and reality, but
many irreducible varieties of experience. Thus, in the case of
*VP*, too, he claims that there is no "general law of
spiritual events [*geistiges Geschehen*] that is not already
completely contained in the laws of the individual
consciousness" (*L* III: 225).


## 7. The order of knowledge


### 7.1 Psychology in its relation to the sciences



As we have seen, Wundt was concerned not only with expanding the set
of known psychological facts, but also with interpreting them within
an appropriate explanatory framework. Of course, the necessity of
establishing such a closed framework distinct from physiology amounted
to distinguishing psychological causality from physical causality in
general, and hence psychology from the natural sciences altogether.
But psychology has to be defined against two other areas of
"scientific" (*wissenschaftlich*) inquiry; first,
in its *volkerpsychologisch* dimension, against the
*Geisteswissenschaften* or "human sciences", and
second, against the non-psychological domains of philosophy. As these
relationships are laid out below, it must always be remembered that
although these four areas--psychology, philosophy, natural
science, human science--are irreducible, this irreducibility is
not a metaphysical or ontological one, but merely one of explanatory
function (and commensurate methodology). They do not have distinct
objects, but again merely represent ways of describing irreducible
perspectives upon the same object, namely experience. Wundt
writes:



> 
> 
> Objects of science do not in and of themselves yield starting points
> for a classification of the sciences. Rather, it is only regarding the
> *concepts* that these objects call for that we can undertake
> this classification. Therefore, the same object [*Gegenstand*]
> can become the object [*Objekt*] of several sciences: geometry,
> epistemology, and psychology each deals with space, but space is
> approached in each discipline from a different angle. ... The
> tasks of the sciences are therefore never determined by the objects in
> themselves, but are predominantly dependent upon the logical points of
> view from which they are considered. (*SP* I: 12-3; cf.
> *L* III: 228)
> 
> 
> 



Wundt's monism has serious consequences for the sort of claim
philosophy (and thus psychology) can make to be scientific. The most
obvious is that neither can lay claim to synthetic knowledge that is
not founded in or (also) describable in terms of the natural or human
sciences.



For Wundt, it is only the sciences that have methodologies by which to
synthesize our representations, sensible as well as
"processed", into "facts" or "pieces
of" knowledge (*Erkenntnisse*). Hence, while strictly
speaking he is committed to considering psychology (i.e.,
physiological psychology and *VP*) a part of philosophy, he
usually speaks of them as distinct enterprises. This is because
psychology is hybrid, adapting scientific methodologies to its
particular aims; in this sense psychology, although part of
philosophy, synthesizes facts, just like the
 sciences.[47]
 By contrast, philosophy's *pure* task is universal,
operating over *all* scientific domains; it is, he writes,
"the general science whose task it is to unify the general
pieces of knowledge yielded by the particular sciences into a system
free of contradiction" (*SP* I: 9). Philosophy's
positive role, therefore, is not to provide the foundations of
science, nor can it ever "step into the role of a particular
science" (cf. Kusch 1995: 129); rather it is "to take in
every case the already secured results of those sciences as
*its* foundation", and organize them into a single,
overarching system by determining their points of connection
(*PP* I: 8; 6). Wundt calls this side of philosophy
*Prinzipienlehre* or "doctrine of principles". By
contrast, its negative or critical role is to regulate the sciences in
accord with the imperative of consistent systematicity. In short, it
has no constitutive but merely a regulative role
*vis-a-vis* the sciences. Thus, when we return to the
philosophical as opposed to the scientific aspect of
psychology's hybrid structure, we see that this aspect consists
in its aim (as opposed to its method) of explaining rules of genesis,
connection, and separation of those mental representations with an
epistemic character. Wundt calls this psychological contribution to
philosophy *Erkenntnislehre* or "doctrine of
knowledge" (i.e., the theory of the coming-to-be of knowledge).
This explanation then provides to philosophy the scientific foundation
for its pure
 task.[48]



Wundt divides up the sciences into two large families, the
"formal" sciences and the "real" sciences. The
former include mathematics; the latter study the natural and spiritual
aspects of
 reality,[49]
 and correspondingly are divided into the natural and the human
sciences. The human sciences in turn are divided into two genera, one
of which deals with spiritual processes (*geistige
Vorgange*), the other with spiritual products (*geistige
Erzeugnisse*). The former just is the science of psychology; the
latter includes the general study of these products as such (e.g.,
philology, political science, law, religion, etc.), as well as the
parallel historical study of these products as they have *in
fact* been created (This taxonomy is given in *SP* I:
19-20). Since the process precedes the product (cf. Kusch 1995:
132), psychology as "the doctrine of spiritual
[*geistig*] processes as such" is the foundation of all
the other human sciences (*SP* I:
 20).[50]
 Philosophy, in turn, takes *psychology*'s results and
again abstracts from them the normative rules governing the
organization of the human *and* natural sciences, something the
latter cannot do themselves. In this way psychology as a science
mediates between the sciences and philosophy.


### 7.2 Psychology and logic



One aspect of Wundt's hierarchy of method and knowledge deserves
special attention, namely the place of logic in the sciences. Like
almost all the similarly titled tomes produced by the German
mandarins, Wundt's *Logik* (in two, later three 600-page
volumes in four editions) molders away in research libraries. Its
contents are for the most part unrecognizable as "logic"
in any contemporary sense. What most philosophers meant by
"*Logik*" in Wundt's day was the rules and
procedure of inference governing the sciences, where this often
included lengthy treatments of the actual scientific application of
these rules. What we would expect to find in a book called
"*Logik*" today, viz., symbolic or mathematical
logic, was called at that time "*Logistik*", and
was considered by some a mathematical (that is, merely formal) game
unworthy of philosophy's *scientific* (that is,
substantive) role (cf., e.g., Natorp 1910: 4-10). Thus we should
not be surprised to read Wundt, too, declare logic's task to be
the justifying and accounting for "those laws of thinking active
in scientific knowledge" (*L* I: 1).



For Wundt, however, this task involves psychology, and indeed much of
his *Logik* is devoted to this topic. As he reasonably points
out, logic comprises the rules of correct thinking, and the principles
of logic are known to us as conscious representations (*L* I:
76; 13; cf. Wundt 1920: 267); thinking and consciousness are objects
of psychological inquiry; therefore any account of logic must include
a psychological description of the genesis of logical principles
(*L* I: 13). Even the normative character of logic had, in his
view, to be given a psychological interpretation (cf. *L* I:
76). Inevitably Wundt was accused of logical
*psychologism*--the all-purpose term of abuse flung about
in fin-de-siecle German philosophical debate. Husserl, for
example, condemned him for expounding an "extreme" form of
psychologism (Husserl 1901: 124-5; cf. Farber 1943: 123, 208,
ff.; cf. Wundt 1910b: 511, ff.), viz.
"species-relativism", the notion that "truth varies
with different species" of animal (Kusch 1995: 49). Yet Wundt
himself calls his *Logik* the "most rigorous rejection of
the psychologism that reigned at the time [i.e., 1880]" (Wundt
1920: 264), and held that "logical thinking is universally
binding for every thinker" (Wundt 1920: 266). How can we
reconcile these statements?



Wundt's view of logic is unusual, but fully in line with his
rigorously anti-metaphysical monistic perspectivism. That is, there is
no logical "third realm", but merely a single process
called "thinking [*Denken*]" (*L* I: 6); it
is an immediately given fact of thinking that there are logical laws
that stand over against all our other thoughts and representations as
norms (*L* I: 76). Their psychological immediacy does not,
Wundt thinks, compromise their normativity, since what is given in
consciousness precisely *is* their normative
 character.[51]
 Once this character is taken for granted, the science of logic
develops its systems of correct deductions (*Schliessen*)
without further worry about the source of that normativity. All that
remains is "develop[ing] the foundations and methods of
scientific knowledge" (*L* I: 8).



According to Wundt, the three features of logical thinking that set it
apart from all other types of representational connection are its
"spontaneity, evidence, and universal validity
[*Spontaneitat, Evidenz, Allgemeingultigkeit*]"
(*L* I: 76). Let us briefly describe these. Wundt's
notion of the spontaneity of logical thinking is perhaps the most
psychologistic-sounding of the three. Because, as was described above,
thinking is



> 
> 
> experienced immediately as an inner activity, ... we must regard
> it as an act of will [*Willenshandlung*], and accordingly
> regard the logical laws of thought [*Denkgesetze*] as laws of
> the will. (*L* I: 76-7)
> 
> 
> 



In other words, logical thinking is accompanied essentially by a
feeling of the thinking subject's freedom in thinking. But while
logical thinking may be accompanied by an especially strong
self-awareness of the mind's own activity, this feeling is not
unique to logical thinking, since active apperception more generally
is also accompanied by the sense of subjective activity. By contrast,
logical evidence and universal validity are characteristics possessed
by logical thinking "to a higher degree than by any other
psychic function" (*L* I: 78). By "evidence",
Wundt means the character of compelling necessity accompanying a
logical judgment, what we might call self-evidence (*L* I: 78,
79). A thought (*Gedanke*) may exhibit immediate certainty,
obvious without any mediating thought-acts; or a thought may be
mediately certain, grounded in prior thought-acts. Immediate and
mediate evidence have their source and foundation in intuition
(*Anschauung*): immediate evidence immediately, mediate
evidence mediately (*L* I: 82-3). Intuition is not
identical with evidence, for evidence only



> 
> 
> comes to be at the moment when logical thinking relates the contents
> of intuition and presupposes the relations of such intuitive contents
> as objectively given. (*L* I: 83)
> 
> 
> 



Wundt thus charts a middle course between, on the one hand, making
logical evidence a "transcendent or transcendental"
function of thinking (as Kant and "recent speculative
philosophy" are alleged to do), and, on the other hand,
considering it an "empirical trait of sensible objects"
(as do empiricists and positivists) (*L* I: 83).



By the standards of such philosophers as Husserl, Natorp, and Frege,
Wundt appears committed to a logical psychologism. But it is worth
considering his response to this charge, for it again illustrates his
monistic perspectivism. While he rejects any interpretation of the
origin of logical principles that would impugn their normative
character of necessity, he also rejects the opposite extreme, what he
calls "*Logizismus*"--the complete divorce of
logical thinking from thinking as it actually occurs in minds. For
Wundt, the logicist makes a metaphysical leap as suspect as it is
unnecessary in conjuring up a "pure",
"absolute", "transcendental", but in any case
*separate* source of logical normativity (cf. Wundt 1910b:
515). Instead of solving the puzzle of logical normativity, he
exacerbates it by adding the puzzles of the ontological status of a
third realm, or of a transcendental ego, or of "pure
thinking", and the *influence* of all of these on your
thinking as you read this. Wundt finds a simpler solution in his
perspectivism. The logical may be considered "purely" from
a logical point of view, i.e., in terms of its normative character,
*or* "genetically" from a psychological point of
view. But there are no logical laws that are not also describable
psychologically, just as there is no psychological phenomenon not also
describable physiologically. But being "describable" in
this sense is not the same as being *explicable*, and it is
this separate task of explanation that falls to logic and psychology,
respectively. The logical description saves the phenomenon of
normativity, just as the psychological description saves the
phenomenon of the interiority of consciousness.


## 8. Conclusion



Wundt's conception of psychology was always controversial. At
least in Germany, the struggle over the status and philosophical
meaning of "consciousness" resulted, on the one hand, in
the exclusion of Wundtian empiricism from philosophy departments,
striving to maintain their speculative purity, and, on the other, the
institutional establishment of experimental psychology as an
independent discipline. This was not the outcome Wundt had desired. He
had wished to reform *philosophy*, not as a synthetic science,
but with a direct, indispensable, juridical relation
*vis-a-vis* both the natural and human sciences. He
never saw his psychological scientism as a threat to
philosophy--on the contrary, he considered his psychology to be a
part of philosophy (cf. Boring 1950: 325), one necessary for
philosophy to take its proper place in the totality of the sciences.
Indeed, philosophy could only assume that position through the
mediating position of psychology (*PP* I: 3). Yet academic
philosophers, denied the possibility of any legislative or executive
functions in the sciences, rejected the juridical ones as well,
bitterly resisting contamination of their pure pursuit by the
empiricism of the new psychology. In Germany, resistance was
especially stiff among neo-Kantians, and later the Phenomenologists.
In the end, the quarreling parties ineluctably assumed positions
similar to their opponents'--though of course in a
"purified"
 way.[52]



Let us return to James's mean
 remark[53]
 about Wundt: he has no *noeud vital*, no central idea, and so
this would-be Napoleon-planarian can never be "killed all at
once". Setting aside Wundt's need to be killed at once or
in bits, a fair and attentive reader will respectfully reject such
scintillating criticisms. For although Wundt has many
ideas--"the theory of actuality", the
"principle of psychophysical parallelism",
"voluntarism", "creative resultants", etc.,
etc.--yet they all do have a single unifying node, namely what I
have here called "monistic perspectivism". If Wundt has a
big idea, it is that Being is a single flow of Becoming with many
sides and many ways of being described. Consequently *we*, as
part of this Being, have many ways of describing and explaining it.
Few have as unblinkingly accepted the consequences of their starting
points, or more doggedly pursued them to their various ends as
Wundt.