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You will notice, as you read on in the book, that back references become numerous. Be advised to look these references up! They send you, in every case, to a particular page, so that their finding is easy, and you can refresh your memory without any great loss of time; though, for that matter, it will do no harm to glance over the section in which they occur. If you, on your part, want to refer to some past discussion, consult the index; it has been made fairly full, and is meant to be used.

Questions and Exercises

Many of the books to which you will be referred, now and later, have appeared in numerous editions, library and popular, English and American. The references are made so complete that you will easily find the corresponding passages in editions other than those used by the author.

Discuss the following definitions of science. If you have access to the books, read the passages in which the definitions occur; if not, do the best you can with your present knowledge. Try to see a reason even for the definitions that you cannot accept.

Science is perfected common sense . The definition accords with the view of Spencer that science and ordinary knowledge are allied in nature, and that the one is but a perfected and extended form of the other. What is there in the common interests of these two men, or in the period in which they lived, to account for such a definition?

Reduced to its lowest terms, science is the observation of phenomena and the colligation of the results of observation into groups .

When may any subject be said to enter the scientific stage? I suppose when the facts of it begin to resolve themselves into groups; when phenomena are no longer isolated experiences, but appear in connection and order; when, after certain antecedents, certain consequents are uniformly seen to follow; when facts enough have been collected to furnish a basis for conjectural explanation, and when conjectures have so far ceased to be utterly vague, that it is possible in some degree to foresee the future by the help of them .

T. H. Huxley, Science Primers: Introductory, 1880, 18 f.; H. Spencer, The Genesis of Science, in Essays, ii., 1891, 8; A. Hill, Introduction to Science, 1900, 3; J. A. Froude, The Science of History, in Short Studies on Great Subjects, First Series, i., 1901, 13 f.; G. R. Kirchhoff, Vorlesungen ?ber mathematische Physik: Mechanik, 1883, 1.

Helmholtz tells us that whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediately practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain; and Clifford asserts that the most useful parts of science have been investigated for the sake of truth, and not for their usefulness. Yet Pearson holds that one of the claims of science to our support is the increased comfort that it adds to practical life. How do you reconcile these statements?

H. von Helmholtz, On the Relation of Natural Science to General Science, in Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects, i., 1904, 25; W. K. Clifford, On Some of the Conditions of Mental Development, in Lectures and Essays, i., 1879, 104; K. Pearson, The Grammar of Science, ch. i., 1900, 29 f., 37.

Discuss the following definitions of psychology:

The science which describes and explains the phenomena of consciousness, as such .

The science of behaviour .

The science of individual experience .

The positive science of mental process .

G. T. Ladd, Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, 1894, 1; W. B. Pillsbury, The Essentials of Psychology, 1911, 5; J. Ward, Psychology, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, xxii., 1911, 548; G. F. Stout, Analytic Psychology, i., 1896, 1.

Can you bring the following series of statements into relation, and show that they illustrate natural stages in the history of human thought?

The savage thinker seems to have taken for granted, as a matter of course, the ordinary operations of his own mind. It hardly occurred to him to think about the machinery of thinking .

The modern mind is, what the ancient mind was not, brooding and self-conscious; and its meditative self-consciousness has discovered depths in the human soul which the Greeks and Romans did not dream of, and would not have understood .

When to save his own soul became man's first business, he must needs know that soul, must study, must examine it. Prescribed as a duty, introspection became at once a main characteristic of religious life .

There is nothing more interesting to the ordinary individual than the workings of his own mind. This interest alone would justify the existence of the science .

If we could say in English 'it thinks', as we say 'it rains' or 'it blows', we should be stating the fact most simply and with the minimum of assumption .

What is the earliest notion of your own mind that you can recall?

Four newspapers describe the same gown as gold brocade, white silk, light mauve, and sea-green with cream or ivory sheen on it. How could this difference of report have arisen?

Newton is said to have discovered the law of gravitation by observing the fall of an apple from a bough. Was this a simple observation, or could it be said to have anything of the experiment about it?

What are the characteristics of a good observer? of a good experimenter?

The older psychologies speak, in technical terms, not of mental processes but of powers, faculties, capacities of the mind. What view of mind do these expressions imply?

Try to describe your experience on some occasion which leads you to say: I have made up my mind; I have half a mind to do so-and-so; That puts me in mind of so-and-so. Try to get down to the bare facts; it will be difficult; but try again and again, and do not be satisfied to report meanings.

Describe your fountain-pen from the points of view of common sense, of physics, and of psychology. Do not attempt too much detail, but get the differences in point of view clearly on paper.

References for Further Reading

? 1. Some general references have already been given; add W. Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, 3d ed., 1857. The book is out of date, but still useful. For science in the Middle Ages, see H. O. Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind, 2d ed., 1914 . For the genesis of science, consult Tylor, as cited above; J. G. Frazer, Balder the Beautiful, 1913, 304 ff.; all the volumes of The Golden Bough are instructive. For an object-lesson in scientific thinking take H. Spencer, The Study of Sociology, 9th ed., 1880 .

? 2. Tylor, as above; J. G. Frazer, Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, 1911, 26 ff.; E. B. Titchener, Psychology: Science or Technology? in Popular Science Monthly, lxxxiv., 1914, 39 ff.; J. Ward, Psychology, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, xxii., 1911, 547 f.

? 3. W. McDougall, Physiological Psychology, 1905; W. Wundt, Principles of Physiological Psychology, i., 1904, 1 ff., 27 ff., 280 ff.; R. M. Yerkes, Animal Psychology and Criteria of the Psychic, in Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, ii., 1905, 141 ff.; M. F. Washburn, The Animal Mind, 1908; A. W. Yerkes, Mind in Plants, in The Atlantic Monthly, Novr. 1914, 634 ff.; J. B. Watson, Behaviour, An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, 1914.

? 4. O. Kuelpe, Introduction to Philosophy, 1897, 55 ff.; Wundt, as above; G. T. Ladd and R. S. Woodworth, Elements of Physiological Psychology, 1911; E. W. Fiske, An Elementary Study of the Brain, 1913; K. Dunlap, An Outline of Psychobiology, 1914.

? 5. W. S. Jevons, The Principles of Science, 1900, bk. iv., chs. xviii., xix.; E. B. Titchener, Prolegomena to a Study of Introspection, in American Journal of Psychology, xxiii., 1912, 427 ff.; O. Kuelpe, Outlines of Psychology, 1909, ? 2; W. A. Hammond, Aristotle's Psychology, 1902; C. A. F. Rhys Davids, A Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics, 1900.

SENSATION

Now that these points have been determined, let us proceed to a general discussion of the whole subject of Sensation.--ARISTOTLE

You may easily find pressure spots by fastening a short horsehair with sealing-wax at right angles to the end of a match, and applying the horsehair point to the back of the hand above a hair-bulb, that is, just to windward of the issuing hair; dot the horsehair about, here and there, till the sensation flashes up. You may find cold spots by passing the blunt point of a lead pencil slowly across the closed eyelid. Warm spots are more difficult to demonstrate. For pain, take the shaft of a pin loosely between finger and thumb of the right hand, and bring the point down sharply on the back of the left hand; you get two sensations; the first is a pressure, the second--which pricks or stings--is a pain.

When we compare these results with the show that the skin makes as a sense-organ in everyday life, we can hardly help bringing against it the charge of dishonesty. The pressure spots give us tickle, contact or light pressure, and pressure proper; the pain spots, itch, prick or sting, and pain proper. The cold spots give cold and cool, the warm spots lukewarm and warm; cold and warm spots together give heat; cold and pain give biting cold; cold and warm and pain give burning or scalding heat; and that is all. Yet the skin pretends to tell us of hard and soft, wet and dry, light and heavy, rough and smooth, yielding and resistant, sharp and blunt, clammy and greasy, oily and sticky, stiff and elastic, and so on. Where do we get all these experiences?

Now suppose that you are looking out, in daylight, over a variegated landscape. Somewhere or other you see a patch of light grey. You get this sensation from the black-white film and the brain-grey; the white-process is stronger than the black-process in the film, and the excess of white, added physiologically to the brain-grey, shows as light grey. Or again, you see a patch of dark purple. This sensation comes from the red-green film ; from the blue-yellow film ; from the black-white film ; and from the brain-grey. All the lights and colours of the landscape can be accounted for in the same way.

the sensation-series 1 2 3 4 5 corresponds with a stimulus-series of the type 1 2 4 8 16;

the sensation-series 1 2 3 4 5 corresponds with the stimulus series 1 4/3 16/9 64/27 256/81;

or, if we take units of some sort, such as millimetres of height of fall,

the sensation-series 1 2 3 4 5 corresponds with the stimulus-series 81 108 144 192 256.

It is because of Weber's law that we are able to ignore the manifold changes of illumination to which we are exposed in the course of the daylight hours; that the painter, who cannot at all reproduce by his pigments the absolute intensities of light in nature, can nevertheless give us a recognisably true copy of any natural scene; and that a large block of seats in the concert-room, at a moderate distance from the stage, can all be sold at the same price and all have equal advantages for hearing. You will readily find other instances of its working, if you are clear as regards the principle involved; namely, that the less you have of anything, the less need be added, and the more you have, the more must be added, to make an appreciable difference; or, on the negative side, that you are not likely to notice any difference in your surroundings, so long as the relations of the stimuli remain unchanged. So Weber's law furnishes yet another reason for the apparent stability of the landscape that we discussed on p. 63.

Questions and Exercises

Mark out, by indelible ink, a sq. cm. upon the outer surface of the forearm. Make upon transparent paper three maps of the area, marking hairs, veins, etc. Work over the area with the horsehair, for pressure spots; with a warmed carpenter's spike, for warm spots; and with a cooled spike, for cold spots. Enter the spots, as you find them, on the maps; remember to dot the hair down for pressure, but to draw the spike slowly and evenly along the skin for temperature. Lay the three maps together, and note the distribution and the relative number of the spots.

After shampooing, the scalp is sensitive and irritable under the brush. Why?

When you are writing with a pencil, or prodding in a pool with a stick, the sensations seem to come from the end of the pencil or stick. What organs are involved? And why should the sensations be localised as they are? Try to think out some experimental means of attacking this question.

What sensations do you get in the act of yawning? What in that of swallowing? What unusual sensations do you have, from the face, after you have been running hard?

How do sour and sweet in the mouth affect the sense of touch? Make solutions, in varying strengths, of sugar and of the juice of some very sour fruit; leave plenty of time between observations.

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