ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter I emphasized the notion that research work in psychophysics orginated in an interest in the perceptual world and that even physicists like Fechner, Helmholtz, and Mach were primarily interested in psychological problems. However, in the attempt to extend principles of physics to problems of psychology the research workers naturally had to limit the range of experiences which could be used as objects of study. What was to be studied was to a large extent determined by the systematic variables available. Phenomenology was primarily a reaction against the attempt to make the study of perception a branch of classical physics. In phenomenology the point of departure is taken in the perceptual world without consideration of, at least without explicit consideration of, how physical measurements might be carried out. Phenomenology, therefore, contributed to a clearer conception of what the object of study in perceptual research ought to be. The movement naturally led to the introduction of a large variety of interesting new problems in psychology.
