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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    lifting weights and by assuming rigid bodily attitudes. A simple way to excite it, for example, is to clench the hand firmly, but in such wise that its surfaces do not touch each other. No external pressure can then be felt, but the resulting experience is said to include, not only a weak sensation of pressure from the moving of the surfaces of the finger-joints on each other, but also a new experience, that of strain, regarded by some as elemental, by others as a complex con¬ sciousness of pressure and of pain. It is specifically due to excitation of the tendons. (2) A second alleged sensation from internal excitation is that of dizziness, due to excitation of the semicircular canals.18 What is known as dizziness is probably either a complex experience or a mere pressure-sensation. It includes, or is closely accompanied by, moving visual images of objects and figures rotating slowly, or slipping and swimming about in one’s field of vision. It is furthermore sometimes, though by no means invariably, accompanied by the feeling of nausea. For the rest, it seems to consist of a pressure- sensation ‘located’ within the head. (3) So-called ‘organic ’ sensations are more evidently complex experiences. These include (a) the so-called sen¬ sations from excitation of the alimentary canal, hunger, thirst, nausea, and (b) the so-called circulatory and respiratory sensations. Carefully analyzed, each of these, in the writer’s opinion, will disclose itself as complex, and not, in any sense, elemental. Thirst, for example, is a complex of pres¬ sure and warmth sensations; it is due to a drying of the mu¬ cous membrane of the mouth-cavity, which becomes a poorer conductor of warmth. The chief element in hunger, also, is probably that of pressure, brought about by some chemical
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