The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

--William James

Best Known For:

Pragmatism

Functionalism

James-Lange Theory of Emotion

Often called the father of American psychology

Timeline of Events:

Born January 11, 1842 in New York City.

1869 - Received M.D. from Harvard.

1875 - Began teaching psychology at Harvard.

1882 - Death of William's father, Henry James Sr.

1890 - Published The Principles of Psychology.

1892 - Turned lab over to Hugo Munsterberg.

1897 - Published Will to Believe and Other Essays

1907 - Published Pragmatism and officially resigned from Harvard.

Died August 26, 1910 at the age of 68.

William James - Early Life:
William James was born into an affluent family. His father was deeply interested in
philosophy and theology and strove to provide his children with a rich education.
The James children traveled to Europe frequently, attended the best possible schools,
and were immersed in culture and art, which apparently paid off - William James went
on to become one of the most important figures in psychology, while brother Henry
James became one of the most acclaimed American novelists.
Early in school, James expressed an interest in becoming a painter. While Henry James
Sr. was known as an unusually permissive and liberal father, he wanted William to study
science or philosophy. Only after William persisted in his interest did Henry permit his
son to formally study painting.

After studying painting with the artist William Morris Hunt for more than a year, James
abandoned his dream of being a painter and enrolled at Harvard to study chemistry.
While two of James' brothers enlisted to serve in the American Civil War, William and
Henry did not due to health problems.
Career:
As the family money began to dwindle, William realized he would need to support
himself and switched to Harvard Medical School.
Unhappy with medicine as well, he left on an expedition with naturalist Louis Agassiz,
although the experience was not a happy one. "I was, body and soul, in a more
indescribably hopeless, homeless and friendless state than I ever want to be in again,"
he later wrote.
Suffering from health problems and severe depression, James spent the next two years
in France and Germany. It was during this time that he studied with Hermann von
Helmholtz and became increasingly interested in psychology.
After graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1869, James continued to sink into
depression. After a period of inactivity, the president of Harvard offered James a
position as an instructor. While he famously commented that "the first lecture on
psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave," James accepted the job and went
on to teach at Harvard for the next 35 years. James also founded one of the first
psychology laboratoriesin the United States.
His classic textbook The Principles of Psychology (1890) was widely acclaimed, but
some were critical of James' personal, literary tone. "It is literature,"
psychologist Wilhelm Wundtfamously commented, "it is beautiful, but it is not
psychology." Two years later, James published a condensed version of the work
titled Psychology: The Briefer Course. The two books were widely used by students of
psychology and were known to most as "the James" and "the Jimmy" respectively.
William James - Theory:

Pragmatism
James wrote considerably on the concept of pragmatism. According to pragmatism, the
truth of an idea can never be proven. James proposed we instead focus on what he
called the "cash value," or usefulness, of an idea.

Functionalism

James opposed the structuralist focus on introspection and breaking down mental
events to the smallest elements. Instead, James focused on the wholeness of an event,
taking into the impact of the environment on behavior.
James-Lange Theory of Emotion

The James-Lange theory of emotion proposes that an event triggers a physiological

reaction, which we then interpret. According to this theory, emotions are caused by our
interpretations of these physiological reactions. Both James and the Danish physiologist
Carl Lange independently proposed the theory.

Influence on Psychology
In addition to his own enormous influence, many of James' students went on to have
prosperous and influential career in psychology. Some of James' students
included Mary Whiton Calkins, Edward Thorndike, G. Stanley Hall and John Dewey.

Selected Works by William James

James, William (1890) The Principles of Psychology. Classics in the History of

Psychology, an internet resource developed by Christopher D. Green of York University,

Toronto, Ontario.

James, William (1897) The Will to Believe

James, William (1907) Pragmatism: A new name for some old ways of
thinking. New York: Longman Green and Co.

Biographies of William James

Myers, Gerald. (2001) William James: His Life and Thought. Yale University

Press.

Simon, Linda (1999) Genuine Reality: A Life of William James. University Of

Chicago Press.

Ernst Weber - One of the Founder of Psychophysics

ERNST
WEBER
Ernst
Heinrich
Weber
(June 24 1795, Wittenberg, Germany -January 26 1878, Leipzig, Germany )
Nationality: Germany
Category: Scientists
Occupation: Physiologist,
psychologist.
Specification: One of the founder of Psychophysics, predecessor of experimental
psychology.
Gender: Male
Major works: Anatomia comparata nervi sympatici(1817); De aure et auditu hominis et
animalium (1820); Tractatus de motuiridis (1822), "Der Tastsinn und das Gemeingefhl
"(1851); The Sense of Touch and the Common Sensibility

Achievements:

Ernst Weber was a German physiologist and Psychologist. He was regarded as a

predecessor of experimental psychology and One of the founder of Psychophysics, the
branch of psychology that studies the relations between physical stimuli and mental states.
He is known chiefly for his work on investigation of subjective sensory response (sensations)
to the impact of external physical stimuli: weight, temperature, and pressure.
Weber experimentally determined the accuracy of tactile sensations, namely, the distance

between two points on the skin, in which a person can perceive two separate touches. He
discovered the two-point threshold - the distance on the skin separating two pointed
stimulators that is required to experience two rather than one point of stimulation.
In 1834 he conducted research on the lifting of weights. From his researches he discovered
that the experience of differences in the intensity of sensations depends on percentage
differences in the stimuli rather than absolute differences. This is known as the justnoticeable
difference
(jnd),
difference
threshold,
or
limen.
Similar observations were made on other senses, including sight and hearing.
He formulated the Weber's law-(I/I = k -constant), where I is the original intensity of
stimulation, I is the addition to it required for the difference to be perceived , and k is a
constant is known as Weber's constant. For lifting weights, the ratio was one to 40. That is,
for any standard unit of 40, subjects would notice a difference if one more unit were added
to
the
weight.
The constant is different for each sense (for intensity of light-1/100, sound-1/10).
Weber also described a absolute threshold for all senses, is the smallest detectable level of
a stimulus.

Life:

He was born at Wittenberg in Germany. His father was Michael Weber, a professor of
theology.
Weber was the eldest of three brothers who all made important contributions to science.
Weber learned Latin in secondary school, and began to study medicine in 1811 at the
University
of Wittenberg. He received his doctor of medicine degree M.D. from this University in 1815,
specializing
in
comparative
anatomy.
In 1818 he was appointed Associate Professor of comparative anatomy at Leipzig University,
where he was made a Fellow Professor of anatomy and physiology in 1821. Weber was a
professor
at
the
University
of
Leipzig
from
1818
until
1871.
In 1821 he was the chair of human anatomy which in 1840 was joined with physiology and in
1865
chair
of
physiology
relinquished
to
Carl
Ludwig.
Around 1860 Weber worked with Gustav Fechner on psychophysics, during which time he
formulated
Weber's
Law.
Zest: Webers works was considered by the English-American psychologist E.B. Titchener
to
be
the
foundation
stone
of
experimental
psychology.
Weber was the third of 13 children. With his brother Eduard Friedrich Weber, 1806-71, he
discovered the inhibitory power of the vagus nerve (1845). With another brother, Wilhelm
Eduard Weber , 1804-91, German physicist he made studies of acoustics and wave motion.
He wrote (1825) a book on wave motion. Also his brothers together made a study of
walking.
He was the Foreign Corresponding Member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences
(1869).
Especially important was his transfer of experimental methods of physiology in the
psychology field.

Wilhelm Wundt
by Saul McLeod

published 2008

Wilhelm Wundt opened the Institute for Experimental Psychology at the University of Leipzig
in Germany in 1879. This was the first laboratory dedicated to psychology, and its opening
is usually thought of as the beginning of modern psychology. Indeed, Wundt is often
regarded as thefather of psychology.
Wundt was important because he separated psychology from philosophy by analyzing the
workings of the mind in a more structured way, with the emphasis being on objective
measurement and control.
This laboratory became a focus for those with a serious interest in psychology, first for
German philosophers and psychology students, then for American and British students as
well. All subsequent psychological laboratories were closely modeled in their early years on
the Wundt model.
Wundt's background was in physiology, and this was reflected in the topics with
which the Institute was concerned, such as the study of reaction times and sensory
processes and attention. For example, participants would be exposed to a standard
stimulus (e.g. a light or the sound of a metronome) and asked to report their
sensations.

Wundt's aim was to record thoughts and sensations, and to analyze them into their
constituent elements, in much the same way as chemist analyses chemical compounds, in
order to get at the underlying structure. The school of psychology founded by Wundt is
known as voluntarism, the processing of organizing the mind.
During his academic career Wundt trained 186 graduate students (116 in psychology). This
is significant as it helped disseminate his work. Indeed, parts of Wundt's theory were
developed and promoted by his one-time student, Edward Titchener, who described his
system asStructuralism, or the analysis of the basic elements that constitute the mind.
Wundt wanted to study the structure of the human mind (using
introspection).Wundt believed in reductionism. That is he believed consciousness
could be broken down (or reduced) to its basic elements without sacrificing any of
the properties of the whole.

Wundt argued that conscious mental states could be scientifically studied

using introspection. Wundts introspection was not a causal affair but a highly practiced
form of self-examination. He trained psychology students to make observations that were
biased by personal interpretation or previous experience, and used the results to develop a
theory of conscious thought.
Highly trained assistants would be given a stimulus such as a ticking metronome and would
reflect on the experience. They would report what the stimulus made them think and feel.
The same stimulus, physical surroundings and instructions were given to each person.
Wundt's method of introspection did not remain a fundamental tool of psychological
experimentation past the early 1920's. His greatest contribution was to show that
psychology could be a valid experimental science.
Therefore, one way Wundt contributed to the development of psychology was to do his
research in carefully controlled conditions, i.e. experimental methods. This encouraged
other researchers such as the behaviorists to follow the same experimental approach and
be more scientific. However, today psychologists (e.g. Skinner) argue that introspection was
not really scientific even if the methods used to introspect were. Skinner claims the results
of introspection are subjective and cannot be verified because only observable behavior can
be objectively measured.
Wundt concentrated on three areas of mental functioning; thoughts, images and feelings.
These are the basic areas studied today in cognitive psychology. This means that the study
ofperceptual processes can be traced back to Wundt. Wundts work stimulated interest in
cognitive psychology.
On the basis of his work, and the influence it had on psychologists who were to follow
him, Wundt can be regarded as the founder of experimental psychology, so securing
his place in the history of psychology. At the same time, Wundt himself believed that the
experimental approach was limited in scope, and that other methods would be necessary if
all aspects of human psychology were to be investigated.