"If we fix steadily for thirty seconds a point between two white
squares about 4 mm. (⅙ inch) apart on a large black sheet, and then
close and cover our eyes, we get a negative after-image in which
are seen two dark squares on a brighter surface; this surface is
brighter close around the negative after-image of each square, and
brightest of all between them. This luminous boundary is called the
_corona_, and is explained usually as an effect of simultaneous
contrast; the dark after-image of the square it is said makes us
mentally err in judgment, and think the clear surface close to it
brighter than elsewhere; and it is brightest between the two dark
squares, just as a middle-sized man between two tall ones looks
shorter than if alongside one only. If, however, the after-image be
watched, it will often be noticed not only that the light band
between the squares is intensely white, much more so than the
normal idio-retinal light [see below], but, as the image fades
away, often the two dark after-images of the squares disappear
entirely with all of the corona, except that part between them
which is still seen as a bright band on a uniform grayish field.
Here there is no _contrast_ to produce the error of judgment; and
from this and other experiments Hering concludes that light acting
on one part of the retina produces inverse changes in all the rest,
and that this plays an important part in producing the phenomena of
contrasts. Similar phenomena may be observed with colored objects;
in their negative after-images each tint is represented by its
complementary, as black is by white in colorless vision."[17]
This is one of the facts referred to on p. 27 which have made Hering
reject the psychological explanation of simultaneous contrast.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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