A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins.

  • Mary Whiton Calkins
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    respectively, of 4: 5, 5 : 6, 3 : 5, and 5 : 8. In these experiences the consciousness of the difference of the tones is relatively emphasized. When this consciousness of difference obliter¬ ates, or almost obliterates, that of unity, the agreeableness characteristic of the consciousness of harmony disappears, and we have the experience of discord or disharmony, conditioned by the union of air-waves of complicated vibration-ratios.19 The principal discordant intervals, with their vibration-ratios, are the major second (C-D), the minor second (C-hD), the major seventh (C-B), and the minor seventh (C-i?B), with the vibration ratios 8:9, 15: 16, 8:15, 9:16. The nature of the physiological processes, excited in the end-organs of the ear by these combinations of air-waves, and the nature of the cerebral processes, assumed to condi¬ tion the experiences of unity and of difference, are still topics of conjecture rather than of established hypothesis. The occurrence, however, of the consciousness of the har¬ mony of different tones is indisputable. III. The Consciousness of Rhythm and of Melody One is conscious of rhythm12 in dancing, reading poetry, playing an instrument, and in watching the dance and listen¬ ing to poem or to music.* Such an experience of rhythm is a consciousness of the regular alternation of temporally distinct sense-phenomena, either bodily movements or sounds. It is based on the alternation of regularly varying bodily processes — in particular, on the alternations of short inspira¬ tion with long expiration, and of strong with weak pressures in walking. To quote from Professor Titchener: “ As we run * For experiment, cf. Titchener, § 46: Myers, op. cit., Exps. 145-146.
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