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.

    89/446 page 71
    consciousness in that it explicitly includes the experience of unification of points. ‘The point’ is ‘the apart’; the form is a unification of points. The consciousness of two-dimen¬ sional form is almost certainly due, in part, to the movements made by eyeballs or hand in outlining or tracing an ob¬ ject; and probably, also, includes a vague consciousness of these outlining movements. Such movements are instinc¬ tively performed as one perceives an object.* When I am visually conscious of my paper as rectangular and then of my pen wiper as round, my eyeballs make two series of move¬ ments, characteristically and markedly differing from each other. If with closed eyes I am tactually conscious of these objects, my finger makes (or starts to make) in the one case a broken movement, in the other a sweeping movement, as it follows their outlines. Such outlining movements, whether of eye or of hand, may be more or less completely executed. The baby, who is finding out that the plate is round, continues the outlining, exploring movement of his finger all about its circumference. The grown person may make merely the first part of the movement; or he may make a slight and unnoticed movement; or, finally, he may have merely a tendency to movement, that is, an ex¬ citation of motor neurones, without any actual muscular contraction. But without doubt these movements (of eye¬ balls, hands, and tongue) play an important part in the development of the space-consciousness. The unattended-to experience of such movements (whether performed, and thus perceived, or merely imagined) probably constitutes a part of my complex consciousness of two-dimensional, or surface, * For experiment, cf, L. Witmer, ‘‘Analytic Psychology,” Exp. XVII., pp. 61 ff.
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image