Gustav Fechner 1801 – 1887

Gustav Theodor Fechner was a German experimental psychologist, philosopher, and the principal founder of psychophysics, the systematic study of the relations between physical stimuli and subjective experience. Originally trained in medicine and physics, he held a chair at Leipzig until a long period of illness drove him toward speculative philosophy. His Elements of Psychophysics, published in 1860, established what is now known as Fechner's law and the basic experimental methods of the new psychology, while his Zend-Avesta and other works defended a panpsychist metaphysics in which all matter, from plants and stars to the earth itself, is in some degree ensouled.