Gerardus Heymans (; 17 April 1857 – 18 February 1930) was a Dutch philosopher and psychologist. From 1890 to 1927, he worked as a professor of philosophy at the University of Groningen (UG). He also served as rector magnificus (president) of the UG in the academic year 1908–1909. Heymans is one of the most influential philosophers of the Netherlands and the pioneer of Dutch psychology. The establishment of his psychological laboratory marked the start of experimental psychology in the Netherlands.
Life
Heymans was born in Friesland as the son of the municipal secretary Jan Heijmans and his wife Sara Wijsman. He went to the HBS (Hogere Burgerschool, an old form of high school education) in Leeuwarden and then studied law and philosophy at the University of Leiden. In 1880 he obtained his doctorate in political science. After that studied philosophy at the University of Freiburg, where he obtained his doctorate in 1881. In the same year he married Anthonia Barkey in Leiden. Heymans was Rector Magnificus of the University of Groningen from 1908 to 1909. In his speech, he outlined a future of psychology with great social value. In the following year, in 1910, his wife Anthonia died.
In 1909 Heymans was allocated a large lecture hall and space for his laboratory.
Heymans has also been a member of several associations. From 1900 he, for example, was a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). After the First World War, however, he cancelled his membership because the Academy did not take a neutral stance toward scientists from Germany and Austria. This is the Dutch version of the Society for Psychical Research, which was founded in Great Britain in 1882. A few years later he stopped because there was too little interest in scientific research within the association.
Work
Heymans wrote several books and essays and regularly wrote for De Gids, a literary magazine. Here he wrote on a variety of topics and his dissertation was also included in this. Heymans' theory is comparable to panpsychism in which he was influenced by Gustav Fechner. Heymans argued that everything is part of one World Consciousness and that everything is connected. Here too Heymans assumed the possibility of investigating consciousness with the empirical method. His book was well-received among the general public and other philosophers.
Psychology
Heymans was appointed professor to teach the history of philosophy, logic, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and psychology. Heymans himself preferred to use the term psychology when talking about psychology. He based his research on earlier results of Weber and Fechner.
Heymans also did a lot of research into visual illusions. The best-known examples are the Müller-Lyer and the Zöllner illusion. He wanted to put all the proposed explanations to the test. Here too Heymans has had a major influence. Eysenck, a British personality psychologist, called him, for example, one of the founders of personality psychology. Heymans was in fact the first psychologist to base a typology, a classification of personality types, on empirical research. Heymans based his typology on the biographies of well-known people, such as Goethe and Napoleon, and survey research.
Psychological laboratory
thumb|260x260px|Figure 3. Heymans' psychological laboratory in 1923
Heymans' psychological laboratory started as a room in his house on Stationsstraat in 1892. For the construction of the villa on Ubbo Emmiussingel, they made sure there was a proper place for the laboratory. It was located on the waterfront and had extra thick walls to block out as much noise as possible. Until 1909 Heymans conducted his experiments here using his wife as the primary test subject. Heymans had a large collection of devices for his experiments. They were purchased and made for education and demonstration purposes, and to make psychology education attractive. Until 1956, the lab was located in the Academy Building of the University of Groningen.
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Publications
In his life, Heymans has written a lot of articles and multiple books. Some of the more famous are:
- 1905. Einführung in die Metaphysik, auf Grundlage der Erfahrung
- 1909. De toekomstige eeuw der psychologie. Speech given at his inauguration as rector magnificus of the UG
- 1914. De oorlog en de vredesbeweging
- 1914. Einführung in die Ethik, auf Grundlage der Erfahrung
- 1915. Die Gesetze und Elemente des wissenschaftlichen Denkens, Ein Lehrbuch der Erkenntnistheorie in Grundzügen
- 1915. Het psychisch monisme