ABSTRACT
In 1895 in his “Letzte Wünche für Osterreich” Brentano wrote, “My school distinguishes between Psychognosie and genetic psychology (on the basis of a remote analogy with geognosy and geology). The task of the former is to exhibit all of the basic mental phenomena. All other mental phenomena are derived from the combination of these ultimate psychological elements, just as all words are built up out of letters. Completion of this task could provide the basis for a characteristica universalis such as Leibniz, and Descartes before him, envisaged. Genetic psychology, on the other hand, is concerned with the laws according to which these phenomena come into being and pass away. Because the conditions of their occurrence are largely physiological, owing to the undeniable dependence of mental functions upon events in the nervous system, we see how investigations in genetic psychology are necessarily connected with physiological investigations.”
