Misunderstandings of basic terms and principles Wundt's terminology also created difficulties because he had – from today's point-of-view – given some of his most important ideas unfortunate names so that there were constant misunderstandings. Examples include: physiological psychology – specifically not a scientific physiological psychology, because by writing the adjective with a small letter Wundt wanted to avoid this misunderstanding that still exists today; for him it was the use of physiological aids in experimental general psychology that mattered. Self-observation – not naive introspection, but with training and experimental control of conditions. Experiment – this was meant with reference to Francis Bacon – general, i.e. far beyond the scientific rules of the empirical sciences, so not necessarily a statistically evaluated laboratory experiment.Wundt: Über Ausfrageexperimente, 1907, p. 301ff For Wundt psychological experimentation primarily served as a check of trained self-observation. Element – not in the sense of the smallest structure, but as a smallest unit of the intended level under consideration, so that, for example, even the central nervous system could be an "element". Völkerpsychologie – cultural psychology – not ethnology. Apperception – not just an increase in attention, but a central and multimodal synthesis. Voluntaristic tendency, voluntarism – not an absolute metaphysical postulate, but a primary empirically psychologically based accentuation of motivated action against the intellectualism and cognitivism of other psychologists.
Misunderstandings of basic terms and principles Wundt's terminology also created difficulties because he had – from today's point-of-view – given some of his most important ideas unfortunate names so that there were constant misunderstandings. Examples include: physiological psychology – specifically not a scientific physiological psychology, because by writing the adjective with a small letter Wundt wanted to avoid this misunderstanding that still exists today; for him it was the use of physiological aids in experimental general psychology that mattered. Self-observation – not naive introspection but with training and experimental control of conditions. Experiment – this was meant with reference to Francis Bacon – general, i.e. far beyond the scientific rules of the empirical sciences, so not necessarily a statistically evaluated laboratory experiment.Wundt: Über Ausfrageexperimente, 1907, p. 301ff For Wundt psychological experimentation primarily served as a check of trained self-observation. Element – not in the sense of the smallest structure, but as a smallest unit of the intended level under consideration, so that, for example, even the central nervous system could be an "element". Völkerpsychologie – cultural psychology – not ethnology. Apperception – not just an increase in attention, but a central and multimodal synthesis. Voluntaristic tendency, voluntarism – not an absolute metaphysical postulate, but a primary empirically psychologically based accentuation of motivated action against the intellectualism and cognitivism of other psychologists.