Below is the abstract of a forthcoming target article to appear in
Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary
journal that provides Open Peer Commentary on important and
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A PERSPECTIVE ON THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOPHYSICS
David J. Murray
Department of Psychology, Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6
Keywords: Delboeuf, distinctiveness, Fechner, history of psychology,
measurement, philosophy of science, psychophysics, Stevens, sensation.
The research that resulted from Fechner's psychophysics followed three
main lines to the present day: (i) one was concerned with "outer
psychophysics," devoted to the evaluation of Fechner's logarithmic law,
Delboeuf's variant of Fechner's law, and Plateau's power law; (ii) one
was concerned with "inner psychophysics", including criticisms of the
validity of threshold measurements, which ultimately led to signal
detection theory; and (iii) one line arose from the claim of Von Kries
(1882) and others that "sensation strength" could not be "measured,"
culminating in modern measurement theory. Two theoretical issues
important in the nineteenth century are discussed in the light of
modern evidence: the role of "sensation strength" in the representation
of psychophysical judgments data, and the question of whether we can
decide between psychophysical laws on the basis of observations of
visual contrasts when the overall illumination is changed.
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To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
this article, a (nonfinal) draft is retrievable by anonymous ftp from
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bbs.murray). Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft. Just
let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise you
feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article.
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Lower case should be used where indicated, using quotes if necessary to
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