Dietrich Tiedemann was a German philosopher who was a native of Bremervörde

Bremervörde

Bremervörde is a town in the north of the district Rotenburg, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated at the Oste river near the mid of the triangle, which is formed of the rivers Weser and Elbe respectively the cities of Hamburg, Bremen and Cuxhaven....

. He was a student at the University of Göttingen, and later a professor at Collegium Carolinum

Collegium Carolinum

Collegium Carolinum may refer to* the historic building of the Charles University in Prague* TU Braunschweig in Germany was founded in 1745 as Collegium Carolinum* a former scientific society in Kassel, founded 1709...

 in Kassel

Kassel

Kassel is a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Kassel Regierungsbezirk and the Kreis of the same name and has approximately 195,000 inhabitants.- History :...

 (from 1776) and at the University of Marburg (from 1786). He was father to physiologist Friedrich Tiedemann

Friedrich Tiedemann

Friedrich Tiedemann was a German anatomist and physiologist.He was born at Cassel, the eldest son of Dietrich Tiedemann , a philosopher and psychologist of considerable repute. He graduated in medicine at Marburg in 1804, but soon abandoned practice...

 (1781-1861).

Tiedemann was author of the six-volume Geist der spekulativen Philosophie von Thales bis Berkeley (The Spirit of Speculative Philosophy from Thales

Thales

Thales of Miletus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Miletus in Asia Minor, and one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regard him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition...

 to Berkeley

George Berkeley

George Berkeley , also known as Bishop Berkeley , was an Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism"...

). Tiedemann had strong disagreements regarding the philosophic beliefs of Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....

 (1724-1804), of which he critiques in two publications; "On the Nature of Metaphysics: An Examination of Professor Kant's Principles-Against the Aesthetic" and "Continuation of the Examination of Professor Kant's Thoughts About the Nature of Metaphysics-Against the Analytic". Kant dismissed Tiedemann's arguments, which he reasoned were caused by a lack of understanding.

Tiedemann was a pioneer of empirical psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

, and an early practitioner concerning the scientific study of child development

Child development

Child development stages describe theoretical milestones of child development. Many stage models of development have been proposed, used as working concepts and in some cases asserted as nativist theories....

. He kept a journal of his son's sensory, motor, language, and cognitive behavior during the first thirty months of his life. Through his empirical observations he claimed that children possessed a "pre-linguistic knowledge".

Selected publications

• Versuch einer Erklärung des Ursprunges der Sprache (1772)
• System der stoischen Philosophie, three volumes (1776)
• Über die Natur der Metaphysick, zur Prüfung von Herrn Prof. Kants Grundsätzen (1785)
• Geist der spekulativen Philosophie von Thales bis Berkeley (1791-97)
• Theätet; oder, Über das menschliche Wissen; ein Beitrag zur Vernunft-Kritik (1794)