Carl Stumpf facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Carl Stumpf
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Carl Stumpf.
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| Born | 21 April 1848 Wiesentheid, Germany
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| Died | 25 December 1936 (aged 88) Berlin, Germany
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| Education | University of Göttingen (Dr. phil., 1868; Dr. phil. hab., 1870) |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | School of Brentano (early) Berlin School of experimental psychology Phenomenology |
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| Doctoral advisor | Hermann Lotze (doctoral and habilitation adv.) |
| Other academic advisors | Franz Brentano |
| Doctoral students | Edmund Husserl Wolfgang Köhler Kurt Lewin |
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Main interests
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Ontology Psychology |
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Notable ideas
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Tone psychology (Tonpsychologie) State of affairs (Sachverhalt) |
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Influences
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Influenced
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Carl Stumpf (German: [ʃtʊmpf]) was a smart German thinker. He was a philosopher, a psychologist (someone who studies the mind), and a music expert. Born on April 21, 1848, he passed away on December 25, 1936.
He is famous for starting the Berlin School of experimental psychology. This school focused on studying how our minds work using scientific methods.
Carl Stumpf learned from Franz Brentano at the University of Würzburg. He later earned his doctorate degree in 1868 from the University of Göttingen. He also taught Robert Musil, a well-known writer. Stumpf worked with Hermann Lotze, who was famous for his ideas about how we see and hear.
Stumpf was especially known for his work on the psychology of tones. He had a big impact on his students, Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka. These students helped create Gestalt psychology, which looks at how we see things as whole patterns. Another student, Kurt Lewin, helped start experimental social psychology in America.
Stumpf is also seen as a leader in studying music from different cultures. This field is called ethnomusicology. He wrote a book called The Origins of Music (1911) about how human music began. He taught philosophy at several universities before becoming a professor at the University of Berlin.
Contents
Carl Stumpf's Early Life
Carl Stumpf was born in Wiesentheid, a town in Germany. His family was important and included many scientists and scholars. His father was a doctor in the countryside. His grandfather studied old French literature and famous philosophers like Kant.
Carl was very talented with music from a young age. He started playing the violin when he was just 7 years old. By the time he was 10, he could play five other instruments! He even wrote his first musical piece.
His Education and Learning
Carl was often sick as a child, so he was taught at home by his grandfather. Later, he went to a local school called a Gymnasium. There, he became very interested in philosophy, especially the ideas of Plato.
When he was 17, he went to the University of Würzburg. He first studied aesthetics (the study of beauty) and then law. But in his third semester, he met Franz Brentano. Brentano taught Carl how to think logically and to use evidence and experience to understand things. Brentano also told Carl to study natural sciences, saying that science was important for philosophy.
After two semesters with Brentano, Carl moved to the University of Göttingen. He studied with Hermann Lotze, who was an expert on how we perceive the world. Carl earned his first doctorate degree there in 1868.
In 1869, he thought about becoming a Catholic priest. But he disagreed with some church rules, so he went back to the University of Göttingen. In 1870, he earned another degree, which allowed him to teach philosophy. His thesis was about mathematical rules.
Carl Stumpf's Career
Soon after, Carl Stumpf became an instructor at the University of Göttingen. He met Ernst Weber and Gustav Fechner, who were doing psychology experiments. Carl watched their careful studies, like how people found certain rectangle shapes more pleasing. This showed him that studying the mind could be done scientifically, just as Brentano had taught him.
In 1873, Stumpf became a professor at the University of Würzburg. He had to teach all the philosophy and psychology classes. During this time, he wrote an important book about how we see things, especially how we understand depth perception. He suggested that our ability to see depth is something we are born with.
In 1894, Stumpf became a top philosophy professor at the University of Berlin. He also became the director of the Institute of Experimental Psychology there. This institute started in three small, dark rooms. But by 1920, it had grown to twenty-five rooms in a former royal palace!
In 1896, Stumpf led a big international meeting of psychologists. He gave a speech about how the mind and body work together. From 1907 to 1908, he was even the head of the University of Berlin.
Studying How We Experience Things
Carl Stumpf started his famous work on how we hear and understand musical tones in 1875. This study was called Tonpsychologie (Tone Psychology). He wanted to write four books, but only the first two were published in 1883 and 1890. Part of the third book was published as Konsonanz und Dissonanz (Consonance and Dissonance).
This work is seen as his greatest contribution to psychology. He used both deep thinking and scientific observations. He looked at musical intervals (the distance between notes) and series of tones, as well as single notes.
Stumpf made a difference between what we experience (like sounds or colors) and the mental actions we do (like hearing or seeing). He called the study of these experiences phenomenology. He studied how different instruments sound, what makes a melody, how tones blend together, and why some tones sound good together (consonant) while others sound bad (dissonant). He could do this research because the Institute of Physics had many great tools for studying sound. Stumpf's ideas about phenomenology greatly influenced Edmund Husserl, who is known as the founder of the school of phenomenology.
Investigating Amazing Phenomena
In 1903 and 1904, Stumpf was involved in two famous cases where he helped show that some amazing claims were not real.
First, an engineer said he invented a machine that could turn pictures of sound waves into actual sound. Stumpf went to a demonstration and then wrote an article saying it was a trick. After that, no one heard about the machine again.
However, the case of Clever Hans was even more exciting. Clever Hans was a horse that seemed incredibly smart. His owner, Wilhelm von Osten, claimed the horse could do math and answer questions by tapping his hoof. Stumpf helped investigate this. It turned out that Hans wasn't actually doing math. Instead, he was picking up on tiny, unconscious clues from his owner or the questioner, like a slight tilt of the head, that told him when to stop tapping. This case became famous for showing how careful scientists need to be when studying amazing claims.
Carl Stumpf's Later Years
Much of Stumpf's later work was not as dramatic as the Clever Hans case. When World War I started, many students left the Institute of Experimental Psychology to fight. The war also broke many of the professional friendships he had with other psychologists.
Carl Stumpf retired from the University of Berlin in 1921. His former student, Wolfgang Köhler, took over as the director of the psychology institute.
Books Translated into English
- Stumpf, C.: 'The Origins of Music', edited and translated by David Trippett. Oxford University Press, 2012.
- Stumpf, C.: 'Tone Psychology: Volume I', edited and translated by Robin D. Rollinger. Routledge, 2019.
Images for kids
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Carl Stumpf.
See also
In Spanish: Carl Stumpf para niños
