ABSTRACT
W. James referred to the theory of local sign as “the theory which denies that there can be in sensation any element of actual locality, of inherent spatial order”. In H. Lotze’s scheme the assignment is done strictly through the anatomically based local signs. The coordinates of the points of the skin manifold are merely labels or identification marks, that is, they are local signs. Lotze limited himself to describing how a stimulus moving across the skin would excite a succession of local signs providing the experience of adjacency or co-linearity or, simply, line. The primary scholar in developing the geometrical empiricism was Herman von Helmholtz—a true intellectual giant in each of the disciplines of mathematics, physics, philosophy, physiology, and perceptual psychology. Implicit in the axioms of geometry, Helmholtz argued, is the empirical issue of the mechanical behavior of fixed bodies.
