Quoted by J. Crary, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture (Cambridge, MA. and London: MIT Press, 1999).
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'Sherrington detailed how an organism's functioning involved the ceaseless transformation of perceptual information into purposeful action about within the world. His emphasis on the kineto-temporal character of perceptual experience effectively annuls the notion of seeing "images" of the world, and uses (as did [William] James) the word "stream" to describe how the flow and direction of energy within the nervous system change from instant to instant. At the same time he also employs the (Baudelairean) image of the kaleidescope and other nineteenth-century technological imagery to suggest how changes in the contents of a perceptual field are never just incremental alterations but involve a total reorganization of response:

As a tap to a kaleidescope, so a new stimulus that strikes the receptive surface causes in the central organ a shift of functional pattern at various synapses... The gray matter may be compared with a telephone exchange, where,  from moment to moment, though the end points of the system are fixed, the connections between starting points and terminal points are changed to suit passing requirements, as the functional points are shifted at a great railway junction. In order to realize the exchange at work, one must add to its purely spatial plan the temporal datum that within certain limits the connections of the lines shift from minute to minute.

This remarkable hybrid attempt to conjure a suitable four-dimensional image is meant to illustrate the uninterrupted modulation in which certain regions of the nervous system are "shut out" while "vast other regions" are called into play, all in the interest of maintaining the ongoing unity of the individual and of supporting what Sherrington refers to as "the great psychical process of attention." (349-350)

 

'Sherrington made the fundamental distinction between what he called "distance receptors," which included vision, hearing, and smell, and "immediate receptors," which were the senses of taste and touch. Vision, as part of the evolution of biological survival mechanisms, was the primary "distance receptor" which allowed an organism to extend the limits of its subjective experience beyond its physical boundaries.' (351)

 

'For Sherrington human vision could not be considered in isolation from the intricate relation of motor behaviour to the "137 million separate 'seeing' elements spread out in the sheet of the retina." The eye moving across a visual field was, he showed, dynamically interconnected "with wide tracts of the musculature as a whole."' (351)

Quoted by T. Quick, 'Disciplining Physiological Psychology: Cinematographs as Epistemic Devices, 1897-1922', Science in Context 30 (4), pp. 423-474.
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Page numbers refer to 2nd edition (1947).

'This paper considers the significance of what became one of the most emblematic sources of analogy in Bergson's philosophy - that of the cinematograph - for physiological and psychological endeavour during the first decades of the twentieth century. In so doing, it suggests that, by 1922, the scientific landscape in which Bergson had placed so much hope had shifted under his feet. The incorporation of cinematographic devices into physiological and psychological investigation, it suggests, played a critical role in the re-organization of relations between physiology, psychology, and philosophy at this time. Indeed, Bergson's generous comments at Oxford regarding biology and psychology may well even have contributed to this trend. In 1913, Oxford appointed a new Waynflete Professor of Physiology, Charles Scott Sherrington. In 1906, a year before the emergence of Creative Evolution, Sherrington had published a monograph, The Integrative Action of the Nervous System, that would become an exemplary study to twentieth-century physiologists. [note: 'On Sherrington see Smith 2003; idem 2001b; idem 2000; idem 1992, 179-190; Swazey 1969, esp. 1-29.'] Notably, the final chapter of this work centered on a set of experiments that adapted cinematographic devices to very different purposes than those Bergson suggested typified scientific endeavour.'

 

'In Integrative Action, Sherrington conveyed a holistic conception of nervous action that centred on a physical interpretation of the interaction between nervous elements. Cells featured particularly prominently in Sherrington's analysis. The book's opening words declared that 'nowhere does the cell-theory reveal its presence more frequently in the very framework of the argument than at the present time in the study of nervous reactions.' Furthermore, he suggested, 'the progress of natural knowledge' had enabled biology to pass 'beyond the confines of the study of merely visible form, and... [turn] more and more to the subtler and deeper sciences that are branches of energetics' (Sherrington [1906] 1947, 1).'

 

'After a consideration of Gaskell and Hering's metabolic propositions, Sherrington devoted nearly three pages of Integrative Action to Macdonald's conclusions. Summarizing the latter's research as leading to the proposition that 'inhibition is the condition in which the possibilities of free motion are most reduced', he suggested that Macdonald's views were 'fertile in suggestion for future experiment' (Sherrington [1906] 1947, 197-200. Quotes on 199-200). Such enthusiasm reflected a new emphasis within physiology on the study of nerve junctions themselves as sites at which nerve conduction might be interrupted. In his Textbook of Physiology of 1900, Edward A. Schäfer had suggested that impulses were 'momentarily arrested at these places of contact of nerve cells with one another', which he referred to as 'synapses' (Schäfer 1900, 608). Sherrington, characterizing such arrests as manifestations of a 'neurone threshold', identified it unequivocally with a non-contiguous, synaptic transmission:

at each synapse a small quantity of energy... acts as a releasing force to a fresh store of energy not along a homogeneous train of conducting material, as in a nerve fibre... but across a barrier which whether lower or higher is always to some extent a barrier (Sherrington [1906] 1947, 157).

This insistence on the functional significance of barriers between cells marks a critical change of emphasis within physiological considerations of inhibitory mechanisms. Where explanations of variations in the rate of electrical transmission along nerves had centred on cells and the substances that composed them, Sherrington and his colleagues characterized such variability as dependent on changes in the thresholds at which transmission between cells could be effected. Neither cell bodies nor protoplasm were the most physiologically significant conditions for variation in the transmission of nervous impulses: rather, 'synapses' were.'

 

'Despite his enthusiasm regarding McDougall's explanation of 'reciprocal innervation', Sherrington's characterization of it limited its explanatory scope to a particular aspect of a broader, physical, phenomenon. He admitted that McDougall's conclusions presented 'an explanation for the transition from one antagonistic reflex to another' (Sherrington [1906] 1947, 200). As a framework for inhibition, however, they tended

to sever... central nervous inhibition – of which I regard reciprocal innervation of antagonistic muscles as but one widely spread case – from other forms.... It appears to me unlikely that in their essential nature all forms of inhibition can be anything but one and the same process (Sherrington [1906] 1947, 203).

Other forms of inhibition, a uniformly-caused function of nervous action, could not be explained by McDougall's scheme. McDougall's psychological insights were re-cast in Integrative Action as contributions to the experimental study of physical (rather than mechanical) nervous function.'

 

'In Integrative Action, Sherrington introduced his cinematographic studies as pertaining to the question of whether or not it was possible to extend his conclusions regarding nervous activity in simple reflexes to the study of sensations. For the majority of the book, he had, as he noted, supposed the animal 'a puppet without passions, memory, feelings, sensations, let alone ideas concrete or abstract.' Now, in his final chapter, he queried whether 'we [can] at all compare with the simultaneous co-ordination of the nervous factors in a motor reflex the synthesis of the nervous elements whose combination underlies a simple sense-perception?' (Sherrington [1906] 1947, 353, 355) Though he notably did not go so far as to make any positive claim, he thereby intimated that complex psychological phenomena might be explained by reference to his physical interpretation of nervous action. [note: 'For an account of Sherrington's conception of sensation as it emerged later in his career see Smith 2001a, 232-235.'] Less clear from Sherrington's text, however, is that were such a claim to have been established, it would have turned back a tide of opinion that had been gaining ground in physiology since at least the middle of the nineteenth century.'

 

'Sherrington's studies sought to bring the production of cinematographic effects of continuity within the purview of his physical physiological schema. His goal was not merely to arrive at an accurate estimation of the rate at which flickering sensations transformed into continuous ones, but also to interrogate the relationship between the retina, the nerves, and visual sensations more generally. Hering's studies had suggested that the optic nerves had to connect before they arrived at the centre of consciousness, as it was in the eyes and their associated nerves that vision was produced. Helmholtz's insistence that knowledge was a judgemental construct, in contrast, seemed to imply that all sensory organs were connected with the cerebrum individually - it was only through the mind bringing individual sense-experiences together than external perception was generated. By creating a situation in which 'corresponding' points on the retina could be stimulated in similar but crucially alterable ways, Sherrington sought to establish with greater surety than had McDougall the modes of interaction between visual fields. By blocking off some of the holes and one or another of the rectangles cut into the rotating screen, it was possible to create situations in which retinal points could be stimulated either simultaneously or alternately, but always at the same rate. Thus, Sherrington hoped, it would be possible to examine whether stimulatory effects were 'additive' between corresponding nerves, or whether McDougall's contentions regarding their 'mutual inhibition' were in fact accurate (Sherrington [1906] 1947, 375-378). If binocular visual sensation could be shown to be additive, Helmholtz's conclusions could be confirmed. If they inhibited one another, Hering would be supported. Here then appeared a crucial test of a long-standing dispute within physiological psychology.

Despite the lengths to which Sherrington went to ensure that both his subjects and his objects were as carefully arranged and closely controlled as possible, however, he was unable to reach any firm conclusions regarding his results. Sherrington's aim had been to evaluate the extent to which his conclusions regarding the physical nature of simple reflex action could be brought to bear on the interpretation of complex sensory phenomena. But when it came to drawing conclusions from these studies, he himself wavered between the two above-noted possibilities. The problem was not - as had hampered so many prior studies in this vein - disagreement amongst individual observers. Rather, it concerned the seemingly contradictory nature of the results themselves. Whether retinal stimulations could be said to sum together or mutually interfere depended, it seemed, on the mode of stimulation: ''corresponding retino-cerebral' points', he perplexedly concluded, 'retain individuality as regards time-relations... [but are] completely confluent by reference to visual space' (Sherrington [1906] 1947, 366). Furthermore the 'rule of combination' revealed by the experiment 'finds little solution by appeal to summation or interference of retinal and purely physiological processes' (Sherrington [1906] 1947, 369). Though Sherrington leant towards a Helmholtzian conception of visual sensation, introspective sensory investigation, when conducted under carefully controlled laboratory conditions, did not lead to clear-cut physiological conclusions.

The possibility that the study of visual illusions could inform study of the extent to which optic nerves actively contributed to sensation had taken Sherrington a long way from his starting point of the physical interaction of individual nerves. Integrative Action continued to portray the study of 'sensual reaction' as at least potentially part and parcel of that of nerve reactions more generally. Although the difficulty of interpreting the flicker experiment showed that 'hasty conclusions' regarding the parallels between simple and 'sensual' reflexes were unwise, it was nevertheless possible to insist on a 'likeness of nervous reactions expressed by muscular and other effector-organs to reactions whose evidence is sensual' (Sherrington [1906] 1947, 384). More generally, the correspondence of sensations to positions in space, to which the body could direct its actions, indicated that 'physiology and psychology, instead of prosecuting their studies... more strictly apart... will find it serviceable for each to give the results achieved by the other even closer heed than has been customary hitherto' (Sherrington [1906] 1947, 385). Nevertheless, Sherrington's cinematographic studies were not a success in his own (physiological) terms, and he would not produce any further work in this vein. By the end of the First World War, the rooms at Oxford that McDougall used for his psychological experimentation had been requisitioned for more strictly physical investigations (Oldfield 1950, 382). Such differentiation of physiological from psychological endeavour would set a trend for these sciences during the first half of the twentieth century.'