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Fechner: |
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Historian of psychology, Boring
wrote that "’Ķpsychologists’Ķ seldom miss noting the date when 22 October
comes around", for it is on this day that Fechner turned psychology into
an exact science. Read more about the fascinating story of the man who set
out to achieve one goal, actually achieved another’Ķ. Gustav Theodor Fechner was born in
1801 in a little village in southeastern Germany. His father, a pastor, was a
man of independence of thought and of receptivity to new ideas. He shocked
the villagers by preaching without a wig, and having a lightening-rod placed upon
the church tower in the days when this precaution was regarded as a lack of
faith in God's care. One can thus see in the father an anticipation of
Fechner's own traits, but there can have been little, if any, direct
influence of this sort, for the father died when Fechner was only five years
old. In spite of poverty Fechner went to Leipzig University in 1817 to study
medicine. After he had qualified in 1822 he ceased to be interested in the
unscientific medical knowledge of the time and turned to physics and
mathematics. He lived by translating French scientific handbooks into German.
This work won him a teaching appointment in physics, and until 1839 he
pursued a highly successful career as a physicist. During this time three other
interests were emerging. Under the nom de plume of Dr. Mises, he began a
series of essays on various topics, the first of which was: Proof that the
Moon is Made of Iodine, 1821. There was also his growing interest in
sense-physiology, and presently his papers on subjective colours and
afterimages in 1838 and 1840. It must have been then that he permanently
injured his eyesight by gazing too long at the sun through coloured glasses.
This eye trouble seems to have coincided with a psychological disorder. This
period is spoken of as the 'crisis' in Fechner's life, and it had a profound
effect upon his thought and life thereafter. For three years Fechner lived as a
hermit in a darkened room. He could not concentrate or control his attention
or thinking. During this protracted illness and withdrawal from academic
activity Fechner became deeply religious. He turned to metaphysical
philosophy, became interested in spiritualism and was obsessed with the idea
that all forms of materialism were evil. In 1848 he published Nanna oder das
Seelenleben der Pflanzen, a volume named for the goddess of flowers, in which
he argued for the mental life of plants. Fechner's philosophy won him little
respect among the scientists, nor any great acclaim by the philosophers. Fechner attacked the materialist
'night view' of existence, and argued that the soul and its future beyond the
material world was the only reality. To discover a way to refute
materialism--the explanation of all phenomena in terms of physics and
chemistry--became his mission in life. His method was to prove that physical
aspects of the world are 'fictitious' and that mental events (and the
attributes of immortal and immaterial spirit) are the sole reality. On that now famous morning of October
22, 1850, while lying in bed and thinking about his problem, Fechner had an
inspiration. He argued, illogically, that since conscious events (mental
states) are correlated with events in the brain and nervous system, then if
only one could establish a relationship between the two in the form of an equation
(making 'a relative increase in bodily energy the measure of the increase in
the corresponding mental intensity') this would abolish materialism. The
problem then became: how can sensations be measured? We can measure
attributes of a stimulus (a beam of light, a tone, weight), but how can the
sensations resulting from light, sound or pressure be measured? How to make such measurements, as
part of a metaphysical attack on materialism, was considered in a programme
of experimental research which Fechner called 'psychophysics'. During the
1850s he carried out a massive project of experimental research. In 1860 the
results of this work appeared as Elemente der Psychophysik. It is conceivable that the Elemente
might have fallen flat, as the laborious production of a queer old mystic in
Leipzig who went to endless pains to prove a point that most wise men do not
believe. The times, however, were ripe for psychophysics. The main upshot was
the development of statistical and experimental techniques which were sufficiently
rigorous and sophisticated to substantiate the claim that psychological
variables could not merely be investigated through the experimental methods
of the physical sciences, but could also be measured. The essential
conditions for the foundation of an experimental science of human nature had
been achieved. It is one of the paradoxes in the
history of science that the development of one of the most quantitatively
sound techniques in experimental psychology was devised by a mystic obsessed
by religious ideals and living in an other-worldly atmosphere, for the
purpose of refuting a doctrine widely held by men of science. However,
Fechner's life, before his breakdown in 1839 and subsequent 'conversion',
proved him to be a man of considerable scientific genius, and it is only
surprising that the greatest fruits of this ability came to maturity in such
circumstances. Bibliography: Boring, E. G. (1961). History,
Psychology, and Science: Selected Papers. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Sexton, V. S., & Misiak, H.
(1971). Historical Perspectives in Psychology: Readings. Belmont, California: Brooks/Cole Publishing
Company. Thomson, R. (1968). The Pelican
History of Psychology.
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books. |