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Ernst Mach

voIvcd. Mach, w ho was srruck by this fact, drew from it thc conclusion that thc csscncc ot mclody must rcsidc in a surn ot spccial scnsations which as notc scnsations (Toncmpfindttngcn) accompany thc notes.'-'

Patrick J. Capretta in his A Hiftory of Psychology: In Otulinę (New York, 1967) has argucd that whilc Mach may havc becn a pionccr ot Gcstalt psychology, noncthcless, hc was on thc wrong patii and may actually have hindered thc dcvclopmcnt of this ncw orientation and school in psychology*

Ernst Mach 1885), an erninem Austrian physicist by profession. probably presented thc first elear cxposition of thc Gcstalt phenomenon as it applied to pcrccption. He argucd that ccrtain arrangements of cicments—for cx-ainplc, lines and anglcs in a geometrie figuro—eausc the cmcrgcncc of dif-ferent "totals” reported by the obscrvcr as stpiarcs, trianglcs, circlcs, etc. Paradoxical as it may secm. Mach*s stand in conceiving of thr ncw or dif-ferent totals as still another sensory content (in kccping with thc Wundtian tradition) rcprćscntcd a thcorctical position in psychology that was for all intents and purposes antithctical to thc cvcntual dcvclopments in Gcstalt Psychology. It must be emphasized that Mach favored a psychology of sen-sation, thc doctrinc that all knowlcdgc is scnsorial.⁴

Werę Mach and Ehrcnfels, as historian Gard ner Murphy suggests, en-gaged in thc futilc gesture of buttressing a toitcring structuralism by the addition of superordinatc cicments? ⁰

Alcxius Mcinong, best known as thc founder of the first Austrian psy-chological laboratory at Graz in 1894, actually camc somewhat eloser to the Gcstalt position than did either Mach or Ehrcnfels in recognizing thc im-portancc of thc pcrccptual act itsclf as giving risc to form-quality, or as Mcinong preferred to cali it “founded content.”⁰

Mach Bands

Mach’s phcnomćnalism has becn cririci/.ed so often that we may tend to overlook those occasions when it may havc significantly contributed to important scicntific discoverics. An ontological phenomenalist by identifying thc extcrnal world with sensory impressions often tends to be morc alert to sensory pcculiaritics than ordinary pcoplc who commonly dismiss them as sense illusions or misidcntifications of some sort. What we now cali "Mach bands” probably could have bcen no-ticed thouands of years ago, and perhaps wcrc, but Mach seems to havc becn thc first to take them seriously. They can be notieed all around us and at almost any timc, but the natural tcndcncy is simply not to bciicvc what goes so contrary to our expcctations. As a good phenom-

cnalist, howcvcr, Mach insisted on bclicving wint hr symbol or as a sensory stand-in for something clse but J! ’ T “ * ticular arrangement of scnsations. But what arc “Mach    Ta

what is so strange nbout them?    ' ^And

psychologic.il work during thc 187OS.

accepted "Talbot-plateau law" (.835), thc rotating disc S becn gray on the wter edge becoming constantly if irregularly toward thc tnner edge. In fac, howeser, thcrc appeared ,w„ color band that were not supposcd to ex,st at all.' Toward the darker edge therc was a band that was .00 dark and toward the lighter edge therc was band that was too l.ght (dtagrams a, 3). How could this be cxplained> Mach svrote fivc articlcs bctwcen ,865 and ,868 ,0 help „lve the problem. He soon camc to the conclusion, using diagrams show color intern,ty that the peculiar bands probably reflected neurological inhibitions and that they were mercly "subjective," in that mensurimr instruments not using the hurnan cye would not record them Unfortunatcly, not enough was known about neurological “inhibi tion" at the „me to test Mach’s hypothesis properly, hence like his discovery of gcstalt qualilics, his Work on these strange bands was ncglcctcd and generally forgotten for somc thirty ycars. It is possible that this neglcct may havc been a factor together with the Wosyka espetience in influencing Mach gradually to abandon his cxperimcntal

DIAGRAM 2.

Black-whitc color disk with nick (and superimposed dotted lines and Greek 1011015).

(Couriesy oj Holden-Djy Incorporated)

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