Władysław Heinrich

Władysław Heinrich (Warsaw, 1 January 1869 – 30 June 1957, Kraków, Poland) was a Polish historian of philosophy, psychologist, professor at Kraków University and member of the Polish Academy of Learning.

In philosophy he was a student of Richard Avenarius at the University of Zurich and applied his radical positivism to psychology: Heinrich pointed out that the new experimental psychology of the time was based on metaphysical concepts and premises, on constructions and introjections.

He authored the first report in experimental psychology to be presented to the Academy of Learning, O wahaniach natężenia zaledwie dostrzegalnych wrażeń (On Fluctuations in the Intensity of Barely Perceptible Sensations, 1898).

[1] Heinrich worked at Kraków University in the physics department, then took over a chair of psychology and philosophy.

Above all, he was the first in Kraków to develop the new radical empiricist philosophy connected with the natural sciences.