Gustav Theodor Fechner (April 19, 1801 – November 28, 1887), was a
GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
experimental
psychologistA psychologist is someone who studies the human mind and behavior. Research psychologists study human perception, cognition, attention, emotion, motivation, personality, behavior and interpersonal relationships...
. An early pioneer in experimental psychology and founder of
psychophysicsPsychophysics is a discipline within psychology that investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and their subjective correlates, or percepts...
, he inspired many 20th century scientists and philosophers. He is also credited with demonstrating the non-linear relationship between psychological sensation and the physical intensity of a stimulus via the formula: "
S =
K Log
I".
He was born at
Groß SärchenŻarki Wielkie is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Trzebiel, within Żary County, Lubusz Voivodeship, in western Poland, close to the German border. It lies approximately south-west of Trzebiel, west of Żary, and south-west of Zielona Góra.Before 1945 the area was part of...
, near Muskau, in
Lower LusatiaLower Lusatia is a historical region stretching from the southeast of the Brandenburg state of Germany to the southwest of the Lubusz Voivodeship in Poland. Important towns beside the historic capital Lübben include Calau, Cottbus, Guben , Luckau, Spremberg, Finsterwalde, Senftenberg and Żary...
, where his father was
pastorThe term pastor usually refers to an ordained person within a Christian church. In some countries the term is more usually used in traditional Protestant churches but is also used in reference to priests and bishops within the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox churches. The...
.
Gustav Theodor Fechner (April 19, 1801 – November 28, 1887), was a
GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
experimental
psychologistA psychologist is someone who studies the human mind and behavior. Research psychologists study human perception, cognition, attention, emotion, motivation, personality, behavior and interpersonal relationships...
. An early pioneer in experimental psychology and founder of
psychophysicsPsychophysics is a discipline within psychology that investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and their subjective correlates, or percepts...
, he inspired many 20th century scientists and philosophers. He is also credited with demonstrating the non-linear relationship between psychological sensation and the physical intensity of a stimulus via the formula: "
S =
K Log
I".
He was born at
Groß SärchenŻarki Wielkie is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Trzebiel, within Żary County, Lubusz Voivodeship, in western Poland, close to the German border. It lies approximately south-west of Trzebiel, west of Żary, and south-west of Zielona Góra.Before 1945 the area was part of...
, near Muskau, in
Lower LusatiaLower Lusatia is a historical region stretching from the southeast of the Brandenburg state of Germany to the southwest of the Lubusz Voivodeship in Poland. Important towns beside the historic capital Lübben include Calau, Cottbus, Guben , Luckau, Spremberg, Finsterwalde, Senftenberg and Żary...
, where his father was
pastorThe term pastor usually refers to an ordained person within a Christian church. In some countries the term is more usually used in traditional Protestant churches but is also used in reference to priests and bishops within the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox churches. The...
. He was educated at Sorau and
DresdenDresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
and at the
University of LeipzigThe University of Leipzig , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest universities in Europe and the second-oldest university in Germany...
, the city in which he spent the rest of his life. In 1834 he was appointed professor of
physicsPhysics is a natural science; it is the study of matter and its motion through spacetime and all that derives from these, such as energy and force...
, but in 1839 contracted an eye disorder while studying the phenomena of
colorColor or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, yellow, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors...
and
visionVisual perception is the ability to interpret information and surroundings from visible light reaching the eye. The resulting perception is also known as eyesight, sight or vision...
, and, after much suffering, resigned. Subsequently recovering, he turned to the study of the
mindMind is the aspect of intellect and consciousness experienced as combinations of thought, perception, memory, emotion, will and imagination, including all unconscious cognitive processes. The term is often used to refer, by implication, to the thought processes of reason. Mind manifests itself...
and its relations with the body, giving public lectures on the subjects dealt with in his books.
Contributions
Gustav Fechner published chemical and physical papers, and translated chemical works by J. B. Biot and
Louis Jacques ThénardLouis Jacques Thénard , was a French chemist.His father, a poor peasant, managed to have him educated at the academy of Sens, and sent him at the age of sixteen to study pharmacy in Paris. There he attended the lectures of Antoine François Fourcroy and Louis Nicolas Vauquelin...
from the
French languageFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
. A different but essential side of his character is seen in his poems and humorous pieces, such as the
Vergleichende Anatomie der Engel (1825), written under the pseudonym of "Dr. Mises."
Fechner's epoch-making work was his
Elemente der Psychophysik (1860). He starts from the
monisticMonism is any philosophical view which holds that there is unity in a given field of inquiry, where this is not to be expected. Thus, some philosophers may hold that the Universe is really just one thing, despite its many appearances and diversities; or theology may support the view that there is...
thought that bodily facts and conscious facts, though not reducible one to the other, are different sides of one reality. His originality lies in trying to discover an exact mathematical relation between them. The most famous outcome of his inquiries is the law known as the
Weber–Fechner lawThe Weber–Fechner law attempts to describe the relationship between the physical magnitudes of stimuli and the perceived intensity of the stimuli. Ernst Heinrich Weber was one of the first people to approach the study of the human response to a physical stimulus in a quantitative fashion...
which may be expressed as follows:
- "In order that the intensity of a sensation may increase in arithmetical progression, the stimulus must increase in geometrical progression."
Though holding good within certain limits only, the law has been found to be immensely useful. Fechner's law implies that sensation is a logarithmic function of physical intensity, which is impossible due to the logarithm's singularity at zero; therefore,
S. S. StevensS. S. Stevens may refer to:* Stanley Smith Stevens, an american psychologist* SS Stevens, a ship used as a floating dormitory...
proposed the more mathematically plausible power-law relation of sensation to intensity in his famous paper entitled "To Honor Fechner and Repeal His Law."
Fechner's general formula for getting at the number of units in any sensation is
S =
c log
R, where
S stands for the sensation,
R for the stimulus numerically estimated, and
c for a constant that must be separately determined by experiment in each particular order of sensibility. Fechner's reasoning has been criticized on the grounds that although stimuli are composite, sensations are not. "Every sensation," says
William JamesWilliam James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher trained as a medical doctor. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and the philosophy of pragmatism...
, "presents itself as an indivisible unit; and it is quite impossible to read any clear meaning into the notion that they are masses of units combined."
He also studied the still-mysterious perceptual illusion of
Fechner colorFechner color is an illusion of color seen when looking at certain rapidly changing or moving black-and-white patterns. They are also called pattern induced flicker colors . Not everyone sees the same colors....
, whereby colors are seen in a moving pattern of black and white.
Fechner introduced the
medianIn probability theory and statistics, a median is described as the number separating the higher half of a sample, a population, or a probability distribution, from the lower half. The median of a finite list of numbers can be found by arranging all the observations from lowest value to highest...
into the formal analysis of data.
Influence
Fechner, along with
Wilhelm WundtWilhelm Maximilian Wundt was a German medical doctor, psychologist, physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the founding figures of modern psychology. He is widely regarded as the "father of experimental psychology"...
and Hermann Helmholtz is recognized as one of the founders of modern, experimental
psychologyPsychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...
. His clearest contribution was the demonstration that because the mind was susceptible to measurement and mathematical treatment, psychology had the potential to become a quantified science. Theorists such as
Immanuel KantImmanuel Kant was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg...
had long stated that this was impossible, and that therefore, a science of psychology was also impossible.
Though he had a vast influence on
psychophysicsPsychophysics is a discipline within psychology that investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and their subjective correlates, or percepts...
, the disciples of his general philosophy were few. Among them, however, was
William JamesWilliam James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher trained as a medical doctor. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and the philosophy of pragmatism...
, who, in 1904, wrote an admiring introduction to the English translation of Fechner's
Büchlein vom Leben nach dem Tode (
Little Book of Life After Death). Fechner's world concept was highly animistic. He felt the thrill of life everywhere, in plants, earth, stars, the total universe. Man stands midway between the souls of plants and the souls of stars, who are angels. God, the soul of the universe, must be conceived as having an existence analogous to men. Natural laws are just the modes of the unfolding of God's perfection. In his last work Fechner, aged but full of hope, contrasts this joyous "daylight view" of the world with the dead, dreary "night view" of
materialismThe philosophy of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance. As a theory, materialism is a form of physicalism and belongs to the...
. Fechner's work in
aestheticsAesthetics is commonly known as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
is also important. He conducted experiments to show that certain abstract forms and proportions are naturally pleasing to our senses, and gave some new illustrations of the working of aesthetic association.
Charles HartshorneCharles Hartshorne was a prominent American philosopher who concentrated primarily on the philosophy of religion and metaphysics. He developed the neoclassical idea of God and produced a modal proof of the existence of God that was a development of St. Anselm's Ontological Argument...
saw him as a predecessor on his and
Alfred North WhiteheadAlfred North Whitehead, OM was an English mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education. He co-authored the epochal Principia Mathematica with Bertrand Russell.-Life:Whitehead was born in...
's philosophy and regretted that Fechner's philosophical work had been neglected for so long.
Fechner's position in reference to predecessors and contemporaries is not very sharply defined. He was remotely a disciple of
SchellingNotable people with the last name of Schelling include:* Ernest Schelling, American composer* Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, German philosopher* Thomas Schelling, American economist and Nobel laureate...
, learnt much from Benedict de Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,
Johann Friedrich HerbartJohann Friedrich Herbart was a German philosopher, psychologist, and founder of pedagogy as an academic discipline....
,
Arthur SchopenhauerArthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his atheistic pessimism and philosophical clarity...
, and
Christian Hermann WeisseChristian Hermann Weisse , was a German Protestant religious philosopher.He was born at Leipzig, and studied at the university there, at first adhering to the Hegelian school of philosophy. In the course of time, his ideas changed, and became close to those of Schelling in his later years. He...
, and decidedly rejected
Georg HegelGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism, and along with Immanuel Kant, one of the most influential philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment....
and the
monadMonad may refer to:In philosophy:*Monad a term used by ancient philosophers Pythagoras, Parmenides, Xenophanes, Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus as a term for God or the first being, or the totality of all being....
ism of
Rudolf Hermann LotzeRudolf Hermann Lotze , was a German philosopher and logician. He also had a medical degree and was unusually well versed in biology. He argued that if the physical world is governed by mechanical laws, relations and developments in the universe could be explained as the functioning of a world mind...
.
Works
Further reading
- Heidelberger, M. (2001) Gustav Theodor Fechner, Statisticians of the Centuries (ed. C. C. Heyde and E. Seneta) pp. 142–147. New York: Springer.
- Michael Heidelberger. Nature From Within: Gustav Theodor Fechner and his Psychophysical Worldview Trans. Cynthia Klohr. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004.
- Stephen M Stigler. The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1986. pp. 242–254.
External links