Treatise On Physiological Optics

The most important work ever produced in the field of physiological optics, this classic is a model of scientific method and logical procedure, and it remains unmatched in its thorough and accessible approach. This is the third in a three-volume republication of the definitive English translation of Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik, originally published by The Optical Society of America in 1924 and containing everything that was known about physiological optics up until that time. The substratum consists of the data that Helmholtz furnished in the two nineteenth-century German editions that appeared during his lifetime. These volumes also contain extensive supplementary matter that Nagel, Gullstrand, and Kries incorporated in the third German edition of 1911, as well as significant new material prepared for the 1924 English translation by C. Ladd-Franklin, Gullstrand, and Kries, with copious annotations by James P. C. Southall that brought the work up to date with current research. Volumes I and II discuss the dioptrics of the eye and the sensations of vision;Volume III examines the perceptions of vision. Its topics include eye movements; the monocular field of vision; direction of vision; perception of depth; binocular vision; and many other highly important topics. Appendixes cover later findings on spatial configuration in vision and the theory of binocular instruments. Indexes for all three volumes are organized by subject and author.

"Helmholtz' 'Popular Scientific Lectures' have spread his fame far and wide among educated people everywhere. While he was professor at Heidelberg and still a comparatively young man, nearly three-score years ago he composed the preface to the first edition of his monumental work on light and vision, in all their intricate and manifold relations to each other; and already considerably more than a decade has passed since the publication of the posthumous third edition of the Physiologische Optik which was brought up to date and greatly enlarged under the collaboration of Nagel, Gullstrant and v. Kries. Yet in all these years there has been no English translation of this great classical treatise; and unfortunately no similar work in English of any kind. It is interesting to note that both Young and Helmholtz, the two great pioneers in Physiological Optics, started on their careers in the medical profession, and each of them afterwards gained his greatest renown in Physics. Apart from its own intrinsic value, the treatise on Physiological Optics is a model of scientific method and logical procedure that has hardly ever been excelled in these respects"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).

The most important work ever produced in the field of physiological optics, this classic is a model of scientific method and logical procedure, and it remains unmatched in its thorough and accessible approach. This is the second in a three-volume republication of the definitive English translation of Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik, originally published by The Optical Society of America in 1924 and containing everything that was known about physiological optics up until that time. The substratum consists of the data that Helmholtz furnished in the two nineteenth-century German editions that appeared during his lifetime. These volumes also contain extensive supplementary matter that Nagel, Gullstrand, and Kries incorporated in the third German edition of 1911, as well as significant new material prepared for the 1924 English translation by C. Ladd-Franklin, Gullstrand, and Kries, with copious annotations by James P. C. Southall that brought the work up to date with current research. The first volume in this series explores the dioptrics of the eye; Volume II examines the sensations of vision, including stimulation by light; simple and compound colors; intensity and duration of sensation of light; and variations of sensitivity and contrast. Appendixes cover later findings on adaptation, twilight vision, and the duplicity theory; normal and anomalous color systems and theories of vision; and the nature of color sensations. The succeeding volume considers perceptions of vision.