PSYC 1030H Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Wilhelm Wundt, Experimental Psychology, Psychometrics
21 Apr 2019
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Importance of mathematics: for him, science has to be mathematical, but he couldn"t believe psychology could be a science, because minds can"t be studied by methods of science. It can"t be reduced to mathematics: mental phenomena, have no spatial dimension, are too short in time to be observed, can"t be experimentally manipulated. Hermann von helmholtz (1821-1894: took up challenge of attempting to study minds mathematically, for much of his career, he conducted studies on physiological of optics and acoustics, he also was a leading physicist (law of conservation of mass) What about the history of psychology: one of his most important contributions was measurement of speed of the nervous impulse. In 1857, he gotten assistantship to work with helmholtz: while working as assistant, wundt gave first course in psychology as natural science in 1862. In 1873, he published first editions of his fundamental work: principles of physiological.
