Wilhelm Wundt and the Emergence of Experimental Psychology

Abstract

The name of Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) remains indissolubly linked to the origins of experimental psychology. This is so even though he cannot be credited with a single significant scientific discovery, any genuine methodological innovation or any influential theoretical generalisation. Recognition on such grounds is far more readily granted to other German experimentalists of the second half of the nineteenth century for their contributions to the emerging field of experimental psychology. Among these it is appropriate to mention Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–87), the inventor of the field of psychophysics with its ‘psychophysical methods’, Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–94), remembered for his monumental work on vision and hearing; and Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909), who pioneered the experimental study of memory.

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