CONTENTS.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
James, William
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Introductory
Psychology defined; psychology as a natural science, its data, 1. The human mind and its environment, 3. The postulate that all consciousness has cerebral activity for its condition, 5.
CHAPTER II.
Sensation in General
Incoming nerve-currents, 9. Terminal organs, 10. 'Specific energies,' 11. Sensations cognize qualities, 13. Knowledge of acquaintance and knowledge-about, 14. Objects of sensation appear in space, 15. The intensity of sensations, 16. Weber's law, 17. Fechner's law, 21. Sensations are not psychic compounds, 23. The 'law of relativity,' 24. Effects of contrast, 26.
CHAPTER III.
Sight
28
The eye, 28. Accommodation, 32. Convergence, binocular vision, 33. Double images, 36. Distance, 39. Size, color, 40. After-images, 43. Intensity of luminous objects, 45.
CHAPTER IV.
Hearing
47
The ear, 47. The qualities of sound, 43. Pitch, 44. 'Timbre,' 45. Analysis of compound air-waves, 56. No fusion of elementary sensations of sound, 57. Harmony and discord, 58. Discrimination by the ear, 59.
CHAPTER V.
Touch, the Temperature Sense, the Muscular Sense, and Pain
60
End-organs in the skin, 60. Touch, sense of pressure, 60. Localization, 61. Sensibility to temperature, 63. The muscular sense, 65. Pain, 67.
CHAPTER VI.
Sensations of Motion
70
The feeling of motion over surfaces, 70. Feelings in joints, 74. The sense of translation, the sensibility of the semicircular canals, 75.
CHAPTER VII.
The Structure of the Brain
78
Embryological sketch, 78. Practical dissection of the sheep's brain, 81.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Functions of the Brain
91
General idea of nervous function, 91. The frog's nerve-centres, 92. The pigeon's nerve-centres, 96. What the hemispheres do, 97. The automaton-theory, 101. The localization of functions, 104. Brain and mind have analogous 'elements,' sensory and motor, 105. The motor zone, 106. Aphasia, 108. The visual region, 110. Mental blindness, 112. The auditory region, mental deafness, 113. Other centres, 116.
CHAPTER IX.
Some General Conditions of Neural Activity
120
The nervous discharge, 120. Reaction-time, 121. Simple reactions, 122. Complicated reactions, 124. The summation of stimuli, 128. Cerebral blood-supply, 130. Brain-thermometry, 131. Phosphorus and thought, 132.
CHAPTER X.
Habit
134