Helmholtz's Treatise on Physiological Optics

Abstract

“To the solid ground Of Nature trusts the mind which builds for aye.”—WORDSWORTH. THE issue of this volume completes a great task. The English-speaking public has now at its disposal for the first time an edition in English of the epoch-making work of von Helmholtz as it originally appeared, along with the new material which was included in the third German edition to bring the work up-to-date, and some additional matter specially included in the American edition. In the present volume, this additional matter, contained in two notes by von Kries, one on the perception of depth, the other on visual rivalry, is less in amount than the corresponding matter in the first two volumes. But the whole volume is considerably larger than either of the others, and about one-third of it is occupied by the notes and the appendix contributed by von Kries, on almost every branch of the subject dealt with, which were added to the third German edition of the text. The notes appear at the ends of the several divisions of the subject, and the appendix is given at the end of the volume. It deals with the nature of the idea of space in general, the relations of normal localisation, localisation and anomalous eye adjustment, learning to see, and forgetting, the physiological foundations of judgment and learning, empiricism and nativism or intuitionalism, the origin of the laws of the ocular movements, historical and critical comments, and the theory of binocular instruments.

Helmholtz's Treatise on Physiological Optics.

Translated from the third German edition. Edited by Prof. James P. C. Southall. Vol. 3: The Perceptions of Vision. Pp. xi + 736 + 6 plates. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Secretary, Optical Society of America, Rockefeller Hall, 1925.) 7 dollars.