1. The two passages cited by Heidelberger are fromZend-Avesta(1851b: II, 348) andUeber die Seelenfrage (1861: 221). Someof Heidelberger’s evidence for Fechner’s materialism(2004: 30) is purely anecdotal, deriving from the impressions ofcontemporaries.
2.Ueber die Seelenfrage (1861) is not covered here, because itclarifies issues already raised inNanna andZend-Avesta;Die Drei Motive und Gründe desGlaubens (1863) is a defense ofZend-Avesta;DieTagesansicht gegenüber die Nachtansicht is essentially areprise and summary of earlier work. Unfortunately, there isinsufficient space to discuss Fechner’s two volume work onaesthetics,Vorschule der Aesthetik (1876).
3. Oken admits that much “Unfug” has beenperpetrated by theNaturphilosophen; but he wants to correctthese abuses and reassure its opponents.
4.. See especially the two essays in this work: “Ueber Schematismusoder Symbolik” (1824: 114–128) and “Versuch einerEntwicklung des Organisationsgesetzes aus dem räumlichenSymbol” (1824: 180–295).
5. The law is named after its founder, Georg Simon Ohm(1789–1854). The law states that the electrical current througha conductor is directly proportional to the voltage and indirectlyproportional to the resistance.
6. Helmholtz refers to Fechner in many places in hisHandbuch derphysiologischen Optik (1867: 313, 379, 387, 403, 418, 542, 597,793, 836, 857, 868).
7. The definition of panpsychism inThe Cambridge Dictionary ofPhilosophy (Audi 1995: 555)—“the doctrine that thephysical world is pervasively psychical, sentient orconscious”—does not apply to Fechner, who did not extendthe realm of the psychic to the inorganic.
8. See Fechner’s account of his experience inNanna: 65,295 and in Kuntze 1892: 130–1, 140–1.
9. The reference to Hartmann is implicit but unmistakable; Fechnerwrites of “die Philosophie des Unbewußten”,which was the title of Hartmann’s most famous work,Philosophie des Unbewussten (1869).
10. Fechner does not deny the existence of the inorganic. Unlike manyNaturphilosophen of his era, he denied that everything innature is alive (see Fechner 1879: 37). If he held that the planetshave souls, that is not because he believed that everything is organicbut because he believed that planets too were living beings.
11. See chapter X of Fechner’sDie Drei Motive und Gründedes Glaubens (1863: 242–8), where he makes the personalconfession that he prefers orthodoxy to “the freestandpoint” which subjects Christianity to criticism.
12. This tension in Fechner’s position was pointed out long ago byFriedrich Lange,Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seinerBedeutung in der Gegenwart (1875: II, 193–5).
13. It is an oddity of Fechner’s argument that he prefers the waveover the particle theory of light when traditional atomists preferredthe particle theory. He insists that only the wave theory isconsistent with the facts of experience (Atom: 26). The wavetheory is acceptable to him only because of Cauchy’s theory ofparticles in the aether; but Fechner gives no reason for rejecting theparticle theory.
14. Thelocus classicus of neutral monism is WilliamJames’ “Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?”(1904 [1912]). The question of Fechner’s influence on James iscomplicated and cannot be investigated here. On this question, seeMarilyn Marshall 1974a.
15. Heidelberger 2004: 112–115, considers Fechner’s relationto Schelling and comes to a very different conclusion from that statedhere.
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