The abilities of man : their nature and measurement / by C. Spearman.

  • Charles Spearman
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The abilities of man : their nature and measurement / by C. Spearman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ment. . . . Here is a droll kind of a God ! 0 most ridiculous hero ! ” 1 The human weakness thus derided by Pascal is familiar enough to us all. A man’s stream of lived experience runs in such a tiny bed, that anything entering into this must needs displace some previous occupant. Of all the compe¬ titions for existence, of all the wars for “ a place under the sun,” surely none is more relentless than that which is con¬ tinually waging between the various contents of our own mind. So far, the most exact information about this pheno¬ menon has been obtained in the sphere of sensory percep¬ tion. The first definite measurement is usually ascribed to the forerunner of modern experimental psychologists, Charles Bonnet, who remarked that the number of objects clearly visible at the same time is about six.2 But much earlier a similar observation had been made by Nemesius, who arrived at a somewhat smaller estimate.3 Many subsequent psy¬ chologists have repeated the observation with growing scientific acumen. Hamilton writes : “ If you throw a handful of marbles on the floor, you will find it difficult to view at once more than six, or seven at most, without confusion ; but if you group them into twos, or threes, or fives, you can comprehend as many groups as you can units; because the mind considers these groups only as units—it views them as wholes, and throws their parts out of consideration.” 4 Particularly curious is the similar but much more elaborate trial made by Jevons with beans; for he concludes that it is “ one of the few points in psychology which can, as far as we yet see, be submitted to experiment.” 5 1 Les Pensees, trans. by Kegan Paul. 2 Essai de Psychologie, ch. 37, p. 132. 3 Numerum autem eorum, quae cernuntur, si plus tribus est aut quatuor, qui uno aspectu non cernitur, motus etiam et figuras multorum angulorum numquam (visio) sola, sed cum memoria et cogitatione sentit. De Natura Hominis, 1566, ch. 7, ed. Malthaei, p. 164. 4 Lectures on Metaphysics, 1865, Lect. XIV. p. 254. 6 Nature, 1871, p. 281.
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