August Büttner

August Büttner was a German mechanical engineer and industrialist who was born on April 13, 1846, in Rahden, Westphalia, and died on July 10, 1919, in Uerdingen in the Rhineland. Alongside his technical and business career, he is also remembered as the author of Zweierlei Denken: Ein Beitrag zur Physiologie des Denkens.

That book explores two different modes of thought and reflects a strong interest in how human thinking works. The surviving catalog and library records available online point more clearly to his published work than to his private life, so modern readers mostly encounter him through this intellectually curious text.

For audiobook listeners, Büttner is an interesting figure because he writes from a place where science, observation, and philosophy meet. Even today, his work offers a glimpse into how earlier thinkers tried to explain the mind with the tools and ideas available to them.