TO HONOR FECHNER AND REPEAL HIS LAW - A POWER FUNCTION, NOT A LOG FUNCTION, DESCRIBES OPERATING CHARACTERISTIC OF A SENSORY SYSTEM
TO HONOR FECHNER AND REPEAL HIS LAW - A POWER FUNCTION, NOT A LOG FUNCTION, DESCRIBES OPERATING CHARACTERISTIC OF A SENSORY SYSTEM
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DOI：
10.1126/science.133.3446.80
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发表时间：
1961-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
56.9
通讯作者：
STEVENS, SS
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
STEVENS, SS
100年前，费希纳发表了他十年努力的成果和发现--我们庆祝这一事件，称之为心理物理学学科的诞生。自《心理物理学原理》首次引起轰动以来的世纪里，以费希纳的名字命名的简单但有争议的对数定律几乎占据了所有提到人类对刺激反应的教科书。因此，我们今年应该聚集在一个专题讨论会上，纪念这些开端的周年纪念，并探讨1960年的问题。也许在费希纳这部不朽作品100周年之际，最迫切的问题是，它的作者怎么会知道这么多，却做出了如此错误的猜测。(He认为，与一般错误不同，感知错误与感知的大小无关。天赋、博学、独创性--这些天赋都是他的慷慨之举，他把自己的技能成功地应用到了几个不同的领域。他不仅创造了心理物理学和实验美学的先驱，而且还为冯·米塞斯后来转变为基于”集体“概念的著名概率理论奠定了基础。“但真正让他出名的是费希纳的心理物理定律。他用这一理论创立了心理物理学，并使之偏离了一个奇怪的方向这种偏离持续了世纪的大部分时间。如果我们认为一百年是一个很长的时间--在现代科学快速发展的过程中，这当然是很长的时间--那么费希纳在1877年（3）的大胆预测几乎是正确的：“巴别塔从来没有完工，因为工人们无法到达一个目的地。
One hundred years ago GT Fechner (l) published the fruits and findings of a ten-year labor-an event that we celebrate as the nascence of the discipline called psychophysics. In the century since the Elemente der Psychophysik first made its stir, the simple but controversial logarithmic law that goes by Fechner's name has invaded almost all the textbooks that mention human reactions to stimuli. It is fitting and proper, therefore, that we should gather this year in a symposium to mark the anniversary of these beginnings and to inquire how the issues stand in 1960. Perhaps the most insistent question on this 100th anniversary of Fechner's monumental opus is how its author could have known so much and have made such a wrong guess.(He believed that, unlike errors in general, errors in perception are independent of the perceived magnitude.) Talent, erudition, originality-each of these gifts was his in generous measure, and he applied his skills with signal success to several different domains. Not only did he create psychophysics and pioneer in experimental esthetics, but he also laid the foundations for what von Mises (2) later transformed into a well-known theory of probability based on the concept of a" collective." But it was Fechner's version of the psychophysical law that really made him famous. With it he founded psychophysics and sent it off on a curious tangent-a deflection that lasted for the better part of a century. If we regard a hundred years as a long timeand it certainly seems long in the fastmoving evolution of modern sciencethen Fechner was almost right in his defiant forecast of 1877 (3):" The Tower of Babel was never finished becaUse the workers could not reach an