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Chapter 23 - Fechner

from Part IV - Mind, Body, Spirit

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2020

Charles Youmans
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
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Summary

The physicist, psychophysicist, physician, and philosopher Gustav Theodor Fechner – an intellectual force occupying Mahler from his student years in Vienna through the composition of Das Lied von der Erde – is often described as a “mystic” or a “speculative thinker” whose fantastical philosophical system attempts to reconcile mechanistic science with an “animistic non-rational world-view.” Accordingly, his theories are usually dismissed today as curiosities. But though Fechner’s views may appear strange, on closer examination they are not mere arbitrary convictions; rather, they have a rational foundation. Furthermore, it can be demonstrated that Fechner, unorthodox thoughts notwithstanding, made important contributions to the natural sciences: particularly in the notions of “psychophysical parallelism” of the “day view,” a response to contemporaneous materialist and mechanistic orientations. The basic details of these Fechnerian ideas are presented here, along with an account of his early reception.

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Mahler in Context , pp. 198 - 206
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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