Frederich Kenkel (b. 1885).
Erich Lindemann (b. 1900). Earned Ph.D.
from Giessen in 1922. Went on to an M.D. from Heidelberg in 1926.
Took an appointment at Iowa St. in 1928. Published articles on
psychiatry, physiology, and psychpharmacology.
Giessen. The university at which Koffka
taught in 1922.
L. Hartmann [No information available.
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if you have some.]
Talbot fusion. Named after the
English physicist and photographer, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877),
who discovered that when the cycle of a flickering light reaches
so high a rate that it perceived as being continuous, its apparent
brightness is equal to the mean of the brightness of the complete
flicker cycle. Also known as the Talbot-Plateau law, after Talbot
and the Belgian physicist Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau (1801-1883).
Heinrich Ewald Hering (1866-1948). German
physiologist. Studied with Ernst Heinrich Weber (1795-1878) and
Gustav T. Fechner (1803-1887) at Leipzig. Proponent of a nativist
theory of spatial perception. Developer of the "opponent-process"
theory of color vision, the main rival to Hermann von Helmholtz's
(1821-1894) "trichromatic" theory:
Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894).
German physicist, physiologist, and psychologist. Born near Berlin.
Attended the Prussian medical academy from 1838 to 1842, training
to be a army surgeon. Studied informally during this time with
the physiologist Johannes Müller (1801-1858), foudner of
the doctirine of specific nerve energies. In 1847, Helmholtz gained
renown as a physicist for developing the law of conservation of
energy. He specifically extended this doctrine to living things,
showing that the energy expended by an animal is less than that
consumed by the same animal. This was a great blow to the doctrine
of vitalism (the idea that living things have a special "life
force" over and above the physical forces that work upon
them) because it showed it to invoke superfluous energies. Appointed
professor of physiology at Königsberg in 1849, where he began
to study sensation and perception, publishing the first volume
of his Optics in 1856. After a two-year stint in Bonn,
he moved to as professor of physiology Heidelberg in 1858, where
he published two more volumes of his Optics (1860, 1866)
and his book on the psychology of sound and music (1863). In 1871
he was appointed professor of physics in Berlin, where he stayed
until his death. He is best known in psychology for his "trichromatic"
theory of color vision (in which he argued that photosensitive
cells in the retina are differentially sensitive to red, green,
and blue light) but his interests and influences ranged far beyonf
this one theory.
Stephan Witasek (1870-1915). Austrian
psychologist. Student of Alexius Meinong (1853-1920). Advocate
of the Gestaltqualitäten school in the early 20th
century. Research was mainly on problems of perception.
Fovea. The part of the retina in which
the photoreceptive cells are most densely packed.
Vestibuler organs. Fluid-filled semi-circular
canals in the inner ear responsible for balance.
S. Garten [No information available. Please
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Aubert phenomenon (A-P). Named after the
German physician Hermann Aubert (1826-1892). who discovered that
when an observer of a vertical tilts his or her head, the line
appears to tilt as well.
Cyclopean eye. The theoretical point
of view of the whole visual system, midway between the two actual
eyes.
P. Busse [No information
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Harry Levi Hollingworth (188-1956). Earned
Ph.D. in 1906 from Columbia under James McKeen Cattell. Appointed
to Barnard College in 1909, wehre he remained until 1946. President
of the APA in 1927. Wrote 25 books and 75 papers on a wide range
of topics, from educational and vocational psychology, to thought,
neuroses, and character.
Indifference point (I-P). The point along
some continuum that represents neutrality (e.g., neither
bright nor dim, neither red nor green, neither loud nor soft).
Alois Höffler (dates?). Identified
by Sajama and Kamppinen (1987, A historical introduction to
phenomenology, pp.43-44) as the first person to clearly distinguish
between a mental act, the act's object, and the act's content.
This allowed phenomenology to explain two crucial troublesome
phenomena: (1) intentional acts (e.g. thoughts) about nonexistent
object such as unicorns (content but no object) and (2) distinct
intentional acts about the same object, such as thinking about
the planet Venus as both the morning star and the evening star
(two contents, one object).
Richard Pauli Conducted research in the
1930s into the effect of will on work performance, extending Kraeplin's
studies of ability to a kind of characterological analysis. Drafted
into the Wehrmacht as a psychologist at the beginning of
World War II (Source: Geuter, U. (1992). The professionalization
of psychology in Nazi Germany (R. J. Holems, Trans.). Cambridge
University Press. (Original work publish 1984)) [No further information
available. Please inform the editor
if you have some.]
F. Oetjen [No information available. Please
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you have some.]
Kurt Lewin (1890-1947). German psychologist.
Studied mathematics and physics at Berlin, then became interested
in the Gestalt psychology. Conducted research on the dynamics
of memory. He became an assistant at Berlin in 1922, and a junior
professor in 1929. Developed his ideas into "Field Theory,"
in which elements of electrodynamics and topology (e.g.,
vectors) were brought to bear on a wide array of the issues in
psychology (e.g., personality, development, action, interpersonal
relations). Moved to the United States in 1932, teaching at Stanford,
Cornell, Iowa, and MIT. Most famous for applying field theory
to problems of group dynamics and social psychology.
Edgar
Rubin (1886-1951). Denmark's most famous psychologist. Earned
Ph.D. at Copenhagen in 1915, and was appointed there the following
year. Spent much of his career in Göttingen. Most famous
for developing the idea that perceptions are often organized into
figure and ground. The figure is the focus of attention, and is
seen in detail. The ground is in the periphery of attention, lacks
detail, and is not usually even perceived as an object. For instance,
in the picture to the left, published by Rubin in 1915, one sees
either the two faces as figure against an indistinct white background,
or a white vase as figure against an indistinct black background.
One does not see the faces and the vase simultaneously; the picture
"switches" between the two aspects. He was also and
independent co-discoverer of the phenomenon of "paradoxical
warmth", in which a cold stimulus gives rise to the sensation
of heat.
