Description
One 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 the therapeutic practices of clinical ophthalmology. As well, he focuses on the personalities, institutions, disciplinary structures, and methodological commitments that shaped the dispute, including the schools' rhetorical strategies. He explores the incommensurability of the protagonists' viewpoints and examines the reception of the theories and the changing fortunes of the schools. Finally, Turner traces the controversy into the twentieth century, where the issues continue to inform the study
Chapter
Chapter Two Physiological Optics from Wheatstone to Helmholtz
The Unification of Physiological Optics
The Stereoscope and the Problem of Visual Space
Binocular Vision in the 1850s
Light and Color Before Colorimetry
Part Two: The Protagonists
Chapter Three Helmholtz on Spatial Perception
From Potsdam to Heidelberg
The Hunting of the Horopter
Chapter Four Hering on Spatial Perception
Hering and the Theory of Identity
The Theory of Retinal Space Values
Chapter Five The Nativist-Empiricist Controversy Begins
The Reform of Physiological Optics
The Dispute Over Spatial Localization Before the Handbuch
The Dispute Over Spatial Localization in the Handbuch
The Rhetorical Achievement of the Handbuch
Hering and Die Lehre Vom Binocularen Sehen (1868)
Chapter Six Helmholtz on Light and Color
Helmholtz on Color Mixing, 1852-55
Clerk Maxwell and the Origins of Colorimetry
Young's Theory and the Handbuch (1860)
Chapter Seven Hering on Light and Color
The Reception of Young's Theory in Germany, 1860-75
The "Spiritualistic" Direction in Physiology
Simultaneous and Successive Light Induction
A Theory of the Visual Substance
The Opponent Process Theory of Color Vision
Reprise: The Unification of Physiological Optics
Part Three: The Wider Controversy
Chapter Eight Core Sets and Partisans
Significant Partisans: Hering
Significant Partisans: Helmholtz
Styles of Scientific Leadership: Hering
Styles of Scientific Leadership: Helmholtz
Chapter Nine the Nativist-Empiricist Debate, 1870-1925
The Stability of Retinal Depth Values
The Evidence of the Clinic: Anomalous Correspondence
The Ascendance of Nativism
Chapter Ten Color Vision Controversies, 1875-90
Debates Over Color Blindness During the 1870s
The Evidence of the Unilaterals
The Defense of Young, Circa 1880
Hering Takes the Offensive
Chapter Eleven Color Vision Controversies, 1890-1915
König, Response Curves, and the Fundamental Sensations
The Specific Brightness of Colors
Rods, Cones, and Visual Purple
The Duplicity Theory of Vision
The Duplicity Theory and the Larger Controversy
Chapter Twelve The Roots of Incommensurability
Incommensurabilities of Program
The Problem of Brightness
Semantics and Incommensurability
Schools as Linguistic Communities
The Limits of Incommensurability
Chapter Thirteen Controversy and Disciplinary Structure
The Disciplinary Basis of Vision Studies
Colorimeters and Experimental Practice
German Physiologists and the Vision Debates
The Institutionalization of Ophthalmology
Visual Perception and the New Psychology
Conclusion: The Fragmentation of Vision Studies
Chapter Fourteen in Search of Denouement: The Twentieth Century
The Internationalization of Vision Studies
Perception Theory in the Twentieth Century
Conclusion: Consensus and Controversy
References and Abbreviations