The psychology of sound / by Henry J. Watt.

  • Henry J. Watt
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychology of sound / by Henry J. Watt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    20/260 page 8
    upon which it rests. We can do so in observation as well. Let the forefinger of each hand be touched. Cease to consider the spots as being in the fingers and consider only their inner differences, staring at them as it were, as one does at times with the letters or sounds of a word, when they lose their meaning and become so oddly absurd. Their differences as mere sounds stand out more clearly than usual. So with the touches: we notice a primary inherent difference between the two which seems best describable as a difference of order. It is the same kind of difference as that between one and two, between first and second. Thus we may conclude; every sensation of any sense of the first group differs from every other in respect of the attribute of order, as we may see from the differences of localisation that are so obvious in these senses. The careful and correct study of this attribute is of vital importance for the psychology of hearing as of many other departments of experience. VI. A fourth attribute is closely connected with order. But its distinction and its study will for that reason be much easier. When we put a hand into warm or cold water, we have a mass of sensation varying in extent as more or less of the hand is immersed. Now although the extent of the cold or warmth varies, each experience is alike in being extensive. Each extent of cold or warmth feeling is just as extensive as any other. This extensity is not so closely bound up with localisation, as with primary order; for we should hesitate to say a localisation was extensive; space is extensive, so is a finger or a toe; but a touch’s reference to a point of space or to the finger or toe is not extensive; only the touch is extensive. In other words spatiality is not implied in extensity any more than it is in mere order. The seeming independence of extensity and localisation may largely account for the fact that extensity and its temporal counterpart, durance, usually appear even in those lists of attributes that do not contain localisation or order. Given extensity, those of the genetic school thought it possible by one means or another to manufacture positions within it out of the natural groupings of differences of quality and intensity. W. James, who was a nativist as regards extensity, thought that the perception of positions within it resulted from sub¬ dividing (36, 75). But a moment’s consideration shows that orders cannot originate from mere extensity. We could make tactual or visual areas of the same size all over the sensory field; but they would be identical, unless they included differences of order. Even an increase
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3