ABSTRACT

In the preceding chapter we saw that if we place a warm stimulus on a cold spot, a paradoxical cold sensation will result. Likewise, if we press the chorda tympani, which, stretched behind the ear drum, contains the taste nerves under other fibers, we shall experience a taste sensation. The same thing happens if we stimulate this nerve electrically or chemically. The optic nerve responds to electrical, chemical, or mechanical stimulation, with a light sensation. These and similar observations led to the promulgation by Johannes Müller (1826) of the law of the specific energies of the senses — the same stimulus calls forth different sensations in different senses, according to the nature of the sense, and different stimuli call forth the same sensations in the same sense. What does this law mean? It means that the content or the quality of the sensation develops from the subject who senses it. The content is not an attribute of the outer object which, so to speak, was only led through the sense to the perceiving mind. Rather, the mind answers the stimulating object in different ways according to the sensory gate upon which it knocks. From the point of view of psychology and epistemology this law has the greatest significance.