Description
Book SynopsisOne of the most persistent controversies of modern science has dealt with human visual perception. It erupted in Germany during the 1860s as a dispute between physiologists Hermann von Helmholtz, Ewald Hering, and their schools. Well into the twentieth century these groups warred over the origins of our capacity to perceive space, over the retinal mechanisms that mediate color sensations, and over the role of mind, experience, and inference in vision. Here R. Steven Turner explores the impassioned exchanges of those rival schools, both to illuminate the clash of theory and to explore the larger role of controversy in the development of science. Controversy, he suggests, is constitutive of scientific change, and he uses the Helmholtz-Hering dispute to illustrate how polemics and tacit negotiation shape evolving theoretical stances.
Turner focuses on the arguments and issues of the dispute, issues that ranged from the interpretation of color blindness and optical illusions to t
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"Turner has clearly done his homework and--unlike many people who write on the history of colour vision--has read the original texts. He understands the issues and the methods used in studying them, and does an excellent job of defining the jargon of the era, which is often comprehensible only in context."--Nature
Table of Contents
List of Figures and TablesPreface and AcknowledgmentsCh. 1Introduction3Ch. 2Physiological Optics from Wheatstone to Helmholtz10Ch. 3Helmholtz on Spatial Perception35Ch. 4Hering on Spatial Perception54Ch. 5The Nativist-Empiricist Controversy Begins68Ch. 6Helmholtz Light and Color95Ch. 7Hering on Light and Color115Ch. 8Core Sets and Partisans139Ch. 9The Nativist-Empiricist Debate, 1870-1925156Ch. 10Color Vision Controversies, 1875-90176Ch. 11Color Vision Controversies, 1890-1915196Ch. 12The Roots of Incommensurability218Ch. 13Controversy and Disciplinary Structure235Ch. 14In Search of Denouement: The Twentieth Century261Appendix281Notes289References and Abbreviations299Index329
