27 Facts About Carl Stumpf

Carl Stumpf is noted for founding the Berlin School of experimental psychology.

Carl Stumpf studied with Franz Brentano at the University of Wurzburg before receiving his doctorate at the University of Gottingen in 1868.

Carl Stumpf tutored the modernist literature writer Robert Musil at the University of Berlin, and worked with Hermann Lotze, who is famous for his work in perception, at Gottingen.

Carl Stumpf had an important influence on his students Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka who were instrumental in the founding of Gestalt psychology as well as Kurt Lewin, who was a part of the Gestalt group and was key in the establishment of experimental social psychology in America.

Carl Stumpf is considered one of the pioneers of comparative musicology and ethnomusicology, as documented in his study of the origins of human musical cognition The Origins of Music.

Carl Stumpf held positions in the philosophy departments at the Universities of Gottingen, Wurzburg, Prague, Munich and Halle, before obtaining a professorship at the University of Berlin.

Carl Stumpf was born in Wiesentheid, Franconia, in the Kingdom of Bavaria, to a prominent family.

Carl Stumpf's father was the country court physician, and his immediate family included scientists and academicians, like his grandfather, who studied eighteenth-century French literature and the philosophers Kant and Schelling.

Carl Stumpf showed precocious musical talent as a child, learning the violin by the age of 7.

Carl Stumpf was sickly as a child so his early education was conducted at home with his grandfather as his tutor.

Carl Stumpf attended the local Gymnasium, where he developed a passion for philosophy, especially the works of Plato, before enrolling at the University of Wurzburg at the age of 17.

Carl Stumpf spent one semester studying aesthetics and one studying law.

Brentano encouraged Carl Stumpf to take courses on the natural sciences because he considered both the substance and methods of science important to philosophy.

Carl Stumpf was awarded venia legendi for philosophy in 1870 after completing his thesis on mathematical axioms, which he wrote in Latin.

In 1873, Carl Stumpf returned to the University of Wurzburg as a professor in the Department of Philosophy.

Carl Stumpf proposed a nativist explanation for depth perception, and his book has been cited as an outstanding early contribution to the debate between the nativist and empiricist views of perception.

Carl Stumpf disputed the Kantian notion of space as an "a priori form of intuition" in his book, On the Psychological Origin of the Presentation of Space.

Carl Stumpf argued that the status of space is Teilvorstellung or a "partial presentation", one that must be experienced as part of a broader presentation.

In 1894, Carl Stumpf was appointed to the chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin.

In 1896, Carl Stumpf presided over the Third International Congress of Psychology, and delivered the inaugural address on the relation between mind and body; he advocated an interactionalist position that opposed the popular notion of psychophysical parallelism.

Carl Stumpf began his work on the sensation and perception of tones, called Tonpsychologie, in 1875.

Carl Stumpf discusses intervals and series of tones, along with single tones.

Carl Stumpf distinguished between phenomena and mental functions, suggesting that phenomena such as tones, colors, and images are either sensory or imaginary.

Carl Stumpf did a wide range of studies of the phenomenological characteristics of the sounds of different instruments, the determinants of melody, tonal fusion, and the consonance and dissonance of tones.

In 1903 and 1904, Carl Stumpf was involved in two well-publicized debunking episodes related to sensational phenomena.

Carl Stumpf, after attending a demonstration, wrote an article challenging its legitimacy, causing it to never be heard about again.

Carl Stumpf retired from the University of Berlin in 1921 and was succeeded as director of the psychological institute by his former student, Wolfgang Kohler.