Quotable: Wundt’s view and relationship to modern experimental psychology
……It would be quite wrong to say that the experiment determines only the action of [stimuli] on the psyche. The behavior of the psyche in response to the external influences is determined as well, and by varying those external influences we arrive at the laws to which the psychic life as such is subject. The sensory stimuli are, for us, only experimental tools, to put it succinctly. By creating manifold changes in the sensory stimuli while continually studying the psychic phenomena, we apply the principle that is the essence of the experimental method; as [Francis] Bacon put it, “We change the circumstances in which the phenomena occur.”
1. ‘’It would be quite wrong to say that the experiment determines only the action of [stimuli] on the psyche.’’
What might Wundt be referring to here?
2. ‘’The behavior of the psyche in response to the external influences is determined as well, and by varying those external influences we arrive at the laws to which the psychic life as such is subject.’’
What is he saying here?
3. The sensory stimuli are, for us, only experimental tools, to put it succinctly. By creating manifold changes in the sensory stimuli while continually studying the psychic phenomena, we apply the principle that is the essence of the experimental method.
How would you sum up this final statement?
