"My Opponent Prof. W.": The debate between Wilhelm Wundt and Adolf Horwicz in the beginning of physiological psychology (1872-1879).

Abstract

Adolf Horwicz (1831-1894) was the main public critic of Wilhelm Wundt's election for the chair of philosophy at the Universität Leipzig in 1875. Horwicz's book titled Psychologische Analysen auf physiologischer Grundlage published in 1872 had a great impact on his contemporaries. Two years later, Wundt published Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie (1874) and with Horwicz's books were recognized as the most representative books of the emerging physiological psychology. Finally, Horwicz and Wundt had a debate published in Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie during 1879-1880 in where Wundt affirmed that many of Horwicz's research results were deduced from preconceived ideas without using a clear method. For that reason, Horwicz considered that Wundt's criticisms were aimed at destroying his scientific reputation. The debate is the materialization of a long professional struggle that took place between professional philosophers and physiologists who began to occupy chairs of philosophy in the early 1870s. The debate can be summarized in the following questions: (a) Should psychology have as its main objective the search for a single physical-biological process to which all other psychical processes are reduced? (b) Should psychological research use an inductivist reasoning? (c) What should be the relationship between philosophy and the psychological psychology? (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).