SWIFTNESS OF THOUGHT

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXI, Issue XV, 8 October 1898, Page 476

SWIFTNESS OF THOUGHT

ITow long does it take a man to think? Professor Richet, at the recent meeting of the British Association, gave the results of his investigations into this subject. He found that by mentally running up the notes of the musical scale for one or more octaves and then dividing the total time by the total number of notes thought of, the time taken for each note was oneeleventh of a second. There are vari-

ous ways of arriving at conclusions as to the amount of time necessary for realising any physical sensation of mental impression. If the skin be touched repeatedly with light blows from a small hammer, a person may, according to Professor Richet, distinguish the. fact that the blows are separate and not continuous pressure when they follow one another as frequently as 1(100 a second.

The smallest intervals of sound can be much better distinguished with one ear than with both. Thus the separateness of the clicks of a revolving toothed wheel was noted by one observer when they did not exceed sixty to the second, but using both ears he could not distinguish them when they occurred oftner than fifteen times a second. The sharp sound of the electric spark of an induction coil was distinguished with one ear when the rate was as high as 500 to the second. Sight is much less keen than hearing in distinguishing differences. If a disk half white and half black be revolved it will appear gray when its revolutions exceed twenty-four per second. It has been found that we can hear far more rapidly than we can count, so that if a clock clicking movement runs faster than ten to the. second we can count four clicks, while with twenty to the second we can only count two of them.