A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins.

Mary Whiton Calkins

Date:: 1910

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

93/446 page 75

$refractiveness, of the eye may condition the depth experience; or some visual character, perhaps the distribution of shadow on the object, may suggest it.* d. Localization: The Consciousness of Position My spatial consciousness includes, finally, the consciousness of position. I am conscious not only that the paper is oblong and the ink-bottle cubical; but also that the ink-bottle lies behind the paper and to the right of the letter-scale. I am conscious also that the date of my letter is written above the signature; I am conscious that the palm of my hand is touched near the thumb by a heated object, and touched near the little finger by a cold object; finally, I am perhaps conscious that a piano is being played above me. It is evident that cases of localization fall into two classes: of three-dimensional and two-dimensional localization, as we name them. The experience of the horizon or of the stars or of the outgoing ship as far away from me, and the ex¬ perience of the ink-bottle as behind the paper, or of the desk as beyond the chair, are cases of three-dimensional localization. Experiences of the signature as below the date, or of the cold object as inward from the warm object, are instances of the consciousness of two-dimensional position. Localization of either sort differs from the consciousness of form, in that it emphasizes apartness rather than unification. Yet localiza¬ tion, the consciousness of position, is more than mere con¬ sciousness of apartness, for one is sometimes conscious of objects as apart without being conscious of their position. One is sometimes conscious, for example, of the spatial distinctness of two stimulated points of the skin without * Cf. below, pp. 77 ff.$

A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins.

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