The new psychology / by E.W. Scripture ; with 124 illustrations.

  • Edward W. Scripture
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The new psychology / by E.W. Scripture ; with 124 illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    391/556 page 359
    would not know, if his own space were reduced to the jJ^th the size, he surely would not know the difference if he could see space like a fly. There is, nevertheless, a possibility of comparing spaces indirectly. This possibility suggested itself after the perusal of Delboeuf’s “ Megamicros, ou les effets sensibles d’une reduction proportionelle des dimensions de I’univers,”^ The consideration was suggested by a passage in Laplace’s '‘Exposition du systeme du monde” (liv. V., ch. V.), in which it is asserted that one of the remarkable properties of the law of attraction (intensity inversely as the square of the distance) is as follows. If the dimensions of all bodies of the universe, their mutual distances and their velocities were to increase or decrease proportionally, they would describe curves exactly similar to those they now describe, with the result that the universe thus reduced successively to the smallest imaginable space would offer always the same appearance to the observers. These appearances are consequently independent of the dimensions of the uni- verse, as in virtue of the law of proportionality of force to velocity they are independent of the motion in space. The psychological deductions contain a remarkable truth and a remarkable error. The former is that of the complete relativity of space as a phenomenon of vision. The error is pointed out by Delboeuf. I can probably best state it by relating some experiments of Delboeuf’s Megamicros, an inhabitant of the earth suddenly transported to an imaginary planet (similar to Mars) at half the earth’s distance from the sun with everything—even himself—reduced to half size. The Martians, as the inhabitants of this planet are called, have established the metre, the hectare, and the litre just as we Terrestrians have done. The Martian ‘ “ Bulletins cle I’Acadeniie royale dc Belgique,” 1893, (3) xxv. 667.
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