ABSTRACT
Johann Friedrich Herbart signalled a revolution in psychology, when he considered psychology to be a science based on mathematics, rather than a topic in metaphysics. Today, Herbart is best known for the creation of new principles of educational psychology. Herbart’s philosophical approach, in which his mathematical psychology first appeared, received scholarly treatment in G. F. Stout, J. Ward, G. Weiss and A. Kim. Herbart’s Psychologie als Wissenschaft is usually translated as “Psychology as Science”. Herbart provided a rationale for preferring a model of psychology based on mathematics rather than on metaphysics. Both Robert Hooke’s and Herbart’s theories were also profoundly influenced by the scientific merits of cosmological systems introduced in the First Scientific Revolution. Herbart asserted that, the greater the degree of opposition between two or more Vorstellungen, the greater the energy needed by each Vorstellung if it is to successfully strive (streben) for its own self-preservation.
