THE SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGY
KÜLPE, Oswald.
Grundriss der Psychologie. Auf experimenteller Grundlage dargestellt.
Leipzig, Wilhelm Engelmann, 1893.
8vo, pp. vii, [1, errata], 478; with diagrams; a very good copy in near-contemporary half morocco, gilt-tooled raised bands and lettering-pieces on the spine; covers and extremities worn, spine title faded; pencil highlighting throughout.
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Grundriss der Psychologie. Auf experimenteller Grundlage dargestellt.
First edition of this important work in the development of experimental psychology.
Külpe’s Outlines of Psychology was published at the suggestion of his mentor Wilhelm Wundt, to whom the work is dedicated. However, it reflects Külpe’s divergence from Wundt’s views on the scope of their discipline. Külpe viewed psychology as a natural science, and consequently argued that research ought to focus on sensation and based as far as possible on experimentation. The work’s publication caused a sensation and prompted Wundt to publish a refutation, pointedly likewise titled Grundriss der Psychologie, defining psychology as the broad study of experience in relation to the subject, as opposed to Külpe’s conception of it as a study of the measurable phenomena dependent on the corporeal individual.
See Wozniak, Classics in Psychology, 1855–1914: Historical Essays (1999).
