Chiara Russo Krauss

This book reconstructs the rise and fall of Wilhelm Wundt’s fortunes, focusing for the first time on the role of Richard Avenarius as catalyst for the so-called “positivist repudiation of Wundt.” Krauss specifically looks at the progressive disavowal of Wundtian ideas in the world of scientific psychology, and especially by his former pupils. This book provides important historical context and a critical discussion of the current state of research, in addition to a detailed consideration of Wundt’s and Avenarius’ systems of thought, as well as on their personal relationship. The author outlines the reception of Avenarius’ conceptions among Wundt’s pupils, such as Külpe, Münsterberg and Titchener, and among other psychologists of the time, such as Ward, James and Ebbinghaus. Finally, this book presents Wundt’s two-fold attempt to respond to the new trend through a criticism of the “materialistic” psychology, and a reformulation of his own ideas.

This book offers an up-to-date insight into the early philosophical debate on Einsteinian relativity. The essays explore the reception and interpretation of Einstein’s ideas by some of the most important philosophical schools of the time, such as logical positivism (Reichenbach), neo-Kantianism (Cassirer, Natorp), critical realism (Sellars), and radical empiricism (Mach). The book is aimed at physicists and historians of science researching the epistemological implications of the theory of relativity, as well as to scholars in philosophy interested in understanding how leading philosophical figures of the early twentieth century reacted to the relativistic revolution.

Even though the relationship between Einstein and Mach is well studied, the literature on the topic often overlooks the fact that Mach never provided an interpretation for the theory of relativity. Rather, it was Mach’s pupil Joseph Petzoldt who published several works to prove that Machian philosophy provided the correct philosophical framework for the theory of relativity. The paper reconstructs Petzoldt’s philosophy and his interpretation of the theory of relativity, also showing how his conceptions sometimes differed from Mach's. Thus, the study also explains why Einstein expressed a favorable opinion of Petzoldt’s work. On the one hand, the overall Machian tone of Petzoldt’s philosophy resonated with Einstein’s own Machian perspective. On the other hand, Petzoldt had developed the notion of Eindeutigkeit, which tended towards a stronger determinism (in contrast to Mach’s Humean conception of causality), and Einstein appreciated this deterministic version of Mach’s thought.