Models: Representation and the Scientific Understanding by Marx W. Wartofsky (review)

Books 335 that I was getting only part of Michotte's ideas. The final comment led me to read Michotte's La Perception de la causalite (Louvain: Pubs. Universitaires de Louvain, 2nd Ed., 1954).Since this book intrigued him enough to draw attention to it, I suppose it must have some valid ideas. To re-issue a book that comments at someconsiderable length on the work of Gibson seems to me to indicate an abysmal ignorance on the part of the publishers not to have up-dated the references to Gibson's later publications. Many criticisms that Hamlyn makes are treated by Gibson in hisSenses Consideredas Perceptual Systems (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966)and in his last book An Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979). This leads me to Hamlyn's statement that 'We are not provided, in sensations, with a basic knowledge on which everything has to be built, becausesensations do not directly give us knowledge ofother things but only of ourselves' (p. 41).To say then, as he does on p, 85, that 'He [Gibson] no longer makes a distinction between sensation and perception because he assimilates the latter to the former' is to make a mockery of scholarship. Seeing Is Deceiving:The Psychologyof Visual IUusions. Stanley Coren ana Joan Stem Girgus. Wiley, London, 1978.255 pp., illus. £12.00. Reviewed by Alan Turner* In this book, two psychologists systematically survey theoretical analyses of visual illusions. With their scientific approach they cautiously avoid unqualified assertions and successfully integrate studies of illusions into the main body of work on visual perception. I found the production of the book pleasing and the text quite easy to follow. The illustrations are small, but, nonetheless, most of the illusions portrayed are easily discernable. In lesslearned, glossy books some of these illusions can be perceived more dramatically. They begin with a brief history of the study of visual illusions and then classify and examine different kinds in successive chapters according to specific factors involved. They also take into consideration the structure of the human eyeand the part of the brain involved in visual experiences of illusions. The following factors are discussed at length: cleaning up poor quality images by the eye and brain, neural tissue fatigue, analogues of force fields occurring in the brain, Helson's approach involving computed, weighted averages of present and residual stimuli, Piaget's information sampling approach and the role of the saccadic eye movement. Chapter 12 gives a brief resume of preceding chapters and is followed by a chapter entitled Toward a Taxonomy of Visual Illusions in which they take account of their classification of illusions in terms of the multiplicity of mechanisms of the nervous systems that are operative. In the last chapter they consider briefly a number of dominant contemporary hypotheses of visual perception and describe how they deal with visual illusions. To dramatize the importance of visual illusions, they cite a mid-air airplane collision in the U.S.A. in 1%4 in which four people were killed. The collision was attributed by investigators of the U.S.A. Civil Aeronautics Board to a visual misinterpretation of cloud contours by the pilot of one of the airplanes. Models: Representation and the Scientific Understanding. Marx W. Wartofsky. Reidel, Dordrecht, Holland, 1979.390pp. Paper, DFL 30.00. Reviewed by David R. Topper** One often cannot tell what a book contains by its title, or-by its subtitle. I expected Wartofsky's book to be a study of the role of analogues (visual or otherwise) in science, something comparable to Mary Hesse's provocative Forces and Fields or W. H. Leatherdale's superb The Role ofAnalogy. Model. and Metaphor *99 Hornsay Lane, London N6 5LW, England. **Dept. of History, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9, Canada. in Science. But instead it is a collection of 18 essays (mostly previously published): several of academic philosophical interest (on the ideas of Spinoza, Diderot and Hume), some on issues in the philosophy of science (e.g. on the role of metaphysics and models), and others on perception and visual art. A theme running throughout a majority of them is that in human actions (perception and thinking, art...