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For more than three decades, from the late 1920s to the mid-1960s, when
the dream of a scientific psychology was still vivid, researchers became
fascinated by what they called the Ganzfeld—the ‘‘total field’’ of percep-
tion. What they meant (biases in studies of perception being what they
are) was the total field of vision. The idea was that if you could experi-
mentally isolate the physical and physiological conditions of vision at their
purest—at their simplest and at the same time their fullest—you would
discover the elementary nature of visual perception. From there, you
could successively build in levels of complexity until you had recon-
stituted the entire range of vision. Reduction and reconstitution. Classical
scientific method.∞
So what are the physical and physiological conditions of vision? Sim-
ply, light striking the retina. If light striking the retina is the simplest
condition, then the simplest fullest condition would be white light—the
simultaneous presentation of the full spectrum of color—striking the en-
tire retina uniformly. Ingenious devices were invented to achieve this.
They typically involved screens and complex di√usion setups, or goggles
that were like Ping-Pong balls cut in half, which were then fit over the eye
sockets and illuminated. Over the years, the devices were perfected to
eliminate ‘‘inhomogenieties.’’ The nose, for example. The nose is a par-
ticularly refractory appendage for pure vision because of its insistence on
casting shadows into the eye, not to mention its adding an outside edge to
monocular vision or a bloblike center to binocular vision.
Nose or no nose, the ‘‘total field of vision’’ was not well-disposed to
reduction and reconstitution. The experimenting went on for quite long
but was thoroughly forgotten in the end, because the pure field of vision,
far from providing a ‘‘primitive,’’ a clean slate or elementary building
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What would the equivalent of the pure field of vision be for the sense of
touch? If the field of visual experience can be described, phenomenally, as
encompassing things from a distance, touch would have to do the op-
posite: pinpoint things in proximity. The tactile analogue of producing
the total field of vision would be to isolate a point of skin and apply
pressure. Generic pressure on an isolated patch of skin would be to touch
what white light filling the whole retina is to sight: the production of an
elementary phenomenal unit lending itself to empirical investigation. For
example, you might anesthetize the whole expanse of the skin except for a
single spot. The hypothesis would be that sensitivity at that spot to be
highlighted, due to the absence of competing tactile stimuli, leaving you
with the simplest, full experience of touch. Imagine a tickle there. Or a
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