Psychological conceptions in other sciences : the Herbert Spencer lecture delivered at Oxford 14 May, 1929 / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Charles Samuel Myers
Date:
1929
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Psychological conceptions in other sciences : the Herbert Spencer lecture delivered at Oxford 14 May, 1929 / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    dilemma concerning the undulatory and corpuscular hypo¬ theses of the transmission of energy with which Physics is now confronted. Both of these hypotheses, it seems, are at present needed to explain all the physical facts; the diffi¬ culty is to combine them consistently. The quantum hypothesis is analogous to the * all-or-none * reaction. According to it, a molecule vibrates in different modes, each mode being a different frequency of vibration. But none of these modes can be excited to any desired grade of intensity. The energy is carried away in units, each mode of vibration having its own particular size of unit. The exciting cause may be strong enough to produce a unit; if it be too weak, it will produce nothing, i.e. no energy at all. Energy is therefore radiated in finite quantities, in¬ creasing or decreasing in jumps. How such ‘ all-or-none ’ behaviour is to be combined with the 'continuously graded’ undulatory behaviour of the ether is at present undetermined. The same problem confronts the physiolo¬ gist in his study of medullated nerves and of striated muscle, the fibres of both of which similarly respond in the ‘ all-or-none ’ fashion, differing among themselves in sensi¬ tivity : how is this action consistent with the ‘ continuously graded ’ contraction in virtue of which prolonged muscular tone is exhibited ? Have we psychologically, physiologi¬ cally, and physically, in each of the three cases, two distinct sets of apparatus, or does the same apparatus, differently co-ordinated, function now in one way, now in the other ? There are many senses in which the psychologist’s state¬ ment holds true, that the organized whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Special attention has been paid of late years to what psychologists, imbued with the danger¬ ous desire of founding a ‘school’, have unfortunately described as a special psychology, the Gestaltpsychologie, i.e. the psychology which stresses the importance of shape, form, and order rather than that of ‘material’ and its abstract localizable parts. As we all know, the same melody may be reproduced in a different key, by using notes that are quite different from those previously employed; or the same notes may be combined afresh to produce a quite
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