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Gustav Theodor Fechner (; ; 19 April 1801 – 18 November 1887) was a German
physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
,
philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
, and experimental
psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the pre ...
. A pioneer in
experimental psychology Experimental psychology refers to work done by those who apply experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ human participants and animal subjects to study a great many topics, in ...
and founder of
psychophysics Psychophysics quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they produce. Psychophysics has been described as "the scientific study of the relation between stimulus and sensation" or, ...
(techniques for measuring the
mind The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
), he inspired many 20th-century scientists and philosophers. He is also credited with demonstrating the non-linear relationship between psychological
sensation Sensation (psychology) refers to the processing of the senses by the sensory system. Sensation or sensations may also refer to: In arts and entertainment In literature * Sensation (fiction), a fiction writing mode * Sensation novel, a Briti ...
and the physical intensity of a stimulus via the formula: S = K \ln I, which became known as the
Weber–Fechner law The Weber–Fechner laws are two related hypotheses in the field of psychophysics, known as Weber's law and Fechner's law. Both laws relate to human perception, more specifically the relation between the actual change in a physical stimulus a ...
.


Early life and scientific career

Fechner was born at Groß Särchen, near
Muskau Bad Muskau (; formerly ''Muskau'', hsb, Mužakow, pl, Mużaków, cs, Mužakov) is a spa town in the historic Upper Lusatia region in Germany, at the border with Poland. It is part of the Görlitz district in the State of Saxony. It is lo ...
, in
Lower Lusatia Lower Lusatia (; ; ; szl, Dolnŏ Łużyca; ; ) is a historical region in Central Europe, stretching from the southeast of the German state of Brandenburg to the southwest of Lubusz Voivodeship in Poland. Like adjacent Upper Lusatia in the sou ...
, where his father, a maternal uncle, and his paternal grandfather were pastors. His mother, Johanna Dorothea Fechner (b. 1774), née Fischer, also came from a religious family. Despite these religious influences, Fechner became an atheist in later life. Fechner's father, Samuel Traugott Fischer Fechner (1765-1806) was free-thinking in many ways, for example by having his children be vaccinated, teaching them Latin, and being a passionate grower of fruit. He died unexpectedly in 1806, leaving the family destitute. Fechner had an elder brother,
Eduard Clemens Fechner Eduard Clemens Fechner (21 August 1799 – 7 February 1861) was a German portrait painter and an etcher. Fechner was born at Gross Särchen, near Bad Muskau, and studied in 1814 at Dresden under Grassi and Retsch. In 1820 he went to Munich, ...
(1799-1861) and three younger sisters: Emilie, Clementine, and Mathilde. Fechner and his brother were then raised for a few years by his maternal uncle—the pastor, before being reunited with his mother and sistes in
Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...
. Fechner was educated first at Sorau (now
Żary Żary (pronounced , german: Sorau, dsb, Žarow) is a town in western Poland with 37,502 inhabitants (2019), situated in the Lubusz Voivodeship since 1999. Previously it was located within Zielona Góra Voivodeship (1975–1998). It is the admin ...
in Western
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
). In 1817 Fechner studied medicine for six months at the in
Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...
and from 1818 at the
University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December ...
, the city in which he spent the rest of his life. He earned his PhD from Leipzig in 1823. In 1834 he was appointed professor of
physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which ...
at Leipzig. But in 1839, he injured his eyes in the research on afterimages by gazing at the sun through colored glasses, while studying the phenomena of color and
vision Vision, Visions, or The Vision may refer to: Perception Optical perception * Visual perception, the sense of sight * Visual system, the physical mechanism of eyesight * Computer vision, a field dealing with how computers can be made to gain und ...
, and, after much suffering, resigned. Subsequently, recovering, he turned to the study of the
mind The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
and its relations with the body, giving public lectures on the subjects dealt with in his books. Whilst lying in bed, Fechner had an insight into the relationship between mental sensations and material sensations. This insight proved to be significant in the development of psychology as there was now a quantitative relationship between the mental and physical worlds.


Contributions

Fechner published chemical and physical papers, and translated chemical works by
Jean-Baptiste Biot Jean-Baptiste Biot (; ; 21 April 1774 – 3 February 1862) was a French physicist, astronomer, and mathematician who co-discovered the Biot–Savart law of magnetostatics with Félix Savart, established the reality of meteorites, made an early ba ...
and Louis Jacques Thénard from
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
. He also wrote several poems and humorous pieces, such as the ''Vergleichende Anatomie der Engel'' (1825), written under the pseudonym of "Dr. Mises."


Elemente der Psychophysik

Fechner's epoch-making work was his ''Elemente der Psychophysik'' (1860). He started from the
monistic Monism attributes oneness or singleness (Greek: μόνος) to a concept e.g., existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished: * Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., i ...
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 ''Fechner's Law'', 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." The law has been found to be immensely useful, but to fail for very faint and for very strong sensations. Within its useful range, Fechner's law is that sensation is a logarithmic function of physical intensity. S. S. Stevens pointed out that such a law does not account for the fact that perceived relationships among stimuli (e.g., papers coloured black, dark grey, grey, light grey, and white) are unchanged with changes in overall intensity (i.e., in the level of illumination of the papers). He proposed, in his famous 1961 paper entitled "To Honor Fechner and Repeal His Law", that intensity of stimulation is related to perception via a power-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 James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
, "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."


The Fechner color effect

In 1838, he also studied the still-mysterious perceptual illusion of what is still called the Fechner color effect, whereby colors are seen in a moving pattern of black and white. The English journalist and amateur scientist
Charles Benham Charles Edwin Benham JP (; 15 April 1860 in Colchester, Essex, England – 1 April 1929, also in Colchester) was a journalist who edited for many years the ''Essex County Standard,'' a published author of works such as ''Essex Ballads,'' and ...
, in 1894, enabled English-speakers to learn of the effect through the invention of the spinning top that bears his name, Benham's top. Whether Fechner and Benham ever actually met face to face is not known.


The median

In 1878, Fechner published a paper in which he developed the notion of the
median In statistics and probability theory, the median is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as "the middle" value. The basic f ...
. He later delved into
experimental aesthetics Experimental aesthetics is a field of psychology founded by Gustav Theodor Fechner in the 19th century. According to Fechner, aesthetics is an experiential perception which is empirically comprehensible in light of the characteristics of the subj ...
and thought to determine the shapes and dimensions of aesthetically pleasing objects. He mainly used the sizes of paintings as his data base. In his 1876 ''Vorschule der Aesthetik,'' he used the method of extreme ranks for subjective judgements. Fechner is generally credited with introducing the median into the formal analysis of data.Keynes, John Maynard; ''A Treatise on Probability'' (1921), Pt II Ch XVII §5 (p 201).


Synesthesia

In 1871, Fechner reported the first empirical survey of coloured letter photisms among 73 synesthetes. His work was followed in the 1880s by that of
Francis Galton Sir Francis Galton, FRS FRAI (; 16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911), was an English Victorian era polymath: a statistician, sociologist, psychologist, Anthropology, anthropologist, tropical Exploration, explorer, geographer, Inventio ...
.


Corpus callosum split

One of Fechner's speculations about consciousness dealt with brain. During his time, it was known that the brain is bilaterally symmetrical and that there is a deep division between the two halves that are linked by a connecting band of fibers called the
corpus callosum The corpus callosum (Latin for "tough body"), also callosal commissure, is a wide, thick nerve tract, consisting of a flat bundle of commissural fibers, beneath the cerebral cortex in the brain. The corpus callosum is only found in placental m ...
. Fechner speculated that if the corpus callosum were split, two separate streams of consciousness would result - the mind would become two. Yet, Fechner believed that his theory would never be tested; he was incorrect. During the mid-twentieth century, Roger Sperry and
Michael Gazzaniga Michael S. Gazzaniga (born December 12, 1939) is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the USA, where he heads the new SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind. He is one of the leading researchers in cognitiv ...
worked on epileptic patients with sectioned corpus callosum and observed that Fechner's idea was correct.


Golden section hypothesis

Fechner constructed ten rectangles with different ratios of width to length and asked numerous observers to choose the "best" and "worst" rectangle shape. He was concerned with the visual appeal of rectangles with different proportions. Participants were explicitly instructed to disregard any associations that they have with the rectangles, e.g. with objects of similar ratios. The rectangles chosen as "best" by the largest number of participants and as "worst" by the fewest participants had a ratio of 0.62 (21:34). This ratio is known as the "golden section" (or
golden ratio In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. Expressed algebraically, for quantities a and b with a > b > 0, where the Greek letter phi ( ...
) and referred to the ratio of a rectangle's width to length that is most appealing to the eye.
Carl Stumpf Carl Stumpf (; 21 April 1848 – 25 December 1936) was a German philosopher, psychologist and musicologist. He is noted for founding the Berlin School of Experimental Psychology. He studied with Franz Brentano at the University of Würzburg ...
was a participant in this study. However, there has been some ongoing dispute on the experiment itself, as the fact that Fechner deliberately discarded results of the study ill-fitting to his needs became known, with many mathematicians, including
Mario Livio Mario Livio (born June 19, 1945) is an Israeli-American astrophysicist and an author of works that popularize science and mathematics. For 24 years (1991-2015) he was an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates ...
, refuting the result of the experiment.


The two-piece normal distribution

In his posthumously published ''Kollektivmasslehre'' (1897), Fechner introduced the Zweiseitige Gauss'sche Gesetz or two-piece normal distribution, to accommodate the asymmetries he had observed in empirical frequency distributions in many fields. The distribution has been independently rediscovered by several authors working in different fields.


Fechner's paradox

In 1861, Fechner reported that if he looked at a light with a darkened piece of glass over one eye then closed that eye, the light appeared to become brighter, even though less light was coming into his eyes.Levelt, W. J. M. (1965). Binocular brightness averaging and contour information.
British Journal of Psychology The ''British Journal of Psychology'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed psychology journal. It was established in 1904 and is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the British Psychological Society. The editor-in-chief is Stefan R. Schweinberger ( ...
, 56, 1-13. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1965.tb00939.x
This phenomenon has come to be called Fechner's paradox. It has been the subject of numerous research papers, including in the 2000s. It occurs because the perceived brightness of the light with both eyes open is similar to the average brightness of each light viewed with one eye.


Influence

Fechner, along with
Wilhelm Wundt Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (; ; 16 August 1832 – 31 August 1920) was a German physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the fathers of modern psychology. Wundt, who distinguished psychology as a science from philosophy and ...
and
Hermann von Helmholtz Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (31 August 1821 – 8 September 1894) was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The Helmholtz Associat ...
, is recognized as one of the founders of modern experimental
psychology Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...
. 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 Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
had long stated that this was impossible, and that therefore, a science of psychology was also impossible. Though he had a vast influence on
psychophysics Psychophysics quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they produce. Psychophysics has been described as "the scientific study of the relation between stimulus and sensation" or, ...
, the actual disciples of his general philosophy were few.
Ernst Mach Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach ( , ; 18 February 1838 – 19 February 1916) was a Moravian-born Austrian physicist and philosopher, who contributed to the physics of shock waves. The ratio of one's speed to that of sound is named the Mach n ...
was inspired by his work on psychophysics.
William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
also admired his work: in 1904, he wrote an admiring introduction to the English translation of Fechner's ''Büchlein vom Leben nach dem Tode'' (''Little Book of Life After Death''). Furthermore, he influenced
Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts i ...
, who refers to Fechner when introducing the concept of psychic locality in his ''The Interpretation of Dreams'' that he illustrates with the microscope-metaphor. Fechner's world concept was highly
animistic Animism (from Latin: ' meaning 'breath, spirit, life') is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Potentially, animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, h ...
. 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
materialism Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materialis ...
. Fechner's work in
aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...
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 Hartshorne Charles Hartshorne (; June 5, 1897 – October 9, 2000) was an American philosopher who concentrated primarily on the philosophy of religion and metaphysics, but also contributed to ornithology. He developed the neoclassical idea of God and ...
saw him as a predecessor on his and
Alfred North Whitehead Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found applica ...
'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 Schelling, learned much from
Baruch Spinoza Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, ...
,
G. W. Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of ...
,
Johann Friedrich Herbart Johann Friedrich Herbart (; 4 May 1776 – 14 August 1841) was a German philosopher, psychologist and founder of pedagogy as an academic discipline. Herbart is now remembered amongst the post-Kantian philosophers mostly as making the greatest ...
,
Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...
, and
Christian Hermann Weisse Christian Hermann Weisse (; ; Weiße in modern German; 10 August 1801 – 19 September 1866) was a German Protestant religious philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Leipzig. He was the son of theologian (1766–1832). B ...
, and decidedly rejected
G. W. F. Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...
and the
monad Monad may refer to: Philosophy * Monad (philosophy), a term meaning "unit" **Monism, the concept of "one essence" in the metaphysical and theological theory ** Monad (Gnosticism), the most primal aspect of God in Gnosticism * ''Great Monad'', a ...
ism of Rudolf Hermann Lotze. Fechner's work continues to have an influence on modern science, inspiring continued exploration of human perceptual abilities by researchers such as
Jan Koenderink Jan Johan Koenderink (born 10 February 1943, Stramproy) is a Dutch physicist and psychologist known for his researches on visual perception, computer vision, and geometry. Koenderink earned a bachelor's degree from Utrecht University in 1964, a ...
, Farley Norman,
David Heeger David J. Heeger (born 1961) is an American neuroscientist, psychologist, computer scientist, data scientist, and entrepreneur. He is a professor at New York University, Chief Scientific Officer oStatespace Labs and Chief Scientific Officer and ...
, and others.


Honours


Fechner Crater

In 1970, the
International Astronomical Union The International Astronomical Union (IAU; french: link=yes, Union astronomique internationale, UAI) is a nongovernmental organisation with the objective of advancing astronomy in all aspects, including promoting astronomical research, outreac ...
named a
crater Crater may refer to: Landforms * Impact crater, a depression caused by two celestial bodies impacting each other, such as a meteorite hitting a planet * Explosion crater, a hole formed in the ground produced by an explosion near or below the surf ...
on the far side of the moon after Fechner.


Fechner Day

In 1985 the International Society for Psychophysics called its annual conference ''Fechner Day''. The conference is now scheduled to include 22 October to allow psychophysicists to celebrate the anniversary of Fechner's waking up on that day in 1850 with a new approach into how to study the mind. Fechner Day runs annually with the 2021 Fechner Day being the 37th. It is organized annually, by a different academic host each year. During the pandemic resulting from COVID-19, Fechner Day was held online in 2020 and 2021.


Family and later life

Little is known of Fechner's later years, nor of the circumstances, cause, and manner of his death. Fechner was the brother of painter
Eduard Clemens Fechner Eduard Clemens Fechner (21 August 1799 – 7 February 1861) was a German portrait painter and an etcher. Fechner was born at Gross Särchen, near Bad Muskau, and studied in 1814 at Dresden under Grassi and Retsch. In 1820 he went to Munich, ...
and of Clementine Wieck Fechner, who was the stepmother of
Clara Wieck Clara Josephine Schumann (; née Wieck; 13 September 1819 – 20 May 1896) was a German pianist, composer, and piano teacher. Regarded as one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era, she exerted her influence over the course of a ...
when Clementine became her father
Friedrich Wieck Johann Gottlob Friedrich Wieck (18 August 1785 – 6 October 1873) was a noted German piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hamme ...
's second wife.


Works

* ''Praemissae ad theoriam organismi generalem'' ("Advances in the general theory of organisms") (1823). * (Dr. Mises) ''Stapelia mixta'' (1824)
Internet Archive (Harvard)
* ''Resultate der bis jetzt unternommenen Pflanzenanalysen'' ("Results of plant analyses undertaken to date") (1829)
Internet Archive (Stanford)
* ''Maassbestimmungen über die galvanische Kette'' (1831). * (Dr. Mises) ''Schutzmittel für die Cholera'' ("Protective equipment for cholera") (1832)
Google (Harvard)

Google (UWisc)
* ''Repertorium der Experimentalphysik'' (1832). 3 volumes. **Volume 1
Internet Archive (NYPL)

Internet Archive (Oxford)
**Volume 2
Internet Archive (NYPL)

Internet Archive (Oxford)
**Volume 3
Internet Archive (NYPL)

Internet Archive (Oxford)
* (ed.) ''Das Hauslexicon. Vollständiges Handbuch praktischer Lebenskenntnisse für alle Stände'' (1834–38). 8 volumes. * ''Das Büchlein vom Leben nach dem Tode'' (1836). 6th ed., 1906
Internet Archive (Harvard)

Internet Archive (NYPL)
** ''On Life After Death'' (1882)
Google (Oxford)

IA (UToronto)
2nd ed., 1906
Internet Archive (UMich)
3rd ed., 1914
IA (UIllinois)
** ''The Little Book of Life After Death'' (1904)
IA (UToronto)
1905
Internet Archive (UCal)

IA (Ucal)

IA (UToronto)
* (Dr. Mises) ''Gedichte'' (1841)
Internet Archive (Oxford)
* ''Ueber das höchste Gut'' ("Concerning the Highest Good") (1846)
Internet Archive (Stanford)
* (Dr. Mises) ''Nanna oder über das Seelenleben der Pflanzen'' (1848). 2nd ed., 1899. 3rd ed., 1903
Internet Archive (UMich)
4th ed., 1908
Internet Archive (Harvard)
* ''Zend-Avesta oder über die Dinge des Himmels und des Jenseits'' (1851). 3 volumes. 3rd ed., 1906
Google (Harvard)
* ''Ueber die physikalische und philosophische Atomenlehre'' (1855). 2nd ed., 1864
Internet Archive (Stanford)
* ''Professor Schleiden und der Mond'' (1856)
Google (UMich)
* ''Elemente der Psychophysik'' (1860). 2 volumes. Volume 1
Google (ULausanne)
Volume 2
Internet Archive (NYPL)
* ''Ueber die Seelenfrage'' ("Concerning the Soul") (1861)
Internet Archive (NYPL)

Internet Archive (UCal)

Internet Archive (UMich)
2nd ed., 1907
Google (Harvard)
* ''Die drei Motive und Gründe des Glaubens'' ("The three motives and reasons of faith") (1863)
Google (Harvard)

Internet Archive (NYPL)
* ''Einige Ideen zur Schöpfungs- und Entwickelungsgeschichte der Organismen'' (1873)
Internet Archive (UMich)
* (Dr. Mises) ''
Kleine Schriften ' is a German phrase ("short writings" or "minor works"; la, Opuscula) often used as a title for a collection of articles and essays written by a single scholar over the course of a career. "Collected Papers" is an English equivalent. These short ...
'' (1875)
Internet Archive (UMich)
* ''Erinnerungen an die letzen Tage der Odlehre und ihres Urhebers'' (1876)
Google (Harvard)
* ''Vorschule der Aesthetik'' (1876). 2 Volumes
Internet Archive (Harvard)
* ''In Sachen der Psychophysik'' (1877)
Internet Archive (Stanford)
* ''Die Tagesansicht gegenüber der Nachtansicht'' (1879)
Google (Oxford)
2nd ed., 1904
Internet Archive (Stanford)
* ''Revision der Hauptpuncte der Psychophysik'' (1882)
Internet Archive (Harvard)
*''Kollektivmasslehre'' (1897)
Internet Archive (NYPL)


References


Further reading

* Heidelberger, M. (2001), "Gustav Theodor Fechner" in ''Statisticians of the Centuries'' (ed. C. C. Heyde and E. Seneta) pp. 142–147. New York:
Springer Verlag Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 i ...
, 2001. * Heidelberger, M. (2004), ''Nature From Within: Gustav Theodor Fechner and his Psychophysical Worldview'' (trans. Cynthia Klohr), Pittsburgh, PA:
University of Pittsburgh Press The University of Pittsburgh Press is a scholarly publishing house and a major American university press, part of the University of Pittsburgh. The university and the press are located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States. The press ...
, 2004. * Robinson, David K. (2010), "Gustav Fechner: 150 years of Elemente der Psychophysik", in ''History of Psychology'', Vol 13(4), Nov 2010, pp. 409–410
APA PsycNet
* Stigler, Stephen M. (1986), ''The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900'', Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retir ...
, pp. 242–254.


External links

* * *
William James on Fechner
* Works o
Gustav Theodor Fechner
at Projekt Gutenberg-DE. (German) * Excerpt fro
''Elements of Psychophysics''
from the Classics in the History of Psychology website. * Robert H. Wozniak'


Biography, bibliography and digitized sources
in the Virtual Laboratory of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science * Granville Stanley 191
'Founders of modern psychology''
p. 125ff archive.org * Gustav Theodor Fechner 190
''The Little Book of Life after Death''
Foreword by William James * Gustav Theodor Fechner 190
''The Living Word''


at statprob.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Fechner, Gustav 1801 births 1887 deaths People from Żary County German atheists German Christians German statisticians German psychologists Experimental psychologists People from the Province of Silesia Leipzig University alumni Leipzig University faculty People educated at the Kreuzschule 19th-century German mathematicians Panpsychism Plant cognition