An Introduction to Psychology: Translated from the Second German EditionWundt, Wilhelm Max
Science
An Introduction to Psychology: Translated from the Second German Edition
Wundt, Wilhelm Max
Educational psychology; Psychology
Many attempts have been made to investigate the processes of thought
in other ways than in the way described above. At first it was
thought that the surest way would be to take as a foundation for the
psychological analysis of the thought-processes the laws of logical
thinking, as they had been laid down from the time of Aristotle by
the science of logic. Scholastic philosophy showed great subtlety in
this direction in changing psychical processes into logical judgments
and conclusions, and there are still followers of this direction
at the present day. Starting with the thought-processes in the
narrow meaning of the word, this logical explanation of everything
psychical was allowed to spread over to associations, the processes
of sense-perception, the pure sensations, feelings, emotions, &c., so
that in this old scholastic psychology the human consciousness was in
danger of becoming a scholastic philosopher, who regulated each of
his actions according to the laws of logic. Now such laws are a late
product of scientific thinking, which presupposes a long history of
thinking determined by a number of specific factors. These norms, even
for the fully-developed consciousness, only apply to a small part of
the thought-processes. Any attempt to explain, out of these norms,
thought in the psychological sense of the word can only lead to an
entanglement of the real facts in a net of logical reflections. We can
in fact say of such attempts, that measured by results they have been
absolutely fruitless. They have disregarded the psychical processes
themselves, and have gained nothing at all for the interpretation of
the laws of logic simply because they saw in them the primitive facts
of consciousness itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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