The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2 (of 2)James, William
Science
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
"In the eye, space-perception has certain constant peculiarities
which prove that no single optical sensation by itself possesses
the extensive form, but that everywhere in our perception of space
heterogeneous feelings combine. If we simply suppose that luminous
sensations _per se_ feel extensive, our supposition is shattered by
that influence of movement in vision which is so clearly to be traced
in many normal errors in the measurement of the field of view. If
we assume, on the other hand, that the movements and their feelings
are alone possessed of the extensive quality, we make an unjustified
hypothesis, for the phenomena compel us, it is true, to accord an
influence to movement, but give us no right to call the retinal
sensations indifferent, for there are no visual ideas without retinal
sensations. If then we wish rigorously to express the given facts, we
can ascribe a spatial constitution only to _combinations_ of retinal
sensations with those of movement."
Thus Wundt, dividing theories into 'nativistic' and 'genetic,' calls
his own a genetic theory. To distinguish it from other theories of the
same class, he names it a 'theory of complex local signs.'
"It supposes two systems of local signs, whose relations--taking the
eye as an example--we may think as ... the measuring of the manifold
local-sign system of the retina by the simple local-sign system of
the movements. In its psychological nature this is a process of
associative synthesis: it consists in the fusion of both groups of
sensations into a product, whose elementary components are no longer
separable from each other in idea. In melting wholly away into the
product which they create they become consciously undistinguishable,
and the mind apprehends only their resultant, the intuition of space.
Thus there obtains a certain analogy between this psychic synthesis
and that chemical synthesis which out of simple bodies generates a
compound that appears to our immediate perception as a homogeneous
whole with new properties."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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