E.H. Weber On The Tactile Senses

The first edition of this book (E.H. Weber: The Sense of Touch, Academic Press, 1978) has long been out of print. Interest in Weber's work continues, and this revised edition commemorates the bicentenary of his birth. It is published through the cooperation of the Experimental Psychology Society and Psychology Press Ltd.The title has been broadened to reflect the fact that Weber explored all the skin senses - and indeed the muscle sense and that mysterious entity "the common feeling." The introduction has been expanded to include further information on Weber's life and times, and on recent research relevant to Weber's on work. The translations of Weber's main works of psychological interest (De Tactu and Der Tastsinn und das Gemeingefuhl) contain only minor changes, but the footnotes have been updated.
The reader will find here much more than those topics for which Weber is best known - the two-point threshold, experiments on weight discrimination and a statement of what is now called Weber's Law. Weber also made interesting remarks on many aspects of sensory psychology - on left-right asymmetry in sensitivity, on visual resolution, the binocular combination of colors, the moon illusion, on summation, inhibition and adaptation in sensory systems, on the difference between simultaneous and successive presentations, on selective attention, the externalization of sensations and the difference between sensation and perception. As a scientist, Weber was working in the new area of experimental psychology. As a philosopher, he bridged the gap between philosophy and experiment. His work remains of interest to historians of science, to philosophers and to sensory psychologists.