Scientific Vision after Wells

Abstract

The experimental study of vision was to undergo a revolution in the nineteenth century. Discussions of space and time had been grist to the philosophers’ mill for centuries. This was to change as a consequence of addressing philosophical questions concerning the perception of space and time by recourse to experiment rather than exposition. Newton had set this in train with regard to colour vision, and Wells was a catalyst for the experimental investigation of space perception. He did not, however, have available instruments which could place the studies in the laboratory. Two initially separate factors assisted in establishing the independence of psychology from philosophy. On the one hand, it was driven by the invention of instruments for stimulus control so that the methods of physics could be applied to the study of perceptual phenomena. On the other hand and somewhat later, it was followed by the development of psychophysical methods, which opened the possibility of quantifying the responses to such controlled stimulation. The principal instruments were invented in the first half of the nineteenth century, and they consisted of contrivances that manipulated time and space in ways that had not previously been possible.