Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt is known as the “father of experimental psychology” and the founder of the first psychology laboratory. From there, Wundt exerted enormous influence on the development of psychology as a discipline, especially in the United States. His writings, totalling an estimated 53,000 pages, include articles on animal and human physiology, poisons, vision, spiritualism, hypnotism, history, and politics; textand handbooks of “medical physics” and human physiology; encyclopaedic tomes on linguistics, logic, ethics, religion, a “system of philosophy;” not to mention his magna opera, the Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie and the Völkerpsychologie (in ten volumes). Although his work spans several disciplines physiology, psychology and philosophy Wundt would not have considered himself an “interdisciplinary” or “pluralistic” thinker: he was to the core a foundationalist whose great ambition was to establish a philosophico-scientific system of knowledge, practice, and politics. Despite his intentions, however, the sheer length of his career (some 65 years) and the volume of his output make it hard to speak of a coherent Wundtian doctrine. His corpus is riven by tensions and ambiguities, and though his work has undergone periodic scholarly reconsiderations, Wundt’s lasting importance for the field of psychology remains the topic of lively debate among psychologists. Not only was he a powerful influence (albeit mostly by repulsion) upon the founders of Pragmatism, Phenomenology, and neo-Kantianism, it was also Wundt and his pioneering students who developed the empirical methodologies that first granted psychology a disciplinary identity distinct from philosophy.