Two philosophers on the history of theories of visual perception. Margaret Atherton. Bkeley's revolution in vision. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990, xii + 249. $29.95 (cloth). Gary Hatfield. The natural and the normative: Theories of spatial perception from Kant to Helmholtz. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990. xxi + 366. $35.00 (cloth)
✍ Scribed by Nicholas Pastore
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1993
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 865 KB
- Volume
- 29
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0022-5061
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Atherton's book examines Berkeley's theory of vision which Berkeley set forth in his Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709).' Part One of the book develops Descartes' and Malebranche's "geometric theory of vision," Part Two focuses on Berkeley's theory, and the concluding Part Three discusses the implications of this theory for Berkeley's doctrine of immaterialism.
Part Two also contains an elaboration of Descartes' and Malebranche's "geometric theory," with emphasis given to Malebranche. Their views are interwoven and contrasted at length with Berkeley's own views because Atherton wishes to establish that Berkeley's "motivations" arose from his repudiation of their "geometric theory." Knowledge of these motivations, she maintains, is the proper way for "understanding" Berkeley's theory. Contemporary philosophers, she says, have chosen the wrong path because they approach Berkeley's Essay from the standpoint of his doctrine of immaterialism. This perhaps may explain her numerous citations of contemporary philosophers, which are also interwoven with her discussion of Berkeley's theory.
Atherton asserts that Berkeley's Essay "constituted a genuinely revolutionary turn in the history of the theory of vision" (3). In her view this revolution had two aspects: (a) Berkeley's repudiation of the geometric theory of vision, which stressed "reasoning" and "calculation" (b) Berkeley's replacement of this theory with his own, which was based on the "association of ideas."
Except for one example, Atherton fails to provide historical substantiation for the occurrence of a Berkeleyan "revolution." The example she cites suggests that she identifies "revolution" with the mere acceptance of Berkeley's theory of vision. Contending that "Berkeley's revolution . . . had remarkably long-lasting consequences," she quotes John Stuart Mill, "[Berkeley's theory] has remained from its first promulgation, one of the least disputed doctrines in the most disputed and most disputable of all sciencesthe Science of Man" (3). However, Mill is merely stating that Berkeley's theory achieved widespread acceptance.
Atherton ignores my book on the history of theories of visual perception, which contains an extended treatment of Berkeley's theory and its reception in the eighteenthand nineteenth-centuries, and which also discusses other theorists examined in her book.2