On some disputed points in physiological optics / by Henry Hartshorne.

  • Hartshorne, Henry, 1823-1897.
Date:
[1876]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On some disputed points in physiological optics / by Henry Hartshorne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ;n their very words, that sensation is in the first place always intuitive; the process of perception then following, by which a reference of the quasi- subjective impression of consciousness is made, to an external cause. Now I believe that we are justified in denying the correctness of such language; and refusing to admit that sensation is per se intuitive, in any proper sense of that word. Subjective it may be, just in so far as it is an affection of the subject whose organs of sense (and through them the consciousness) are impressed. But I would insist that the affection of consciousness in sense-perception, nay, in primary sensation,_\s di.stinct.lv --- -• nature; at least to the extent thai ego of the metaphysician, nor tions of the nerves of sense) is ah cognition; while, at least in tlu belongs, by the law of our constil nature; not needing a secondary ] ness to it. We cannot explain tli law of sense-cognition, according 1 this is true of any and every other whether old or new; and the legit be, as with any other science, to fi ful induction, what are the facts tions. I believe that it may promt ject, to introduce a new term into the word intuition is, as familiarly live process, by which ideas ofrea> gether misapplied when the same v it is) to indicate also the mental The importance, in my judgment philosophy, of so explicit a term which there is now actually no < English phrase, is the raison d’etre making has always against it a stroi impropriety; but in this case, the prt oocms to me to be over-ruled by a real necessity of thought and of expression. By means of the thought which is intended to be thus expressed, a satisfactory antithesis, and (as it is inductive) a tenable refutation, of Berkleyan idealism may be obtained; through the aid (too often overlooked by psychologists) of some of the most clearly demonstrable facts of physiology. Our sensorial consciousness affirms the reality and externality of the objective world, no less simply, directly and positively, than our reflective consciousness affirms our subjec- tive being. III. On Ocular Color-Spectra and their Causation. In order to introduce a few observations which, if not novel, have at all events been but seldom noticed, and to bring forward what I believe to be a new explanation of a remarkable group of optical phenomena, it is need-