Author: Klaus Staubermann

Title: Investigating Vision and The Reversion Spectroscope

Abstract: Historians of science have frequently argued that the establishment of experimental psychology was marked by the investigation of visual practice in meridian astronomy. In this paper I will argue that the beginnings of experimental psychology were also marked by the investigation of colour and contrast phenomena and will show how these studies were the outcome of spectroscopic practice. I will also show that what marked the beginnings of experimental psychology, the study of astronomical observation, already pointed at the limits of the experimental psychology programme. Although astronomers had successfully employed visual techniques to obtain quick and reliable measurements, no convincing explanations could be found in the experimental psychology laboratory to explain their techniques sufficiently.