Background

Carl Stumpf was born on April 21, 1848, in Wiesentheid, Franconia, the Kingdom of Bavaria (now Wiesentheid, Germany). He was a son of Eugen Stumpf and Marie Stumpf, née Adelmann. His father was the country court physician, and his immediate family included scientists and academicians. Stumpf also had three brothers and three sisters.

Education

Carl Stumpf had a great talent for music. He had learned the violin by the age of 7 and by the age of 10 five other instruments. Moreover, Stumpf attended the local Gymnasium in Bamberg where he studied music and composed several pieces. Later he attended the Gymnasium in Aschaffenburg where he studied Plato with Hocheder.

Carl Stumpf studied at the Julius Maximilian University where he met Franz Brentano. From 1867 to 1870 Stumpf attended Brentano’s lectures on the history of philosophy, and metaphysics. Later he transferred to the University of Göttingen to study under Hermann Lotze. Stumpf received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1869.

Career

Carl Stumpf started his career as a lecturer at the University of Göttingen in 1870. He held this post until 1873 and then became a professor at the Julius Maximilian University where he worked until 1879. At that time he began his work on Tonpsychologie (the psychology of musical sounds).

In 1879, Stumpf took up a post of a professor at Charles University in Prague. In 1884, he left this post and became a professor at the University of Halle where he worked until 1889. Stumpf also worked as a professor at Ludwig Maximilian University from 1889 to 1894 and at Humboldt University of Berlin from 1894 to 1921. In 1896, he presided over the Third International Congress of Psychology. Stumpf was Rector at Humboldt University of Berlin from 1907 to 1908.

Carl Stumpf published his first book Über den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung in 1873. Later he wrote such books as Leib und Seele, Zur Einteilung der Wissenschaften, and Die Anfänge der Musik. His books were translated into English and other languages. In 1898 he founded the journal Beiträge zur Akustik und Musikwissenschaft.

Achievements

• Carl Stumpf was a German philosopher, psychologist, educator and writer who was known as one of the pioneers of comparative musicology and ethnomusicology. He also formulated a theory of space perception and a theory of emotions. His most famous books are The Origins of Music and Tone Psychology. Stumpf founded the Phonogram Archive, devoted to collecting recordings of primitive music.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Origins of Music

    (In this text Carl Stumpf set out a path-breaking hypothes...)

    1911
  • Tone Psychology: Volume I: The Sensation of Successive Single Tones

    (During his lifetime, he ranked among the most prominent s...)

Views

Stumpf was an empiricist. He formulated a theory of space perception and a theory of emotions and introduced the concept of "emotional sensations" as a special class of sensations, related to tickling, itching, and cutaneous pain, and he believed that these emotional sensations constitute the basis of all emotionality. Pleasure and pain (or displeasure) were for him merely another special class of sensations rather than a separate class of psychic phenomena. This view has not, however, prevailed. Stumpf tried to re-establish with regard to the body-soul problem the theory of mutual causation. However, this theory was not accepted, not even by the gestalt theorists because it was obsolete.

Stumpf accepted a dualism of mind and nature but regarded the task of philosophy as the investigation of what mind and nature have in common. Stumpf rejected the idea of vitalism or of any sort of life force, although he did not oppose empirical psychovitalism, the view that feelings, thoughts, and volitions can be stimuli for physical nerve processes.

Membership

Carl Stumpf was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Connections

Carl Stumpf married Hermine Biedermann in 1878. Hermine died in 1930.

Father:

Eugen Stumpf

Mother:

Marie Stumpf

late wife:

Hermine Biedermann

References

• Carl Stumpf - From Philosophical Reflection to Interdisciplinary Scientific Investigation
  2011
• A Brief History of Modern Psychology A Brief History of Modern Psychology offers a concise account of the evolution of this dynamic field – from early pioneers of psychological theory to cutting-edge contemporary applications. In this revised third edition, leading scholar Ludy Benjamin surveys the significant figures, concepts, and schools of thought that have shaped modern psychology. Engaging and accessible narrative provides readers historical and disciplinary context to modern psychology and encourages further investigation of the topics and individuals presented.
  2007