We may approach the same result also from experiments of very different
kind. If a flash of light at one point is followed by a flash at another
point after a very short time, about a twentieth of a second, the two
lights appear to us simultaneous. The first light is still fully visible
when the second flashes, and it cannot be noticed that the second comes
later than the first. If now in the same short time interval the first
light moves toward the second point, we should expect that we would see
the whole process as a lighted line at rest, inasmuch as the beginning
and the end point appear simultaneous, if the end is reached less than a
twentieth of a second after the starting point. But the experiment shows
the opposite result. Instead of the expected lighted line, we see in
this case an actual movement from one point to the other. Again we must
conclude that the movement is more than the mere seeing of successive
positions, as in this case we see the movement, while the isolated
positions do not appear as successive but as simultaneous.
Another group of interesting phenomena of movement may be formed from
those cases in which the moving object is more easily noticed than the
impressions of the whole field through which the movement is carried
out. We may overlook an area in our visual field, especially when it
lies far to one side from our fixation point, but as soon as anything
moves in that area our attention is drawn. We notice the movement more
quickly than the whole background in which the movement is executed. The
fluttering of kerchiefs at a far distance or the waving of flags for
signaling is characteristic. All indicate that the movement is to us
something different from merely seeing an object first at one and
afterward at another place. We can easily find the analogy in other
senses. If we touch our forehead or the back of our hand with two blunt
compass points so that the two points are about a third of an inch
distant from each other, we do not discriminate the two points as two,
but we perceive the impression as that of one point. We cannot
discriminate the one pressure point from the other. But if we move the
point of a pencil to and fro from one point to the other we perceive
distinctly the movement in spite of the fact that it is a movement
between two end points which could not be discriminated. It is wholly
characteristic that the experimenter in every field of sensations,
visual or acoustical or tactual, often finds himself before the
experience of having noticed a movement while he is unable to say in
which direction the movement occurred.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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