Review of Helmholtz's Treatise on Physiological Optics

Abstract

Reviews the book, Helmholtz's Treatise on Physiological Optics by Edited by James P. C. Southall (1924). The reviewer states that the second volume of the third German edition of the Opik appeared in 1911, one year after the third volume. The delay was due to the illness of the editor, W. Nagel. After Nagel's death von Kries assumed the responsibility for the completion of the second volume. Nagel had already prepared parts of an appendix for the second volume on adaptation, twilight vision, and the duplicity theory, which were included by the new editor together with an appendix of his own on normal and anomalous color systems and theories of vision. Psychologists will find the contents of the second volume, sensations of vision, of more immediate interest to them than those of the first volume. Here one has Helmholtz's great researches on visual stimulation, simple and compound colors and their attributes, contrast, etc., and the appendices by Nagel and von Kries. According to the reviewer, what has already been said about the preparation of the first volume is equally true of the second. Professor Southall and his collaborators deserve the highest praise for bringing before English readers such an excellent version of Helmholtz's monumental work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)