Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Vol.

47(2), 187–199 Spring 2011

View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/jhbs.20495
© 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

THE ROLE OF TONE SENSATION AND MUSICAL STIMULI IN EARLY

EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
SVEN HROAR KLEMPE

In this article, the role of music in early experimental psychology is examined. Initially, the
research of Wilhelm Wundt is considered, as tone sensation and musical elements appear
as dominant factors in much of his work. It is hypothesized that this approach was moti-
vated by an understanding of psychology that dates back to Christian Wolff’s focus on sen-
sation in his empirical psychology of 1732. Wolff, however, had built his systematization of
psychology on Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, who combined perception with mathemat-
ics, and referred to music as the area in which sensation is united with numerical exactitude.
Immanuel Kant refused to accept empirical psychology as a science, whereas Johann
Friedrich Herbart reintroduced the scientific basis of empirical psychology by, among other
things, referring to music. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

INTRODUCTION
In discussions concerning the early days of experimental psychology, tones and music
are seldom mentioned. Nevertheless, by taking a closer look at the body of Wilhelm Wundt’s
work, elements of music appear as an important factor in a considerable number of his exper-
iments. A close affinity between music and psychology has also been documented by the pio-
neers of German Gestalt psychology (Ash, 1998). Max Wertheimer refers to Christian von
Ehrenfels’ argument of musical transposition being most important in saying that Gestalt is a
factor in perception (Wertheimer, 1967). If we change the key of a melody, all the elements
are replaced. The only way that we still recognize the melody is not because of the sum of the
elements but by the totality of the relationship between them. This totality is an additional fac-
tor in forming the Gestalt (Ehrenfels, 1890/1988). This was an important argument for
Ehrenfels, emphasized by the fact that he repeated it as one of the very last things he dictated
to his wife some weeks before he died (Ehrenfels, 1932/1988). Thus, one may say that
throughout history, music and psychology have had a much closer connection than seems to
be the case today.
Köhler, Koffka, and Wertheimer, as well as Ehrenfels, were all very well educated amateur
musicians. In that sense they had a personal interest in music, which may explain some aspects
of their references to it. Nevertheless, they were not alone in regard to this focus on music, with
Carl Stumpf perhaps being the best example. With the two volumes of Tonpsychologie, 1883
and 1890, his work represented a milestone in both psychology and musicology. In psychology,
he introduced relation as an important factor (Ash, 1998), and in musicology, he solved the prob-
lematic distinction between consonance and dissonance by introducing the term Sonanzgrade
(Dahlhaus, 1989). Even the huge controversy between Stumpf and Wundt in the 1890s pertained
to music. It was first of all a methodological dispute, involving several questions, one of which

SVEN HROAR KLEMPE has been Associate Professor of Psychology since 1999 at the Norwegian
University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway. Earlier he was a full professor in mu-
sicology, but he has also been associate professor in media studies. The research has been interdisciplinary,
though concentrated on communication and fundamental philosophical aspects of acquiring scientific
knowledge. In recent years he has focused very much on the history of psychology in early modernity.
He has published several books, mainly in Norwegian.

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188 SVEN HROAR KLEMPE

concerned the significance of the informants’ level of competence in music (Ash, 1998; Hui,
2007). Another aspect was defining intervals in terms of geometrical (Stumpf) versus arith-
metical (Wundt) mean values (Boring, 1929), and a third question was about qualitative
(Stumpf) versus quantitative (Wundt) approaches to musical judgments (Ash, 1998). One can
probably understand very well why Titchener, who after having read the controversy three
times, “decided twice for Wundt and once for Stumpf ” (Boring, 1929, p. 113).
Music has certainly been a key factor in experimental psychology. What music is or is
not, however, remains an open question. There is a continuous transition here from musical
elements on the one hand, via tone sensation, to noise on the other. Yet Wundt did not make
any distinction between noises and tone systems, arguing that they “appear to be qualitatively
alike” (Wundt, 1902, p. 55). What therefore strikes one is that nonlinguistic sound stimuli
seem to have had a dominant and special role in experimental psychology in the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries. As a result, one of the most persistent questions is the
extent to which these references were just a coincidence or if they had some type of scientific
motivation. In this paper, I will follow up this question by looking closer at the role of musi-
cal stimuli in the development of modern German experimental psychology before the advent
of Gestalt psychology. I will start by focusing on some aspects of Wilhelm Wundt’s work and
then go back into the history of psychology by examining how musical aspects were intro-
duced into the field of psychology and on what premises.

THE ROLE OF TONES AND MUSIC IN WUNDT’S PSYCHOLOGY

If we consider how Wundt introduces psychology, much is explained by referring to the
use of the metronome. In his Introduction to Psychology (Wundt, 1912), many of the psycho-
logical phenomena he presents are demonstrated by rhythmical events. The reason for this, says
Wundt, is simply that “our consciousness is rhythmically disposed” (Wundt, 1912, p. 5).
He suggests a close relationship between consciousness and rhythmical events in an organism,
referring to the beating of the pulse, breathing, and so forth. The point of focusing on rhythm,
however, is not so much to underscore the psychophysical aspect as to demonstrate how imme-
diate sensations generate ideas on various levels of clarity throughout the organism.
There is another aspect here that the metronome demonstrates very well. This is the dis-
parity between the outer and inner world. As Wundt describes it, the metronome “is really
nothing more than a clockwork . . . , so that beats may follow each other at equal intervals in
greater or less rapidity” (Wundt, 1912, p. 2). In other words, a metronome does not group
meter together, but rather groups how individual beats are disposed in a timely manner at a
certain tempo. Nonetheless, it is almost impossible to listen to a metronome without group-
ing the beats into a certain metrical order, whether in groups of two, three, or four. “We sub-
jectively emphasise the one beat” (Wundt, 1912, p. 4), Wundt says, and by this he also stresses
the disparity between the physical time given by a metronome and our impression of the same
metrical time. Despite the fact that Wundt wanted to create a closer connection between
empirical psychology and other empirical natural sciences, there is still a certain difference.
In physics the content is abstracted from the subject, while in psychology the content “is
examined with a view to discovering its immediate character and its complete relation to the
subject” (Wundt, 1902, p. 11). Physics is about the object, whereas psychology is about
the subjective impression of the same object.
The metronome represents a kind of guide, leading the reader through the entire
Introduction to Psychology, and is used to illustrate a lot of psychological issues treated in the
book, although the musical references are not limited to rhythmical aspects. This is especially

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 THE ROLE OF TONE SENSATION AND MUSICAL STIMULI IN EARLY EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 189
true when Wundt presents his theory of feelings, tones, and chords that serves the purpose of
illustrating his points: “The feeling of pleasure will, as is well-known, become more intense
when harmonious tones combine with rhythmical beats into one melodious whole” (Wundt,
1912, p. 52). Wundt was not satisfied with the notion of feelings as just a question of pleas-
ure and displeasure, so he divided the type of feelings into three different categories:
(1) pleasure and pain, (2) strain and relaxation, and (3) excitation and quiescence (Wundt,
1912). In the Introduction, they are illustrated by musical events. In particular, the theory of
strain and relaxation, or “expectation” and “realisation” (Wundt, 1912), has been followed up
by musicologists such as Leonard B. Meyer (Meyer, 1956) and Eugene Narmour (Narmour,
1990, 1992). In music, the feelings of strain and relaxation are obviously beyond the feelings
of pleasure and displeasure.
It is not only in the Introduction that Wundt refers to musical elements. In the more
extended and comprehensive introduction to psychology, the Grundrisse (Wundt, 1896), and
the English version, Outline of Psychology (Wundt, 1902), he goes deeply into the role of
music and tone sensation in psychological research. In Chapter 6, which is about “pure sen-
sation,” the advantages of musical stimuli are presented and discussed. One of these is the
physiological construction of the ear, which makes humans sensitive to auditory sensations
(Wundt, 1902), while the other is the coincidence between the physical aspects of music and
how it is perceived (Wundt, 1902). On this basis, musical aspects serve the same illustrative
function in this more extensive introduction to psychology, with the role of music seeming to
be even more important in the sense that this thesis delves much more deeply into music, and
refers to a broader spectrum of musical elements than just rhythm and the metronome.

THE 1896 LABORATORY IN LEIPZIG

If we now take a look at Wundt’s own description of the scientific activity at his labora-
tory (Wundt, 1910), the impression that musical stimuli had a rather essential role is no
weaker. He presents a small statistical account of the fields covered by the most important
theses produced in his laboratory during this period (Wundt, 1910). The distribution of
the theses within their respective categories appeared as:

Intensity of sensation (Intensität der Empfindungen/Psychophysik) 14

Tactile sensation (Tastempfindungen) 7
Psychology of tones (Tonpsychologie) 12
Light sensation (Lichtempfindungen) 16
Sense of taste (Geschmackssinn) 4
Sense of smell (Geruchssinn) 1
Spatial sense of sight (Räumliche Gesichtswahrnehmungen) 6
Sense of time (Vorlauf der Vorstellungen und Zeitvorstellungen [Zeitsinn]) 15
Experimental aesthetics (experimentelle Ästhetik) 3
Attention (Aufmerksamkeitsvorgänge) 10
Feelings and affects (Gefühle und Affekte) 7
Associations and memory (Assoziations- und Erinnerungsvorgänge) 8

The laboratory he is referring to in this article is the one built in 1896 (Wundt, 1910). This
building may be regarded as the fulfillment of his dreams and activities, which characterized
the work that took place in the more provisional localities beginning in 1879. There are many
remarkable aspects to this laboratory, which included two auditoriums, one with 98 seats and

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190 SVEN HROAR KLEMPE

FIGURE 1.
Wundt’s plans for his laboratory from 1896 (Wundt, 1910, p. 516).

the other with 490. The number of seats indicates the stature of this laboratory, which gath-
ered researchers from all over the world (Nicolas & Ferrand, 1999). What is more important
here, though, is the fact that there were actually two laboratories, one of which was devoted
to optical experiments (#2 in Figure 1) and the other (#9) to acoustical experiments.
If we now consider how the laboratories were equipped, we see that Wundt focused on
the fact that all five sense areas should be covered (Wundt, 1910), and the equipment should
be able to assess the quality of the sensation as well. He refers to the Helmholtzian apparatus
for color mixture as a core part of the laboratory for use in optical experiments. When it
comes to the other laboratory, however, he refers to a huge number of tuning forks. The number
(probably at least 350) is astonishing enough, but the way in which they were used is perhaps
even more impressive. They represented all the pitches in a span from 32 Hz to 60,000 Hz,

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 THE ROLE OF TONE SENSATION AND MUSICAL STIMULI IN EARLY EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 191
covering 12 octaves in total (a modern grand piano covers approximately 7–8 octaves).
In addition, they could be adjusted for differences in temperature for the span from 32 Hz
(subcontra C) to 2,024 Hz (three stroked B), meaning that three or four could multiply the
number of tuning forks in this range.
In addition, Wundt described apparatuses for generating sound and overtones, and went
into great detail in depicting the acoustical experiments conducted in the laboratory, as the
equipment reveals what type of research was going on. The tuning forks imply that the rela-
tionship between consonance and dissonance was of particular interest, and the relationship
between tuning and temperature also seems to have been regarded as an issue. In many ways,
the two laboratories mirror Wundt’s previous position as an assistant in Ferdinand von
Helmholtz’s laboratory between 1858 and 1864 (Diamond, 2001). Helmholtz’s primary con-
tribution to the field of perception was his two theses on vision, published during 1856 and
1866 (Helmholtz, 1962) and another on the sensation of tones, first published in 1862
(Helmholtz, 1983).
Helmholtz’s influence on Wundt can probably not be overestimated. As previously men-
tioned, the main difference in the activities in their laboratories was the role of the object ver-
sus the subject. Scholars emphasize this by pointing out that Wundt’s psychology is not
satisfactorily depicted by focusing solely on the scientific aspects (Greenwood, 2003). Wundt
was very conscious of the fact that what he was performing in his laboratories were not exper-
iments in physics but rather in psychology (Wundt, 1904; Sturm & Ash, 2005). Hearing seems
to be the preferred sense, despite the fact that his laboratory was divided into one acoustical
and one visual chamber. One reason he gave for this is that “the greatest variety of intensive
ideas . . . is presented by the sense of hearing” (Wundt, 1902, p. 105). In this sense, tones and
music probably represented a certain field in which the subjective impression of an objective
event was investigated. The Weberian threshold values very much summarize this distinction,
and were also regarded as factors in the perception of music. This was an issue in his dispute
with Stumpf (Boring, 1929), and the relationship between a tone and its overtones is also
associated to a certain degree with the question of the relationship between the perceptible
and the almost perceptible.
Music as stimuli, in other words, was not restricted to the experiments in tone psy-
chology alone. With 12 theses in this field, one may say that tone psychology per se repre-
sented a remarkable activity in the laboratory. When it comes to other research, such as the
perception of time, it is best exemplified by referring to the perception of musical aspects,
as this is just one example of how time is perceived when it is related to an irregular inten-
sification. One experiment (Wundt, 1907, pp. 387–446) shows that intensifications disturb
the feeling of time, which is a general question that has nothing to do with music.
Nevertheless, it is operationalized in terms of musical elements. Time is defined in terms
of a three-beat measure, and intensification is defined in terms of the interval’s size. As
long as the strong beat coincides with a large interval, the feeling of time is undisturbed,
but as soon as the large interval coincides with a weak beat, the feeling of time and mea-
sure is disturbed (see Figure 2).
From the perspective of a distinction between theory-laden and non–theory-laden instru-
ments (Sturm & Ash, 2005), one may ask what type of theory the metronome and the huge
number of tuning forks and tone generators really represent. If elements of music were used
solely as auditory stimuli, why did language not serve the same purpose as well? This is a cru-
cial question in the sense that music has its own qualities, although it is comparable with lan-
guage (Vuust, 2007; Holck, 2007).

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192 SVEN HROAR KLEMPE

FIGURE 2.
WUNDT’S OWN ILLUSTRATION OF HOW THE EXPERIENCE OF THE BEAT CHANGES IN ACCORDANCE WITH AN INCREASED
INTERVAL (WUNDT, 1907, P. 401).

THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE

Why the early experimental psychologists almost consistently omitted language and
even thinking may appear to be a mystery. Wundt defined language and thinking as being
beyond the field of psychology (Wundt, 1902). This is in contrast with modern psychology,
but does not mean that Wundt totally ignored the phenomenon. Language, communication,
and thinking were regarded as parts of folk psychology (Völkerpsychologie), which is some-
thing quite different from experimental psychology (Knobloch, 1992), though also comple-
mentary. At this time, experimental psychology focused on the basic elements of
consciousness, which were taken to be sensations, simple ideas, and basic components
of feelings (Wundt, 1891, 1902). So when language was investigated during this early period,
it was from a sensationalistic point of view. He also argued that the sensational aspects, like
sound, were much more fundamental than the conceptual in a child’s development of language
(Wundt, 1902). Wundt even stated that the child copied the melody and rhythm before he or
she wanted to communicate conceptually, and that parents often misunderstand their children
when they think the preverbal child is trying to tell them something; in fact, the child just
wants to attend to the sound of the family choir (Wundt, 1902, 1906). This is an aspect that
might be said to have been revitalized to a certain extent in some perspectives on develop-
mental psychology (Malloch & Trevarthen, 2009).
In other words, music-like aspects seem to be regarded as fundamental for a human
being even when it comes to language, although this perspective seems to be motivated by the
fact that psychology is primarily defined in terms of sensation. Even when it comes to issues
that are very close to language, such as associations, music represents an additional aspect.
In an article about language and thinking (Wundt, 1906), Wundt discusses the nature of asso-
ciations. He presents an alternative perspective with regard to the distinction between succes-
sive and simultaneous forms of associations (Wundt, 1906). Associations are important in
establishing the connection between sensation and thinking. Although psychologists had pre-
viously discussed both forms of association, they had taken successive forms of association
into account in practice by focusing on language. Simultaneous associations imply that all
ideas are present at the same time. This is not so easy to express through language, but is fairly
easy when sound stimuli are used (Wundt, 1906). A musical chord includes at least two and
usually three or four different pitches, sounding at the same time. In addition, a chord will
also include a spectrum of overtones, with all of these various parts of the pitches and
overtones merging into a whole, which is perceived as a unit of sound. Wundt regarded the
wholeness of simultaneous associations as a sensational idea (Wundt, 1906). This sensational
wholeness seems to be something language is not able to provide, which is probably one of
the reasons why language was not considered as the most interesting stimulus for auditory
experiments. Language only provided successive associations, whereas sound and music
guaranteed a situation in which simultaneous associations were established.

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THE ROLE OF LEIBNIZ AND WOLFF

To answer the questions posed in the introduction, some clues might be traced in Wundt’s
earliest writings. In the introduction to Contributions to the Theory of Sensory Perception
(Wundt, 1862), he presented much of the scientific program of the rest of his life (Miller, 1962).
One of the main subjects he discusses is the relation between rational and empirical psychology,
with Aristotle as a point of departure. “Thus our psychology is still, like it was for Aristotle, and
even more today than it was then, a science of the content of imaginations”1 (Wundt 1862,
pp. 3ff). The German Enlightenment philosopher Christian von Wolff systematized this distinc-
tion in the two volumes on empirical (1732) and rational (1734) psychology. In these two vol-
umes he opened up a slightly new understanding of psychology. “The same distinction appears
later on in a much sharper appearance by Christian Wolff, who in the rational psychology
defines the transcendental essence of the soul in accordance with Leibniz’s metaphysics, and in
empirical psychology defines the different faculties of the soul” (Wundt, 1862, p. 10). This dis-
tinction between rational and empirical psychology, he adds, lasted until the nineteenth century.
Along with this distinction between rational and empirical psychology, there is a paral-
lel distinction between the higher and lower faculties in acquiring knowledge. The latter has
its direct origin in Aristotle’s On the Soul (Aristotle, 2001), but it goes through some trans-
formations when it appears in Leibniz–Wolffian philosophy. One of these transformations is,
of course, what Wundt refers to as Leibniz’s metaphysics, but another is that the understand-
ing of sensation also includes a comprehensive discussion of emotions and affects (Wolff,
1745/1998). These additional factors are such that the distinction between higher and lower
faculties for acquiring knowledge do not exactly coincide with the distinction between
rational and empirical psychology. Both sensation, and to a certain extent, thinking are exam-
ined within the framework of empirical psychology in this German tradition. Thinking, how-
ever, can be said to be two different things. It may have its origin in sensation, but it may also
include substances, which do not have their origin in sensation. This is why Wundt defines
the distinction between rational and empirical psychology in terms of deduction and induc-
tion, respectively (Wundt, 1862). Rational psychology is about deductive thinking, which
does not have its origin in sensation, whereas empirical psychology is about inductive think-
ing, which does have its origin in sensation.
One may say, therefore, that empirical psychology in the eighteenth century primarily
focused on sensation. This corresponds to a bottom-up process. This process, of course, includes
cognition, in the sense that higher cognitive functions are processing impressions stemming
from sensations—to use a more contemporary terminology. Empirical psychology, however,
represented a perspective in which the individual’s sense impressions were focused on as a part
of a scientific discourse. That perspective was new. Science was about universal truths, and it
was generally accepted that the sense impressions represented the particular. Even Aristotle had
claimed this. In addition, he asserted that the particular “cannot be objects of scientific knowl-
edge” (Aristotle, 1990, Book I, Part 18). Aristotle also presents the terms deduction and induc-
tion in the same work. As a consequence, induction is not regarded as belonging to scientific
discourse, but to persuasion, and is therefore discussed by Aristotle in the Rhetoric. Deduction,
on the other hand, is regarded as the only legitimate logical reasoning in science.
Wundt is obviously integrating induction as a part of scientific discourse, which indi-
cates that we can talk about a change that has taken place. At what time this change happened

1. “Unsere Psychologie ist desshalb heute noch, wie bei Aristoteles, und mehr noch als sie bei ihm war, eine
Wissenschaft von den Tatsachen des Bewusstseins.”

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194 SVEN HROAR KLEMPE

is suggested in the preceding quotation from Wundt, namely in the transition from Leibniz to
Wolff (cf. Corr, 1975). Leibniz fully agreed with Aristotle in regarding knowledge derived
from the particular as nonscientific (Leibniz, 1985). In this sense, Leibniz’s conceptualization
of science is more or less identical to metaphysics. Nevertheless, perception is one of the most
fundamental aspects of his philosophy in the sense that it is through use of this term that
Leibniz is able to explain multiplicity and changes in the world: “The passing condition,
which involves and represents multiplicity in the unit [unite] or in the simple substance is
nothing but what is called perception” (Leibniz, 1898/2008). One of the main characteristics
of perception, however, is that it may appear in different modes. Some might be clear and
some might be very unclear, and some might be both clear and unclear at the same time. It is
in this context that Leibniz brings in music as something primarily perceived as a sensual and
unclear phenomenon, but at the same time also mirrors the most exact forms, namely mathe-
matical calculations. In one of his many letters, he says that music is the unconscious numer-
ical exercise for the soul (“Musica est excercitium arithmecae occultum nescientis se
numerare animi”; Dammann, 1967, p. 79). This formulation summarizes what Leibniz’s
Monadology is about, although unconsciousness has to be understood as a kind of “not being
aware of.” Music is first and foremost a sensation-oriented phenomenon. The content of
music is based on numerical proportions, which determine its quality, and even though the
quality of music may be perceived, its numerical proportions are more vaguely perceived.
They might be detected in the beat, but the mathematical proportions in the chords are almost
undetectable, even to the trained listener. The lower faculties for acquiring knowledge are
important for the enjoyment of music, yet in order to have a clear understanding of what we
are enjoying, we need an understanding through our intellect.
Although Wolff became significant, Leibniz is the main reference point for Wundt. He
even wrote a book about Leibniz in 1916 in honor of the 200th anniversary of his death
(Wundt, 1917). In the introductory chapter, Wundt confesses that it was because of Leibniz’s
contributions to mathematics that he had planned to write the book. As has been pointed out
elsewhere, Wundt’s “approach to each research problem was essentially mathematical and . . .
this continued to be true throughout his life” (Diamond, 2001, pp. 26ff). Wolff followed up
Leibniz’s interest in mathematization of the sciences (Corr, 1975). Yet Wolff’s self-reliant con-
tribution was to draw attention to perception and empirical psychology as independent but
essential parts of metaphysics. He systematized eighteenth-century metaphysics to consist of
four equal parts. These were ontology, cosmology, psychology, and natural theology (Corr,
1975; Schweizer, 1983). The two volumes of psychology, published in 1732 and 1734, were
only two volumes in a series of six, which were published between 1730 and 1737. This series
covered the whole span of metaphysics. The content of these volumes were referred to as
“Leibniz–Wolffian philosophy” by his contemporaries (Copleston, 1964; Corr, 1975), as if
Wolff was more or less reproducing Leibniz’s philosophy. Yet his emphasis on empirical psy-
chology as a part of metaphysics represented just one argument for the fact that Wolff did not
merely reproduce Leibniz’s philosophy (Corr, 1975). Nevertheless, it was crucial because it
allowed sense impressions and observations to be sources in achieving scientific knowledge.
This change had a great impact on the German Enlightenment and allowed the opportunity
for different forms of scientific activities in northern Europe in the eighteenth century.

THE ROLE OF MUSIC IN HERBART’S PSYCHOLOGY

One person who was highly influenced by the discussions around the systematization of
metaphysics in the eighteenth century was Immanuel Kant. He could not accept, however,

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empirical psychology being defined as part of metaphysics (Kant, 1956). He even rejected
regarding psychology as a science (Leary, 1978; Sturm, 2001). Instead, he restricted empiri-
cal psychology to anthropology (Kant, 1983). Although Kant subsequently had a tremendous
impact on philosophy, and his conclusions were crucial for the destiny of psychology, they
were not fully accepted by all of his contemporaries. One of his successors in Königsberg,
Johann Friedrich Herbart, was one who had objections.
What Herbart could accept, however, was that exactitude must be regarded as a require-
ment for science (Leary, 1980). He was also influenced by Leibniz (Klotz, 2008) and dwelled
on the same paradox that Leibniz had presented when it comes to scientific knowledge,
namely, that mathematics meets the requirement for exactitude but lacks reality, whereas
physics represents reality but does not satisfy the requirement for exactitude (Leibniz, 1985).
This gap was important to Wolff (Corr, 1975); it must be said to have been one of the driving
forces for Kant to develop new criteria for human understanding in his Critique of Pure
Reason (Kant, 1956), but also a reason to place empirical psychology outside science. For
Herbart, on the other hand, this philosophical gap was an invitation to further develop
Leibniz’s considerations of music. If music is to be regarded as the soul’s unconscious count-
ing, and music is primary given as a sensual phenomenon, then music must be the phenome-
non that on the one hand represents reality and on the other hand meets the criteria for
numerical exactitude.
This represents a point of departure for Herbart; not only focusing on music, but, even
further, reintroducing psychology as a science. Herbart is known for his contribution to com-
bining psychology and mathematics (Leary, 1980), yet it could be argued that music is even
more important to him than mathematics. In addition to possessing numerical exactitude,
music also refers to sensorially given reality (Klotz, 2008). There is no doubt that Herbart
highly valued music in this respect. He even thinks music can be compared with Kant’s under-
standing of space when it comes to a priori necessity combined with sensation (Herbart,
1851). Herbart presents this comparison as a rhetorical question, but the serious outcome is
that music combines sensuality with a clear understanding. There is a slight coincidence
between this perspective on space and some reflections Wundt also presented. In his compre-
hensive introduction to psychology (Wundt, 1902), he starts by stating that all spatial ideas
are either of tactual or visual sensations, but in reality sensational experiences in space are
characterized by complexity and fusions that are best illustrated with the “overtones of a
clang” (Wundt, 1902, p. 121). That music is not only to be regarded as a sensual phenome-
non, but in addition is an object for precise judgment when it comes to rhythm, pitch, and its
acoustic nature, seems to be a highly motivational factor for both Herbart and Wundt to focus
on music.
To Herbart, however, there is a deeper reason why he focuses so much on mathematics
and music. Both areas contribute to his attempt to solve one of the most fundamental philo-
sophical problems in idealistic philosophy, which is that multiplicity can coexist with an idea
of unity. Leibniz in particular focuses on this multiplicity, suggesting that it is strongly con-
nected with perception. According to Leibniz, perception must be said to be nothing but mul-
tiplicity in the sense that in the perceptual process one stands in confrontation with the other.
Even the self can be perceived, and the fact that one can have an awareness of oneself is what
Leibniz calls apperception (Leibniz, 1898/2008). The content of this term changed slightly on
its way to Herbart, and ended up referring to the process by which sensory content was assim-
ilated and accepted as a part of the totality of ideas (Danziger, 2001). Yet the term was still
strongly connected to the relation between unity and multiplicity. The philosophical challenge
in psychology was how to explain this process of assimilation of ideas. There are no logical

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196 SVEN HROAR KLEMPE

reasons to accept ideas that contradict our well-established perspectives, because differences
do not cease without reasons. Herbart was of the opinion that mathematics and music clearly
demonstrate how unity could be combined with multiplicity. Mathematical reasoning is based
on the principle that different numbers are assimilated into others, and through this form an
entire universe of united diversity; musical harmonies consist of different pitches, while at
the same time being united in chords (Herbart, 1851). One may therefore say that within the
German idealistic tradition, which originated with Leibniz, the challenge was primarily con-
nected to sensation. Consequently, immense effort was invested in obtaining an understanding
of how sensational multiplicity could be combined with universal knowledge characterized by
unity. According to Herbart, music appeared to be the area that seems to meet this challenge.

MUSIC AS A “DIRECT FACTOR”

Wundt’s reference to experimental aesthetics had its forerunner in Gustav Theodor
Fechner (1802–1887). His 1871 Zur experimentalen Aesthetik and 1876 Vorschule der
Aesthetik (Fechner, 1978) are regarded as important contributions to nineteenth-century aes-
thetics (Arnheim, 1992). Yet the connection between aesthetics and psychology was strong
even before Fechner (Allesch, 2006). Again, Leibniz and Wolff must be said to form a point
of departure. It was Wolff’s pupil Alexander Baumgarten (1714–1762) who founded what is
now regarded as modern aesthetics (Cassirer, 1968). The two volumes of aesthetics he pub-
lished in the middle of the eighteenth century had so much overlap with then-contemporary
empirical psychology that aesthetics must be said to be more or less an elaboration of some
core aspects of what was defined as empirical psychology (Schweizer, 1983). Thus, sensation
had been the core issue in aesthetics since Baumgarten (Cassirer, 1968).
This focus on sensation is followed up by the Fechnerian term “aesthetics from the bot-
tom up” (Ästhetik von Unten) (Fechner, 1978), which emphasizes the experiential aspect of
art (Dahlhaus, 1976). Yet this is not isolated from top-down aesthetics (Ästhetik von Oben)
(Fechner, 1978), which primarily refers to universal truths but was also regarded as having an
immense impact on the experiences of art. These two terms of aesthetics refer to the two
forms of acquiring knowledge presented by Aristotle in On the Soul. In this respect, Fechner
is following the idealistic perspective presented by Herbart and his predecessors (de la Motte-
Haber, 2004). Nevertheless, he represents a turning point. Yet this is more connected to a com-
bination of these perspectives rather than an exclusion of one of them (Allesch, 2006). One
may say it was philosophical aesthetics that excluded the bottom-up perspective, whereas psy-
chological aesthetics attempted to combine the two. Regarding this background, Allesch sees
the striving of psychological aesthetics for this combination as a struggle for emancipation
from philosophical hegemony (Allesch, 2006).
It is in this perspective that Fechner introduces the term “direct factor.” The term refers
to notions that are directly connected to the sensational impression itself, and not involving
any reflections about meaning, content, or purpose (Fechner, 1978). It stands in opposition to
what he calls the “aesthetical association principle,” which implies that a sensational impres-
sion is followed up by a certain idea of meaning and purpose (Fechner, 1978). The motivation
for introducing the term “direct factor” lies on at least two levels. One is the aesthetic, which
is about immediate impressions. The other is the psychological, which is about a combination
of a top-down and a bottom-up impression. Thus, to talk about direct factors is primarily the
achievement of isolating and focusing on the bottom-up perspective.
According to Fechner, the direct factor can be traced to several areas. He says that “the
associative factor plays a main role” (Fechner, 1978) in visual arts, and also in poetry, whereas

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 THE ROLE OF TONE SENSATION AND MUSICAL STIMULI IN EARLY EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 197
the direct factor dominates in music (Fechner, 1978). This is because one of the most essential
effects of music is that it is independent of associative ideas (Fechner, 1978). He even stresses
that the associative factor plays only a subordinate role in music. In this respect, he refers to
the influential contemporary music critic Eduard Hanslick and accepts his statement that music
cannot express something certain, even when it comes to certain feelings (Fechner, 1978).

CONCLUSIONS
To sum up, one may say that references to music in early German experimental psy-
chology appear to be highly motivated. They are first of all connected to an understanding of
psychology as a discipline focusing on sensation. Both Wundt and Fechner attempted to study
sensation as such, which required stimuli that do not activate the higher cognitive functions.
Fechner, in particular, presents a series of arguments for music not evoking the higher cogni-
tive functions to the same degree as other forms of expression such as language and the visual
arts. His term “direct factor” depicts this isolation of the pure sense impression, and is to him
explicitly related to music. That music provides direct access to study sensation as such must
be said to be one reason why Wundt also focuses so much on musical elements as stimuli in
his research.
There are other reasons as well. Wundt is also concerned with scientific precision in his
research. In opposition to other sense impressions, music represents a kind of precision,
which can be compared with mathematics, especially when it comes to pitch, measure, and
rhythm. By following the historic line in German idealistic philosophy from Leibniz to
Herbart, one may say that music has served the same function as mathematics in being a kind
of guarantee of precision.
This search for precision, however, is very much connected to a deeper philosophical
problem connected to the question of what can and what cannot count as scientific knowl-
edge. Whereas Leibniz is highly influenced by the premodern perspective on scientific
knowledge as strongly connected to the universal, Wolff’s empirical psychology of 1732
opened up the particular sense impression as being a source for scientific knowledge. This
subjective form of knowledge had to be compensated for, however. In this respect, meta-
physics must be said to primarily comprise universal truths provided by ontology, cosmology,
and natural theology, but also by rational psychology. Despite the fact that metaphysics
defined in these terms has long vanished, it must be said that the need for precision was still
there. In this sense, mathematics was the requirement Kant focused on. Since empirical psy-
chology appeared not to satisfy this requirement, he rejected it as a science. Herbart, on the
other hand, reintroduced psychology as a science, not only by focusing on mathematics, but
probably even more by presenting music as representing some answers to this need for preci-
sion and exactitude. Wundt must be said to follow this up. According to him, all research
problems should be mathematical. Yet the mathematical exactitude in physical and psycho-
logical reality was regarded as a quality provided by music.
Hence this accentuated role of music and its elements has to be said to mirror a certain
understanding of what psychology is about. It is strongly connected to a focus on sense
impressions. The role of music also mirrors a certain understanding of scientific knowledge.
Since empirical psychology is about subjective sense impressions, music is very much
regarded as an objective compensation for this subjectivity. As a third aspect, then, music
serves the function of representing something different from language, yet one may say that
this reflects a certain understanding of music as well. In opposition to what was a widespread
belief in the nineteenth century, and still remains with us—namely, that music should be

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198 SVEN HROAR KLEMPE

understood as if it is a language—the role it had adopted in experimental psychology presup-

posed that it was something essentially quite different.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank Prof. Karl Halvor Teigen for guidance into the history of psy-
chology and Dr. Paddy Mahony for his assistance in the preparation of this paper.

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