Psychology · William James
SENSATION IN GENERAL.
This is due to the different _terminal organs_ with which the several afferent nerves are armed. Just as we arm ourselves with a spoon to pick up soup, and with a fork to pick up meat, so our nerve-fibres arm themselves with one sort of end-apparatus to pick up air-waves, with another to pick up ether-waves. The terminal apparatus always consists of modified epithelial cells with which the fibre is continuous. The fibre itself is not directly excitable by the outer agent which impresses the terminal organ. The optic fibres are unmoved by the direct rays of the sun; a cutaneous nerve-trunk may be touched with ice without feeling cold.[2] The fibres are mere transmitters; the terminal organs are so many imperfect telephones into which the material world speaks, and each of which takes up but a portion of what it says; the brain-cells at the fibres' central end are as many others at which the mind listens to the far-off call.
Doubtless the sort of outer force habitually impinging on the end-organ gradually modifies the end-organ, the sort of commotion received from the end-organ modifies the fibre, and the sort of current a so-modified fibre pours into the cortical centre modifies the centre. The modification of the centre in turn (though no man can guess how or why) seems to modify the resultant consciousness. But these adaptive modifications must be excessively slow; and as matters actually stand in any adult individual, it is safe to say that, more than anything else, the _place_ excited in his cortex decides what kind of thing he shall feel. Whether we press the retina, or prick, cut, pinch, or galvanize the living optic nerve, the Subject always feels flashes of light, since the ultimate result of our operations is to stimulate the cortex of his occipital region. Our habitual ways of feeling outer things thus depend on which convolutions happen to be connected with the particular end-organs which those things impress. We _see_ the sunshine and the fire, simply because the only peripheral end-organ susceptible of taking up the ether-waves which these objects radiate excites those particular fibres which run to the centres of sight. If we could interchange the inward connections, we should feel the world in altogether new ways. If, for instance, we could splice the outer extremity of our optic nerves to our ears, and that of our auditory nerves to our eyes, we should hear the lightning and see the thunder, see the symphony and hear the conductor's movements. Such hypotheses as these form a good training for neophytes in the idealistic philosophy!
The physiological condition of this first sensible experience is probably many nerve-currents coming in from various peripheral organs at once; but this multitude of organic conditions does not prevent the consciousness from being one consciousness. We shall see as we go on that it can be one consciousness, even though it be due to the coöperation of numerous organs and be a consciousness of many things together. The Object which the numerous inpouring currents of the baby bring to his consciousness is one big blooming buzzing Confusion. That Confusion is the baby's universe; and the universe of all of us is still to a great extent such a Confusion, potentially resolvable, and demanding to be resolved, but not yet actually resolved, into parts. It appears from first to last as a space-occupying thing. So far as it is unanalyzed and unresolved we may be said to know it sensationally; but as fast as parts are distinguished in it and we become aware of their relations, our knowledge becomes perceptual or even conceptual, and as such need not concern us in the present chapter.
"Every one knows that in the stilly night we hear things unnoticed in the noise of day. The gentle ticking of the clock, the air circulating through the chimney, the cracking of the chairs in the room, and a thousand other slight noises, impress themselves upon our ear. It is equally well known that in the confused hubbub of the streets, or the clamor of a railway, we may lose not only what our neighbor says to us, but even not hear the sound of our own voice. The stars which are brightest at night are invisible by day; and although we see the moon then, she is far paler than at night. Every one who has had to deal with weights knows that if to a pound in the hand a second pound be added, the difference is immediately felt; whilst if it be added to a hundredweight, we are not aware of the difference at all....
"The sound of the clock, the light of the stars, the pressure of the pound, these are all _stimuli_ to our senses, and stimuli whose outward amount remains the same. What then do these experiences teach? Evidently nothing but this, that one and the same stimulus, according to the circumstances under which it operates, will be felt either more or less intensely, or not felt at all. Of what sort now is the alteration in the circumstances upon which this alteration in the feeling may depend? On considering the matter closely we see that it is everywhere of one and the same kind. The tick of the clock is a feeble stimulus for our auditory nerve, which we hear plainly when it is alone, but not when it is added to the strong stimulus of the carriage-wheels and other noises of the day. The light of the stars is a stimulus to the eye. But if the stimulation which this light exerts be added to the strong stimulus of daylight, we feel nothing of it, although we feel it distinctly when it unites itself with the feebler stimulation of the twilight. The poundweight is a stimulus to our skin, which we feel when it joins itself to a preceding stimulus of equal strength, but which vanishes when it is combined with a stimulus a thousand times greater in amount.
"We may therefore lay it down as a general rule that a stimulus, in order to be felt, may be so much the smaller if the already preëxisting stimulation of the organ is small, but must be so much the larger, the greater the preëxisting stimulation is.... The simplest relation would obviously be that the sensation should increase in identically the same ratio as the stimulus.... But if this simplest of all relations prevailed, ... the light of the stars, e.g., ought to make as great an addition to the daylight as it does to the darkness of the nocturnal sky, and this we know to be not the case.... So it is clear that the strength of the sensations does not increase in proportion to the amount of the stimuli, but more slowly. And now comes the question, in what proportion does the increase of the sensation grow less as the increase of the stimulus grows greater? To answer this question, every-day experiences do not suffice. We need exact measurements, both of the amounts of the various stimuli, and of the intensity of the sensations themselves.
"How to execute these measurements, however, is something which daily experience suggests. To measure the strength of sensations is, as we saw, impossible; we can only measure the difference of sensations. Experience showed us what very unequal differences of sensation might come from equal differences of outward stimulus. But all these experiences expressed themselves in one kind of fact, that the same difference of stimulus could in one case be felt, and in another case not felt at all--a pound felt if added to another pound, but not if added to a hundredweight.... We can quickest reach a result with our observations if we start with an arbitrary strength of stimulus, notice what sensation it gives us, and then _see how much we can increase the stimulus without making the sensation seem to change_. If we carry out such observations with stimuli of varying absolute amounts, we shall be forced to choose in an equally varying way the amounts of addition to the stimulus which are capable of giving us a just barely perceptible feeling of _more_. A light to be just perceptible in the twilight need not be near as bright as the starlight; it must be far brighter to be just perceived during the day. If now we institute such observations for all possible strengths of the various stimuli, and note for each strength the amount of addition of the latter required to produce a barely perceptible alteration of sensation, we shall have a series of figures in which is immediately expressed the law according to which the sensation alters when the stimulation is increased...."
Sensation of light 1/100 Muscular sensation 1/17 Feeling of pressure, } " " warmth, } 1/3 " " sound, } "These figures are far from giving as accurate a measure as might be desired. But at least they are fit to convey a general notion of the relative discriminative susceptibility of the different senses.... The important law which gives in so simple a form the relation of the sensation to the stimulus that calls it forth was first discovered by the physiologist Ernst Heinrich Weber to obtain in special cases."[4] =Fechner's Law.=--Another way of expressing Weber's law is to say that to get equal positive additions to the sensation, one must make equal _relative_ additions to the stimulus. Professor Fechner of Leipzig founded upon Weber's law a theory of the numerical measurement of sensations, over which much metaphysical discussion has raged. Each just perceptible addition to the sensation, as we gradually let the stimulus increase, was supposed by him to be a _unit_ of sensation, and all these units were treated by him as equal, in spite of the fact that _equally perceptible_ increments need by no means appear _equally big_ when they once are perceived. The many pounds which form the just perceptible addition to a hundredweight feel bigger when added than the few ounces which form the just perceptible addition to a pound. Fechner ignored this fact. He considered that if _n_ distinct perceptible steps of increase might be passed through in gradually increasing a stimulus from the threshold-value till the intensity _s_ was felt, then the sensation of _s_ was composed of _n_ units, which were of the same value all along the line.[5] Sensations once represented by numbers, psychology may become, according to Fechner, an 'exact' science, susceptible of mathematical treatment. His general formula for getting at the number of units in any sensation is _S_ = _C_ log _R_, where _S_ stands for the sensation, _R_ for the stimulus numerically estimated, and _C_ for a constant that must be separately determined by experiment in each particular order of sensibility. The sensation is proportional to the logarithm of the stimulus; and the absolute values, in units, of any series of sensations might be got from the ordinates of the curve in Fig. 2, if it were a correctly drawn logarithmic curve, with the thresholds rightly plotted out from experiments.
Fechner's psycho-physic formula, as he called it, has been attacked on every hand; and as absolutely nothing practical has come of it, it need receive no farther notice here. The main outcome of his book has been to stir up experimental investigation into the validity of Weber's law (which concerns itself merely with the just perceptible increase, and says nothing about the measurement of the sensation as a whole) and to promote discussion of statistical methods. Weber's law, as will appear when we take the senses, _seriatim_, is only approximately verified. The discussion of statistical methods is necessitated by the extraordinary fluctuations of our sensibility from one moment to the next. It is found, namely, when the difference of two sensations approaches the limit of discernibility, that at one moment we discern it and at the next we do not. Our incessant accidental inner alterations make it impossible to tell just what the least discernible increment of the sensation is without taking the average of a large number of appreciations. These _accidental errors_ are as likely to increase as to diminish our sensibility, and are eliminated in such an average, for those above and those below the line then neutralize each other in the sum, and the normal sensibility, if there be one (that is, the sensibility due to constant causes as distinguished from these accidental ones), stands revealed. The methods of getting the average all have their difficulties and their snares, and controversy over them has become very subtle indeed. As an instance of how laborious some of the statistical methods are, and how patient German investigators can be, I may say that Fechner himself, in testing Weber's law for weights by the so-called 'method of true and false cases,' tabulated and computed no less than 24,576 separate judgments.
There is no inconsistency between this statement and the fact that, starting with a weak sensation and increasing it, we feel 'more,' 'more,' 'more,' as the increase goes on. It is not more of the same _stuff_ added, so to speak; but it is more and more _difference_, more and more _distance_, from the starting-point, which we feel. In the chapter on Discrimination we shall see that Difference can be perceived between simple things. We shall see, too, that _differences themselves differ_--there are _various directions of difference_; and along any one of them a series of things may be arranged so as to increase steadily in that direction. In any such series the end differs more from the beginning than the middle does. Differences of 'intensity' form one such direction of possible increase--so our judgments of more intensity can be expressed without the hypothesis that more units have been added to a growing sum. =The so-called 'Law of Relativity.'=--Weber's law seems only one case of the still wider law that the more we have to attend to the less capable we are of noticing any one detail. The law is obvious where the things differ in kind. How easily do we forget a bodily discomfort when conversation waxes hot; how little do we notice the noises in the room so long as our work absorbs us! _Ad plura intentus minus est ad singula sensus_, as the old proverb says. One might now add that the homogeneity of what we have to attend to does not alter the result; but that a mind with two strong sensations of the same sort already before it is incapacitated by their amount from noticing the detail of a difference between them which it would immediately be struck by, were the sensations themselves weaker and consequently endowed with less distracting power.
This particular idea may be taken for what it is worth.[7] Meanwhile it is an undoubted general fact that the psychical effect of incoming currents does depend on what other currents may be simultaneously pouring in. Not only the _perceptibility_ of the object which the current brings before the mind, but the _quality_ of it, is changed by the other currents. "Simultaneous[8] sensations modify each other" is a brief expression for this law. "We feel all things in relation to each other" is Wundt's vaguer formula for this general 'law of relativity,' which in one shape or other has had vogue since Hobbes's time in psychology. Much mystery has been made of it, but although we are of course ignorant of the more intimate processes involved, there seems no ground to doubt that they are physiological, and come from the interference of one current with another. A current interfered with might naturally give rise to a modified sensation.
Examples of the modification in question are easy to find.[9] Notes make each other sweeter in a chord, and so do colors when harmoniously combined. A certain amount of skin dipped in hot water gives the perception of a certain heat. More skin immersed makes the heat much more intense, although of course the water's heat is the same. Similarly there is a _chromatic minimum_ of size in objects. The image they cast on the retina must needs excite a sufficient number of fibres, or it will give no sensation of color at all. Weber observed that a thaler laid on the skin of the forehead feels heavier when cold than when warm. Urbantschitsch has found that all our sense-organs influence each other's sensations. The hue of patches of color so distant as not to be recognized was immediately, in his patients, perceived when a tuning-fork was sounded close to the ear. Letters too far off to be read could be read when the tuning-fork was heard, etc., etc. The most familiar examples of this sort of thing seem to be the increase of _pain_ by noise or light, and the increase of _nausea_ by all concomitant sensations.
This theory has been shown to be untenable by Hering. The discussion of the facts is too minute for recapitulation here, but suffice it to say that it proves the phenomenon to be physiological--a case of the way in which, when sensory nerve-currents run in together, the effect of each on consciousness is different from that which it would be if they ran in separately. '_Successive contrast_' differs from the simultaneous variety, and is supposed to be due to fatigue. The facts will be noticed under the head of 'after-images,' in the section on Vision. It must be borne in mind, however, that after-images from previous sensations may coexist with present sensations, and the two may modify each other just as coexisting sensational processes do. Other senses than sight show phenomena of contrast, but they are much less obvious, so I will not notice them here. We can now pass to a very brief survey of the various senses in detail.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.