within certain limits. This problem gave rise to a long controversy. Fechner founded experimental psychology by means of this hypothesis. He participated in this controversy with a number of articles even into his old age, but always in a serious and chivalrous spirit. But it has become more and more apparent that Fechner's law, so far as it applies at all, expresses the relation of the psychical process (sensation) and the external stimulus, but not the relation of the psychical process and the brain process, which is apparently much more directly proportional. This conception would also agree better with Fechner's hypothesis of identity (and with his excellent illustrations).
In addition to his famous masterpiece Fechner produced two more scientific works of importance: Über die physikalische, und philosophische, Atomenlehre, (1855), in which he assumes a position similar to that of Lotze with respect to the atom-concept, and Vorschule der Æsthetik (1876), in which he treats a number of æsthetic problems empirically.
W. Wundt has written an excellent essay on the inherent consistency of Fechner's intellectual labors (Gustav Theodor Fechner, Rede zur Feier seines hundertjährigen Geburtsstages, 1901').
4. William Wundt (born 1832[1], professor of physiology at Heidelberg, afterwards professor of philosophy at Zürich and since then, 1874, Leipzig) passed to philosophy from physiology, induced partly by psychological and partly by epistemological motives. After he had made the change, new motives impressed him, especially the effort to elaborate a theory of the universe and of life at once satisfying to the affections and the intellect. Wundt's final theory, according to his own
- ↑ Died 1920
