Wilhelm M Wundt - Collected Quotes

"Hence, even in the domain of natural science the aid of the experimental method becomes indispensable whenever the problem set is the analysis of transient and impermanent phenomena, and not merely the observation of persistent and relatively constant objects." (Wilhelm Wundt, "Principles of Physiological Psychology", 1874)

"The materialistic point of view in psychology can claim, at best, only the value of an heuristic hypothesis." (Wilhelm Wundt, "Principles of Physiological Psychology", 1874)

“Memory-images, it is true, cannot be directly aroused through external sense impressions, but follow them after a longer or shorter interval. Still, it is obvious that their attributes, and especially their relation to the primary ideas through direct impressions, can be most accurately be learned, not by waiting for their chance arrival, but by using such memory-ideas as may be aroused in a systematic, experimental way, through immediately preceding impressions.” (Wilhelm M Wundt, “Outlines of Psychology”, 1897)

"Now the word-symbols of conceptual ideas have passed so long from hand to hand in the service of the understanding, that they have gradually lost all such fanciful reference." (Wilhelm M Wundt, “Outlines of Psychology”, 1897)

"The endeavour to observe oneself must inevitably introduce changes into the course of mental events, - changes which could not have occurred without it, and whose usual consequence is that the very process which was to have been observed disappears from consciousness." (Wilhelm M Wundt, “Outlines of Psychology”, 1897)

"The whole task of psychology can therefore be summed up in these two problems : (1) What are the elements of consciousness ? (2) What combinations do these elements undergo and what laws govern these combinations?" (Wilhelm M Wundt, “Outlines of Psychology”, 1897)

"We call that psychical process, which is operative in the clear perception of a narrow region of the content of consciousness, attention." (Wilhelm M Wundt, “Outlines of Psychology”, 1897)