ABSTRACT
The history of psychology could, as we said in Chapter 1, be broken down in any of a large number of ways. Here it is separated into three major divisions, using the dates of 1860 and 1900 as the dividers. It was in the year 1860 that Gustav Theodor Fechner published his Elements of Psychophysics,1 which for the first time demonstrated how to make precise measurements of mental quantities and how psychical quantities are related to physical ones. Hence, 1860 could be seen as the year of birth of experimental psychology. Other historians have considered 1879 as psychology’s birth year, because that is when Wilhelm Wundt, according to archival records, made a formal request of the University of Leipzig administration for funds to support its institute of experimental psychology, a request often reinterpreted as “the founding of the world’s first experimental psychology laboratory.”
