Subject
Re: THOUGHTS Re: Einstein and Langevin, measurements,
limits and angels
limits and angels
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Date
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Re: [NABOKV-L] THOUGHTS Re: Einstein and Langevin, location of New Wye & its fauna]Stan K-B: Jansy rightly points out HomSap's sensory deficiences [hallucinations etc] and our instruments are imperfect, too. I'll reply soon, JM, since I was an RL Gregory guinea-pig at the Cavendish [...]
to JF: Your refinement accepted, JF. See my reply to James Studdard/Jansy.
JM: I seem to have missed your replies about Gregory and the one on Planck and limits.
Since I've been long familiar with several theories about human thresholds of perception, I returned to "another Schauplatz", one of Gustav Fechner's invention, in the Wiki. Don B. Johnson tried to ascertain if VN had read Fechner's Vergleichende Anatomie der Engel (Comparative Anatomy of Angels) (1825), a booklet prefaced by William James but, unfortunately, he didn't locate it among VN father's books.
Besides Fechner's intriguing conjectures about Angels, we also find Das Büchlein vom Leben nach dem Tode (1836). On Life After Death (1882) or The Little Book of Life After Death (1904). His lectures were attended by Freud and, contrastingly, he also inspired research in the field of "perception". Fechner (1801-1887) was the founder of "psychophysics"
Here are excerpts from Wikipedia, on Fechner:
Fechner is credited to have created the formula "S = KLogI" that proved the existence of a scientific connection between the body and the mind. Fechner's epoch-making work was his Elemente der Psychophysik (1860). He starts from the monistic thought that bodily facts and conscious facts, though not reducible one to the other, are different sides of one reality. His originality lies in trying to discover an exact mathematical relation between them. The most famous outcome of his inquiries is the law known as the Weber-Fechner law which may be expressed as follows: "In order that the intensity of a sensation may increase in arithmetical progression, the stimulus must increase in geometrical progression."
Though holding good within certain limits only, the law has been found to be immensely useful. Fechner's law implies that sensation is a logarithmic function of physical intensity, which is impossible due to the logarithm's singularity at zero; therefore, S. S. Stevens proposed the more mathematically plausible power-law relation of sensation to intensity in his famous paper entitled "To Honor Fechner and Repeal His Law.[...] Fechner's reasoning has been criticized on the grounds that although stimuli are composite, sensations are not. "Every sensation," says William James, "presents itself as an indivisible unit; and it is quite impossible to read any clear meaning into the notion that they are masses of units combined." Philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari credit Fechner as the discoverer of a "differential unconscious" that offers a powerful alternative to the "conflictual unconscious" posited by Freud.[...] Fechner's world concept was highly animistic[...]Man stands midway between the souls of plants and the souls of stars, who are angels. God, the soul of the universe, must be conceived as having an existence analogous to men. Natural laws are just the modes of the unfolding of God's perfection. In his last work Fechner, aged but full of hope, contrasts this joyous "daylight view" of the world with the dead, dreary "night view" of materialism. Fechner's work in aesthetics is also important. He conducted experiments to show that certain abstract forms and proportions are naturally pleasing to our senses, and gave some new illustrations of the working of aesthetic association.
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to JF: Your refinement accepted, JF. See my reply to James Studdard/Jansy.
JM: I seem to have missed your replies about Gregory and the one on Planck and limits.
Since I've been long familiar with several theories about human thresholds of perception, I returned to "another Schauplatz", one of Gustav Fechner's invention, in the Wiki. Don B. Johnson tried to ascertain if VN had read Fechner's Vergleichende Anatomie der Engel (Comparative Anatomy of Angels) (1825), a booklet prefaced by William James but, unfortunately, he didn't locate it among VN father's books.
Besides Fechner's intriguing conjectures about Angels, we also find Das Büchlein vom Leben nach dem Tode (1836). On Life After Death (1882) or The Little Book of Life After Death (1904). His lectures were attended by Freud and, contrastingly, he also inspired research in the field of "perception". Fechner (1801-1887) was the founder of "psychophysics"
Here are excerpts from Wikipedia, on Fechner:
Fechner is credited to have created the formula "S = KLogI" that proved the existence of a scientific connection between the body and the mind. Fechner's epoch-making work was his Elemente der Psychophysik (1860). He starts from the monistic thought that bodily facts and conscious facts, though not reducible one to the other, are different sides of one reality. His originality lies in trying to discover an exact mathematical relation between them. The most famous outcome of his inquiries is the law known as the Weber-Fechner law which may be expressed as follows: "In order that the intensity of a sensation may increase in arithmetical progression, the stimulus must increase in geometrical progression."
Though holding good within certain limits only, the law has been found to be immensely useful. Fechner's law implies that sensation is a logarithmic function of physical intensity, which is impossible due to the logarithm's singularity at zero; therefore, S. S. Stevens proposed the more mathematically plausible power-law relation of sensation to intensity in his famous paper entitled "To Honor Fechner and Repeal His Law.[...] Fechner's reasoning has been criticized on the grounds that although stimuli are composite, sensations are not. "Every sensation," says William James, "presents itself as an indivisible unit; and it is quite impossible to read any clear meaning into the notion that they are masses of units combined." Philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari credit Fechner as the discoverer of a "differential unconscious" that offers a powerful alternative to the "conflictual unconscious" posited by Freud.[...] Fechner's world concept was highly animistic[...]Man stands midway between the souls of plants and the souls of stars, who are angels. God, the soul of the universe, must be conceived as having an existence analogous to men. Natural laws are just the modes of the unfolding of God's perfection. In his last work Fechner, aged but full of hope, contrasts this joyous "daylight view" of the world with the dead, dreary "night view" of materialism. Fechner's work in aesthetics is also important. He conducted experiments to show that certain abstract forms and proportions are naturally pleasing to our senses, and gave some new illustrations of the working of aesthetic association.
-----
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/