The Science of Human Nature: A Psychology for Beginners — John Shaqi
The Science of Human Nature: A Psychology for BeginnersPyle, William Henry
Science
The Science of Human Nature: A Psychology for Beginners
Pyle, William Henry
Educational psychology; Psychology
But simple and self-evident as the facts are, their acceptance must have
tremendous consequences to our thinking, and to our view of human
nature. If the mind is dependent in every feature on the body with its
sense organs, this must give to this body and its sense organs an
importance in our thought and scheme of things that they did not have
before. This close dependence of mind upon body must give to the body a
place in our scheme of education that it would not have under any other
view of the mind. We wish to emphasize here that this statement of the
close relation of the mind and body is not a theory which one may accept
or not. It is a simple statement of fact. It is a presupposition of
psychology. By "presupposition" is meant a fundamental principle which
the psychologist always has in mind. It is axiomatic, and has the same
place in psychology that axioms have in mathematics. All explanations of
the working of the mind must be stated in terms of nerve and brain
action, and stimulation of sense organs.
Since the sense organs are the primary and fundamental organs through
which we get experience, and since the sensations are the elementary
experiences out of which all mental life is built, it is necessary for
us to have a clear idea of the sense organs, their structure and
functions, and of the nature of sensations.
=Vision.= _The Visual Sense Organs._ The details of the anatomy of the eye
can be looked up in a physiological textbook. The essential principles
are very simple. The eye is made on the principle of a photographer's
camera. The retina corresponds to the sensitive plate of the camera. The
light coming from objects toward which the eyes are directed is focused
on the retina, forming there an image of the object. The light thus
focused on the retina sets up a chemical change in the delicate nerve
tissue; this excitation is transmitted through the optic nerve to the
occipital (back) part of the brain, and sets up brain action there. Then
we have visual sensation; we see the object.
The different colors that we see are dependent upon the vibration
frequency of the ether. The higher frequencies give us the colors blue
and green, and the lower frequencies give us the colors yellow and red.
The intermediate frequencies give us the intermediate colors blue-green
and orange. By vibration frequencies is meant the rate at which the
ether vibrates, the number of vibrations a second. If the reader wishes
to know something about these frequencies, such information can be found
in a textbook on physics.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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