Nature From Within: Gustav Theodor Fechner And His Psychophysical Worldview

by Michael Heidelberger

University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004
Cloth: 978-0-8229-4210-8 | Paper: 978-0-8229-6547-3 | eISBN: 978-0-8229-7077-4
Library of Congress Classification B3237.H4513 2004
Dewey Decimal Classification 193

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-1887) was a German physicist, psychologist, and philosopher, best known to historians of science as the founder of psychophysics, the experimental study of the relation between mental and physical processes. Michael Heidelberger's exhaustive exploration of Fechner's writings, in relation to current issues in the field, successfully reestablishes Fechner's place in the history and philosophy of science.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Michael Heidelberger, emeritus professor of logic and philosophy at the University of Tübingen, is the author of numerous works on the philosophy of science.

Cynthia Klohr (translator) taught philosophy for many years at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. She has translated books in philosophy, psychology, the history and theory of science, human rights, music, and cultural history.

REVIEWS

"A brilliant book. . . . No historian of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German science and philosophy can afford to ignore it." —British Journal for the History of Science

“A clear, comprehensive, and rigorous treatment of the philosophical basis for Fechner’s thought, including, importantly, the way in which he was able to reconcile apparently divergent intellectual themes in his philosophical and scientific writing.” —Isis

“Almost mandatory reading as it provides many new historical insights that are quite significant for contemporary philosophy of science.” —Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook

TABLE OF CONTENTS

<Heidelberger, Contents>
<p. v, no folio, p. vii, cont'd or blank>
Contents
<BR><HR><BR>
<TOC>
Preface	000
Introduction	000
Part I
History
<BR><HR><BR>
<TOC>
Chapter One: Life and Work	000
1.1 Ancestry and Early Years	000
1.2 Oken's and Schelling's Philosophies of Nature	000
1.3 Turning to Physics and Overcoming Philosophy of Nature	000
1.4 Herbart's Psychology	000
1.5 The Aesthetic and Romantic View of Nature	000
1.6 The Philosophy of Late Idealism	000
1.7 Beginning Philosophical Work	000
1.8 Illness	000
1.9 The Day View's Origins	000
1.10 Written Work after 1851	000
1.11 The Day View as Contrasted with the Night View	000
1.12 Fechner's Life after Recovery	000
Part II
Philosophy
<BR><HR><BR>
<TOC>
Chapter Two: Nonreductive Materialism	000
2.1 Knowing and Believing	000
2.2 Fechner's Mind-Body Theory: "The Identity View"	000
<BR><HR><BR>
<TOC>
Chapter Three: Philosophy of Nature	000
3.1 Philosophy of Nature and "Belief"	000
3.2 Psychical Phenomena as Functional States	000
3.3 The Day View as Scientific Identity Philosophy	000
3.4 Direct Realism: The Objective Reality of Phenomena	000
3.5 Further Implications of the Day View
Part III
Day View Science
<BR><HR><BR>
<TOC>
Chapter Four: Scientific Realism and the Reality of Atoms	000
4.1 Fechner's Early Writing on Atomism	000
4.2 The "Theory of Atoms"	000
4.3 Realism Includes Phenomenalism	000
4.4 Mach Turns to Anti-Atomism	000
<BR><HR><BR>
<TOC>
Chapter Five: Psychophysical Parallelism: The Mind-Body Problem	000
5.1 Psychophysical Parallelism Dates Back to the 1850s	000
5.2 Psychophysical Parallelism from Fechner to Feigl	000
5.3 Schlick and Carnap Enter the Scene	000
5.4 Psychophysical Parallelism in the United States: Herbert Feigl	000
<BR><HR><BR>
<TOC>
Chapter Six: Psychophysics: Measuring the Mental	000
6.1 Basic Concepts	000
6.2 The General Principle of Measurement and Measuring Sensation	000
6.3 Applying the Principle of Measurement to Gauging Sensations	000
6.4 Objections to Quantifying Psychical Phenomena	000
6.5 Ernst Mach's Theory of Measurement	000
6.6 Measurement Theory and the Day View	000
<BR><HR><BR>
<TOC>
Chapter Seven: Self-Organization and Irreversibility: Order Originating from Chaos	000
7.1 Life and Organic Development	000
7.2 The Philosophical and the Scientific Context	000
7.3 From Fechner to Freud and Peirce	000
7.4 Self-Organization Today	000
<BR><HR><BR>
<TOC>
Chapter Eight: Indeterminism: From Freedom to the Laws of Chance	000
8.1 Fechner's Indeterminism	000
8.2 Excursus I: Freedom and Physiology	000
8.3 Excursus II: Epigenesis and Philosophy of History	000
8.4 "Collective Objects"	000
8.5 From Fechner to Von Mises	000
<BR><HR><BR>
<TOC>
Conclusion	000
Appendix	000
Notes	000
Bibliography	000
Index	000
 

Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: Fechner, Gustav Theodor, 1801-1887

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