I have been wondering about the report of that dream, because it
is repeated so often--but without attribution. I looked at the
1966 English translation of Elements of Psychophysics (Vol I) and
no mention of the date or a dream occurs in the text. (The
translation of the volume was NIH-funded to celebrate the
centennial of the publication of E of P. I guess we will need to
wait until 2066 to see the translation of Vol. II).
E G Boring does the introduction to the translation and repeats
the dream story--without attribution of course. Even more
irritating is an article by Boring (1961), in which the
date/dream story is higlighted several times, still without
attribution.
However, Boring (1929/1950) does provide an interesting bit of
info in his Experimental Psychology. Fechner wrote a book,
"Zend-Avesta, oder uber die Dinge des Himmels und des Jenseits,"
which was published in 1851.
Boring (1929/1950, p. 279) notes: "Oddly enough this book
contains Fechner's program of psychophysics..."
1851 would be a year after the famous dream and the dream/idea
would still be fresh. The "Elements" contains mainly the results
of the program
Google books has the Zend-Avesta online but my rusty knowledge of
German and the old font system have managed to block my efforts
to find the psychophysics section. Perhaps another scholar will
have better luck.
Happy Fechner's Day,
Ken
Boring, E. G. (1961). Fechner: Inadvertent founder of
psychophysics. Psychometrika, 26, 3-8.
--
---------------------------------------------------------------
Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. [email protected]
Professor and Assistant Chairperson
Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC 28608
USA
---------------------------------------------------------------
Christopher D. Green wrote:
Today is Fechner Day! It celebrates the day on which, according to
legend, Gustav Theodor Fechner developed the psychophysical method by
which an experimenter manipulates the intensity of a physical stimulus,
and then asks (what we would now call) a participant what sort of
change, if any, s/he perceives. By doing this repeatedly, one can build
up a geometrical curve of the relationship between the physical and the
psychological, and then fit a mathematical equation to that curve.
Fechner found that the relationship is logarithmic. Smitty Stevens later
decided that the relationship was a power function instead. The debate
continues.
Chris
--
Christopher D. Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
Canada
416-736-2100 ex. 66164
[email protected]
http://www.yorku.ca/christo/
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