Epistemological models in psychoacoustics: a historical overview

Since Fechner set the basis for psychophysics, psychology of sound and musical perception started its course as a scientific discipline. During less than two centuries of history, anyway, it passed through many different epistemological paradigms, influenced by the changes occurred into the historical and philosophical panorama. Starting from Fechner's 1860 volume Elemente der Psychophysik, we explore these paradigm shifts, tracking some of the principal steps made by psychology of sound and music in its attempts to offer a model for discovering and explaining the scientific phenomena and laws underlying acoustic sensations and perception, “in tune” with the different theoretical frames of the most influent psychological theories of the XIXth and XXth century.